portable applications
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Flash Drive Reminder Prevents Leaving Your Thumb Drive Behind
10:00PM Kevin Purdy | USB Drives (for Windows systems): If you’re the type who brings their USB flash-memory drive everywhere you go, yet often has to backtrack all the places you’ve been to find it, Flash Drive Reminder is definitely worth the download. The tiny app, and its auto-starting accompanying file, sit on your drive and activate whenever you’ve plugged it into a Windows system. You’ll get a pop-up screen asking you to keep the Reminder app running during your session, and it takes up very little memory. When you go to log off or shut down your session, the reminder pops back up, reminding you to yank out your drive. That’s about it, though there is a “quiet” version that doesn’t present the pop-up window when you first plug in. Flash Drive Reminder is a free download, works on any USB drive (but only activates on Windows systems). If you’ve got a better system for remembering your drive, software or physical, let’s hear it in the comments. Flash Drive Reminder [via Windows Guides] More »
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DriverBackup2 Copies Your System Drivers
11:30PM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: DriverBackup2 is a lightweight driver-backup tool. The application is portable with a caveat: you’ll need administrative privileges for full use. You can opt to backup one or all of your drivers, the backed up files are dumped into a tree structure based on driver name. DriverBackup2 also allows you to restore and delete unnecessary drivers. If you ever hunted for obscure drivers online, when installing legacy or obscure hardware for instance, DriverBackup2 will save you the hassle of searching them out again. For other driver viewing and backup solutions check out DoubleDriver and DriverView. DriverBackup2 is freeware, Windows only. DriverBackup2 [via gHacks] More »
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Toucan Syncs And Backs Up Your Files
3:00AM Gina Trapani | Windows only: Portable application Toucan backs up and syncs your data between two locations (like your hard drive and your USB drive). Weighing in at just over 4.10MB installed, Toucan offers several advanced backup and syncing settings, like incremental backup with compression (supporting 7-Zip format), portable drive variables, scripts and advanced rulesets. Similar to SyncBackSE but smaller and portable, Toucan is a nice option for making sure you’ve got everything on your thumb drive. Toucan is a free download for Windows only. Toucan [PortableApps.com] More »
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NexusFile Helps You Speed Through File Management Tasks
11:30PM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: NexusFile is a feature-rich portable Windows Explorer alternative. Weighing in at just under 3MB, NexusFile easily replaces a host of other applications. There is a basic file renamer, an ftp client, and a file splitter/joiner. You can export saved file lists in a variety of formats, assign favourite folders, browser folders in tabs and in a dual pane view, and compare folders. NexusFile has keyboard shortcuts for every imaginable need from jumping to the root folder to executing command line instructions and everything in between. If you have a disdain for your mouse, you won’t be reminded of it while working in NexusFile. If you’re on friendly terms with your mouse you aren’t forgotten, the GUI of NexusFile is very well laid out. Have a set of working folders your access frequently? Assign them while you work to the vertical bar of numbers in between the dual panes. They’ll be right at your fingertips from then on. The rest of the interface follows with a similar degree of thoughtfulness. If you need Unicode support for your daily file management, you’re covered with NexusFile. If the extremely high contrast colour scheme is too much for you, there is a detailed colour scheme designer under Tools -> Options -> Color. For another feature rich and portable explorer alternative, check out Cubic Explorer. For more alterantives make sure to look over the Five Best Alternative File Managers. NexusFile is freeware, Windows only. Thanks g915! NexusFile More »
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Eraser Portable Securely Wipes Data From Your Thumb Drive
7:00AM Adam Pash | Windows only: Free application Eraser Portable puts Eraser —the popular open-source secure file deletion tool—on your thumb drive for secure file deletion on the go. Like the original, Eraser Portable can wipe any hard drive, optical media, files, folders, encrypted data, the Recycle Bin, and pretty much any other data you want to kill. It may not be an app you use every day, but it’s a great utility to throw on your thumb drive, iPod, or other portable device for those times you do need a quick, secure delete. Eraser Portable [PortableApps.com via MakeUseOf] More »
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Jarte Is A Portable Wordpad Based Powerhouse
11:30PM Lifehacker US Edition | Windows only: Jarte is a free portable word processing application built on the framework of Microsoft Wordpad. Don’t be deceived by its spartan lineage though; Wordpad serves only as the undercarriage of Jarte’s feature set. Jarte is designed around the most frequent needs of the average user. By putting commonly used tools and features in the menus immediately accessibly by the toolbar buttons, users aren’t left digging through menus when they’d rather be writing. Jarte supports tabbed based word processing, dictionary files, spell check, and a favourites system for bookmarking favourite folders, files, and fonts. Jarte is freeware, Windows only. Thanks cohomology! Jarte More »
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Test Drive TraceMonkey Nightly Builds In Portable Firefox
7:45AM Gina Trapani | Our in-house portable Firefox guru Asian Angel has posted a thorough how-to for those of you hot to use the lightening-fast TraceMonkey JavaScript engine nightly builds without disturbing your full-on Firefox installation. Here’s how to run the newest Firefox TraceMonkey nightly build as a portable version. More »
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Carry Your PC on Your iPhone or iPod Touch
2:00AM Adam Pash | It’d be wonderfully convenient if you could take your important documents and applications with you wherever you go, but lugging a laptop with you every time you step out the door is far from convenient. That’s where MokaFive’s new cross-platform application called iPhone Sentinel comes in. By turning part of your iPhone or iPod touch into a portable hard drive, iPhone Sentinel and the MokaFive Player allow you to run virtual machines directly off your iPhone, so you can run anything from an entire operating system to standalone video games like Quake. Here’s how it works. More »
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