Imaging by Santanu Mallick

Ever wished you could hide a folder or file on your shared PC in a jiffy? Or at least password protect it from prying eyes? How often have you gritted your teeth in frustration trying to figure out the latest versions of a document across two machines? Or sighed in dismay when you had to edit an image when your PC doesn’t have Photoshop installed on it? What about the occasions when you have suddenly found yourself exclaiming extremist expletives at having to reboot an unresponsive PC?

Most of us are always so much in awe of our PC and its operating system that we quietly accept anything and everything exactly the way it has been dished out to us. Shouldn’t be that way, should it? There are ways around each of the above through nifty little programmes, web tools and services if you know where to look. And all for free. Here are some little-known power add-ons and online tools for everyday use that not only pep up your productivity but also teach you how to work smarter.

Email Stripper

www.papercut.com/emailStripper.htm

If your heart skipped a beat and your face was wreathed in a leery grin upon reading the name of this freeware, our sincere apologies. It does not reveal any scantily clad forms of the female persuasion whatsoever. Yes, it may come with an overly suggestive Strip It button too, but it sombrely removes just those ugly series of greater-than signs (>) and similar formatting characters from the e-mails you forward and reply to.

So when you next receive a messy looking e-mail littered with a string of >>>>>> that you want to further forward to someone else, run it through Email Stripper first to clear the clutter. The programme also deletes the gaping breaks between lines. This means that you hardly have to do any formatting yourself to make the forward look tidy. Apart from e-mail forwards, you will find it invaluable for cleaning out lengthy and threaded e-mail conversations which can get rather tedious to scroll through sometimes.

Splashup

www.splashup.com

Need to edit a photograph but frowning over the fact that you don’t have Photoshop installed on your PC? Point your browser to the aforementioned web address to try this super-duper online image editing programme. The account sign-up is short and snappy. Unlike other online web tools Splashup allows you to edit multiple images, tinker around with filters, play with image layers and layer effects, swap brushes and all the that jazz. In fact, it has an almost astounding array of editing functions for an online affair. Overall, you will find it far more versatile and useful than better known online photo manipulators like Resizr, Picnik, and Pixoh. The web-based editor also works in tandem with Facebook, Flickr and Picasa. You need to have Flash Player 10 installed to use Splashup but the programme provides you the handholding required to do this. If want an easy and fun downloadable photo editing programme, try Splashup Light.

Syncplicity

www.syncplicity.com

You use multiple computers — one at office and another one at home. And maybe, a laptop as well. But ever so often you find yourself going batty trying to figure out which is the most recently edited version of a file. What you need to simplify your life are the services of a free file synchronisation application and web service like Syncplicity. This utility ensures that all files in one or more folders on Syncplicity loaded machines (yes, these could even be more than two) you use are automatically updated and synchronised.

You could also call it an auto-mirroring or two-way syncing of these folders on the various PCs that you use. Syncplicity is an easy to use, real-time file synchronisation and back-up programme that runs in the background without any sort of intervention from you. It can be deployed over the Internet or even a Windows local area network (LAN) to instantly sync and back up files in several monitored folders. Currently providing 2GB of web storage for two computers for free, Syncplicity deploys 128-bit SSL encryption security for all data transactions. It also offers complete remote access and version history.

My Lockbox

www.fspro.net/folder-lock-box

If you keep confidential data on your office PC or laptop but need to share it with your colleagues off and on... Or have been blessed with inquisitive kids who like to poke and peer into every file and folder — especially ones that you’d prefer to keep out of their clickable reach... Get yourself My Lockbox. This fairly simple freebie can not only hide your files and folders but can also password protect any folder on your computer in a jiffy. The Lockbox folder is hidden from all users (including those nosey system administrators) and sniffer applications. The programme is easy to set-up and use. A control panel makes it easy to alter all important parameters like the Lockbox’s location, its protection status, and the open sesame password. The programme can be triggered with a hotkey combo. It protects your precious private data from intrusive eyes even when Windows is running in Safe Mode.

CopyTaste

http://copytaste.com

A web tool that allows you to create specific private URLs for data that you want to share. This could be a quote or wacky line, stories, tips, or even an image or video. You can make your page private or public, allow comments and post formatting-rich text. You can also advertise your company or your product and services by instantly creating an easy to use, fast and free CopyTaste post and merely mail people the specially generated URL link.

You can create specific private URLs for data that you want to share only with specific people too. A point worth mentioning is that you’ll never need to go through the tedium of registering yourself or logging in each time to use the services here. Land up at the site, copy-paste or bang out the text or other that you want to host on the Internet, generate your unique URL for it and send it off to people. That’s it. On the down side, the CopyTaste site is extremely vague on instructions and that can get your goat.

PortableApps Suite

http://portableapps.com/suite

Don’t have a laptop but want to carry around not just your work files with you but also your own programmes and specific programme settings? Try the PortableApps Suite. This is a collection of killer portable applications that you can carry on a pen drive — in your pocket — wherever you go. The suite includes everything from a web browser, e-mail client, full office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation programme, database software and drawing tool), PDF reader, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging (IM) client, antivirus, all-media player, back-up utility and integrated menu, all pre-configured to work portably. Oh, how can we forget the Sudoku and Mine-sweeper clones in there? The full-featured collection comes with a sharp-looking menu that is customisable. The application icons in the pop-up programme selection menu can be renamed or hidden according to your wishes and needs. The lighter Portable-Apps.com Suite (recommended for 256MB drives) occupies about 150MB once installed on a pen drive while the regular suite (which includes a portable version of the complete OpenOffice app suite weighs in at 355MB after installation.

PC Decrapifier

www.pcdecrapifier.com

Ever cared to notice how pushy advertisers are trying to stuff pre-loaded trialware and product promos down your throat via the spanking new Windows laptop or the branded PC you’ve just bought? Termed craplets — irritating time-limited programmes that are useless scraps of software that you hardly ever want and most often never bother to look at — these are actually unnecessary third-party programmes on an aggressive marketing spree.

Since these craplets often come from well-known software publishers like Norton, McAfee, AOL, Dell, and Corel, we tend to go along with them and let them stay ensconced. The fact is that every time you boot your PC, these programmes slow down the entire process and interfere with the system’s operations. Now PC Decrapifier is designed to detect and delete all such annoying craplet software — not at random but as per a specific list — in an unattended fashion. Don’t fret, you will always get to see what has been detected and if there is anything you want to keep, you can always retain it. You can also go to the programme’s site to check out (under the Applications List header) the official list of craplets sentenced for slaughter. Unfortunately, PC Decrapifier is not foolproof. It doesn’t catch and kill all irritants. You may still need to remove some of the junk yourself.

SuperF4

http://code.google.com/p/superf4

How many times have you found yourself muttering not-so-sweet-somethings at your PC in general and an immobile, unresponsive programme on screen in particular? Preferable to foaming at the mouth or having to reboot the machine, here’s something that may help you prevent profane pronouncements as well as preserve your equanimity — somewhat. SuperF4 is a utility that kills Windows applications that are just not responding to either your keypresses and mouse-clicks or your furious keyboard thumpings. This is meant for applications running in the foreground. Unfortunately, of course, unlike a Harry Potter charm, it can’t make your unsaved file appear out of nowhere.

Cometdocs

www.cometdocs.com

What do you do if someone sends you a file with weird sounding ODS or SXM extensions — instead of the regular TXT or DOC that you are used to? Forget unearthing the application programme it was created in (which you can diagnose without a whimper at http://filext.com/file-extension though), you may even find it difficult to view the contents of such a file. A quick-fix solution in this situation is requesting for the services of a file converter like Cometdocs. This is a convenient little online billet that converts documents file formats —from one that you can’t handle to something that you can manage. Au contraire to what its name may suggest, Cometdocs doesn’t convert just DOC files alone. It can handle audio files, PowerPoint-like presentations sequences, several images formats (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PDF), spreadsheet files, etc. In fact, it can take on more than 50 types of online conversions here. That said, please be warned that depending on the complexity of the formatting and the software version of the programme that created the file originally, the resultant documents may not be exactly the same as the master document, but still fairly close. Zamzar (www.zamzar.com ) is the other option you can try for online file format conversions.

OpenWith

www.openwith.org

Okay now, Cometdocs will solve your problems in viewing files or maybe an editable format for programmes with which you are familiar. But what would you do if you had to edit a .GAN or .DJV or .MD5 file that you couldn’t convert and had to edit in its original master programme? You don’t have to be down at mouth or start flapping your arms in despair. We would advise you to follow your browser all the way to Open With.com. Not only does it proffer detailed information about all kinds of virtually unheard of file extension types that you could come across on any given workday, the website most conveniently also leads to all kinds of free programmes that you can download and use to open such atypical files. Document and data files aside, the available file categories encompass everything you can think of: audio, compressed, disk images, encoded, images, presentations, source code, spreadsheets, videos and more.

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