September’s News – Special Issue

A few days ago Google celebrated its 11-th birthday. I think it’s a good reason to dedicate my September’s News post to Google innovations. So, this September:

Google Chrome version 3.0  Final released a year after this browser’s  birthday. New stable release is claimed to be significantly faster, supports HTML5, has new better Tab page and of course great Chrome Themes. But there is still no version for Mac. Let’s wait.

One more invention of search giant was delivered this month – Google Fast Flip. Controversial yet worth trying news reader that presents news and articles just like in printed magazine. Mobile version of Fast Flip is available as well. As for me, Fast Flip’s interface is not perfect yet, but it does its main job – browsing news becomes faster.

An old idea in the new implementation – Google Sidewiki, an add-on for Firefox and Internet Explorer which lets users to discuss web pages from browser sidebar. Sidewiki adds button to Google Toolbar and looks like a sidebar when active. It offers you to add your opinion about web pages you visit. When you highlight text on a page, a little icon appears on the left side. Click it to open sidebar and post your entry about the page.

Happy Birthday Google! We’re waiting for your new achievements.

Useful Freewares for Everyday Use

Let me share a few freewares I use every day. These helpful tools will make the part of life you spend working on computer much easier and more pleasant. Try them out.

1. doPDF – this tool allows converting documents into PDF format. doPDF adds virtual printer driver to your system. That means you can save files as PDF in any program with Print option. Simply select Print from an application and choose doPDF as a printer. The tool allows setting custom resolution and paging scaling, choosing one of predefined page sizes, etc. The great feature: doPDF creates PDF file that are searchable by both people and search engines. OS: Windows all.

2. Q-Dir – a multifunctional file manager. Its distinctive feature is unusual interface with four panels displaying files and folders. The program has to versions – for 32-bit and 64-bit systems/ This file manager lets quickly access most often used folders, generate file thumbnails, etc. Q-Dir integrates into Windows context menu. It supports working with ZIP archives and FTP links. Q-dir includes some great tools to simplify your file management. They are screen magnifier, color filter, highlight filter, file-filter, quick-link’s for fast folder access and many other. OS: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista.

3. AkelPad – small yet handy and fast text editor. It can process text documents in single or multi window mode, provides full support of Unicode strings and codepages. With AkelPad, you can edit even read-only files and preview files before opening. Other great features: column text selection, multi-level undo, fast search/replace, print option. AkelPad can be installed on Windows Vista and Windows 7 to replace NotePad.

Hope you’ll enjoy them!

iCal for Windows – get iCalendar events on your desktop

“iCalendar is a standard for calendar data exchange. The standard is sometimes referred to as “iCal”, which also is the name of the Apple, Inc. calendar program…”
As iCalendar is to be used in Apple Macintosh operating system environment, there is lots of tips how to show iCal on Mac desktop. And there is so few information about iCal on Windows desktop that one can think there are only Mac users who need iCalendar on their desktops. Nevertheless, iCalendars became much more popular last years than they were in times of iCal invention because of using iPhones and iPods, Google Calendar and other web-based applications that support and use iCal format. And you got the possibility to have iCalendar directly on your Windows Desktop.
Screen Calendar, desktop time-management and calendar application, lets you import iCalendar events from local or remote files, subscribe to web sources in .ics format and have your iCal events always on your fingertips even when you’re offline.

Screen Calendar lets you:

• Import events from iCal files to your desktop calendar
• Add or edit events and export results to iCal file
• Subscribe to iCalendar sources for automatic update
• Always show iCalendar events on the desktop even when you’re offline

Now you can order Screen Calendar with discount and get 20% off the regular price of Screen Calendar till September 30^th, 2009