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RandallS's blog

Truecrypt 5.0 -- Better than Ever

Fri, 2008-02-08 21:06 — RandallS

I posted about Truecrypt back in 2006 on the old version of this blog. A few days ago, Truecrypt version 5.0 was released with a number of nice improvements, including the ability to encrypt the boot drive. From the announcement:

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Docx2RTF -- Convert Word 2007 files to RTF (Discovery)

Sun, 2008-02-03 09:07 — RandallS

Microsoft did it again with Word 2007. They changed the file format so that older versions and other Word Processors can't read it. If you get a Word 2007 .docx file from an associate or client, you no longer need to buy Office 2007 to read it. Docx2rtf is a freeware program that converts .docx files to the much more standard richtext (.rtf) format -- preserving as much of the original formating as the .rtf format allows. It will also convert the new "ODF" format used by the latest versions Openoffice, NeoOffice and similar program to standard richtext format.

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GNOME Menu File Browser Applet

Tue, 2008-01-29 09:05 — RandallS

Sometimes you just want to open or execute a file in a directory you use a lot. Opening a file manager, browsing to and opening the file and then closing the file manager is a lot of work if you have to do it often enough. The Menu File Browser Applet is an applet for the GNOME Panel. It lets put one or more directories of your choice on the GNOME Panel as menus. You can browse and open files in these directories (and their subdirectories) directly from the panel, without having to open a file manager.

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PlayOnLinux -- Automated WINE Installations

Mon, 2008-01-21 11:01 — RandallS

PlayOnLinux is a frontend that helps to install a number of population Windows games and applications on Linux using WINE. It connects to an online PlayOnLinux script repository for the latest script to automate the installation of a given program. You still have to own a copy of the Windows program you want to install, of course.

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PDFedit -- PDF Editor for Linux

Fri, 2008-01-18 16:25 — RandallS

The PDF document format has become an industry standard and many Linux office programs can produce a document in PDF format without any additional software or special printer drivers needed. Editing a PDF document directly, however, has been hard in Linux due to a lack of a well-designed PDF editor (commercial or open source).

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XYplorerFree -- Freeware Version of XYplorer File Manager for Windows

Wed, 2008-01-16 10:02 — RandallS

XYplorer is a popular shareware replacement for the standard (and low on features) Windows Explorer file manager that comes standard on the Windows operating system. What few know, because the author keeps it well-hidden on his web site, is that an older version of XYplorer has been released as freeware: XYplorerFree. While XYplorerFree lacks the new XYplorer features added after December 2006, it has a number of powerful features that Windows Explorer lacks:

Portable (works from USB)
Multi-Tabbed
Powerful File Search
Search Templates
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KDE 4.0 Released -- Not Really Ready for Everyday Use

Sat, 2008-01-12 14:43 — RandallS

KDE 4.0 has been released, with a large number of improvements to the KDE desktop. I tried it. Unfortunately, I don't think it is really ready for everyday use yet as there are lots of (mainly minor, at least from my brief trial) problems and issues. I'm going to stay with Gnome for the time being, but I will probably need to re-evaluate this decision in six to nine months as KDE 4 is very nice -- or looks like it will be very nice once more of its problems are worked out.

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FeedDemon Windows RSS Reader is Now Freeware

Thu, 2008-01-10 08:45 — RandallS

With version 2.6, Newsgator's popular FeedDemon newsreader for Windows is freeware. I personally prefer Great News for Windows and Liferea for Linux, but if you are looking for a feed reader, FeedDemon is definitely worth a look now that it is free. It has some special features that interact with Newsgator and consistently gets good reviews.

Here's FeedDemon's major features as listed on the FeedDemon web site:

Reading Feeds

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WinMover -- More Ways to Move Windows (Discovery)

Wed, 2008-01-09 08:54 — RandallS

WinMover enhances the Microsoft Windows desktop environment by giving you more ways to move and position windows on your desktop. For example, if you hold down the Alt-key with WinMover running, you can move or resize a window by pressing the mouse button anywhere in the windows and dragging. This is very handy when a program displays its windows mostly off-screen where you can't get to the the title bar and/or the edges to click and drag.

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Make Applications Running in WINE Look Better

Mon, 2008-01-07 14:39 — RandallS

The Tombuntu blog has posted an interesting method for improving the really ugly "early Win95" look of Windows programs running under WINE. Unfortunately, it slows some Windows apps running under some versions of WINE to a crawl on some systems -- mine included. The ability to "theme" WINE applications is a new feature in recent builds of WINE and should improve in the future.

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