Agent Ransack

Forget Windows’ Find File function, say hello to Agent Ransack. It He/she:

• doesn’t ignore files which Windows Find deems not worth searching
• allows Regular expressions in both the content to search for and the file name; in fact he/she also has a “Test Regular Expression” function which is handy even when not searching for files
• allows saving of searches and results (straight to the clipboard too)
• displays matched lines
• is free

I think you’ll find it a very useful tool. Pun most certainly intended, and extremely amusing if I do say so myself. And I do.

Last FM: Your own personal radio station

As much as I love Triple J, I enjoy listening to it some days more than others. I might enjoy one song but not necessarily the next.

Imagine a radio station which always played what you wanted to hear, all the time, and which played new stuff from other similar bands that you’d probably enjoy too.

Enter Last FM.

It’s similar to a conventional radio station:

• They play new music
• They play old music
• They pay the licence fees for the music and you get to listen for free (unless you’d like to contribute, of course)
• You can’t rewind, speed-up or pause songs.

It’s different from a conventional radio station:

• You can choose the style/genre you hear
• You can tell them your favourite songs, and create “tags” or collections
• You can skip (or even ban) a song you don’t want to hear
• You can always see the artist, album, song title and album cover (most of the time) of the current song
• You can find out more about the current band just by clicking
• There are no advertisements between songs (yet?)
• You need to download their (open source) player and have a broadband internet connection, which leads to the following point
• Most of us normal folk won’t be able to listen to it away from the computer, eg in our cars

Adding Audioscrobbler to your favourite audio player makes the experience even more rewarding, as it automatically updates your profile with the songs/bands you listen to, influences what Last FM plays for you, and ultimately helps in the building of their “if you like this band then you’ll probably like that band” database, no matter how eclectic your taste in music.

I’m not sure how they’re making any money out of this yet — other than a few Google Ads on the site — but I have to agree with a friend that this may be one of the key solutions to stamping out music piracy.

I’m loving it. I get to hear new bands that I (most of the time) enjoy, I use up a little bit more of that 20GB/month I’m paying for, and I can have music playing constantly without having to change CD’s or rip and carefully catalog MP3s.

Thank you for the music. (Don’t start singing it, I can’t stand ABBA.)

Falling George

It’s a flimsy link but if we call George Bush a “tool” (as no doubt many do), it will make the following link relevant to this blog.

http://www.yeeguy.com/freefall/ is one of the funnest and funniest things I’ve seen in a while.

Stickies

Even if you don’t use the paper equivalent, there is no forgiveness for not using Stickies.

Free and with a keyboard shortcut for just about every function, this has to be the best sticky note software available. In fact, I’d rate it above the few commercial versions I’ve seen.

I primarily use them for alarms (it’s time for lunch), timers (check on that stuff in the oven) and reminders (prompt fellow workers to up their blogging levels), but you can also use them for communication in a networked environment. They support rich text, can be made always-on-top, are skinnable, and support alpha-blending/transparency.

Get Sticky. Now. You know you want to. Even if it’s just so that you can see what happens when one wakes up as an alarm.

DMEXBar [Windows Explorer add-on]

I first installed DMEXBar back when it was known as DMEXMenu, and only because I wanted a quick way of creating a new folder in Windows Explorer ([Ctrl] + [F7] if you’ve already gone and installed it while reading this sentence).

But several versions later (the author doesn’t seem too worried about dot releases) this fine piece of German engineering is an extremely powerful utility that really does make Windows Explorer its bitch. err… I mean… helps you immensely in your use of Windows Explorer. Especially if, like me, you prefer keyboard shortcuts to mouse clicks.

It adds a new toolbar with heaps of features but the ones I use the most are favourite folders, open with, arrange windows (for file moving and copying), calculate directory size, and copy filenames to clipboard.

Sure, you could go for an Explorer replacement such as 2xExplorer but I prefer adding functionality to something that’s already installed. Plus [Windows] + [E] is so easy to press.

This review really doesn’t do it justice. Install it. Now.

Free Download Manager & FlashGot

My favourite free download manager is… err… Free Download Manager funnily enough.

GetRight was wonderful and all, but it’s U$25.00; and FDM has more features than most people will need (categories, scheduler, site explorer and spider, multi-section downloads, and HEAPS more) so it’s better bang-for-buck. Actually its feature-to-price ratio would cause division by zero which I guess is pretty hard to beat.

The only thing I didn’t like about FDM was its integration with Firefox — I couldn’t find a way to prevent it from intercepting a particular download (without changing settings and restarting the browser) and cancelling didn’t return you to the browser for downloading. But then along came FlashGot, a Firefox extension which connects Firefox to FDM absolutely perfectly.

Sorry, I’ve got to do it; I can’t resist any longer… Happy downloading!

WebMon

Want to be automatically notified when certain webpages change? You need WebMon.

Freeware, intuitive to use, with an uncluttered interface and the option to only detect changes in a particular part of a page, it’s great for monitoring those sites that haven’t clued on to that “RSS thing” yet.

Google Moon

Good for a quick laugh: http://moon.google.com/

Make sure you zoom right in.

Google Earth

Wow.

When you’ve got a spare five minutes (or hours) check out Google Maps in your browser. You’ll be impressed.

But then download Google Earth (10MB) and when you’ve got a spare twenty minutes (or days) have a play. You’ll be blown away.

I cannot believe how gob-smackingly cool this is.

Half the fun is in finding stuff like your house, your high school, your parents’ house etc etc; the other half of the fun is “flying” from one to the other (switch to plane mode for even more fun). It actually makes the world seem smaller. It’s also fun tilting down and checking out the landscape.

Yankee Clipper III (freeware clipboard extender)

Update 03/10/2007: Forget Yankee Clipper III, Ditto is where it’s at.

---

I’m pretty sure I’ve tried nearly all of the freeware clipboard extenders out there (Clipboard Recorder, CLCL, ClipTray, et al) but I still keep coming back to Yankee Clipper III, primarily because of its find function.

Install it, use it (Ctrl+Alt+V), love it, and then smile and roll your eyes as you watch your single-clipboard-using friend lose an important clip or fire up Notepad to hold a list of temporary clips.

Oh and make sure you and check the “Periodically re-attach to clipboard” option in Edit | Configuration | Advanced. The only thing worse than not using a clipboard extender is having yours stop working during a heavy copy-and-paste session.

And for those who like a little aural feedback, rename Clip.wav.bak to Clip.wav for a satisfying “plip” every time Yankee catches a clip.

<lameSignoff>Happy clipping!</lameSignoff>