Newsletter Archives

• Slimjet – A Web browser with no assembly required

  Posted on October 3, 2022 at 02:42 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  There are a lot of Web browsers out there if you want to stray from Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox.

  All have extensions you can install to add your favorite cool features, but that’s like having to assemble your toys on Christmas morning. How about something that comes out of the box ready to go?

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.40.0, 2022-10-03).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Web Browsers

• Stick A Note — It’s life-changing! No, really … life-changing

  Posted on September 19, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.38 • 2022-09-19

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  Is this freeware maven seriously going to shove another sticky-note program down our throats? Yes. Yes, I am.

  I am, because this is quite different. This will change the way you live! It’s on a par with the printing press! The cotton gin! This telephone! Okay, fine, it’s at least equal to the invention of fried pies!

  Anand Gupta, a wonderful, professional developer from West Bengal, India, has created a freeware program called Stick A Note that is considerably different from any sticky-note program you have ever used. Stick A Note does not put virtual sticky notes onto your desktop. It puts them on the windows of individual programs.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.38.0, 2022-09-19).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Freeware, Notes

• Keyboard Locker — When you have a bunch of cats or just one big one

  Posted on September 5, 2022 at 02:42 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  A funny thing happened as I was beginning to write this article about locking your keyboard.

  Dewey (aka “Chonk”) filled my page with gibberish as he strolled across my keyboard while I was away. So, the brilliant opening I had originally written for this article is gone — because Chonk doesn’t remember (or care) what he destroyed. Bad kitty!

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.36.0, 2022-09-05).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, keyboard, Lock

• Cryptomator – a little foil on your head is quite fashionable

  Posted on August 29, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.35 • 2022-08-29

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  You can say you don’t trust the cloud with your files, but you do store files in the cloud. Your emails, your cat pictures on Facebook, your virtual farm in Farmville, your credit info, your bank account … yep, the cloud.

  But you don’t have to go all-in with full trust. Take matters into your own hands!

  I love my cloud storage services. I use Dropbox (my favorite), Google Drive (or whatever they’re calling it this week), OneDrive (will always be SkyDrive in my heart), and iCloud (we all make mistakes). Do I trust them to encrypt my data? Sure I do. Encrypt away, geeks! Do I also encrypt the files again from my end? Heck, yeah! Now, one might call me paranoid, but I’m really just a bit of a history buff. Words like “unhackable” and “uncrackable” sound an awful lot like “unsinkable” to me.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.35.0, 2022-08-29).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, encryption, security

• CleanSweep2 — When you need extra hard-drive space fast

  Posted on August 15, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  My first use of Windows was 3.1. Back then, I didn’t know how fast a graphical user interface was supposed to be.

  If the operating-system gods determined that Netscape Navigator would take a full minute to load, who was I to question it?

  Today, I question that a lot. There are things in Windows that are slow. Very slow. Not just third-party programs, either. There are features of Windows itself that are just as slow now as they used to be.

  Disk Cleanup is a good example.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.33.0, 2022-08-15).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Disk Cleanup

• Portable Text Encryption — Your super-secret decoder ring

  Posted on August 1, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  Ever send an important and sensitive email to the wrong person? Wouldn’t it be great if the reply you got back was “Why did you send me gibberish?” instead of “Bob makes HOW MUCH!?”

  U.S. developer Dana Booth has created an easy-to-use tool to encrypt text before pasting it into an email, chat message, or anywhere else. Portable Text Encryption uses AES, DES, Blowfish, and RC4 symmetric encryption ciphers to make sure that if the recipient of your message doesn’t have the password you provide (tell them verbally — not in an email), they aren’t gonna be reading anything but gibberish.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.31.0, 2022-08-01).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, encryption, privacy

• CopyQ — I’m about to make your work way easier!

  Posted on July 18, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  Microsoft has a feature called “Clipboard History” to store copied items to paste later, but it’s … well, it’s boring.

  If you like boring, type Clipboard Settings into your Taskbar search and have a bowl of plain oatmeal while you learn how to use it. If you are more a waffles-with-hot-sauce kind of person, keep reading.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.29.0, 2022-07-18).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Productivity, Windows Clipboard

• FocusWriter — Don’t get distracted by squirrels and things

  Posted on June 27, 2022 at 02:42 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  We have so many distractions on and near our computer screens that it can be a real chore to stay focused when writing. Whether it be an article, a family Christmas letter (we still do those), or a novel, you have to concentrate if you ever want to be done and see the sun again.

  FocusWriter by Graeme Gott has been around since 2008 (same year OlderGeeks.com was born) and is one of the most popular freeware programs for writers. FocusWriter can’t keep the bluebirds away from your window or turn down your TV, but it is very good at keeping things on your screen from distracting you.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.26.0, 2022-06-27).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Word Processing

• Pocket Radio Player — a world of radio stations

  Posted on June 13, 2022 at 02:42 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  Living exactly halfway between two cities means we are on the broadcasting fringe of both cities’ radio stations.

  Sure, I can listen to Air Supply — if I don’t mind The Farm Report being randomly inserted as I drive over hills. But I don’t have this issue at home or work, however, thanks to Internet radio.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.24.0, 2022-06-13).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Internet Radio, Radio

• Hasleo Windows ISO Downloader — easily get Windows from Microsoft

  Posted on May 30, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.22 • 2022-05-30

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  There was a time when getting your hands on an ISO of Windows to fix your computer meant borrowing one from a friend or visiting pirated software sites.

  These days, Microsoft lets you stay on the good side of the Internet neighborhood by allowing you to download copies. You can go through the steps on Microsoft’s website to get Windows, or you can do it the easy way.

  Hasleo Software has been around for years, making some of my favorite commercial tools, but they also have a few free ones. Hasleo Windows ISO Downloader is their free, portable program to download Windows 8.1, Windows 10, or Windows 11 straight from Microsoft’s official servers.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.22.0, 2022-05-30).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Windows

• WebChangeMonitor — stalk your favorite websites for changes

  Posted on May 16, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  My husband and I get asked a lot about how just two people can keep thousands of computer programs up to date on our website.

  Simple: We can’t — but we try real hard. Luckily, we get assistance from software developers’ emails, RSS feeds, open-source project trackers, and good ol’ fashioned complaining.

  Another tool we’ve started using lately is WebChangeMonitor, by German software developer Martin Halle. It’s a great little program that allows you to be notified when a change occurs on a webpage. Pretty handy for us when we want to know whether a developer has updated their version of an application, but the program can be helpful to anyone in so many other ways, too.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.20.0, 2022-05-16).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, Flight Simulation, Website Monitoring

• DockFolders — it’s the pretty things …

  Posted on April 11, 2022 at 02:42 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  I would like to start out with an apology to those I have neglected this year. I have been so nerdy with the software, and then I remember that some of you just want pretty things.

  No worries! I have what you need! Pretty and useful! DockFolders by Silon Systems is beta freeware (you know I have to be the first to try anything) that creates a gorgeous, curved folder dock/menu on your desktop. The program works on Windows 7, 10, and 11.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.15.0, 2022-04-11).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, File Explorer, utilities
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