PAST MEETINGS

Thursday, May 15, 2003

Topic:	Freeware Gems
Presenter	Pam Thompson, consultant for Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP
Host:	Belle Ulander Baker & Hostetler LLP 1050 Connecticut Ave., Suite 1100 Washington, DC 202-861-1535 (Belle's Direct Phone Number)

Pam gave 5-15 minute demonstrations of the following eleven freeware programs. She's even found a couple more to add to the bottom of this list since the meeting!

Ad-Aware (suggested by WTF member Jill Krogmann)

This program scans your memory, registry, hard, removable and optical drives for known datamining, aggressive advertising, and tracking components (a.k.a. spyware).

Adobe Paper Capture

With this add-in to Adobe Writer 5.0, you can take a PDF created from scanned text and make it searchable and, depending on the quality of the original, even copied to another program! The three choices are:
     PDF Formatted Text and Graphics: Used to be known as 'PDF Normal.' When you run the Paper Capture, all bitmapped text it recognizes will be replaced with the equivalent text character. This format creates a small file size than the other styles, however it changes the original look of the document.
     PDF Searchable Image (Exact): Used to be known as 'PDF Image + Text.' This creates the largest file size, but is, as the name suggests, the most accurate. When the plug-in is run a layer of text is placed behind the image, making the page appear exactly as it did when you scanned, but now it is searchable.
     PDF Searchable Image (Compact): This is the compromise between the two types above, producing smaller files sizes than the Exact method. The general look and feel of the image is retained and it becomes searchable. The quality is not quite as good as the Exact method.

Bullets & Numbering add-in for PowerPoint 97

With this add-in, created by Microsoft, you will have a new toolbar that allows you to create sequentially numbered or bullet lists in your PowerPoint presentations. You can create a numbered list in any of four styles (Œ , ,Ž... 1,2,3... a,b,c... or A,B,C....), Of course when you change the order of your paragraphs, the numbers change appropriately. Trick from Pam: type your text first, then highlight and apply the style you want.

CamStudio

CamStudio is a tool for recording screen activity into standard AVI video files. You can move the cursor, launch a new program, type some text, click a few buttons, or select some menus while CamStudio records all these movements, allowing you to save them and play them back later on -- great for demonstrating software features! You can limit the recording to a selected area of the screen or choose to capture full desktop activity. You can adjust the video quality settings to reduce file size, use custom cursors and more. Even more impressive: it comes with a companion program to convert the AVI to Macromedia Flash (.SWF) files which can be played in any browser with a free plug-in from Macromedia. In our demonstration, Pam's 4 MB test AVI file reduced down to a 178 KB Flash file and then started playing automatically in Internet Explorer!!

Fresh Tweak UI

Fresh UI is a utility for configuring and optimizing Windows. It’s loaded with hundreds of hidden settings in Windows XP/2000/NT/ 98/95/Me. With this you can customize the Windows User Interface down to removing tabs from some default dialog boxes; optimize system and hardware settings; and control the user environment with policies. During the presentation, Pam was able to override Baker & Hostetler’s system policy of making Regedit unavailable. This is definitely not for the end user!!

InfoPoll Designer (suggested by WTF member Kathy Kelly)

Kathy summarized this product perfectly when she wrote: "Use [this program] to design and publish easy-to-use online surveys. Great for course evaluations, user needs assessment etc."

IrfanView

IrfanView is a very fast, compact and user friendly graphic program which is simple for beginners and surprisingly powerful for advanced users. It supports a large number of graphic formats and can convert between most of them. It can quickly create thumbnails for an entire folder of images and then print contact sheets of the thumbnails in any variation of row and columns. It can create slideshows which can be turned into exe’s or screensavers. It has amazing batch conversion, multi-file renaming, multi-file image clean-up (contrast, brightness, rotation, etc) abilities. With free plug-ins, it has a built-in Multimedia player and play MP3s, AVIs, MIDIs, etc. You can even use many Photoshop filters!
Pam uses this program to manipulate screenshots (created with PrintScreen or Alt+PrintScreen). If she is planning to email a screenshot, she will crop the image and then decrease its color depth from 32-bit to 16-bit or less which tends to shrink the file size from 3MB to around 80-100 KB. She also uses this program to lighten images or increase the contrast on photographs for an employee directory/database she created in Access.

StatusView

Tracks and displays where personnel are and when they'll be back. Includes an electronic intraoffice messaging system. Works on local area networks or stand-alone PCs. This freeware (nonregistered) version supports 20 users only and lacks some enhancements of the registered version.

VB Doodle

VB Doodle is a unique screen capture tool, that allows you to draw on your desktop, using a virtual pencil and then save the capture as a BMP file, print it or copy it to the clipboard. You can specify the color and size of the pencil to create multi-color doodles. Trick from Pam: Don't use this program's copy feature - use PrintScreen, then paste into IrfanView to tweak further.

Zipper

A program to compress or uncompress ZIP file(s). Can even attempt to repair damaged ZIP files. Nice interface.

Zorro

Zorro is a utility to completely blank the screen except for a rectangular area selected by the user, and it also includes configurable options like disabling the screensaver, hiding the cursor, and selecting the background color. This can really help in training to eliminate other screen distractions.

----- Other Good Ones To Try -----

ExpPrint (suggested by WTF member Belle Ulander)

Print selected files or entire folder trees directly from Explorer with this comprehensive, easy to use, context menu extension.

Enhanced Font List for Office 97 (not needed for 2000/XP)

The Enhanced Font List provides you with a complete list of all installed fonts and displays them as they will look in your document. A left mouse click will apply that font to the current selection, right mouse click will take you to Word's font dialog.

FreePDF

This utility allows you to create PDFs by printing to a "Create PDF" printer from any Windows 9x/ME application.

Several other freeware add-ins for PDF creation can be found at PDFZone

Google Toolbar

When installed, the Google Toolbar automatically appears along with the Internet Explorer toolbar. This means you can quickly and easily use Google to search from any website location, without returning to the Google home page to begin another search. There are quick links to their Search Groups and Search Images start pages, as well as buttons that will highlight or jump to the words used in your criteria!

Tweak UI PowerToys for XP

The Microsoft Windows shell-development team did some extra programming and put together a set of tools, called Power Toys. This group of "toys" lets you adjust your Windows User Interface, including menu speed, window animation, and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

WindowsSwitcher for Microsoft Office 97

WindowSwitcher is an application that allows you to quickly switch between all open Office 97 documents, workbooks, and/or presentations using the Windows TaskBar -- just like you can do in Office 2000 or XP. If WindowSwitcher is enabled, and you have more than one document, workbook, or presentation open, the non-active windows will be displayed as buttons on your TaskBar.