Portable Apps to the rescue

Portable Apps (http://portableapps.com/) is a wonderful resource for people who use a usb key for their own documents and want apps not available everywhere.

For instance, want to use the library computer to do some homework, but there is no decent office software available? You can get OpenOffice, or Abiword from PortableApps.com to do it for you, and carry it with you.

Here is the list of portable software as of Tuesday, May 31 2011: (From http://portableapps.com/apps)

Accessibility

Firefox Accessibility Extension - Make Firefox more accessible
On-Screen Keyboard Portable - Easily access an on-screen keyboard
Virtual Magnifying Glass Portable - A full-featured screen magnifier

Development

AkelPad Portable - lightweight plaintext editor
Database Browser Portable (Freeware) - Database management utility
Frhed Portable - free hex editor
Geany Portable - Text editor and basic IDE
gVim Portable - advanced, feature-rich text editor
HM NIS Edit Portable - NSIS development environment
Notepad++ Portable - A full-featured text editor with syntax highlighting
Notepad2 Portable - Simple, lightweight text editor
Notepad2-mod Portable - Lightweight text editor
NSIS Portable - Windows installer and launcher creation
Nvu Portable & KompoZer Portable - The easy-to-use Nvu web editor
PortableApps.com Installer - the easy way to package portable apps
PortableApps.com Launcher - make apps portable without writing code
SQLite Database Browser Portable - Simple SQLite database management tool
SWI-Prolog Portable - Prolog programming environment
XAMPP - Apache, mySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, etc in one package

Education

BPBible Portable - bible study tool
Celestia Portable - portable space simulator
FreeMat Portable - scientific prototyping and technical computing
GoldenDict Portable - dictionary and encyclopedia lookups
Gramps Portable - genealogical research software
Marble Portable - virtual globe and atlas
Mnemosyne Portable - flashcard memorization tool
Stellarium Portable - portable planetarium
TIPP10 Portable - touch typing tutor
TypeFaster Portable - touch typing tutor

Games

Armagetron Advanced Portable - 3d lightcycle game
AssaultCube Portable - fast-paced, online, first-person shooter
Atomic Tanks Portable - overly-powerful tanks blow each other up
Battle for Wesnoth Portable - turn-based fantasy strategy game
Big Solitaires 3D Portable - collection of 40 solitaire games
Brutal Chess Portable - 3d chess
Canabalt Portable (Freeware) - outrun the demolition of your city with just one button
Chromium B.S.U. Portable - fast-paced, vertical scrolling space shooter
Cube Portable - old-school first person shooter
DOSBox Portable - classic DOS games to go
Freeciv Portable - empire-building strategy game
Frets on Fire Portable - rock out anywhere with this Guitar Hero™-style game
Get Sudoku Portable - interactive sudoku solver
Hedgewars Portable - turn-based strategy, artillery and comedy game
Hex-a-Hop Portable - hexagonal puzzle game
IceBreaker Portable - wall-building-style arcade game
Jooleem Portable - simple and addictive puzzle game with great music and visuals
Kobo Deluxe Portable - 3rd person scrolling 2D space shooter
LBreakout2 Portable - breakout-style arcade game similar to Arkanoid
LMarbles Portable - pattern-matching puzzle game
Mines-Perfect Portable - a classic hunt-for-mines game with advanced features
Monster 2 Portable - retro-style role-playing game
NetHack Portable - single player dungeon exploration
netPanzer Portable - multiplayer tactical warfare
Neverball Portable - 3d rolling ball obstacle course
OpenTTD Portable - urban planning simulation
Pathological Portable - color-matching puzzle game
PokerTH Portable - classic Texas Hold Em style poker at its best
Puzzle Collection Portable - dozens of single player puzzles
Quick Bridge Portable (Freeware) - play bridge against the computer
Quick Cribbage Portable (Freeware) - play cribbage against the computer
Quick Poker Portable (Freeware) - play poker against the computer
Quick Solitaire Portable (Freeware) - seven classic solitaire games
Rocks'n'Diamonds Portable - fast-paced gem collection game
Sauerbraten (Cube 2) Portable - first person shooter
Scorched 3D Portable - turn-based over-powered artillery in 3D
Sudoku Portable - the wildly popular and addictive puzzle game
SuperTuxKart Portable - multiplayer cart racing
T^3 Portable - 3 dimensional tetris
The Mana World Portable - a free, 2D, retro-style MMORPG
Tick5 Portable - 5-in-a-row puzzle game
Tile World Portable - engaging and fast-paced tile-based puzzles
Twin Distress Portable - color matching puzzle game
Warzone 2100 Portable - single or online multiplayer real-time strategy game
WarMUX Portable - turn-based war of Unix mascots
WAtomic Portable - molecular puzzle game
WinBoard Chess Portable - advanced chess engine
X-Moto Portable - 2D motocross platform game
Zaz Portable - color-matching puzzle game

Graphics & Pictures

AniFX Portable (Freeware) - full-featured cursor editor
Blender Portable - 3D modelling, animation, rendering, post-production, playback
Cornice Portable - image viewer with slideshow
Dia Portable - full-featured diagramming tool
Fotografix Portable (Freeware) - lightweight image editor
Fyre Portable - 2D computational artwork
GIMP Portable - Photo and Image Editor
Hot Spot Studio Portable (Freeware) - mix light to create art
IcoFX Portable (Freeware) - full-featured icon editor
Inkscape Portable - vector graphics editor
IrfanView Portable (Freeware) - lightweight graphic viewer
JPEGView Portable - image viewer and processor
K-3D Portable - 3D modeling and animation
PhotoFiltre Portable (Freeware) - image editing and effects
XnView Portable (Freeware) - view, organize and convert photos

Internet

aMSN Portable - chat and video chat on MSN/Windows Live
DamnVid Portable - video downloader and encoder
DownThemAll! Extension (for Firefox) - download the files and images you want faster
Feed Notifier Portable - RSS/ATOM popup feed notifications
FileZilla Portable - the full-featured FTP client
FireFTP Extension (for Firefox) - a lightweight extension
Google Chrome Portable (Freeware) - fast, simple, themeable browser
gPodder Portable - podcast receiver and manager
Iron Portable - advanced web browser
Juice Portable - podcast receiver and manager
KVIrc Portable - full-featured IRC chat client
Maxthon Portable (Freeware) - fast, powerful browser
Miranda IM Portable - chat with AOL, MSN and Yahoo users in a customizable interface
Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition - the award-winning web browser that's safe and secure
Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition - the handy email client
Nvu Portable & KompoZer Portable - the easy-to-use webpage editor
Opera, Portable Edition (Freeware) - lightweight, customizable browser
PChat Portable - full-featured IRC chat client
Pidgin Portable - chat with AOL, MSN and Yahoo users in an easy-to-use interface
PopMan Portable - lightweight email notifier
Private Browsing by PortableApps.com - enhanced private browsing
PuTTY Portable - lightweight telnet and SSH client
qBittorrent Portable - lightweight bittorrent client
QuteCom Portable - softphone, text, audio and video chat
Sage Extension (for Firefox) - A full-featured RSS extension
SeaMonkey, Portable Edition - complete internet suite (browser, email, chat, newsgroups)
Skype Portable (Freeware) - instant messaging, video chat and phone calls
µTorrent Portable (Freeware) - lightweight bittorrent client
WinSCP Portable - SFTP, FTP and SCP client
WinWGet Portable - take and manage your downloads on the go
wxDownload Fast Portable - multi-threaded download manager

Music & Video

Audacity Portable - A simple audio editor and recorder
CDEx Portable - cd audio extraction and conversion
cdrtfe Portable - CD, DVD, VCD burner
CoolPlayer+ Portable - Lightweight, fast, easy-to-use audio player
DVDStyler Portable - DVD menu authoring tool
fre:ac Portable - extract, convert, and encode audio
InfraRecorder Portable - full-featured CD and DVD burner
MP3Gain Portable - MP3 audio normalization
MuseScore Portable - music composition and notation
Paul Stretch Portable - extreme audio stretching
SMPlayer Portable - Full-featured movie player with support for most video formats
Songbird Portable - Full-featured digital media library and player
VirtualDub Portable - video processing and capture utility
VLC Media Player Portable - Aeasy to use media player that plays many formats
XMPlay Portable (Freeware) - Full featured audio player and library

Office

AbiWord Portable - a lightweight word processor compatible with Microsoft Word files
Dia Portable - full-featured diagramming tool
Evince Portable - document viewer (pdf, ps, djvu, tiff, dvi)
Finance Explorer Portable (Freeware) - personal financial management
FocusWriter Portable - distraction-free word processor
Foxit Reader Portable (Freeware) - small and fast PDF reader
GnuCash Portable - accounting, expenses and financial management
Gnumeric Portable - full-featured spreadsheet
LibreOffice Portable - word processor, spreadsheet, presentations with excellent compatibility
Lightning Extension (for Thunderbird) - A lightweight extension for your calendar and tasks
Money Manager Ex Portable - easy-to-use personal finance software
Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition - Calendar and task management with a familiar interface
Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition (Address Book) - Email client's built-in address book with import/export functions
OpenOffice.org Portable - word processor, spreadsheet, presentations with Microsoft compatibility
PDFTK Builder Portable - split, collate, watermark and password protect PDF documents
PNotes Portable - sticky notes to go
RedNotebook Portable - modern journal and diary
SpeedCrunch Portable - an intuitive algebraic calculator
Stickies Portable (Freeware) - lightweight sticky notes
Sumatra PDF Portable - a lightweight PDF viewer
Task Coach Portable - to do list and task manager
The Guide Portable - two-pane outliner
ToDoList Portable - customizable task management
WinDjView Portable - a lightweight DjVu viewer

Security

ClamWin Portable - Antivirus on the go
Eraser Portable - securely delete files and data
EraserDrop Portable - easily secure-erase files and data
KeePass Password Safe Portable - Secure, easy-to-use password manager
Spybot - Search & Destroy Portable (Freeware) - Spyware detection and removal

Utilities

2X Client Portable (Freeware) - remote server and RDP access client
7-Zip Portable - File archiver and compressor
Ant Renamer Portable - Advanced file renaming utility
AquaSnap Portable (Freeware) - Screen productivity enhancement
BleachBit Portable - cache, temp file and history cleaner
CamStudio Portable - screen recorder and video producer
Checksum Control Portable - create and verify MD5/SFV checksums
Command Prompt Portable - Simple link to a customizable command prompt
Console Portable - console window enhancement
Converber Portable (Freeware) - convert units of measurement
ConvertAll Portable - convert units of measurement
Cook Timer Portable - simple countdown timer
CrystalDiskInfo Portable - disk health monitoring tool
CrystalDiskMark Portable - disk benchmark utility
CubicExplorer Portable - advanced file manager
Daphne Portable - process explorer, killer and debugger
Diffpdf Portable - compare PDFs textually and visually
Disk Cleaner Portable - cache, temp file and history cleaner
Ditto Portable - clipboard manager and extender
DM2 Portable - window control enhancer
Don't Panic! Portable - one-click application hider
DShutdown Portable (Freeware) - remote PC shutdown and wake up
DTaskManager Portable (Freeware) - advanced task manager
DSynchronize Portable (Freeware) - directory synchronization
Explorer++Portable - multi-tab file manager
FreeCommander Portable (Freeware) - easy-to-use windows file manager
Free UPX Portable (Freeware) - advanced executable compression
HDHacker Portable (Freeware) - MBR and boot sector manager
IObit Uninstaller Portable (Freeware) - uninstaller and cleaner
JkDefrag Portable - Disk defragmentation and optimization
jPortable (Freeware) - Java virtual machine made portable
jPortable Launcher - Run Java JARs portably
Lightscreen Portable - easy to use screenshot tool
Listary Portable (Freeware) - find-as-you-type search for Windows Explorer and more
PeaZip Portable - Easy to use file archiver and compressor
PortableApps.com AppCompactor - shrink apps without affecting functionality
PortableApps.com Backup - integrated backup utility bundled with the platform
PortableApps.com Menu - integrated start menu bundled with the platform
Regshot Portable - registry and file comparison
Revo Uninstaller Portable (Freeware) - easy to use uninstaller
SIW (System Information for Windows) Portable (Freeware) - software/hardware info
Smart Defrag Portable (Freeware) - disk defragmentation and optimization
Synkron Portable - file and directory synchronization
System Explorer Portable (Freeware) - task manager and process analyzer
TeamViewer Portable (Freeware) - remote PC support and screen-sharing
Texter Portable - text substitution utility
TinyTask Portable - simple macro record/playback
Toucan - backup, sync and encrypt for advanced users
UUID-GUID Generator Portable - generate unique identifiers
Virtual Volumes View Portable - drive and disk cataloger
VirtuaWin Portable - virtual desktop manager
WinDirStat Portable - disk usage analyzer and cleanup tool
Windows Error Lookup Tool Portable (Freeware) - find windows error code details
winMd5Sum Portable - check md5 sums to verify files on the go
WinPenguins Portable - penguins running around your desktop
WinMerge Portable - file comparison and merging
WinMTR Portable - network diagnostic tool
Workrave Portable - repetitive stress injury prevention
Xenon File Manager Portable - portable file browser
XN Resource Editor Portable -lightweight binary resource editor
Zint Barcode Studio Portable - barcode generator
ZSoft Uninstaller Portable (Freeware) - uninstaller and cleaner

This is what PortableApps.com has to say for themselves: (Found at http://portableapps.com/about)

"PortableApps.com is the world's most popular portable software solution allowing you to take your favorite software with you. A fully open source and free platform, it works on any portable storage device (USB flash drive, iPod, memory card, portable hard drive, etc). With millions of users all over the world and a full collection of open source software as well as compatible freeware and commercial software and partners in the software and hardware industry, PortableApps.com is the most complete solution for life on the go.

PortableApps.com was founded by John T. Haller, the developer behind numerous portable applications including "Portable Firefox" which started the portable software trend. We've been making software portable since March 2004. Today, our team stands at nearly 100 developers, translators, application packagers, designers and release testers. Our goal is to centralize the knowledge and development of portable software efforts and build a single, open platform which any software or hardware developer can use."

My personal favorite portable app is IrfanView.

If you would like, or need a portable app, check PortableApps.com out.

Chromium Web Browser (Chrome)

As much as I love Mozilla Firefox, There are some pages that run poorly on it, one in particular is Launchpad.net, which I frequent, and which slows down almost any machine to a crawl when displayed via Firefox in Ubuntu.

I also find it quite useful to have more than one browser when doing web editing.

Chromium is my close second choice in the Ubuntu world for several reasons.

One is that it's built quite differently from Firefox, and is not a WebKit browser, which is built on Firefox technology.

The second is that Chrome, and it's Linux counterpart Chromium, are becoming (or are) quite popular, which helps you to see how your webpage will react to an up and coming web browser.

Enough of the reasons why I use it, here is what the
Google people have to say about their product:

*From the webpage "http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/make/features.html?brand=CHMB".

Chrome is designed to be fast in every possible way. It's fast to start up, fast to search and load web pages, and fast to run all your web apps.

Chrome is built to help you browse more safely and securely on the web. Chrome's sandboxing, Safe Browsing, and auto-update technologies help protect you against phishing and malware attacks.

Chrome's browser window is streamlined, clean and simple. Its combined search and address bar makes it easy to search and navigate the web, all from one box.

The Chrome Web Store is an online marketplace where you can discover thousands of apps, extensions, and themes for Chrome.



My suggestion is to use the wrench icon to add your favorite start up page, and to add a home button, both found on the main "wrench" options page.

Other than that Chromium is pretty much ready to go upon installation.

In all fairness I must point out that the actual page for chromium itself differs, and is found here: http://www.chromium.org/

What the good people at Chromium.org have to say specifically about Chromium (not Chrome):

"Chromium is an open-source browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all users to experience the web. This site contains design documents, architecture overviews, testing information, and more to help you learn to build and work with the Chromium source code."

If your in the market for another browser on your Linux machine, consider Chromium, I have found it to be rather reliable.

XChat, open the comm

If you are an Ubuntu user or have another version of Linux, then you are probably a user of x-chat, or irssi.

The Ubuntu and Linux community offer extensive support for most if not all Linux distro's.

This support is run through what are called "IRC" channels.

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat.

X-chat is my first choice for talking with the people at Ubuntu's IRC chat room.

I also suggest installing irssi, just in case something happens to your distro and you need help, or if you are a fan of the console, or don't use X.

Ubuntu's IRC channel can be reached at irc.freenode.org, the channel being #ubuntu.

If you are interested in this program, which is available for Linux and Windows, you can download it at:

http://xchat.org/

If you use Linux, including Ubuntu, you can install it by either using "sudo apt-get install xchat", or by using the synaptic package manager found in the system menu, then administration.
(Atleast for Ubuntu you can find it there.)

IrfanView Image viewer and editor

Irfanview is my favorite image editor and viewer because of it's speed of use (by user) and many many formats it can use.

I also love the add ons available for it, which make it almost as good an audio and video player as vlc, even though that's not irfanview's intent.

The website states:

"IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 , 2008, Vista, Windows 7.
(click here for IrfanView EULA)

It is designed to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals.

IrfanView seeks to create unique, new and interesting features, unlike some other graphic viewers, whose whole "creativity" is based on feature cloning, stealing of ideas and whole dialogs from ACDSee and/or IrfanView! (for example: XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 10+ years).

IrfanView was the first Windows graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple (animated) GIF support.
One of the first graphic viewers WORLDWIDE with Multipage TIF support.
The first graphic viewer WORLDWIDE with Multiple ICO support.

Some IrfanView features:

* Many supported file formats (click here the list of formats)
* Multi language support
* Thumbnail/preview option
* Paint option - to draw lines, circles, arrows, straighten image etc.
* Toolbar skins option
* Slideshow (save slideshow as EXE/SCR or burn it to CD)
* Show EXIF/IPTC/Comment text in Slideshow/Fullscreen etc.
* Support for Adobe Photoshop Filters
* Fast directory view (moving through directory)
* Batch conversion (with image processing)
* Multipage TIF editing
* File search
* Email option
* Multimedia player
* Print option
* Support for embedded color profiles in JPG/TIF
* Change color depth
* Scan (batch scan) support
* Cut/crop
* IPTC editing
* Effects (Sharpen, Blur, Adobe 8BF, Filter Factory, Filters Unlimited, etc.)
* Screen Capturing
* Extract icons from EXE/DLL/ICLs
* Lossless JPG rotation
* Unicode support
* Many hotkeys
* Many command line options
* Many PlugIns
* Only one EXE-File, no DLLs, no Shareware messages like "I Agree" or "Evaluation expired"
* No registry changes without user action/permission!
* and much much more"

I actually use this program in Ubuntu using wine, because it is just that much better, in my honest opinion, than the alternatives.

If you are interested in this software you can download it here:
http://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm

(I would also download the add ons pack for it here as well.)

The official website is here:

http://www.irfanview.com/

P.S. to Linux users, as of Tuesday, May 31 2011...

If you want to use this in linux, I suggest getting the Portable Apps version, available here:
http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/irfanview_portable

Removing Facebook Apps

Do you have that Facebook app that's either annoying or improper and you want to remove it?

Click here: http://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=applications

Then click on the "x" on the right of the app you want removed.

I hope this helped others out there with an annoying facebook app.

Kompozer your website

If you do any website editing, this might be your best friend.

As Kompozer's Official website states:

"Easy web authoring

Finally, a top-notch WYSIWYG web page program for the rest of us! Now there's no need to pay a little fortune for a program to create and edit great-looking web pages, including powerful and easy to use CSS capabilities.

KompoZer is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs.

KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding.

Reliable technology inside


KompoZer is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla; it's a super-fast, very reliable, standards conformant engine maintained on a daily basis by a wide community of developers. Its remarkable support of XML, CSS and JavaScript offers the best authoring platform on the market. Its architecture based on XUL makes it the most extensible editing tool ever.

KompoZer is a stand-alone tool; hence its small size and fast speed.

Those who are familiar with the DreamWeaver interface will feel right at home with KompoZer:

WYSIWYG editing of pages, making web creation as easy as typing a letter with your word processor.
Integrated file management via FTP. Simply login to your web site and navigate through your files, editing web pages on the fly, directly from your site.
Reliable HTML code creation that will work with all of today's most popular browsers.
Jump between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML using tabs.
Tabbed editing to make working on multiple pages a snap.
Powerful support for forms, tables, and templates.
The easiest-to-use, most powerful Web Authoring System available for Desktop Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh users.
Details about key features and capabilities

FTP site manager

With KompoZer, all the sites you have specified in your Publishing Settings become browseable in a sidebar. You can get a tree view of a site, la Explorer's folders pane, or a one-dir-only view, la Explorer's directory view. It is also possible to filter files and show all files, or only HTML documents or image files. The browsing area also allows to show for each file its size and the date of last modification.

A new color picker

KompoZer has a new extended colorpicker, more conformant to what most users are used to. Set a color from its red blue and green components, or its hue saturation and brightness. Or just use your mouse to pick up the color you want.

Tabs!

One of Mozilla Firefox's killer features is now available in KompoZer! Have one window only on your screen and edit several documents at once, each document having its own Undo/Redo stack! Just glance at the tabs to know if a document needs to be saved or not!

CSS editor

Create stylesheets easily and manage the styles attached to your documents. You can see your style settings applied '"live" to the document you're editing.

A dash of style(s)

With KompoZer, right-click on any element in the hierarchical toolbar at the bottom of the window and set directly its style properties.

Customizable toolbars

Just customize your toolbar and show only the buttons you want/need.

Forms

Take advantage from a XUL-based UI to edit all your forms, and edit all your form elements.

Cleaner markup

KompoZer contains some machinery to get rid of most of those annoying
. Combined with the ability to call W3C's HTML validator from within KompoZer you'll make valid, clean documents.

XFN

When you create a new link to an external resource, or when you edit an existing link, you can now add XHTML Friends Network information to say that the owner of that resource is someone you know and trust.

Visible marks

In a complex page layout, you often need to see visible carriage returns and block borders. KompoZer can now do that for you. And of course, everything is controlled by a CSS stylesheet so you can customize those marks and replace them by your own.

Table/Cell resizing rulers

On the left and top side of the opened tab you will find the convenient table resizing rulers which will help you easily adjust the size of rows and columns in any table in the web page you design.

Automated Spellchecker

The integrated in-line spellchecker will underline all misspelled words as you type to ensure correct spelling throughout the entire web page."

-----

What I like most is the easy editor built with a decent html editor, very usefull.

I used to use bluefish and firefox... this combines all that into one package.

I still suggest checking your work with Firefox, sometimes Kompozer's view and Firefox's are not one in the same.

If you are interested in this software, here is the website:
http://kompozer.net/

OSDisc may I have some more?

OSDisc is a website that sells you free operating systems...

That's right, they sell you FREE operating systems, but their is a purpose.

OSDisc is perfect for those of us who have limited bandwidth, or are still stuck on super slow dial up.

I personally have purchased about 20 os's from them in my time.

I have 3 on the way, right now.

If you are like me, give OSDisc a try:
http://www.osdisc.com/