Evan Sims

14 free or open source Windows applications I love

“What do you use to do this?” or “What application do you recommend for that?” I get asked these kinds of questions a lot, as do most folks in my line of work. What surprises a lot of people is that much of the time, I respond with a free or open source solution. I’m not against commercial applications by any means… I use Photoshop over Gimp and TextPad over Notepad++. But sometimes you discover applications that are so robust, and so well done that they blow the socks off anything you can buy… these are a few of those apps.

1. WinSCP — An open source FTP/SFTP/SCP client. This tool is indispensable in my web development work, and I use it pretty much everyday. It’s rock solid and feature packed. I switched to WinSCP earlier this year from SmartFTP.
2. 7zip — A powerful archiving tool. Fully supports 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR, and can extract ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z. The 7zip archive format for which it’s named is also very robust, and supports a better compression ratio than ZIP. Excellent alternative to shareware tools like WinRar and WinZip.
3. VirtuaWin — An open source virtual desktop manager, allowing you to define an arbitrary number of desktops and hot swap between them. Think Spaces on Mac OS X, or similar functionality under Linux. I’m kind of an organization freak, so it’s great to be able to have a workspace devoted to IM/Twitter, another just for code, and another with Warcraft running on it. =)
4. Privoxy — A web filtering proxy that filters advertising, removes pop ups because they hit your browser, manages cookies and much more. It’s an advanced tool with a lot of options, but the default configuration is enough for most folks who are just looking to protect their privacy a little bit more. As a Google Chrome user, this is a great way to get rid of ads without missing AdBlock for Firefox. bFilter is a similiar filtering tool, but uses heuristics (like your virus scanner) instead of blacklists to filter content. It’s also a bit easier to configure for less advanced users. Both work very well.
5. Google Chrome — Google’s innovative web browser, based on WebKit (the same rendering engine that powers Safari.) It’s not for everyone, but I love it. It’s the first mainstream browser to take advantage of threaded processing, in which each browser tab resides in it’s own CPU process; if a page crashes a tab, it doesn’t take down the whole browser. It also features a very fast Javascript engine, putting script-intensive sites like Gmail much faster. The only downside right now is the lack of an extension API, but the developers are planning on adding one.
6. ImgBurn — A freeware disc burning and backup application. Not much to say here, aside from the fact that I’ve never lost a disc from a bad burn using it.
7. AVG Free — You don’t have to spend a bunch of cash on antivirus protection… in fact, you don’t have to spend any. AVG is a great antivirus tool, frequently updated and easy on system resources. It comes highly regarded from editors and users alike. Avira AntiVir Personal and Avast Home Edition are both great, free antivirus tools too.
8. CCleaner — Windows has a built in system cleanup utility called “Disk Cleanup”, but it doesn’t hold a candle to this tool. Aside from cleaning up Windows itself, it supports a slew of other applications, including Firefox, Google Chrome, Acrobat, Microsoft Office, Java and many, many more. It also includes a very thorough registry cleaner. I recommend running both functions of the tool several times a month
9. Foobar2000 — I’m a loyal iTunes user, but if I’m running a lot of memory intensive programs, or if I’m on battery power and I’m looking to get every drop of time I can out of it, Foobar2000 is a very capable music manager and player. I just set it to monitor my iTunes Music folder, and Foobar will add everything to it’s own manager. The two programs can coexist very comfortably.
10. Last.fm — Although it began it’s life as Audioscrobbler, a simple habit tracking and statistics generating website for music lovers, Last.fm has blossomed into a very robust and useful site, with a number of desktop and mobile applications that extend it even further. In particular, I love the Last.fm desktop and iPhone clients, which provide a Pandora-like customizable Internet-radio feature. On a side note, Pandora does offer an iPhone app, and has a Adobe AIR-based desktop application, but I don’t think they’re really taking advantage of the desktop space as well as Last.fm is… yet.
11. VideoLAN — An open source media player that runs on just about any desktop operating system out there. It will support just about any video format on the planet out of the box, without requiring you to work through the tedious process of installing codecs. I use it for video playback only, but it does support audio too. Other honorable mentions are Media Player Classic and ZoomPlayer. An excellent codec package for Windows XP is XP Codec Pack, which I believe will also work on Vista.
12. Windows Live FolderShare — I’ve been using FolderShare for about 3 years now, and it’s a tool I don’t think I could live without. Basically, FolderShare allows you to easily set folders on your PCs to sync between each other. Unlike most tools these days, FolderShare doesn’t back anything up to the Internet, it’s strictly PC-to-PC, and that’s why I like it. I use it to keep my iTunes library, source code, web development projects and invoices in sync between my desktop and laptop, so I’ve always got the latest versions of everything ready to go when I need to head out the door, and my desktop is up to date with any revisions as soon as I get home. It works over local networks and the Internet alike, and will function nicely behind most firewalls. Microsoft announced they’ll be renaming and upgrading the service at some point this month, doubling the amount of files you can keep in sync. If you’re looking to store things in the cloud, I highly recommend Dropbox.
13. Picasa — I’ve used Picasa to manage my photo library for years, and it’s never let me down. I recently toyed with Windows Live Photo Gallery, which is also an excellent library management tool, but not as mature and polished as Picasa. You can use the open source Picasa2Flickr tool to ease the uploading of your Picasa photos to the popular photo hosting service.
14. Evernote — Potentially my most recent addition to my favorites list, Evernote is a free note taking application for Windows, OS X and a variety of mobile devices, including iPhone. This app is packed with so many features I’m not even going to try to cover them all, but trust me: you need to try it. You can publish and share your notes on the web if you chose to, and optionally store them in the cloud so they can be kept in sync between multiple machines. The commercial version offers more bandwidth for note sync, and HTTPS support for better security while you’re on the road.

There are more, of course, but these are the favorites that come to mind. If you have any recommendations or alternatives, please share!

Getting your extensions to work in the Firefox 3.1 Beta

If you’ve been running the Firefox 3.1 beta for the last few days like I have, you’re probably beginning to miss all those fun extensions you took for granted in 3.0. Sure, you could install nightly tool addons to disable version checking for you, but I feel dirty having a hack like that running all the time in the browser. Instead, I discovered a far more elegant solution: just edit the XPI.

First, grab 7zip. It’s a free archive manager like WinZIP or WinRAR, but it plays nice with the XPI format. Now, go to the Mozilla Addons site and find the extension you’re looking to install. The “Install” option will be disabled, but no worries, just scroll down and hit the “All Versions” link. Now you’ll have one or more versions listed with enabled Install buttons, but using those won’t work: they’re marked internally as working with Firefox versions up to 3.0.*. This is what we’ll need to change.

Right click the Install link for the most recent plugin version, and save the XPI file to your desktop. Now, load 7zip and open that XPI file in it. Find the “install.rdf” file, right click and pick Edit. There’s a lot of nonsense in these files, but all we’re worried about is one string:

em:maxVersion="3.0.*"

Once you locate this line, change it to read:

em:maxVersion="3.1.*"

Save the file, allow 7zip to update the archive, then close 7zip. Now, in Firefox, go to the Addons window from the Tool menu and switch to the extensions tab. Drag the XPI from your desktop into your addons list. Firefox will install the addon for you without complaint. Restart Firefox and you’re done!

This hack will work for most extensions as there has been very few changes to the core functionality of Firefox in 3.1; most of the changes are to the Gecko rendering and JavaScript engines. I’ve successfully installed all my essentials in 3.1 without any problems, but if you do end up running into an addon incompatibility issue you can always start Firefox in Safe Mode from the Mozilla Firefox group in the Start menu.

Hope this helps!

MinChat: A Minimal Chat UI for Warhammer Online

A recent goal of mine has been to learn Lua, an increasingly popular scripting language that is used most commonly as the extension interface for games like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online. Having been quite the Warhammer addict myself these last few months, I decided now was the perfect time to put what I’d learn into action.

My first project is very simple: a chat interface modification. The chat system in Warhammer is nice, but a bit clunky. The chrome around it (that is, the huge social button, the scrollbars, etc.) take up a lot of screen real estate. Being the minimalist I am, it kind of bugged me. So I took it upon myself to fix it.

The fruit of my labor is MinChat. It does one simple thing: hide all the crap you rarely if ever use in the chat interface. No more social button (press O to open that window), no scrollbars, no input text button, nothing. Just text and, when you hover over it for a few seconds, chat channel tabs. The addon also automatically focuses your chat on the most recent line when new text comes in.

You can grab the addon from Curse Gaming’s Warhammer site. Please let me know you’re thoughts!

When did we forget the fun of a challenge?

It never fails. Every passing week that goes by brings news of another MMO dumbing itself down to broaden its audience. To widen it’s market appeal. To try and survive against both the savior and the bane of the MMO industry, World of Warcraft. Today I saw word of EverQuest 2 following suit, and it honestly bummed me out.

I understand publishers wanting to step up their game and be competitive. I understand their longing to be the next Warcraft. I get the need to tempt new players to visit long released games. Really though, is making your games easier the answer to this, even when it goes against your fundamental design?

One of the cornerstones of EverQuest, and many traditional online games, is the challenge. It’s about the big raids and epic struggles. Granted EQ2 adopted a much easier level of entry for players than it’s predecessor, but I would never consider the game itself easy. The big draw of EQ has been the challenges, so is SOE looking to change that?

I’ve got news to the publishers out there: making your games easier isn’t going to tempt players to buy your game. In the case of EQ2, you may actually hurt your player base. People looking for a more casual online experience are going to go with WoW, plain and simple. Why wouldn’t they, when their friends, family and half the workplace are rolling Horde? You tweaking the mob XP isn’t going to solve that. So how do you fix it?

Build a better game. It isn’t rocket science. Be innovative, be creative. We’ve got creative game designers coming out the ying yang with brilliant ideas. Know your player base, communicate with them, bounce ideas back and forth, and implement features people want, or features people don’t even know they wanted. Building a loyal player base is critical, especially for aging games like EQ2, and a happy player base inherently breeds a larger one. Friends tell friends, the blogosphere sings its praise, and you get richer for it.

You can’t expect to beat Blizzard at it’s own game. Don’t bother trying. Instead, try something different, something better. EVE Online, while radically different from any other MMO on the market, is a prime example of this. Are they competing with WoW? No. They aren’t even trying. They’re doing their own thing and they seem very happy with their numbers. How about Warhammer Online? It’s getting hyped as a WoW killer, but you’ll notice that they aren’t really marketing themselves as that; it’s the player base and the blogs pushing that idea. Because they really believe it is. I don’t, mind you (I think they excel at a wholly different type of game experience), but it’s proof that a happy player base is the best marketing department you can have.

Blog Day 2008

As my buddy Brian pointed out to me, today is Blog Day — a once a year event where bloggers are encouraged to share their favorite finds from the blogosphere.

First, I would feel neglectful if I didn’t reference my closest friend’s blogs. In no particular order we’ve got Ryan O’Sullivan’s personal site, Jim Weinhart’s got two now, and Brian has just started a new one. They’ve each got their own flavor, so check them out.

Now, the point of Blog Day is to reference 5 blogs that you’ve discovered that fascinate the crap out of you, so let’s do that.

• Massively — A gaming blog focusing on MMOs. This one is stuffed full of great tips, awesome opinion pieces and breaking news. It’s by far my favorite gaming site at the moment.
• CleanTechnica — As you might guess from the name, CleanTechnica is devoted to news and information about technologies and products that help to reduce humanity’s impact on the environment. There are plenty of “green blogs” out there, but I like CleanTechncia because it has a high quality-to-noise-ratio and, as a geek, I appreciate a peak into the technological breakthroughs happening that sector.
• Smashing Magazine &mash; Great blog for web development nerds. Covers a lot of topics, from design and scripting libraries to blog engines and programming languages.
• Webmonkey — Yes, that Webmonkey. Relaunched a few months ago, Webmonkey has quickly regained a position as one of my top 5 sites to follow for web development info.
• Typesites — I admit it, I’m a typography nerd. That isn’t to say I’m all that talented at it, but it’s one of those topics that fascinate the hell out of me. Typesites is one of the best blogs I’ve come across that discusses the issue in relation to the web.

I’d also like to give a shout out to Jake and Amir, Tiki Bar TV and Garrett Murray’s Qwick Reviews for consistently make me giggle.