Hana & Sarah’s blog

Just watched Titan A.E. (animation movie) from Hulu.com.
The quality is more than good and I enjoyed the movie even with the short AD showing time to time.

Download: http://www.truecrypt.org/downloads.php
It’s a freeware

There are some personal secret data in my hard disk that I don’t want anybody to see - such as diary. This is a perfect solution for me that once I create an encrypted volume data file, I can mount it as a virtual hard drive. Whenever I write or read the data into or out from the virtual disk, the TrueCrypt will encrypt or decrypt the data on the fly.

I used to think those softwares that encrypt or decrypt files are slow and would be uncomfortable to access data easily. But TrueCrypt is surprisingly fast, a lot more than what I expected. Probably, because it is using the physical memory space to do the calculation. I have saved a large movie file and played directly from the virtual drive, I was unable to notice any differences from when it was played from the normal hard drive.

Pros

• The reading and writing speed is more than satisfactory as an encryption software.
• Support all three major OS. Windows, Mac OS, and Linux
• Portable so you can copy it into your USB and move all the data into the encrypted volume data. So even if you loose your USB stick, you won’t have to worry that someone might access your confidential data.

Cons

• It takes a little time to learn how to use the software. Creating a volume data file may not be easy for a computer novice.
• When you want to access the secret files, you need to mount the volume data file to access from the virtual drive. The process could be shortened somehow making it much simpler.

Make sure to visit Tutorial Page to start with TrueCrypt. It is necessary to read the webpage to learn how to create and mount volume data file as virtual hard disk.

Website: http://tokyodownstairs.blogspot.com/2007/11/winflip.html
Direct Download: http://www.tokyodownstairs.com/binary/WFlip042.zip

Here is another Flip 3D emulator for your XP.
This one is actually better than Shock Aero. (Here is my previous posting on Shock Aero. The Shock Aero has become too heavy and slow. It also requires serial number that you can get from the developer’s homepages. But it’s just an unnecessary extra step as a freeware.)

WinFlip is light and fast, it requires DirectX9.0c. But you should already have it in your XP.

Pros

• It doesn’t require setup. You can execute after unzip.
• WinFlip is light and fast.
• Showing Alphabet letter besides each window to directly access it.
• The short cut is Window + Tab but you can also trigger the Flip screen by mouse movement. If you make a circle movement with your mouse, the Flip screen is shown. That is very neat and kind of addictive. These setup can be changed from the options.

Cons

• It’s unstable. If you open lots of windows and application, WinFlip becomes unstable and crashes.

If you love Vista’s Flip 3D, WinFlip maybe the best freeware solution for you but note that it becomes unstable after several hours. But let’s hope that they fix this problem soon. Until then, I decided to remove the winflip from the startup menu.

Website: http://www.abstractspoon.com/
Direct download: http://www.abstractspoon.com/todolist_exe.zip

Must be the best TODOLIST software there is (at least among the Freewares).

It provides almost all attribute fields such as start , due , end date, priority, time spent, category, status, and more to maintain daily jobs or large project easily.

Also, it provides Import and Export interface that you can move around your data easily between other spreadsheet applications or as a HTML page.

It is portable since you can start using it right away after unzip. You can copy the folder into your USB memory stick and bring it with you anywhere. Just make sure that you select to store data into an INI file instead of the registry when you start the app first time.

Another interesting function is that it supports multiple users through todolist file sharing and simple source control function. TO tell you the truth, I haven’t tried this function yet.

This may be more useful at your work instead of at home. But it’s worth to try it.

Also you may want to download Calendar plugin. It’s a DLL file that you can just copy into the same folder where ToDoList.exe is. After copying, restart the todolist.exe and access the Calendar plugin from the Tools menu.

Download from http://launchy.net. It’s a freeware.

Launchy is quite convenient and easy to use. The default shortcut keys are Alt + Space which can be easily changed from the option menu that you can access by right clicking on the border of Launchy.

It provides slick interface design which is skinable. Also, it is easy to add new executable location. You only need to define the parent folder in the Catalog menu and Launchy will scan all sub-folders and index them too. It is smart and self learning so once you executed ‘putty’ ssh by typing ‘pu’, it will show ‘putty’ as default entry next time you type ‘pu’. One thing that I didn’t like was that it consumes about 18 MB of memory. It is little too much for a simple application, but I guess it’s because of the graphic interface. But I couldn’t find better alternative.

Basically I like it because it’s pretty and smart enough to remember my favorite applications.

There are some similar free softwares introduced here at Lifehacker.com site. I did tried recently became freeware Enso. It is less intuitive (with no pretty graphics interface, showing only large bold letters on the left top corner) and hard to learn . Also it uses about 34 MB of memory. It was just not for me.

With the RocketDock and Launchy, I am in full control of my desktop.