The software I actually use

Submitted by jlindquist on Tue, 02/17/2004 - 04:50
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  • TuffMail - Why use a dedicated mail provider rather than your internet service provider? The answer is (in this case) first and foremost: IMAP! The IMAP-protocol will allow you to store your mail on the server which in turn will allow you to access it from various locations. Another benefit of IMAP is the ability to work with shared folders - which is great for cooperation within an organisation or a university (sharing the same server). IMAP is already widely used on universities around the world, but it is still very rare to find a good provider. This is one among many reasons why TuffMail is such a fantastic service.
  • Mulberry - This mailer has the most sophisticated IMAP-support in any e-mail client, lots of extremely ingenious features, a fabulous discussion-list with the developer himself participating each and every day and versions for Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris. Mulberry is a very, very strong e-mail client that is rapidly becoming standard on universities around the world. The interface can be a bit hard to master but it is constantly being improved.[Licence: shareware] [Size: 5.3 MB, size of running program: ca. 11.8 MB] [Developer: Cyrus Daboo, USA]
  • ContentSaver Pro - Superb utility for saving web-content (and other material). You can categorize, comment and/or highlight material and there's excellent search options as well. This program is a major reason why one should work with an Internet Explorer-based browser - or at least a browser that will allow the user to save content in the HTML-format using the clipboard in Windows. This rules out Opera. [Licence: Shareware] [Size: 6.6 MB] [Developer: Martin Koppmann, Germany]
  • Sleipnir - An Internet Explorer-based tabbed browser of outstanding quality. Advanced security options and completely configurable shortcuts, mouse-gestures, menus etc. Lots of other goodies.The link above is to an English "translation" of the original Japanese home-page. Be patient and the page will show in some sort of English. English forum for Sleipnir. [Licence: freeware] [Size: 710 KB, size of running program: min. 11 MB] [Developer: Yasuyuki Kashiwagi, Japan]
  • IE History - Program that makes it possible to search Internet Explorer's history, cache or cookies (or all together) and have the results presented in a new page (as in Opera). Unzip it, and put a reference to it on Sleipnirs Tools-menu (by going to Tools | Customize and choosing the "Tools"-tab). You can add a "&" in front of a letter on the menu-item, if you want a keyboard-accelerator. If you want to run the program with a keyboard-shortcut, you can - of course - go to Tools | Customize, choose the "Keyboard"-tab, then choose the "Tools"-category and find the "IE History"-item (provided you have added that item to your Tools-menu). [License: freeware] [Size:141 KB, size of running program: 5.32 MB] [Developer: Vladimir Olovyannikov, Russia]
  • IE Booster
  • Powermarks
  • AdMuncher - The internet becomes a beautifully serene and peaceful place when one is using it. No ads whatsoever. No annoying activity (pop-ups, pop-unders etc.) preventing one from doing what one wants to do.
  • RoboForm - What is there to say? If you don't want to spend your time filling out forms and logins when surfing, you will love RoboForm.
  • FlashGet
  • Hotmail Popper
  • SetBrowser
  • 40tude Dialog
  • Miranda IM
  • WebSite-Watcher
  • Local Website Archive
  • TweakMASTER
  • DU Meter
  • PurgeIE
  • Index.dat Suite
  • THINKING AND WRITING
  • Library Master - Bibliographic and textual database manager that leaves EndNote and Reference Manager crawling in the dust. *Extremely* well thought out. Can work with just about every possible word processor (either via the RTF-format or via common formats such as Word and WordPerfect and rare formats such as Nota Bene). Outstanding customer support as well! Of course, Nota Bene has a built-in bibliographical manager of very high quality, but it does not allow users to customize citation styles and import filters. The latter in particular seems to me to be a serious shortcoming and is a major reason why I have opted for the fairly expensive solution of supplementing Nota Bene with Library Master. If you are a user of any other word-processor than Nota Bene, I don't think that there can be much doubt about it: Library Master (+ BookWhere) is the best solution for bibliographical management - without comparison. [License: Shareware][Size:, size of running program: ca. 9MB][Developer: Harry M. Hahne, Canada]
  • Nota Bene - This is more an "academic research suite" than an Office Suite. It consists of the word processor Nota Bene (a cousin to the famous word processor XyWrite), the sophisticated search-tool Orbis and the bibliographic management-tool Ibidem. Everything is highly configurable and there is also a version with additional support for Greek, Hebrew and Cyrillic alphabets. Support for Coptic, Syriac, Ugaritic, Akkadian can be purchased additionally. [Licence: shareware] [Size: , size of running program: ca. 19.5 MB] [Developer: Steve Siebert, USA]
  • The Nota Bene word processor supports the powerful script-language XPL (XyWrite Programming Language).
  • Unofficial forum
  • Put this in the body of your message: SUB NOTABENE < your real name >
  • A good unofficial resource
  • Aladdin Systems - FlashBack version control and file undo - Basically, this utility can save every revision you do in your word-processor, text-editor etc. as a separate file. Of course, this means that you will never lose anything when you change or delete a passage of text - everything can be recovered again. Apparently, it hasn't been updated for ages but it works excellently on Windows XP. [Licence: shareware] [Size: 1.171 MB, size of running program: ca. 6.5 MB] [Developer: Aladdin Systems, USA]
  • BookWhere - Whether you use Nota Bene and it's built in bibliographical tool, Ibidem, or Nota Bene together with Library Master (or Library Master with any other word-processor), BookWhere is a perfect companion. It is a program that - via the so-called z39.50 protocol - allows you to search just about every single library in the world! You can then export your search results and import them into your bibliographical software. If you are using Library Master (or EndNote, ProCite or Reference Manager), you can use a "Send to"-menu function to send the results directly to your bibliographical software.
  • MyBase
  • Atlantis
  • TextMaker
  • MS Word - There's just no escaping it. At least not yet. I need to be able to proof-read documents in the Word-format, which Nota Bene can't do at all and as much as I admire the OpenOffice-project, I still find their product tedious to work with. Perhaps some day...[Licence: shareware] [Size: ?, size of running program: ca. 28 MB (min.)] [Developer: Microsoft, USA]
  • EndNote - Well, I don't really use EndNote. I am just interested in following its development since I am interested in all tools that can help an academic in the humanities - and EndNote definitely has a leading position in that field. It is very impressive but still - after huge leaps in development in recent years - has very bizarre shortcomings. Chief among these is the inability to group entries in subsets. For an interesting - and extremely detailed - evaluation of the leading programs in this field see this page. [Licence: shareware] [Size: 24 MB, size of running program: ca. 9.5 MB] [Developer: Thompson ISI ResearchSoft, USA]
  • Encarta Premium Suite
  • Encyclopedia Britannica: Ultimate Reference Suite
  • FinePrint
  • PDF Factory Pro
  • MUSIC AND IMAGES
  • Quintessential Player
  • Real Player 10
  • Quick Time Pro 6.5 - A lot of the movies I shoot with my digital camera are in "vertical position", so to speak. Rotating .avi-movies is a nightmare so I open them in Quick Time Pro, rotate them and save them in .mov-format. Perfect quality.
  • Windows Media Player
  • Fronimo
  • WinDVD 4
  • DVDIdle Pro
  • Movie Collector
  • Music Collector
  • Mp3 Collector
  • IMatch - Image organizer. This program has an astounding abundance of clever features, it has super-sophisticated script-support and it has a visually highly pleasing interface. I can only think of *very* few things to do with images that this program can't do. Excellent support and forum as well.
  • PBase - Photosharing service of very high quality. Excellent upload-options, optional password-control of galleries, optional use of style sheets (customized or provided by PBase), support for guest-comments of galleries and/or images and much, much more.
  • Photoshop Elements
  • ACD FotoSlate 3.0
  • GSpot
  • ArtRage
  • SYSTEM
  • jv16 PowerTools
  • Ashampoo Uninstall Suite
  • Spring Cleaning 3
  • Fix-It 5
  • EndItAll
  • Tweak Manager
  • Powertoys for Windows XP
  • RegAlyzer
  • FILES
  • DOpus
  • PowerDesk Pro
  • Beyond Compare
  • File-Ex
  • FileSplit
  • NinoTech Path Copy
  • Column Provider: Filename Extension
  • SECURITY
  • Avast!
  • Sygate Personal Firewall Pro
  • BigVault
  • ByteGuardian
  • Spybot - Search & Destroy
  • SpywareBlaster
  • UTILITIES
  • Capture Professional 5
  • ClipMate 6
  • ContextMenu ControlFreak
  • Out of Context
  • HTML-Kit
  • Macro Toolsworks - Advanced Scripting Version. Tremendously powerful macro-tool. Even the standard version is amazingly powerful and I used it for years, until I finally took the plunge and upgraded to the Advanced Scripting version very recently. The advanced version allows the user to embed Basic Script, VB Script or Java Script in macros. It comes with the standard Basic Script-editor and also allows the user to use data from the native macro language in Basic Script-macros (and vice versa). The help-file is *very* short on information on advanced scripting, but the rest of the help-file is fairly comprehensive and explicit. It could easily be bettered, though! Still, a highly recommended macro-program.
  • Mailbag Assistant
  • MoneyDance
  • Ecco Pro
  • O&O Toolbox Pro
  • Keywords Seeker
  • Perfect Screens
  • WinRar
  • Lhasa
  • The Font Thing
  • WordWeb Pro
  • Adobe Acrobat Reader
  • Dana
Author Comments: 

This list owes a lot to this list. It is probably going to take me quite a while to add comments and links to all the items - so please feel free to comment or ask questions while the work is in progress :-)

jim02/17/2004

Lots of stuff here I've never heard of, but based on your mini-reviews so far I bet I'd find lots of it useful. I'm looking forward to your progress on commenting the rest of the items on this list.

Hey, if none of your music tools do volume normalization you might want to give MP3Gain a look. It's very handy and it's free.

jlindquist02/17/2004

Thanks, Jim. I'll check out Mp3Gain!

Stardust_HR02/17/2004

Great list! There are many programs here that I like and use daily. Based on your recommendation, I'm downloading Mulberry. Keep up the good work! :-) (I'll put a link pointing to your list on the next update of mine)

As for my recommendation, it would have to be PowerPro . This program is hard to categorize since it can do practically anything, from keyboard shortcuts, countdown timers, to virtual desktops and beyond...

jlindquist02/18/2004

Thanks! I did play with PowerPro for a short while years ago but other software came my way that was more attractive to me then - and now I've grown so accustomed to it that I'm very reluctant to give it up (first and foremost Macro ToolsWorks).

jim03/15/2004

Just found ArtRage. Wonderful, fun, and free.

geek03/15/2004

Thanks for the link; that program is great fun! The tracing feature is really cool.

jim03/15/2004

Glad you like it! I love the way the paint colors smudge and blur as you run them together. And the sound the water makes when you clean your brush in it. And that the water gets tinted the paint color as you clean your brush more and more. Great program, very nicely implemented.

jlindquist03/15/2004

Thanks, Jim! Great tip! This is a welcome creative addition to my pc - and it will come in very handy when my son (who is now 19 months old) is going to learn to use a mouse!

jim03/15/2004

:-) Yeah, I just posted to my personal weblog that this would be great for parents. I'm glad you like it, and I hope your son does too!

MagicSpeller07/23/2004

Hi, Jannik.

Care to say why you chose Miranda over Trillian or Gaim?

Keith

jlindquist08/26/2004

Sorry for the delayed reply: I chose Miranda because it was recommended as being better than Trillian by a person who I have great confidence in.