LANcom Technology Blog

Ever had a problem with accidently moving your curser while typing on a laptop? TouchFreeze is a free, open source tool that conveniently disables your laptops touchpad when you start typing and then automatically re-enables it when you stop.

TouchFreeze sits in your system tray in the bottom right of your screen, so you can easily exit it if for some reason you need to. Of course if you regularly need to use your keyboard and touchpad simultaneously then this probably isn’t the tool for you, but for most people this won’t be an issue.

TouchFreeze works with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003/2008, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7.

To download TouchFreeze and try it out for yourself click here.

Hap tip to lifehacker for the idea for this post.

Just a heads up, there are currently fully serviced offices available in LANcom house.

These offices include:

1. Air conditioned office space in a CBD fringe location with 24/7 access
2. Meeting room facilities
3. Fully attended reception area during office hours
4. Telephone answering and facsimile message service
5. Use of a post office box with daily mail collections
6. Kitchen facilities with free tea and coffee
7. Rates, Power, lighting maintenance costs
8. Office cleaning and rubbish disposal
9. No long term lease

To find out more you can visit http://servicedoffices.net.nz

MailTidy, an email backup and archiving tool we have been working on here at LANcom, now has an online demo.

MailTidy is a tool that allows you to backup and archive your old emails, giving you really easy access to them anytime over the net. It’s fast to set up, easy to use, and accounts can be encrypted to the same level as online backing so you know your data is safe.

If you would like to try out the demo of MailTidy you can go to http://app.mailtidy.com/ and sign in with the email demo@mailtidy.com and the password tidydemo

If you would like to learn more about MailTidy and all the features that will be included in the soon to be released final version click here.

Google Translate, a great tool that allows you to translate text and whole web pages, is now even better. Just last week Google announced three new features to this service.

1. Translate instantly – There is now no need to press the translate button when you are translating text from one language to another. Google Translate now translates instantly as you type.
2. See the phonetic spelling for not roman languages – If you would like to learn how to say sometime out loud in a language that does not use roman characters you can now click ‘Show romanization’. This means that you will be able to see both how the word is written in that language as well as how the word is spelt phonetically in English.
3. Text to speech – If English is not your first language Google Translate now allows you to hear out loud how your translation into English sounds.

To visit the Google Translate website and try out these and other features click here.

To read more about Google Translate’s new features from the official Google Blog click here

Want to back up all your saved links in case they accidentally get deleted? Or do you want move your favourite links from one internet browser to another?

In most internet browsers it’s really easy to save a copy of all your saved links as an HTML file. You can then keep this file as a backup, import it into other browsers on your computer, or import it into a browser on another computer.

Here’s how you can do this in Internet Explorer

1. Go to File and then Import and Export… (if you can not see the File menu, press the Alt key on your keyboard)
2. Now select Export to a file and click Next
3. Now tick the Favourites box and click Next
4. You will now be able to select if you would like to save everything in your favourite folder or just a certain folder within it.
5. Next select the location of where you would like to save this file and click Export.

If you would like to import your favourites into Internet Explorer on another computer all you need do is Go to File, Import and Export and then select Import a file and follow the instructions.

If you would like to import your favourites into Firefox all you need to do is:

1. In Firefox go to Bookmarks and select Organise Bookmarks
2. Now go to Import and Backup and select Import HTLM and follow the instructions.

A while ago on this blog we looked at Optical Character Recognition software (OCR), which allows you to covert image files of text into text you can edit on your computer (read more). Well now there’s a brand new online tool which makes doing this even easier.

With the NewOCR website all you need to do is browse to the file you want to convert, select the language, and then click send file. Thats it, no registration is required.

With New OCR you can:

1. Upload and convert as may files as you want
2. Convert text from JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and multipage TIFF files up to 5MB
3. Convert multipage PDF documents up to 20MB
4. Download your results as a Word or text document
5. Convert documents in 29 different languages

To visit the NewOCR website click here.

Hat tip to MakeUseOf.com for the idea for this post

Looking to keep better track of your time? Here are 3 free tools that could help.

1. Yast – Yast is a new, really easy to use, online time tracking tool. It allows you to create multiple projects and then track time against them. You can use Yast like a stopwatch and just press start and then stop whenever you want to add time to a project, or you can add time that you spent after the fact. All your different projects/tasks are colour coded so you can look at graphs of a particular day or week and instantly see how you’re spending your time.
   To visit the Yast website click here.

    

2. TimeSnapper - TimeSnapper is an automatic screenshot journal and what it does is automatically take screenshots of your computer screen every few seconds. When you want to review what you have done it can play all the screen shots back to you like you are watching a sped up version of your day, or you can select a period on a timeline and see exactly what you were doing at that point in time. This application makes it easy to fill out timesheets.
   To download and try out TimeSnapper click here (Note: you need to go to the bottom of this page to download TimeSnapper Classic, which is the free version)

    

3. TrackMyPeople – TrackMyPeople is an online time tracking tool that allows you to not only track your own time, but track the time of a whole team of people if you need to. With TrackMyPeople users simply login and enter anytime they spend against the projects the manager has added to the system. TrackMyPeople can then create easy to understand graphs allowing you to analyse your team’s productivity. It also offers an integrated calendar allowing you to see how members of your team are spending each day.
   To check out the TrackMyPeople website click here.

Want to find the perfect stock photo? Cyclops can make searching for that photo really easy. Cyclops is a search engine that allows you to search multiple stock photography sites at once. It also includes results from Flickr as well.

All you need to do is enter what you are looking for in to the search box and click search. You can then use the drop down box to see results for that term from different photo sites.

To visit the Cyclops site click here. 

Note: The photos on this site are royalty free meaning you will only need to pay a small fee once in order to use them. If you are looking for completely free stock photos you may want to look at freerangestock.com.

Hat tip to lifehacker for the idea for this post.

If you’re thinking about upgrading to Windows 7, but you’re not sure if your computer will be able to run it, then Microsoft has a free tool you can download. The Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser scans your PC for any issues with your hardware, devices, and installed programs and lets you know if there is anything you need to do before upgrading.

As a general rule most PCs that can run Vista should be able to run Windows 7, but it may still be a good idea to check.

To visit the Microsoft website and download the Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser click here.

To learn more about the new features of Windows 7 click here.