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Tuesday, July 17, 2012

I Love Free Software

I Love Free Software


Show Caps Lock, Num Lock, Scroll Lock Status in System Tray

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 06:46 PM PDT


LockState is a free software that shows status of Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock in System Tray. It adds an icon in the system tray that shows the status of all the lock keys. Apart from that, it also lets you freeze state of any of the lock key.

This Caps Lock indicator software is quite small in size – just 210KB. And it does not requires any installation; just run the software, and you are all set.

When you run LockState, it adds an icon in the system tray. This icon shows 3 bars, and text "NCS" below them. The first bar corresponds to "Num Lock", second to "Caps Lock", and third to "Scroll Lock". To remember this, the icon also shows text "NCS" below the bars, with N for Num Lock, C for Caps Lock, and S for Scroll Lock.

Whenever any of the lock keys are pressed, the bar corresponding to that key turns Red. So, you can quickly visually see what is the state of lock keys.

LockState

Apart from that, you can also mouse over the icon and see status of all the keys in form of a tooltip.

This lock key indicator software is especially useful if your keyboard does not have indicators for Caps Lock, Num Lock, and Scroll Lock. This is mostly true for laptop users. My laptop does not have any indicator for these keys, and  I sometimes find myself pressing the lock keys again just to know their status. This lock key indicator will make things easier for me.

Another useful feature of this freeware is that it lets you freeze the status of any of the lock keys. For example, you can choose to freeze Caps Lock key. After that, pressing the Caps Lock key won't change the status. To change the status, you'll need to unfreeze the status again. This is useful if you find yourself accidentally hitting the lock keys.

LockState Lock

LockState also comes with alternative icons, in case you don't like the default ones. In the zip file that you downloaded, you'll see a folder called "Icon Sets". Just select any of the icons from here, and copy to "Icons" folder inside "Lock State" folder. And of course, you can also create your own icons, and move there.

Some other similar software we reviewed earlier include Keyndicate, and Keyboard LEDs.

All in all, LockState is a good software. It works well for the task it is designed for. I really like the fact that it does not takes a lot of space on system tray, and the design is quite intuitive. I had installed this software for writing this review, but I might very well retain it.

Download LockState free.

Related posts:

  1. Free Software To Display Lock Key Status: Keyndicate
  2. Lock Specific Keys of Keyboard and Lock Mouse: Kid-Key Lock
  3. Free Keyboard Locker To Lock Keyboard And Mouse: Child Lock

Show Caps Lock, Num Lock, Scroll Lock Status in System Tray was originally published at I Love Free Software

Free Online Hotel Bookings Software: CultDesk

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 03:30 PM PDT


CultDesk is a free hotel bookings software which can help you in managing your bookings. Basically, what this software does is it helps in adding online booking to your website and managing accommodation in a better way. In fact, this free hotel software would also help you in connecting to other booking channels so that you can manage vacancies and booking in just a few clicks.

Registering your hotel bookings:

cult1

As soon as you launch the application, you will see a window which prompts you for username and password. Since we are not yet registered with CultDesk so we need to click on 'Create a new account' and complete the details. From here we proceed by choosing 'register new accommodation property' as we do not have any property registered with CultDesk yet. Once you enter the credentials in the next screen, you are e-mailed along with a password and activation link. You need to enter the username and email address on registration. Once you open the activation link, your account gets active.

Interface

Once you login with your new credentials, you will see the following screen:

cult2

As you can see, the interface is quite simple and pleasing. It is quite simple to create your hotel profile as we would find in the coming sections. The free hotel bookings software is quite user-friendly and you will be amazed to check out its features and ease of access.

You can also check out free vacation planning website reviewed by us.

Connecting to the popular internet hotel booking channels

To register your hotel so that it is connected to the major internet hotel booking channels, you will have to follow the given steps. Hit the 'go' button on the previous screen and the following window appears where you need to enter the required details. Click on Continue once you are done. Most of the fields are mandatory hence you need to make sure that you are filling all the required details.

cult3

After you hit continue, you need to enter the Master Data in the next window which is shown under:

cult4

You need to fill the information very carefully. In case, you leave any mandatory field or enter any field wrongly, you won't be able to proceed. Hence make sure that you adhere to the format and do not miss out any important field. Once you hit next, you will have to enter the description of your hotel.

cult5

As you can see above, you need to enter some very basic details. These include the e-mail, url for your website, geo-data which means you need to specify the latitude and the longitude, stars ( whether your hotel is 1 star, 2 star, 3 star, 4 star or 5 star) and the capacity. Hit continue to hop onto the next screen.

cult6

The final step as you can see above is to enter a hotel description. Once you are done, you can save the details. This completes your registration process.

Pro-registration

If you have entered valid details, your hotel will get registered with the CultSwitch server and you will get the corresponding object_id for your hotel and an online booking URL that can be easily integrated onto your website. In addition to 'Home', 'User' and 'Object data' some additional items would be displayed to manage your hotel and vacancies. These would include inventory, bookings, web bookings which would come with plethora of options. You can perform the following:

  • Edit your inventory and manage vacancies.
  • Blocking or opening specific days for booking and hence managing availability.
  • Updating rates.
  • Checking out booking summary. You have four tabs: 'Future','Current','Past','Cancel' and 'Search'.

Verdict

In all, CultDesk is a great free hotel bookings software if you wish to manage your hotel bookings without having to spend a hefty amount. It comes with great features and hence is worth a try!

Download CultDesk for free.

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Free Online Hotel Bookings Software: CultDesk was originally published at I Love Free Software

CRM Integration inside Gmail Free: Streak

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 02:00 PM PDT


Streak is a free customer relationship software which integrates into Gmail where it allows users to manage each Gmail contact and each Gmail message as an element of a CRM – customer relationship management system. Let’s face it, a sales person spends majority of their time going through emails, if it’s online sales that we’re talking about, and with Streak, your Gmail account becomes your CRM software, simple as that.

Streak default window

Drawback of Streak would be that it can only be installed on Google Chrome, it’s a browser extension, and if you are using other browsers, then you will gonna have to look for other CRM programs or install Google Chrome on your system. Gmail account improved with Streak can be seen on the image above. It’s basically a new email folder with special formatting which allows you to manage clients and customers and keep track of various different business deals:

  • Sales/CRM
  • Investments
  • Product Development
  • Dealflow
  • Event Planning
  • Trip Planning

After you install the Streak extension from the main website you will gonna have to allow it access to your account, after which you will be presented with a window where you can choose what kind of pipelines you would like to create. Some of the available pipeline types can be seen above, a pipeline is basically where you can sort different deals, if you are for example working on both CRM and Investments at the same time.

Similar software: 4 Free CRM systems, myERP, Erply.

Gmail customer relations system – Streak

Boxes are the second most important thing to remember if you plan on using Streak, after you’ve fully grasped pipelines. A box is where you can sort various different emails and contacts that you have based on their status:

Streak boxes

Default boxes of the Sales/CRM pipeline would be:

  • Lead
  • Contacted
  • Pitched
  • Demo
  • Negotiating
  • Closed

You can see how useful boxes are, you can sort each one of your Gmail contacts and emails into their box, based on the status of the deal. For those customers who were just now proposed with a deal, they can be placed in the Pitched box, those who were given samples of the product that you’re selling they can go in the Demo box, and those clients to whom you’ve successfully made a sale, they can be placed in the Closed box.

Streak adding email to box

Emails of deals that you’re working on can be added to boxes by clicking on the desired email in your Inbox, then clicking on the boxes above and entering the name of the box where you want to add this particular contact/email. On the right you will get a list of pipeline boxes and you can simply store the message in the correct box. Later on as the correspondence continues between you and the client you can change the box to one of the other mentioned, or you can create your own box. Notes can also be written for each customer that’s managed with the help of this Gmail customer management extension. If you spend a lot of time in your Gmail account, then Streak is just what you need, very easy to use, small size CRM which integrates into your email account, try it it’s free.

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CRM Integration inside Gmail Free: Streak was originally published at I Love Free Software

Free Software For Eye Exercise And Eye Protection

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 12:30 PM PDT


Here are 3 free software for eye exercise and eye protection. These eye protection software prove to be useful for those people who spend their most of the time in front of a computer (like me!).

These free eye rest software make it possible for you to take breaks in between your busy work on a computer. You can set the timer according to your preference for taking breaks in between. In this way you can protect your eyes and prevent eye strains that occur due to long working hours on computer.

RestBreak

 

RestBreak basically alerts you about the break while you are working on your computer. This free software display the periodic reminders to take breaks in between your work. This easy to use eye protection software sits in your system tray and works in the background. It pops-up or gives you an alert according to the periodic time set by you. RestBreak even allows you to enter the break message, adjust an audible reminder, etc. RestBreak is a small in size software, so it takes very less of your system resources. If your eyes are straining due to long working hours in front of a computer, then I would suggest you try RestBreak.

Read more about RestBreak or try it here. Don't forget to check out ProtectYourVision reviewed by us.

EyeDefender

 

EyeDefender is a free software that helps you to prevent eye strains by providing rest intervals in between your work. This eye exercise software helps you to set break frequency while you work on a computer. And you can take the break according to the set break frequencies in order to give rest to your eyes. During the break time, in order to reduce the eye strain this free software does any of the one: it displays pictures, it starts visual training, displays screensaver on your screen, or displays pop-up reminder in the system tray. Eye Defender is really helpful for the users who regularly use computers for a long period that too without a break.

Read more about EyeDefender or try it here.

Protect Your Eyes

Protect Your Eyes

Protect Your Eyes is another small in size software that helps you to protect your eyes by alerting you about the breaks that you should necessarily take while working on computers for long hours. This easy to use software comes with a very basic and straight-forward user-interface. This eye protection software comes with few pre-set time intervals, so you can choose any of the interval from the drop down menu. For using this software you need to simply launch it and select an interval and click the Set interval button, then click the start button to start the timer. Hit the OK button in the confirmation pop-up window. When it's time for your break the main interface of the software pops-up with a message "Please take your break". In this way it alerts you about the breaks which you should take while working.

Read more about Protect Your Eyes or try it here.

So these were few software which would really help you in eye protection. Try these eye protection software for free. You would also like to check out our post on How to test eyesight online for free.

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Free Software For Eye Exercise And Eye Protection was originally published at I Love Free Software

Photo Printing Tool to Prepare Images for Printing: KWare PhotoPrint

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 11:00 AM PDT


KWare PhotoPrint is a free photo printing software basically designed to print the images in the format you want it to be. There will not be any loss in the quality of the image and it will be printed in the original resolution. This free office tool supports all types of formats i.e. jpeg, metafile, bitmap, etc. You can print the photo in the type and size you want it to be as it will not force you to open the image in a pre-designed layout. You need to have a photographic paper and you will get the type of print you wanted using this free photo printing software.

Installing Kware PhotoPrint

You need to follow some simple steps to install this software in your machine. First you need to go to this site . Then click on the option named PhotoPrint_install. You can find this option in the download section of the page. After clicking on the install option an .exe file will be downloaded. Click on the .exe file and the installation starts. After this you just need to follow the usual installation process by clicking the next button and the software will be installed in your machine. If you are interested to try some more photo printing software, you can try Easy Poster Printer, Photoscape and IDPhotoStudio reviewed by us.

 

Interface of this photo printing software

The interface of KWare PhotoPrint is very simple and not a very stylish one. You can find the names of the drives on the left pane from which you want to load the image. Then there is a print option and layout option. All the options of loading the image and editing are there near the header. You can browse the images easily and the software will prepare the thumbnail layouts for you.

Using this photo printing software

You need to select the image that you want to edit and print. You can select the image from the drives and the folders shown in the left pane. After you find the image you need to drag it to the layout panel. In the layout panel you can crop and resize the photo according to your requirements. You can also view the image in large size by doubling clicking on it. You have the option to print the images individually or in a group. After you finish editing PhotoPrint will automatically prepare for you a thumbnail layout in a separate folder.

On the top you have the file option through which you can save current page layout or open a new page layout. In the tools menu where you have the option named effects that help you add different enhancing effects to the image. The row below the top header has many menus that are required while making adjustments in the image. Some of the options are:

  • Rotate
  • View Preferences
  • Crop selected image
  • Photo Effects

Besides these options you can also find some tabs like save page layout, new page layout, and delete selected image in the same row. To make printing adjustments you can go to the panel that has printing options. There you can find options for preferred layout i.e. landscape or portrait. Then you need to select the width and height for printing the image. KWare PhotoPrint helps you get the print in the best resolution without any loss on the quality of the image.

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Photo Printing Tool to Prepare Images for Printing: KWare PhotoPrint was originally published at I Love Free Software

Free Facebook and Twitter Emoticons with i2Symbol

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 09:30 AM PDT


i2Symbol is a free web service where Facebook and Twitter users can find free special symbols, emoticons, smileys, styles and pretty much anything else that you can think of which can embellish your posts with clever graphics. Being witty and creating interesting status updates is a great way of making sure that your Facebook status updates and Twitter tweets get attention, and with i2Symbol you can do exactly that.

i2Symbol default window

This is the default page of i2Symbol where you can see only the first tab of all the amazing graphics that you can insert inside your posts or tweets. The first list of characters, the one that you can see above is called Symbols, there are 4 more, plus options for My Favorites where you can even store symbols that you like on the i2Symbol website. The aforementioned 4 symbol categories would be:

  • Symbols, already mentioned, and
  • Emoticons
  • Vintage
  • ABC
  • Shared

Next to My Favorites, there are also tools where you can style and share your own special characters, that would be the Styler link in the top menu, and there’s also additional option where you can actually export your creation as images, for uploads inside your social network image galleries. Let’s have a look at what kind of emoticons and special symbols for Facebook and Twitter i2Symbol has to offer.

Free emoticons with i2Symbol

Symbols can be seen on the image above, there are some emoticons even amongst them, but if you are interested in some extravagant emoticons, then you should click on the Emoticons link in the upper menu. This is where you can find several different sub-categories of emoticons, each of which has several pages of cool and amazing emoticons which were created by using special keyboard characters, which you don’t normally see on a keyboard.

i2Symbol emoticon copy

Each emoticon can be copied as a PNG image or directly as symbols which you can then simply paste inside Facebook posts or Twitter tweets. There are two ways of how you can copy the entire Emoticon, either by hitting Ctrl + C or by right clicking and selecting Copy.

Create special style Facebook post with i2Symbol

i2Symbol doesn’t only stop at giving you free emoticons, symbols and everything else that you can imagine, you can also create your own texts, embellished with special characters:

i2Symbol text special

There’s even the very popular and confusing upside down text option, among several others. Notice that what you create here is easily possible to transfer into your social network profiles, again either by copying it directly or by exporting your creation as an image. On the left side, next to Styler there are options where you can see creations, emoticons, symbols, styles which were shared by other people. Use that in order to find something fresh and new, if you are not satisfied with all the different symbols that you can get from i2Symbol.

i2Symbol service is completely free, and it’s perfect for everyone that want’s to have special emoticons in their Facebook and Twitter accounts, and other social networks for that matter, make sure to check out this free web service.

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  2. How to Add Emoticons and Smileys to Facebook Status Updates
  3. How to Enable Emoticons in iPad

Free Facebook and Twitter Emoticons with i2Symbol was originally published at I Love Free Software

5 Firefox PageRank Plugins To Check Google PageRank On Firefox

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT


Here, are 5 free plugins to check Google PageRank on Firefox browser. These plugins let you quickly check Google PageRank of any website your are browsing. If you are in SEO field, these plugins are especially helpful to you.

Firefox Adds-on Store has many plugins to check Google PageRank. Some of the plugins we will discuss about include Page Rank Checker; one of the most popular one, SEO Analysis; comes with multiple options, PageRank for Firefox, and more.

Page Rank Checker:

Page Rank Checker

Page Rank Checker is a free Firefox plugin to check Google Pagerank of different webpages on Firefox browser. This Firefox plugin is a simple and popular plugin in Firefox add-on store to track page rank of webpages. Before installing this plugin, make sure that add-on bar is enabled from the tools menu of the browser. After installing the plugin, access any webpage for which you want to know the Pagerank. You will see the Pagerank of the website in the add-on bar below.

TYC + PR Indicator:
TYC PR Indicator

TYC + PR Indicator is a free Firefox add-on to track Google Page rank and Yandex TYC for the webpage which you have accessed on Firefox plugin. This Google Page rank indicator plugin is also a simple plugin that can be easily managed on Firefox browser. After installing this plugin, you can head to options menu of TYC + PR Indicator plugin. Select the appearance and the elements which you want to have on your Firefox browser. On accessing any webpage, the plugin automatically checks the data from Google and shows Google Pagerank in real-time in the adds-on bar of the browser.

SEO Analysis:

SEO Analysis

SEO Analysis is another free Firefox plugin to know Google Pagerank of any webpage. The plugin tells accurate Google Pagerank of the webpage which you have accessed on your Firefox browser. Apart from Google Page Rank, the plugin also displays Alexa Rank, Dmoz Listing, Yahoo Backlinks, Domain Age, mozRank, and Domain Hammer. All these contents are displayed on the adds-on bar of Firefox browser. To enable or disable any content, head to options menu of the plugin on your Firefox browser.

PageRank Client:

PageRank Client

PageRank Client is a free plugin for Firefox to track Google Pagerank of any website. After installing PageRank Client, you will see the rank on the adds-on bar of the browser. The plugin doesn't have any extra options to customize. Just download and install from Firefox adds-on store and you are done with.

PageRank For Firefox:

Page Rank For Firefox

PageRank For Firefox is a free Firefox plugin which shows Google Page Rank of any webpage on Firefox browser. This plugin is a bit different from all other plugins as discussed above. On installing the plugin, you will see the plugin icon the on the right top of the Firefox browser same as extensions in the extension bar of Chrome browser. The icon itself displays the page rank of the current webpage accessed. The good part of PageRank for Firefox is that, it shows page rank of all the webpages open in all the tabs of Firefox. You don't have to switch between different tabs to check Google Page Rank of each webpage open in multiple tabs.

If you find any other good Firefox add-on to check Google PageRank, then do let us know in comments.

If you are running Google Chrome browser, then do check out Chrome PageRank extensions. Also, take a look at Alexa Chrome extensions.

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5 Firefox PageRank Plugins To Check Google PageRank On Firefox was originally published at I Love Free Software

Free Webpage Update Monitoring Program: WebMon

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 06:30 AM PDT


WebMon is a free webpage update monitoring program which can help you monitor a website and check for changes to it every time it gets updated. You just need to insert the address and the web page update monitoring program would monitor it automatically for any updates to a particular webpage. It is a very handy tool especially when you are a regular follower of a website where you need to track each and every update that happens to it. For example in case you follow a particular website for information and news on a particular gadget then you may add it to the software and you would be updated as and when there are changes to the contents on that particular website.

Installing this free webpage update monitoring

The installation procedure of WebMon is kept simple where you can visit the official download site and click on the download button. The download process starts within seconds and gets downloaded on your system in quick time. Moreover after you are done downloading the program the next step is to run the setup process. The step by step procedure guides you to install it on your system and gets installed in very quick time. After you are done installing the program you sure would be raring to use the program so the next step would be to launch the program from the shortcut on your desktop or from the start menu. If you are looking for some more useful internet tools, you can try The Web Blocker, Voice Browser and NoMachine reviewed by us.

Using webpage update monitoring

As soon as you launch the program you would be presented with a popup (screenshot Below). It mentions the process to start using the program besides mentioning the help button for accessing any guidance which you may require to run the program.

Once you click on OK you would see a white screen with a few options at the top. To start tracking a particular website you can click on the Add symbol at the top of the window below the menu bar. Once you do so you would be asked to enter the address of the page you wish to track.

Once you do so its crawlers start checking the link and then proceed to gather the info of the link inserted. This would bring in a new window asking you about a few settings such as the description of the website and the interval between every check which you would like the software to do. It could be minutes, hours or even days.

If you wish to access the particular page you can directly double click on the name appearing on the program window. It will open the website in your favourite browser instantly. You may add as many websites which you may like to and track for updates on them.

Moreover if you wish to check for updates of a particular site on the list you could do it any time beside the automatically set time for the program. To do so just right click on the webpage from the list and click on Check for updates. The other features of this software include importing and exporting of already updated bookmarks from your browsers, setting up automatic checking at set intervals, option of setting popup sounds and alerts when there is a change tracked, you could run other programs simultaneously while this program is working in the background, gives you the choice to choose a particular section of a website too.

Now that you know all about WebMon, you can try this software to know when your favorite web pages change.

Related posts:

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Free Webpage Update Monitoring Program: WebMon was originally published at I Love Free Software

Improve BitTorrent Downloads with Download Thruster

Posted: 16 Jul 2012 05:00 AM PDT


BitTorrent Download Thruster is an addition to BitTorrent torrent client which is designed to improve the network connection speeds during downloads and with that decrease the time that it takes to download a file. Faster file downloads is something that majority of torrent users wants, and with BitTorrent Download Thruster you can have better download speeds, and if not that you can at least sleep better knowing that you’ve at least tried.

Thruster default window

Download Thruster is not a large program, only a few megabytes in size, and it doesn’t have a lot of options, in fact it doesn’t have any options, apart from the Network Interface selection menu which can be seen on the image above. Even though there’s not many options, Download Thruster does a lot of good things in the background, things that you are not aware of but which are very important if you want to have your torrent files downloaded faster.

Installation and memory demands

A lot of you are probably thinking, not another application to use up my already scarce computer resources, but don’t worry, BitTorrent Download Thruster doesn’t use a lot of resources. On our test machine the program used up only 3 MB of memory and it was a very small burden on the processor.

Something that should be brought to your attention, which happened to us during installation is that the program tries to install a toolbar without the users permission:

Thruster plugin

Installation tried to automatically install the addon without even asking us if we wanted to have it installed, which is very sneaky and not very nice. But since you can decline the plugin install in your browser all is well.

How does Download Thruster help my downloads?

According to the creators of Download Thruster, the application is balancing your network connections and minimizing the strain on the line, which torrent downloads usually are. Direct server downloads are good because they only have a few concurrent connections, or perhaps even just one, depending on what you are using to download. Concurrent connections is a number that tells us how many different machines from around the web we are connected to when downloading or surfing. With torrents, since we are basically downloading from hundreds of people from around the world, depending on how many torrents we are downloading, we have hundreds of concurrent connections and that can cause slow downs and even connection breakups. For this reason improved balancing is not such a bad idea, and that’s exactly what Download Thruster does.

Improved download speeds with more precise peer search

One more feature that’s worthy of a mention would be that BitTorrent Download Thruster is supposed to improve accuracy and increase the speed with which peers on a certain torrent file are found. We’ve tested download without Download Thruster and the speeds were lagging, once we ran it, new peers were found and speed jumped to the maximum.

Thruster working

How exactly and will it help you depends on a number of different factors, so it’s best that you try this BitTorrent addon and see for yourself how it will work. Of course do not expect to have the speed limits set by your ISP removed, but better speeds on torrents with little peers can be expected, try it and see how it goes. Download BitTorrent Download Thruster free.

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  3. Free BitTorrent Client for Windows, Mac, Linux: Deluge

Improve BitTorrent Downloads with Download Thruster was originally published at I Love Free Software

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