Leo - Free help for MS Office, iTunes, Firefox and Facebook

Aren't you tired of asking reluctant, condescending friends for computer help? Wouldn't you like to know how to really use Office applications, Firefox, Facebook or iTunes? Now you can gain the knowledge you seek, grasshopper, with this free application that allows you to select a task and have Leo either show you how to do it or do it for you. Bliss!

Leo - Intro from Kryon Systems on Vimeo.

Get Leo

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Gmail New Feature - Add Rich Text Signature

Email signatures are useful and fun, as long as you don't make them annoying to others. Well, if you promise to make your signatures tasteful and not too lame, I'll tell you that Gmail now allows you to set up rich text email sigs. Go to your Gmail and click on settings, then scroll down to the place that has a rich text editor for your signatures. Play nice now.

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Microsoft SharedView - Safely share views of your screen with friends

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, a screen view is worth 1,000 pictures. When you need to show a friend what the heck you're talking about on your screen, nothing beats showing them. From the website:

"Microsoft SharedView is a fast, easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups of friends or coworkers; anytime, anywhere. Use SharedView to put your heads together and collaborate - create, convey, and communicate…across physical boundaries, through firewalls, and down to the smallest details."

Microsoft SharedView

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Gmail Insert Image - Now you can add inline images to Gmail messages

Used to be you had to use attachments to add images to your Gmail, but no more. Just go to Settings>Labs and enable the Insert Images gadget.

Then when you're composing a message, use the new insert image button.

Easy!

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Now you can draw in Google Docs

Happens from time to time, you need to do a quick and easy, down and dirty flow chart, or some other type of diagram, and throw it into a document. Last time I was in that predicament I had to go looking for a free and simple way to do it. I wish this had been available then. From the blog:

"It's easy to create drawings using lines, free hand scribbles, text labels and a large choice of shapes that you can move, resize, rotate and adjust. Group, order, align and distribute and other features are available when you select objects you've drawn. You can also customize a range of shape properties, from line widths to fill color, and from arrowheads to font size, and much more. If you change your mind, there is undo and redo. You can collaborate with a friend or colleague on a drawing, or work alone, just as you can in Google Docs today."

Draw in Google Docs

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GreenPrint - Save paper and ink!

I am usually loathe to participate in anything trendy, and nothing is more trendy that being "green." On the other hand, this will save you money, so it passes inspection. From the web site:

"GreenPrint's patent-pending software eliminates unwanted pages saving paper, ink, money, and millions of trees."

GreenPrint

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ShutDown Suite [Utilities] - Shut down, restart, or log off the quick and easy way

Remember: Daylight Saving Time begins on Sunday morning!

A combination of small freeware apps that make shutting down, restarting or logging off a breeze. From the web site:

"ShutDown Suite combines small freeware applications that allows you shut down, reboot your computer or log off from your user account. ShutDown Suite contains two packages: "No Install" and "Installer". Each package contains different applications. In "No Install" package, there are 6 programs. This programs never ask for confirmation when they launched. For Example: ShutDown Safe.exe application in this package shuts down computer immediately. But if there are any applications that have unsaved data, stops shutting down and wait for user's reply to that program's save warning. But ShutDown Force.exe ignores unsaved data and other programs and forces system to shut down. This may cause data loss. In "Installer" package, there are 3 programs: ShutDown, Reboot and LogOff. These programs have installer and uninstaller routines and display a tray icon and allows you shut down, reboot or log off your system easily via their tray icon menu. These programs also have "force" and "Start with Windows" options."

ShutDown Suite

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LinkExtend Firefox Extension - Get a multiplicity of information on web sites

What do you know about that web site you're visiting? Is is safe? Is it popular? Is it reviled? Find out all that and more in a comprehensive display. From the web site:

"Welcome to LinkExtend, the ultimate browsing tool. Enhance your web surfing experience getting link information instantly on computer security, company ethics, child safety, popularity, and much more. Data from many free online services is collected and combined to provide you with comprehensive results. LinkExtend is freeware and contains no adware or spyware."

LinkExtend

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PDF to Word Free - Speedy conversion tool to make a Word doc from PDF

I can't resist a private beta. This one is easy to join. Just enter a valid email address and the code word "nitro." When you're activated, you can upload up to a 10 Mb PDF file and have it emailed back to you as a Word or rtf doc.

"Using our PDF-to-Word conversion technology, you can quickly and easily create editable DOC/RTF files, making it a cinch to re-use PDF content in applications like Microsoft Word, Excel, OpenOffice, and WordPerfect.
Best of all, it's entirely free!"

PDF to Word

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Multi Monitor Mouse - Optimized pointer utility for multiple monitors

This Windows utility shaves seconds off your computer tasks by warping the movement of your pointer across the bezels of your displays. You know, the part that surrounds your screen area? From the web site:

"M3 allows for conventional control of the mouse within each monitor's screen, while permitting immediate warping across monitors when desired to increase mouse traversal speed."

Multi Monitor Mouse

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EMail Address Crawler for Thunderbird - Scans your email for email addresses

Thunderbird users, do you neglect the little chore of adding contacts when you receive email? Do you find your autocomplete completely useless because you never took the time to add that contact's email address? Well then this Thunderbird extension is just what your tech doctor ordered. From the web site:

"Automatically fill your address books with e-mail addresses extracted from all your e-mails."

Email Address Crawler

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Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder - Dig up your Windows product key

Despite it's cute name, this one isn't fancy or particularly good-looking; it just performs a very useful function that everyone will probably need a few times in their computing lives. It retrieves your Windows product key from your registry in case you can't find it elsewhere, on a CD case or the side of your computer, say.

Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder

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PowerMenu - Enhance your menus and add capabilities

Adjusting how your open windows interact with and position themselves relative to each other is just one of the additional capabilities this app adds to your context menus. From the web site:

"PowerMenu is a small application I wrote back in 1998 that some extra menu items to the windows control menu in addition to the standard "Close", "Maximize", etc options. The extra menus are: Always On Top, Transparency and Minimize To Tray."

PowerMenu

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a-squared Free 4.0 - Find and smash malware

You can't ever be too thin, and you can't have too much malware protection. So they say, but it is true that no single anti-malware application is 100% effective, so it's good to have a few good ones at work at all times. Here's another free, yet highly effective, offering. From the web site:

"# Scan your PC for infections of Trojans, Viruses, Spyware, Adware, Worms, Bots, Keyloggers and Dialers.
# 2 Cleaning Scanners in 1:
Anti-Virus + Anti-Spyware
# 4 million users world wide rely on a-squared to clean their PC from Malware."

a-squared Free

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Free Extended Task Manager - Find unruly processes and more

I'm sitting at my computer, working away happily, when things suddenly go screwy. Moving my mouse results in hesitant, jerky movements of my pointer. Application buttons won't do anything. Time for the Task Manager.

But finding the misbehaving process with the standard Windows tool is often difficult to impossible. That's why it's good to have something more useful. From the web site:

# Displays disk input/output activity with information about related applications
# Displays network port activity with IP addresses of external computers
# Displays information about applications that utilized most of the CPU or memory at any time presented on the charts
# Displays all files locked by a select process.
# Finds all processes locking a specified file.
# Includes "Summary" tab for quickly assessing the overall state of the Windows system
# Allows freezing individual Windows processes
# Offer various visual and functional improvements over the standard Windows Task Manager

Free Extended Task Manager

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Update Notifier Firefox Add-On - Keep abreast of add-on updates

Here's the simplest way to stay current on all your extensions in Firefox. From the web site:

"Notifies you when updates are available for your extensions and themes. Allows quick access to your extensions and themes and the ability to check both types for any updates. Easily configurable for automatically installing updates when available and checking for updates when Firefox starts."

Update Notifier

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EndTask Pro - A powerful, free way to beef up task manager issues

You probably know your Windows Task Manager service as your ultimate means of shutting down apps that refuse to be closed the normal way (besides shutting down your computer entirely). EndTask Pro does that better and does more to boot. From the web site:

"EndTask Pro protects you against unkown spyware, pop-up ads, and provides you with a variety of bonus tools helpful for any computer user. EndTask complements your firewall and Adware removal tools by giving you direct control over all of the programs that are running on your computer and powerful monitoring tools. Its unique pop-up blocker will save you time by hiding annoying advertisements while allowing access to good pop-ups."

EndTask Pro

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TabCloser Firefox Extension - Close similar tabs with one click

When you find yourself in Firefox with multiple tabs open from the same domain, having this extension offers a simple right-click menu choice for closing them all at once.

TabCloser Firefox Extension

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AltDrag - Drag your windows to hell and gone

Moving windows around your screen is often necessary, but difficult to do because you have to click on the title bar to drag them anywhere. With AltDrag you simply press the Alt key and Click/drag anywhere on the window in question. With AltDrag you can also "press the shift key to make the window stick to other windows."

AltDrag

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Photocopier - Turn your scanner and printer into a photocopier

This beautiful little freeware application is one of those things that make you say, "It's about damn time!" From the web site:

"Got a scanner and a printer? Why not combine the two into a copier? You no longer need a Xerox if you have Photocopier. This is how it goes: insert a document into your scanner, start Photocopier and press its Copy button. After a few moments your printer produces a copy of the document. That's it. No difficult settings to make, it's very user friendly."

Photocopier

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