Karl’s Place

The utility that I’ve needed for years and finally looked for: PureText.

So many times I copy text from a web page or other document and need to paste it into an application that doesn’t offer the “Paste Special” option. I just want the text, not the formatting.

PureText lets you create a shortcut key (Windows-V by default) that will paste just the plain text from the clipboard.

NetworkWorld has another interesting article listing free tools for IT management. A previous, similar article is here.

The latest Cisco Router Guide, which can help you compare router features and choose the right router for the job, is available here.

If someone sends you a file (or you download a questionable file) and you really want to be sure that the file is safe, try out VirusTotal.

VirusTotal is “a service that analyzes suspicious files and facilitates the quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines”.  You upload or email a file to them, and they scan it with a bunch of antivirus programs.

They currently list 32 companies whose antivirus engines are used.

This is certainly not a replacement for running antivirus software on your machine, since it only scans individual files that you submit.

As much as I like the Dictionary Search Firefox extension that I mentioned in my last posting, I’ve decided that the Context Search extension gives me everything that I need, and easier.

There’s really just two steps:

1. Click on the down arrow next to the search box in the Firefox toolbar, choose “Manage Search Engines…” and then click on “Get more search engines…” to install the ones you like.
   
2. Install the Context Search extension, which will make all of those search engines available from the context menu when you highlight a word or phrase on a web page and right-click on it.

Fun with the Firefox context menu.

First, a word about the Campus Crusade for Christ search engine.
Campus Crusade has tons of resources on the web, but they can be hard to find. CCC has lots of divisions, each with many web sites. So, we’ve added a Google Search Appliance that you can use at search.ccci.org. If you use Firefox, you can add the CCC search engine to the Firefox toolbar very easily by following the instructions here.

Now that you have the CCC search engine available in Firefox, here’s a tip that I didn’t know about until a few days ago: If you highlight a word on a web page and right-click on it, the context menu will include “Search CCCI for [word you highlighted]”. Whatever search engine you have chosen in the Firefox toolbar will show up in this context menu.

What I really wanted, though, was for the context menu to show a whole list of search engines: Search Wikipedia, Search Google, etc. What I found is the Dictionary Search extension for Firefox. Once you install it, you can configure its options (under Tools, Add-ons, Extensions) to search different places. Here’s how I have my options set:
(the Wikipedia URL that extends beyond the input area is just copied from the list of dictionary URLs here).

Here’s a tip that I didn’t know when I started this post: If you don’t mind the context menu being a little deeper, you can just install the Context Search Firefox extension, and all of the search engines that you have integrated with Firefox will show up in the context menu.

Enjoy!

http://lifehacker.com/?view=full is all about using technology to be more productive.

This post lists great free tools for Windows and Mac to save your bacon when your computer is in trouble. I’ve personally gotten a lot of use from Knoppix, the Ultimate Boot CD, and gparted. I’ll be checking out the rest of the Windows utils.

I’ve been creating application documentation lately, and FastStone Capture has been a big help. Previously, I used alt-PrtScn to send a screen capture of the active window to the clipboard, and then pasted it into Paint Shop Pro to edit and crop as necessary. FastStone Capture is more flexible about what part of the screen it captures (even capturing scrolling windows), and then it sends the capture immediately to an editor that lets you easily crop and save. It even comes up with a date-based filename.

It’s free–check it out!  Apparently not free anymore, but still a great tool (October 5, 2007)

The web site and blog at IntelliAdmin.com have some nice tips and utilities for Windows.

They’ve taken several Windows registry hacks and built free graphical utilities around them, including the Daylight Saving Time patch for Windows 2000.

It can be a struggle to figure out where all the space has gone on your hard drives. This is a handle little utility that adds a “size” tab to the properties page of Windows Explorer. Just right-click on a folder, choose Properties, click the Size tab, and you’ll see how much space is taken up by each of your folders and its subfolders and files. Use the Options button to sort by size.

This is not as pretty as the graphical output that you get from a utility like TreeSize, but it’s nice that it’s integrated with Windows Explorer.

This utility can be found at many file download sites, including here.