Some of Your Favorite Programs/Apps?

[easysurfer]

What are some of your favorite programs or apps? I'll be inclusive so feel free to mention for any platform (Win, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone and others..)

For me 3 programs come to mind right now.

1). Move Mouse (Win) - does a simple task, but comes in so handy. Task is to at a time I wish (I have set to 60 seconds), just move the mouse pointer a tad so the computer doesn't think I'm away. Amazing how may times I run the program for the simple task.

2) Lightshot (Win and Mac, Chrome) - easy screen capture program. Highlight area in a rectangle to capture. Or capture entire screen. Elegant, not clunky like some other programs.

3) SimpleScreen Recorder (linux) - as the name says, I use for when recording the screen on computer. Can be mouse movements, video files playing or anything else my computer screens shows. Tried some win programs for screen recording, but on my pc, was laggy.

All three programs are free as in FREE !

What are some that you like?

 

[bizlady]

IPhone TripIt Don't leave home without it!
All confirmations from flights, car rental, hotels, tickets can be forwarded from email and automatically loaded into the app and organized.

 

[easysurfer]

That sounds like a nice app. I have an android. When I travel, still resort to the old fashioned print out method.

 

[braumeister]

On a Mac, I would be lost without Default Folder.

 

[mpeirce]

IPhone TripIt

Don't leave home without it!
All confirmations from flights, car rental, hotels, tickets can be forwarded from email and automatically loaded into the app and organized.

I love TripIt. Just today I was chatting with DW and we couldn't remember which airline we flew on on a certain trip. A moment later I had the answer.

Their only flaw is that they try to upgrade you to the Pro version. Can't blame them for trying to make a buck I suppose.

 

[ejman]

I think the LibreOffice suite is great . I use the linux version buy I understand its equally functional in Win or Mac.

 

[CaptTom]

On the air travel theme, FlightAware shows the "inbound flight." That's the previous flight of the same aircraft. This critical piece of information will let you know how much of a lie the posted departure delay is, and give you a feel for when you're REALLY leaving. You can hop through inbound flights all the way back to the first flight that plane made that day.

Along the same lines, FlightRadar24 will tell you about flights in the air. I use it to track my inbound flight, or the flight of a relative or friend. You can also identify any non-military planes you see in the sky. It's amazing how many people have false assumptions about the flights that are passing overhead.

I have these apps on my Android. FlightRadar24 has a web site, too.

 

[ItDontMeanAThing]

2) Lightshot (Win and Mac, Chrome) - easy screen capture program. Highlight area in a rectangle to capture. Or capture entire screen. Elegant, not clunky like some other programs.

Snipping Tool has been a part of Windows since Win 7. Captures rectangle, free-form, window or entire screen. Has a Pen tool for writing on the snipped image and a Highlight tool for, uh, highlighting.

Everything for Windows. Searches folder and file names as fast as you can type. Can restrict search by file type, e.g., photo, video, compressed, etc. After being installed, you have to wait for it to scan the selected disks. After that it updates its index in the background. Free at voidtools

 

[easysurfer]

Snipping Tool has been a part of Windows since Win 7. Captures rectangle, free-form, window or entire screen. Has a Pen tool for writing on the snipped image and a Highlight tool for, uh, highlighting.

Everything for Windows. Searches folder and file names as fast as you can type. Can restrict search by file type, e.g., photo, video, compressed, etc. After being installed, you have to wait for it to scan the selected disks. After that it updates its index in the background. Free at voidtools

Thanks for the Snipping Tool mention as part of Windows. Must have slipped by me as I've never really used that before.
After just trying now, I do like Snipping Tool more than some of the other screen capture programs I've used. Though, I still like Lightshot a bit more as seems to flow a bit easier. But just my opinion.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

On the air travel theme, FlightAware shows the "inbound flight." That's the previous flight of the same aircraft. This critical piece of information will let you know how much of a lie the posted departure delay is, and give you a feel for when you're REALLY leaving. You can hop through inbound flights all the way back to the first flight that plane made that day.

+1 on FlightAware. I've used it to call BS on a gate agent who kept announcing our flight would leave "in 30 more minutes," every 30 minutes for a couple hours on end. The FA app told me our equipment was just pulling away from the next gate to make a run to a nearby city and back, before we would board it to our destination. It was right (and yes it was the trip from hell, since I had already been on another plane for 10 hours before making that connection).

For traveling by air, SeatGuru and GateGuru are must-haves for smartphones.

Thanks for this thread. I'm just making the switch from Windoze to Mac OS, so it's nice to see some recommendations.

 

[target2019]

Pinned to my Win 10, and would not think of removing:
- TightVNC
- Palm Desktop (Luddite version)
- Opera
- Metapad (lightweight text editor)
- Magnifier
- Snipping Tool
- IrfanView
- VLC Media Player

 

[cynicalbuthopeful]

Waze - this mobile app saves me and my husband from nightmare commutes. Must app when we are driving in the states.

 

[RunningBum]

Evernote for storing travel plans, shopping lists, reminders, and all kinds of things. It syncs with my phone. I may switch to MS One Note since free Evernote is limited to 2 instances, and I'd like to share with my other kindle and 2nd PC as well.

 

[Lsbcal]

IPhone TripIt Don't leave home without it!
All confirmations from flights, car rental, hotels, tickets can be forwarded from email and automatically loaded into the app and organized.

I use Google's Inbox for this. It is a gmail app that will bundle all your email for a trip i.e. confirmations, flights, etc. Here is an example of what you see at the top level:

Then you click into the top level to see all your emails in a date ordered fashion. Very cool.

To get this you will have to go with gmail for your trip emails. I use it for just about everything nowadays. Then you can see use the inbox on a PC, ipad, or even android phone (my choices for devices).

 

[Lsbcal]

Another app I've just started using on my PC is RemindMe. It will pop up a reminder for things like appointments. Has features like audio sounds and repeating in time reminders.

 

[Lsbcal]

Evernote for storing travel plans, shopping lists, reminders, and all kinds of things. It syncs with my phone. I may switch to MS One Note since free Evernote is limited to 2 instances, and I'd like to share with my other kindle and 2nd PC as well.

I've used Excel with it's tabs plus the Snipping Tool to do a OneNote kind of thing. I'm thinking of OneNote for trip plans if it is better.

For those using OneNote, is it an improvement over Excel (using tabs)?

 

[easysurfer]

Social Fixer. Not a program or app but browser add-on to gain some control over Facebook feeds and the way Facebook behaves.

Allows for filters on keywords or user created. I just added a filter on keywords to filter out a current hot topic (as my feed was getting hit with opinionated friends and family ). I just added a filter on a not topic and see the filtering doing it's stuff.

Does take a bit of a learning curve, but I wouldn't browse on my PC without it. One drawback is there isn't a mobile version, so what newsfeeds I filtered out on my PC would still show on my phone.

Oh, also, with Social Fixer, I was able to see when a "so-called friend" (note the sarcasm, but a bit of truth ) asked me to be a friend just to see what pictures I posted, then a couple days later, "unfriended me"

 

[pb4uski]

Any.do for shopping lists and to-do lists... I like that I can tell Alexa to add an item to my shopping or to-do list and it shows up in Any.do on my phone.

Starting to use MyFitnessPal to monitor my diet.

And of course, Chrome, Quicken and TT.... and LibreOffice for spreadsheets and docs. Gmail for email.

I also like/use TripIt but I don't travel much anymore so I only use it occasionally.

 

[pb4uski]

Pinned to my Win 10, and would not think of removing:
- TightVNC
- Palm Desktop (Luddite version)
- Opera
- Metapad (lightweight text editor)
- Magnifier
- Snipping Tool
- IrfanView
- VLC Media Player

Wow. How 90s!

 

[W2R]

Here are the programs I have pinned to my taskbar or on my desktop, so I guess I use these more than any others. All were free except as noted and work on my Windows 10 laptop.
__________________________________________

Windows Media Player
Paint
PaintShop Pro ver 6.02*
Snipping Tool
Windows Explorer
Open Office
Notepad
Wordpad
Calculator (for W10 but with the old Windows 7 appearance)
MSIE
MS Edge
SolSuite (costs $9.99, lots of solitaire games)
Norton (costs $98/year but cuts back on worries so I don't care)
Malwarebytes
CCleaner
iTunes
__________________________________________

* This version of PSP is from back in 1997, when you could actually OWN software for manipulating photos and images, instead of renting it. I think it cost me around $35 maybe so I got my money's worth. I love it because it is so familiar to me by now. I can make an avatar in a jiffy using it, which I like to do as you may have noticed.

 

[Ronstar]

Snapseed for mobile editing photos - iPad and iPhone
Concepts for drawing on iPad
Ortelius for making maps on iMac
Adobe creative cloud photography suite on iMac

 

[Lsbcal]

What I find most useful are apps that work across all my devices. Devices for me are Win 10 PC, iPad, Google Android phone.

So the Google tools do this (Sheets, Inbox, Google Drive, Calendar are favorites). Ditto for the MS Office products as I really like Excel and do not want to switch. But I still use Google sheets for light weight work like "to do tasks" and recording workouts.

 

[target2019]

I'm not a user of MS OneNote, but found it has an interesting feature.
I captured a portion of earlier post with Snipping Tool. Pasted that capture into OneNote. Right click on the picture and "capture text from picture".

So, the app performs OCR on the image, and the result was perfectly read to text. The result is below.

Pinned to my Win 10, and would not think of removing:
- TightVNC
- Palm Desktop (Luddite version)
- Opera
- Metapad (lightweight text editor)
- Magnifier
- Snipping Tool
- IrfanView
- VLC Media Player

 

[bizlady]

If you are at all interested in an "AI" app, I have been playing with Mezi. It is an iPhone or google app- not sure if available on other platforms. Owned by American Express. Works pretty well for finding hotels, flights, things to do and restaurants. I used it to find a shuttle and it even booked it for me. So-so in smaller towns, works USA and international. Seems to look at YELP ratings, and the prices it quotes have checked out to be pretty close or right on with individual websites. Fun even if not traveling just to see what it can do!

 

[Scuba]

Waze - this mobile app saves me and my husband from nightmare commutes. Must app when we are driving in the states.

+1. Used it twice a day when I commuted, and still use it pretty regularly in So CA.