Posts Tagged: ‘Review’

Windows Snipping Tool – Originally Published July 2017

July 5, 2017 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
By Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

There are several free and paid utilities that you can use to make a screenshot of your monitor.  One of the best Windows utility programs that I often utilize can’t be downloaded.  It’s already built into the operating system.

Snipping Tool is a screenshot utility included in Windows Vista and later.  It can take screenshots of an open window, rectangular areas, a free-form area, or the entire screen.  Snips can then be annotated, stored as an image file (PNG, GIF, or JPEG file), an MHTML file or e-mailed.  The Snipping Tool allows for basic image editing of the snapshot, with different colored pens, an eraser, and a highlighter.  Prior to Windows Vista, the Snipping Tool was available in the Windows Experience Pack (power toys).

The start icon for the Snipping Tool can be found in the programs/accessories group.  I have found that it is much faster and easier to start by typing “sni” in the search box and clicking on “Snipping Tool”.  Once opened, the application is very simple to use.  There are several available options:
1. Hide Instruction Text will show or hide the instruction text in the main Snipping Tool window.
2. Always copy snips to the Clipboard will copy all snips to your Windows clipboard so you can paste them into other applications.
3. Include URL below snips (HTML only) will save your snip as a Single File HTML, or MHT document.
4. Prompt to save snips before exiting.
5. Show screen overlay when Snipping Tool is active.
6. Ink Color will change the color of the selection border when you create a snip.
7. Show selection ink after snips are captured simply shows the selection border around the snip.

         

Personally, except for Include URL, I’ve left all the options on default.  It really doesn’t make much difference.  After you’ve selected any options you want, it is time to make a clip of your screen.  There are four different types of snips you can take.  In order to change the type of of selection the Snipping Tool will use to create a snip you would click on the small down arrow menu next to the New button.
1. Free-form Snip: This method allows you to draw a shape around your selection using a mouse or a stylus.  Once the selection shape is drawn and you close the shape so there are no open sides, the snip will be created and shown to you.
2. Rectangular Snip: This method allows you to create a rectangular selection around a portion of your screen and anything in that rectangle will be used to create the snip.
3. Window Snip: Will capture the contents of the entire active window that you select.
4. Full-screen Snip: Will capture the entire screen on your computer.

After selecting your type of snip, simply left-click and hold your mouse button down.  Your screen will fade and you can move the mouse to select the area to clip.  After you are satisfied with your selection, release the mouse button and you have snipped your screen.

A new window will open with your clipped image.  You can make then use the pen to draw on your clip.  There is also a button to select a high lighting tool.  There is an erase button that will undo any changes you’ve made.  I seldom edit my snips.  I have found that when it is necessary it is easier to do in a graphics program.  When your snip is satisfactory, you can save it to a file or attach it to an e-mail.

Note: The screenshots and directions in this article were all done on a Windows 7 computer.  Everything is similar for all other versions of Windows.  I can’t give you a download link because the program is already installed on your machine.

If you like this software, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

MacroDroid – Originally Published June 2017

July 5, 2017 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

Down deep inside, I’m pretty lazy.  I think that is one of the reasons that I’ve become a technology geek.  After all, why should I get up from my easy chair to turn off the television when I can just push a button.  Of course, in this modern age, I’m not sure I could even find the on/off button.  When I’m in my vehicle, like many other people, I connect my phone via Bluetooth.  When I get out, I always take out my phone and stop my music player, turn on the Wi-Fi, turn off the Bluetooth and put the phone back in my pocket.

The truth is that is how I used to do it.  I don’t have to anymore because when I turn the engine off and open the card door, it all happens “automatically”.  This is done with an application that I’ve been using for the last month or so.

MacroDroid is a powerful task automation and configuration app that focuses heavily on usability with a simple UI and a logical step by step process.  I’ve tried many similar apps and even reviewed a few of them in past Newsletters.  MacroDroid is the easiest and most functional that I’ve ever used.

There are three steps to using MacroDroid:
1. Select Trigger – This is where you define an action that will start your macro.  In my example above, the trigger is Bluetooth disconnect from SYNC (my cars Bluetooth name).  At the time of this writing, there are more than 40 triggers.
2. Add Actions – This is what your device will do after the trigger occurs.  In my example the macro turns on the Wi-Fi, disables the Bluetooth, says the time and launches the home screen.  There are more than 70 actions you can use.
3. Add Constraints – This is where you can set options to limit when a Macro can activate.

There are many built in templates and user uploaded Macros.  All of them can be easily modified for each users needs.  I do have a small quibble with the templates.  For many actions, there are too many templates.  You can spend a lot of time finding the perfect one that works with your device.

     

 

The developer operates an active help forum where users can suggest features, share macros and get help with the application. There is also a settings helper application for devices that might have problems.  I haven’t had to use it.

 

You can download MacroDroid – Device Automation from the Google Play Store.  Android version 4.0.3 or higher is required.  The free version is limited to five macros and contains advertisements.  I can’t tell you whether the ads are obtrusive or not.  I purchased the pro version for $2.99 about fifteen minutes after I installed it.

Thanks for reading.

Paint.net – Originally Published May 2017

May 4, 2017 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
By Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

At last months meeting there was an excellent discussion about various graphics editing and manipulation tools.  I thought I’d take a few minutes and tell you about one of my favorites.  The program that I use most often for serious editing is Paint.NET, an open-source, free photo editing software program.  It was originally created as a college undergraduate student project in 2004, funded by Microsoft and was designed to replace Microsoft Paint, which was included in Windows.

The program has a simple, intuitive interface that is easily learned.  There is a large selection of tool that is easily and logically arranged.  Many of the tools are contained within their own window.  This allows users to set up their work space for their own convenience.

Paint.NET has many advanced features which include blurring, sharpening, the Magic Wand which allows for the selecting of regions of similar color and the Clone Stamp which is used for copying or erasing portions of an image.

Layers are another great feature of Paint.Net.  They allow you to add a layer on top of the background that not only allows you to add new items on top of others, but to edit them independently of the other layers.

The program has a large number of special effects.  These allow you to alter the appearance of your image.  You can use blurs, sepia toning, color level altering, ink sketch transformations, anti red-eye, distortions such as bulging, denting and pixelation.  The software has a huge following of users that are constantly creating and sharing other special effects and plug-ins.

If you’re like me, a great feature is unlimited history.  You don’t have to worry about making errors while you are editing.  You can make as many changes as want.  If they don’t look good, just undo and do over as often as you like.

There is also an active online community and forum.  They will give you any extra help that you might need.  You can also find several tutorials and guides.

Did I mention Paint.NETs best feature is the cost?  The price is free, although the authors will accept any donations.  Give it a try.  You might like it.  You can download Paint.NET by clicking the link.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLACUG extra, bonus perk; a little lagniappe.

Reviewing My Reviews – Originally Published April 2017

April 7, 2017 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

It’s hard for me to believe, but I’ve been writing these Android articles for more than four years now.  It all started when I got my first Android phone, the Samsung Galaxy Note II.  That was a good machine.  I used it a lot and never had one battery explode.  Since then I’ve written a lot of articles about using Android, hardware that I’ve owned and apps that I’ve used.  This month, I thought I’d take a look back and re-view some of the applications I’ve reviewed.

Voice Shortcuts Launcher was the first app I ever reviewed.  I liked it a lot but don’t use it anymore.  OK Google has improved so much that it is the only voice control I use.  Speaking of Google, the first app of theirs I reviewed was “Google Currents”, a newsreader that Google discontinued about six months later.  It sure is hard to believe that Google would discontinue something.

When I reviewed Cluefhttps://tinys-bs.com/wordpress/wp-admin/post-new.phpul Privacy Advisor by Bitdefender, I thought it was an interesting program that inspected your installed apps and gave privacy recommendations.  I didn’t use it for a very long time.  Kingsoft Office is a suite of apps that has been updated and renamed to WPS Office + PDF. At the time, it was the best word processing software available for Android.  Many tech sites still say that today.  I don’t do much word stuff on my smaller mobile devices any more and have not installed it lately.

When I reviewed the Amazon App Store, it wasn’t really a review but an article explaining why I removed it from all of my devices.  I got a little upset when Amazon required me to be logged in whenever I used one of the “free” programs they featured.  My machines seemed to run a lot faster without the program installed.

Wordiest is the first game I ever reviewed.  I still play the game almost every day.  Other games I’ve reviewed are Red Herring, Trainyard, Shikaku and Monkey Wrench.  Except for Red Herring, I still play them all fairly frequently.  I’ve reviewed the Fireproof Games Room Series more than once.  Even though they aren’t free, they remain my favorite Android games.

In October of last year, I reviewed Solid Explorer, an excellent two panel file explorer that keeps getting better all the time.  Simple Checkbook hasn’t been updated since November 4, 2014.  Every time I think about downloading something newer, I realize that the older model keeps my accounts perfectly.

I hope you enjoyed this short synopsis of some of my Android Reviews.  It has been four years since I left Windows Mobile and went to the Darkside.  Maybe it isn’t so dark after all.

Thanks for reading.

FreeOCR – Originally Published March 2017

March 12, 2017 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on my latest club project in my spare time.  I hope to get all of the club newsletters scanned and posted on the web site. It is a time consuming job, but I think it is an important part of the clubs history.

I could just scan each page, combine into a PDF file and post to the website.  The problem with using that simple, easiest method is that the files would not be indexed by the Google web site search engine.  I spent so much time setting up the web site custom search that this became an untenable alternative.  I needed some good optical character recognition software (OCR).

I’m a scanning rookie.  By that I mean I have never used a scanner for anything but scanning old pictures and the occasional document.  This whole project has been a learning experience for me.  I hope everyone thinks the results are satisfactory.

The first thing I learned is that many of the OCR scanning programs use the same engine, Tessaract OCR.  Tesseract is a commercial quality OCR engine that was originally developed by HP.  It was open sourced in 2005.  Click this link for An Overview of the Tesseract OCR Engine.  There are many OCR software packages (both free and paid) using Tesseract.  All of them are just “wrapper” interfaces.

After a thorough search of reviews, a few test downloads and several second thoughts, I did what I often do: go with Gizmo’s recommendation.  I downloaded and installed FreeOCR.  FreeOCR is a free Optical Character Recognition Software for Windows.  It supports scanning from most Twain scanners and can also open most scanned PDF files and multi page Tiff images as well as popular image file formats.  The interface is intuitive and the program is easy to use.

FreeOCR processes only one image at a time, but it will OCR multi-page PDF files.  There is no limit on file size.  FreeOCR can create Word and RTF documents from the text it extracts, but it’s just pasted text.  There is no attempt to reconstruct the document or place images.  Most importantly, text scanning conversion is excellent.

There is an Online Help Menu, but you will likely only have to look at it once or twice.  To use the program, simply open a document by scanning, opening a file or opening a PDF.  You can either select the entire page or draw a box around part of the image.  Then press the OCR button to process your selection.  The original image is on the left panel and the OCR text is on the right.

The left panel has nine menu items (the small icons on the left of the pane).  From top to bottom, you can select next page, previous page, fit image to screen, fit width to screen, enlarge, reduce and rotate either counter or clockwise.  The bottom icon (the little square) is the most used and the most useful.  Clicking it opens the selection menu allowing you to crop the image to your selected area or copy the entire image to the clipboard.

Similarly, there are seven menu items in the text panel on the right side. From top to bottom, you can clear the text window, save text, remove line breaks, copy all the text to the clipboard, export text into Microsoft Word, export text as RTF or change the font size.  In my setup, I copy the text to the clipboard and then paste into Scibus.  Most of the text editing required is deleting extra spaces, changing the number 1 to a lower case letter l or changing the capitalization of the x.  The program doesn’t reliably convert some fonts.  After about fifty edits it got much easier as I learned what errors to look for.  When I am done editing the text, I select images and copy them to the clipboard.  Then I paste them into the document.  I don’t spend a lot of time making them perfect because I think the important part of the newsletters is the articles and being able to search them on the club website.

FreeOCR is freeware OCR & scanning software and you can do what you like with it including commercial use.  The included Tesseract OCR engine is distributed under the Apache V2.0 license.  I recommend downloading the program from the home page.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

RCA Voyager Review – Originally Published February 2017

February 5, 2017 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

I was finally forced to retire the first Android table that I ever purchased.  My Archos 70IT was a faithful machine that I used every day.  For the last year or so, I used it solely for downloading and viewing podcasts and videos.  Although I don’t remember what I paid for the machine, I know I’ve gotten my moneys worth over the years.

I’ve been on the lookout for a replacement, but in no hurry to buy.  My tablet needs are pretty simple.  I watch tech videos and read lots of books and magazines with several different apps.  I don’t play a lot of games, but it would definitely have to be able to play my all time favorite: The Room Series.  On a tablet, I don’t need to use many of the Google services, such as maps, calendar, etc.  One of my main requirements has always been a 7 to 8 inch size because it will easily fit in a cargo pocket.

When I found the RCA Voyager 7 inch tablet, RCT6873W42, I was skeptical of the $35 dollar price tag because of the following specifications:

  • Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) Operating System
  • 1.2 GHz Intel SoFia Quad Core Chip
  • 1024×600 7.1 inch Multi-touch Screen
  • 16 GB DDR3 Ram
  • 1M pixel webcam
  • 1- DC In, 1-Headphone Jack, 1-Microphone Jack, 1-Micro USB 2.0
  • Micro SD/SDHC card slot up to 128GB
  • Bluetooth and WIFI

At the low price point, none of the specifications are top of the line, but they are not at the bottom either.  The tablet is Google Certified and comes with all the Google services and apps pre-installed.

All of the controls and jacks are on the right side of the machine.  The power button is about an inch from the top of the machine and I have sometimes fumbled trying to power the machine.  This is more of a minor aggravation than an inconvenience.  There is one speaker on the back.  The sound is not great, but it is adequate.  I haven’t used the web camera, but I’m sure it would not be very good.  Battery life has been adequate, usually lasting from 4-6 hours, depending on whether I’m watching videos or reading.

On the bottom of the tablet are connecting pins for use with the optional keyboard case.  The case is a very hard plastic with a keyboard built in.  The keyboard keys are very small and almost unusable if you are a touch typist.  When attached to the keyboard, you will only be able to easily use the tablet in landscape mode.  You can purchase the keyboard for around eight dollars, but it is not necessary for optimal use of the tablet.

Is the tablet worth the price?  For me, the answer is a resounding yes.  I’ll admit that when I first bought it, I thought I was wasting my money.  It has been a perfect fit for my admittedly limited tablet needs.

ToolWiz TimeFreeze – Originally Published January 2017

January 11, 2017 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
By Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

Are you like me?  Do you download a lot of programs, install them and then decide that you really don’t need them?  If so you should really use virtualization software of some type.  There are many efficient programs that do this.  VirtualBox, Parallels and VMware just to name a few.  There are also many quasi-virtualization programs.  These are programs that run software in a “virtual box”.  Examples of this type of software are Sandboxie, Bufferzone and DriveSentry.  Many software security suites such as Avast, Norton, Comodo, etc. also include sandboxing utilities.

The ToolWiz TimeFreeze is a simple and small sandbox utility that lets you protect your Windows Operating System.  The program creates a temporary cache file on your hard drive.  All changes made to your computer while TimeFreeze protection is enabled are stored in this cache file.  No changes are made directly your system, files, or folders.

After you install TimeFreeze you must restart your computer to allow the program to start its services.  You can the activate TimeFreeze from the system tray, start menu or desktop icon if you have one.  Simply select start TimeFreeze.

As you can see in the screenshot, there are only five options (check boxes) in the program.
1. Start Time Freeze automatically when Windows starts.
2. Enable Folder Exclusion when Time Freeze is ON.
3. Enable Password Protection for the control.
4. Show toolbar on your desktop.
5. Hide the tray icon.

I prefer not to start freezing with my system start. Instead I start it manually before I install a program for testing or do something that may be dangerous to my computer. If you add any folders or files to the exclusion folder, no changes will be made to them. Enabling password protection simply requires a password to start the program. I personally see no reason to do this.

You can stop TimeFreeze by clicking the stop button. When you do this a pop up screen appears with two options:
1. Turn off the protection and save all the changes. This will save any changes you made into your active system and then stop freezing. This may take several minutes.
2. Turn off the protection and drop all the changes. This will stop TimeFreeze and reboot you computer. Alternatively, you can click the your start button and reboot your computer.

CAUTION: TimeFreeze is a program useful for mainly for testing software without making changes to your computer. Although it may be helpful, it is not an anti-virus or anti-malware program.

TimeFreeze is free for personal use. It is a 2.8 MB download from many of the software download sites. I recommend you download from the ToolWiz website.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

Simple Checkbook Ledger – Originally Published December 2016

December 4, 2016 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

The number one app on my phone hasn’t been updated since November of 2014 and will likely never be updated again.  I’ve used it on all my android phones since my first one and it is one of the first programs I install if I get a new phone or do a reset.  I use the app nearly every day and often many times each day.

Simple Checkbook Ledger is a checkbook ledger.  Many of the other apps of this type have more features, sophistication, adaptability, etc.  I like this one because it does one thing and does it well.  It keeps the balance of my checkbook, savings account, gift cards, etc.  It does all this while actually looking like an actual old time check register.
Main features include:

– Keeps track of multiple accounts with password protection (password can be turned off in account preferences)
– Saves a list of descriptions/payees so that after you type something once you only need to tap on it later.
– Tap on a transaction to mark it mark it as cleared (it will be highlighted).
– Long press on a transaction to void, delete, edit, or add a note to the transaction.
– Schedule automatic transactions to be entered into the ledger at specified time intervals such as weekly, biweekly, monthly, and yearly.  Special monthly transactions are also supported for
items not occurring on the same day every month, such as the third Wednesday of the month.
– Export your ledger as a comma separated value (CSV) file that can be loaded on
almost any spreadsheet software.
– Archive
s cleared transactions.
– Export archived transactions as a CSV file and optionally have them deleted from the app at the time you export them.
There is also an option to sync your accounts with Google Drive. I have never tested this.

         

As with many programs, there are a few things that could be improved.  If you hit the back button without saving a transaction, it will be lost.  The app doesn’t remind you.  If you password protect an account, it is imperative to remember the password.  There is no recovery method.

Simple Checkbook Ledger is free on the Google Play Store.  A one time purchase of $0.99 will remove advertising.  The app has been on my phone for such a long time that I cannot remember the placement or obtrusiveness of the ads.  If you have a use for this type of program, give it a try.
Thanks for reading.

Spyware Blaster – Originally Published November 2016

November 6, 2016 Posted by Tiny

Some Lagniappe for You
by Tiny Ruisch

la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.

I’ve used Spyware Blaster on all of my Windows computers for as long as I can remember.  It is a small program that will use less than 9 MB of space on your hard drive.  Unlike other anti-spyware programs, it does not remove spyware from your computer.  Instead, it focuses on keeping evil spyware, adware, browser hijackers, etc. from being downloaded by your web browser and being installed.  It does this by using a list of known exploits and setting the “killbit” in the Windows Registry that identifies the software as unsafe.  This in effect, sets a flag to notify a web browser that an object is not be opened.  Your browser will not download malware.


Unlike most anti-malware programs, Spyware Blaster does not have to be running at all times in the background.  It works seamlessly with whatever anti-virus software you use.  When you first install and run the program, you simply have to check for updates.  After updates are downloaded, select enable protection for all browsers.  You can then close the program.  Every week or so, you should run the program and check for updates to the data base.

Spyware Blaster has some other features that I have not tested.  You can create a System Snapshot, view and change browser settings, tweak Internet Explorer settings, backup the Hosts File, completely disable Flash content or create custom Active X blocking lists.  These are items that I either have no need for or employ in other utilities.

Spyware Blaster can be downloaded from the Brightfort website.  (Bonus: They have some other pretty good utilities.)  It is a Windows only program.  The software is free for personal and educational use.  The purchase of a license for $14.95 allows for automatic updates and support.  Give it a try.  It’s kind of like a flu shot.

If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk, a small gift, a present from the club: a little lagniappe.

Solid Explorer – Originally Published October 2016

October 4, 2016 Posted by Tiny

From the Dark Side
by Tiny Ruisch

My favorite Android file explorer was just updated.  Solid Explorer is a great program that just got even better.  Just like I haven’t used Windows Explorer for several years, I haven’t utilized the stock Android files program.  For years, I used the free ES Explorer.  When they junked up the interface with advertising, I shifted my allegiance and haven’t looked back.

Solid Explorer has all of the standard functions: Select All, Copy, Paste, Delete, Search, etc.  One of the features that is most useful is dual panels, which makes it extremely easy to drag and drop.  Although you can only see both windows in landscape mode, they are still active if your machine is using portrait mode.  You simply have to swipe right or left.  I usually keep my left window in my phone memory.  I change the right window as needed to either my SD card or places on my network.

You can keep as many favorite places as you need.  With one touch, I can browse any of my networked computers, my networked media storage, all of my mobile devices, etc.  If you have any favorite folders on your network, you can also create an icon just for them.  I don’t have to navigate all the folders to get to “my documents” on different machines.  One touch and I am there.

Solid explorer also makes an excellent cloud manager.  It supports Dropbox, One Drive, Own Drive, Google, Box and many others.  You can also use FTP to remotely connect to your home computer(s).

   
The app also has built in file viewers for image and text files.  Support for compressed file formats such as zip, rar and tar is also built in.  You can either create or extract compressed files.  It also duplicates another Microsoft Windows feature in that it indexes files.  This make it able to do really fast searches.

The latest update has added a file encryption feature.  You can encrypt either a single file, a whole folder or your entire phone.  I can almost guarantee that if you use Solid Explorer’s encryption and the built in Android encrypt your phone option, the FBI won’t be able to see what is on your phone.  Of course, they don’t seem to be the most efficient at that job anyway.  Solid Explorer uses the AESS256 algorithm.  If your device has a fingerprint sensor, you can encrypt without a password.

Now for the bad news, unlike most of the Android apps I review, Solid Explorer is not completely free.  You can download the full version from the Google Play Store.  When you do so, you can use all features for a two week trial period.  After that, it costs $1.99 to unlock the app.  I personally paid the unlocking fee about thirty minutes after I installed the program.  Interestingly, as I write this review, the app has a 4.6 rating in the play store.  The unlocker app (paid) has a 4.7 rating.

Thanks for reading.