Yesterday, I discovered this nice full-screen clutter-free text editor called JDarkRoom. It’s just you and your text on a plain background, with nothing else on the screen that could distract you. This could be quite useful if you’re having problems focusing on your writings. You can modify the text size/colour as well as the background colour so that it’s easy on the eyes. I’ll definitely give it try the next time I have to write a longer text.

Imagine you could walk through all flickr photos of the Notre Dame in Paris in 3D. Photo tourism is a bit like Google Earth for photo collections. It basically generates a 3D model based on photos taken at the same location. They don’t have to be taken in a certain way and can be random tourist photos. This software recognises key points in all the images and calculates the view point of the photo. Anyway, you have to see it for yourself because it’s hard to describe. A good start is to watch this video and then try the live demo here. Since Microsoft is involved in this research as well, they are developing their own software based on this technology. It’s called photosynth, which you can test drive here. Simply amazing!

For me, one of the most annoying things when working on a computer is trying to find the right folder. Even though the network at my office and my computer at home are pretty well organized, it can take quite a lot of mouse-clicks to find what you’re looking for, just because of the sheer number of folders. Sure, you can create shortcuts to your most used folders on the desktop. This is a method I used for a while until I found ac’tivAid and Dirkey. Now I can’t really think of an easier and faster way to find the folder I’m looking for, than with these two tools:

ac’tivAid

This collection of tools is being developed by my favourite German computer magazine c´t. It contains more than 30 different tools ranging from an application launcher, recent directory pop-up to other various tool that make your work in Windows much easier. Although, most of the tools are really useful, it´s the QuickChangeDir tool which stands out.

My job as a Graphic Designer/Account Manager quite often requires me to find folders and files really quickly on our servers. It´s not that we haven´t organized our folders, it´s more that there are so many and even if you click your way through the folder structure it always takes a few moments until you find the file you want. So for years now I´ve been looking for a tool which I can activate in every file requester or explorer window, type in part of the name of the project folder I´m after and then you just hit return and you´re there. This is exactly what QuickChangeDir does. And it does this job very fast and very quick by indexing all the folders on your (network) drives on a regular basis. Just to be clear, this is not a file search programme like Google Desktop. It only works with folders but since I keep my files pretty organised anyway, this is all I need.

I´ll give you another example so you can see what makes this tool quite unique, at least as far as I know. Let´s say you´ve just created a Photoshop file which will be used in the Christmas flyer you´re working on. You hit Ctrl-S in Photoshop and the save file dialog pops up. If this is a new project, chances are pretty small, that you´re already in the right folder where you want to save this file. But with QuickChangeDir all you need to do is hit Windows Key + – and type “Christmas” or whatever part of the project folder name you remember. Next, you´ll get a list with all the folders containing “Christmas”. Just choose the one you need and hit enter. Even though this might have saved you only a few seconds, if you, like me, work on many different projects during the day it can save you a lot of time.

The only problem with ac’tivAid is that the website is only in German, so is the read-me file. But at least the whole interface is available in English. And since most features are self-explanationary this is actually all you need. On http://www.heise.de/ct/activaid/ just download”activaid_v111.exe”, which has all the installation files in one package. If you encounter any German bits you don´t understand, you can ask me anytime.

http://www.heise.de/ct/activaid/

Dirkey

Just like QuickChangeDir above, Dirkey is a real time saver if you need to get around your folders as fast as possible. You could describe the programme as a folder bookmarking tool. There are quite a few tools like this out there, but it is the integration with Windows, which makes Dirkey special. No matter if you´re in explorer or any Windows file-requester, just right-click on the red close icon in the current window and Dirkey appears. Now you can add the current folder to your favourites or select a previously boomarked folder from the list. I always bookmark all the folder of my current projects, so that I can access them from anywhere in Windows with just two mouse clicks. Unfortunately, the author of Dirkey doesn´t develop the software any further and has sold the source code to another company. But the good thing is that´s been working without any problems on my Windows XP machine at home and several PCs at work for the last few years.

http://www.protonfx.com/dirkey/

Apart from ac’tivAid and Dirkey there are a few more tools which I use every day to make my computer work easier, but those two are definitely the biggest time savers. If you know of any other must have tools like these, please let me know. Of course, any other comments or questions are also welcome.

Probably everyone has heard of Google Earth by now. Yesterday they made huge data update with more higher resolution satellite/aerial photos yesterday. So the first thing I checked was my place here in Auckland, New Zealand. So far New Zealand had only a few high resolution areas and Auckland only on the North Shore. Now if you click on the image to the left you can see where I live. It’s probably not hard to see that Google has updated all the areas around my place, except beautiful Balmoral, Auckland. Is it a conspiracy? Or are they trying to hide the top secret research lab down the road? Who knows.

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock for the last year or so there is a technology out there called Voice over IP (VoIP) which allows you to talk over the internet. Probably the most popular VoIP client is Skype. Even Google has got its own VoIP software called Google Talk. Anyway, I don’t want to explain all this in detail. If you want to know more about what VoIP is and how it works a good place to start is probably here.

Now back to the free phone calls mentioned in the title. I found this VoIP client the other day called VoipBuster. They are still in beta stage but you can already download their client and use it. Just as with quite a few VoIP clients out there you can call landlines with VoipBuster as well. But as a special offer phone calls to more than 10 European countries and the US are free – well, almost. All you have to do is pay 5 Euros to activate your account. I tried it a few days ago and called from New Zealand to Germany over the internet. The connection was as good as with a normal phone. There where also no delays or lag. The only problem is that they cut the connection after one hour. But since it’s basically free you can just call again.

Just like everyone else, I’m not quite sure how this company can afford this. Maybe it’s because they are still in beta stage or to attract more customers. Anyway, at the moment they offer free phone calls to my home country Germany. So why not enjoy it as long as it lasts.