Skype

I used this product since it came out but two feature that most people are not aware of are these:
The ability to change your Call ID number to match your mobile etc. is pure genius. I was stuck in the USA at Christmas and needed to operate from my friend home as if I was in the UK.
Other than starting my day at 3am I was able to function as if I was in my office in the UK. I got work to redirect my work mobile number to my Skype In London number. And I had fortunately update my Skype’s Call ID with my work mobile number. This meant that each call from the USA cost nearly nothing but people thought it was me (and answered) and were able to call me. Of coarse I was able to use Google Voice in the USA to bounce incoming calls to any number of phone there (please bring Google Voice to the UK).
The other function is Skype To Go this allows me to assign a local number (normally bundled with mobile minutes) to my Skype account. When I call this number from my phone I’m given the option to speed dial pre selected numbers I have already entered in the web interface or enter the number I want to dial. It’s great to contact my international friends while stuck in the car. I have my phone CallerID added as an authorised number otherwise you have to enter a pin to access this functionality.
If you are in the USA and you get free local calls than this is a great way to call internationally using proper phone and not have to use your computer or mobile app.
www.skype.com

Update - latest version supports dual logins for Win7 so you can have one Skype account for personal use and another for business. Just create a desktop short-cut that has a  /secondary command. Only wish this was simpler for normal users.

PDF Creator

Well the title says it all but it’s not limited to PDF document type it can create JPG, PNG, BMP and many other image formats.

It’s a simple and free to install. As with many of these products they appear as a printer. When you print to the “PDF Creater” printer you are given option to name the files etc. It’s at this point you can change the file type.

If you need higher quality images or page sizes e.g. for scale drawings than there is a properties function where the defaults for each file type can be set.

Worth installing because when used in conjunction with Foxit you have a very powerful PDF creation suite at your finger tips.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

File Transfer and Comparison

Beyond Compare is a tool that I purchased over 5 years ago for a replacement for CuteFTP at the time.

The low level comparison option was invaluable when trying to find errors in code loaded to webservers. Or changes  developers had implemented on the fly and forgotten to mention.

Today I use it to manage my every increasing photo, video and music libraries on multiple local and remote backup site locations.

Also useful to transfer files to Android devices while a iTunes type product is developed (yes, I’m aware of double twist but it gets in the way)

http://www.scootersoftware.com/

Foxit PDF Reader

Again about a year ago I wanted a PDF reader that allowed me the ability to measure elements within the page. I was reviewing a lot of site plans at the time and printing them out to A1 and A0 was getting expensive and difficult to handle when using my mobile office i.e the car or train.

I also need to mark-up and comment PDF documents which it does as you would expect. Some of the properties like font and line colour can be in different places for similar elements so don’t give up looking you can change text from red you just need to do so before typing and then right clicking and in properties set as default.

I realise the version of Adobe has this functionality but Adobe has had enough money out of me over the years at inflated rates just because I live in the UK and not the USA.

Foxit Reader Pro used to be free to evaluate but had a charge of about $40 for a single user licence. Again I was happy to pay it  but just rebuilt a laptop the other day and was installing my default set of tools and tried to re-licence the latest version. Well it transpires that I couldn’t do this because it’s free.

Warning just be careful when you install it as the prompts for installing tool bars and short cuts to eBay are littered throughout the install process.

It’s a sad day when browser bars and short cuts out strip real money.

Another plus point over Adobe Reader is that very large site plans seem to render much quicker on Foxit Reader which is the icing on the cake for me.

 http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/

TrueCrypt

Once again I’ve been using this for years to protect personal and work files from accidental disclosure.

The product just works, use interface has some quirks that non techy users might have issues with but generally it brilliant.

Here are the main features with links back to their site.

The feature I love most is the ability to encrypt my laptops hard drive so that on boot up I have to enter a password (another great use for Yubi Key) and that’s it, I have access and if I lose a laptop in the field I’m just pissed off and I don’t have to worry somebody has access to my files.

Main Features:

• Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
• Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.
• Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication).
• Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
• Parallelization and pipelining allow data to be read and written as fast as if the drive was not encrypted.
• Encryption can be hardware-accelerated on modern processors.
• Provides plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
  Hidden volume (steganography) and hidden operating system.

You can download the latest version at http://www.truecrypt.org/ and remember to donate as free software like this really does deserve to be funded.

LastPass

I’ve been using this for the past year or so and from day two decided that it was so great they deserved the modest $12 a year for the pro version.

For this modest sum I’m able to have my encrypted password details to hand on any of my phones.

The ability to have multiple accounts and to safely share details with work and family members is invaluable.

Integration with Yubi Key is great but useless if you use your phone for accessing your password data.

Look forward to possible integration with desktop apps.

www.lastpass.com

SpinRite

There is loads of badly written software out there but every known and then you discover a nugget worth mentioning. SpinRite is this nugget. I heard about it on the Security Now podcast, within a month I had reason to purchase the software to try and recover some data from a friend hard drive (was making a horrible sound). SpinRite took a while but it recovered the data.

Well I forgot about it until recently when I had a laptop whose data was backup but application setting were not yet documented, but this tiny application saved me again. It took only 3 hours for SpinRite to recover the information and data. Drive has function 100% since. If you need this functionality and you will one day then it seems to work on any OS then purchase a copy while you can!


You can purchase it at http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm