by Scott on January 30, 2009
A Windows only tool, ZapGrab is an easy to use screen capture program. ZapGrab is one of those applications that I can’t live without. It is a free program and has been around for several years. I usually keep it right in my Quick Launch area (the little black box icon below).
Clicking the icon brings up the application (shown below). The application stays on top of all the other windows that you may have open. When you are ready to capture a screen shot you press the Grab button. Pressing this button changes your mouse cursor into a crosshairs and by then clicking the left mouse button and dragging over the desired area you can capture your screen shot. The resulting screen grab is placed on the clipboard to be pasted in the application of your choosing.
Any part of the screen may be captured. Here’s an example:
ZapGrab is portable and is a perfect candidate to keep on your flashdrive.
by Scott on January 20, 2009
Just a quick post to let you know that Smart To-Do List will soon be able to track due dates for each task (optionally). This should be available within the next 2 weeks. I’m working on integration with an existing online to-do list application as well. Stay tuned.
by Scott on November 16, 2008
The new version of Foxit Reader has a tabbed interface. This is a pretty sweet addition and it’s about time. Why doesn’t every application do this? The tabs are optional if you would rather have separate applications open.
Prior to installing the new version I decided to check the memory consumption of the old version by opening 3 different PDF files at once. As you can see below the total memory used is 32,388 K.
The memory usage of the new tabbed interface version with the same 3 files open was less: 25,548 K.
There are other new features in this version as well. The magnifier tool, shown below, is pretty nice. There is also a built in multimedia player for special multimedia e-books.
The only con that I’ve found so far is the ad that is located in the upper right-hand corner. This ad changes every once in a while and can be distracting.
by Scott on September 17, 2008
Did you know that you can annotate pdf files for free? This post will detail the method I use to annotate pdf files. In order to do this you’ll need the following two applications:
Foxit Reader is a simple pdf reader application. This application also allows you to add notes, arrows, highlighting, and many other additions to your pdf document.
Although the reader can be downloaded for free, the notes and things that you can add are actually part of the paid version of the software. If you save your document after annotating it the software will add a watermark to the corner of the document. Here’s an example of the watermark:
It is possible to save a copy of your annotations using the other free application, PDFCreator. From the PDFCreator website:
PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application.
This application will add an additional printer that will be available from your print dialog. Basically you can print from any Windows application to the PDF Creator printer and it will create a pdf of the document or image or whatever you are printing.
By now I’m sure you can see what the next step would be to save an annotated pdf document. After placing your notes on your document, select File > Print from Foxit and select PDFCreator from the available printers. This will allow you to create a new pdf file. You can write over the old file, but I wouldn’t recommend it. There is one caveat to using this technique, you lose the ability to search the document from whatever pdf reader that you are using.
One great way that I have used this technique several times is for filling out pdf forms. You generally don’t need to search a form document for text. I also have used this method to add notes to lectures that were given out by my professors.
Hope this helps you out sometime!
by Scott on September 11, 2008
The latest version of Smart To-Do List has been posted to the server. If you’ve previously purchased Smart To-Do List you will be getting an email detailing where to download the latest version. This version adds the following functionality:
- Re-ordering project tasks via drag and drop. Finally! To do this left click and hold down the mouse button on the text of the selected task and drag it to it’s new location on the list. If the list is longer than what is viewable on the screen, the software will auto-scroll the list for you as you drag.
- To-Do list items can be moved between projects via drag and drop. Use the same method mentioned above only drag the text to the selected project and let go of the mouse button when you’ve reached the new location for the task. The item will be removed from the current list and added to the selected project.
- To-Do list items can be re-ordered alphabetically. This isn’t a filter. This would be used if you’d like to alphabetize your list.
- An additional filter has been added that allows you to sort the current view by priority. This filter will list the high priority items first, followed by the medium, and then the low priority. The keyword command for this filter is “hml”.
About re-ordering the tasks, this can only be done in a single project view with no filters applied. I will add the ability to reorder the tasks when all projects are visible in the future.
Please leave a comment if you like the changes or if you have an additional suggestions!
Special thanks to my beta testers, you were a tremendous help.
