TopStyle Lite – Free Style Sheet Software
When I first started getting my feet wet with web design and support, I had trouble understanding style sheets and how they worked. TopStyle Lite — the free, downsized version of TopStyle — was recommended to me as a good visualizing tool. And so it is. The nature of style sheets is evolving, but I still use TopStyle Lite pretty regularly for sites using standard style sheets.
Download a style sheet (css file) and open in it TopStyle Lite, and both seeing what you have and seeing where you’re going become really simple. Change the attribute on the right side of the screen, and TopStyle will change the related item in the style sheet. It’s nice until one gets comfortable with style sheets…and even beyond.
Trillian – A Free Way to Manage Multiple Chat Platforms
Most of my chat contacts use either Yahoo! Messenger or MSN Messenger to chat. I have email with both, but no desire to have open two chat clients at the same time. Enter Trillian. It is not the tool of its kind, but I’ve been using it for a long time and have no complaints.
There is a free version and a paid version. I use the free and it is more than adequate for my needs. It has the flexibity to personalize, to log into one or all identities, to see emoticons as graphics, to sort contacts by friends or business associates (for example), to save history (especially useful when one receives instructions via chat).
If you use chat frequently, for business OR personal reasons, and your contacts are on multiple platforms, consider Trillian as your chat client.
The Gimp – Free Image Manipulation Software
This is some pretty hefty software. It does everything but tap dance. There is a learning curve, but if you’ve worked before with image manipulation software, you already have a leg up. Read more
The Well Fed Writer: Special Feature on Peter Bowerman
Three months ago I learned about Peter Bowerman and his book The Well Fed Writer. He has become a commercial freelance expert, with his experience, freelance history, ebook, ezine, seminars and teleseminars. Read more
Passive Income Sources for Writers: An E-Book Review
Think writing is a personal easy pass to overnight success? Think again. You can make a decent living at it however, if you use your writing skills to develop a variety of products that will produce passive income for you in the long term. Read more
Part Two of The Best Work at Home Strategies I’ve Discovered
This is part two in a series of The Best Work at Home Strategies I’ve Discovered. Read more
The Best Work at Home Strategies I’ve Discovered
This is part one of a two part series on The Best Work at Home Strategies I’ve Discovered. Read more
Treepad Lite – Personal Information Manager
There are more and more reasons to save data digitally with every day that passes. A belt-and-suspenders approach to traditional note-taking is a good idea. A solid option for saving items traditionally relegated to a notebook is Treepad. There is a more sophisticated paid version and there is a free pared down plain-text version called Treepad Lite. While not necessarily the best place to store passwords (no security), it is a great place to store phone numbers, url’s, emails, etc.
Treepad Lite takes no space at all; it can be run from a thumb drive. All versions run on several releases of Windows and on Linux/Wine.
doPDF – Free PDF Converter
Anyone who uses a computer as a part of his or her day-to-day life — business or personal — will eventually need to send a printed document to someone via email. The options are to attach the original document (not advised, usually), a scan of the document (acceptable, but tedious to the sender), or a pdf (portable document format) of the document. Whenever possible and practicle, the latter is the way to go.
PDF converters are listed as printer. There are many, many options for software to create a pdf. My personal choice is doPDF. It’s free, installs easily, and creates the pdf quickly and accurately from your Windows word processor of choice.
X-Sheet Invoicing – Good starter business finance software
X-Sheet Invoicing is a wonderful little financial management application for business developed by the folks at Development-X to show the flexibility and ease of use of their X-Sheet technology. I use X-Sheet to manage my own consulting finances. I’m a small enterprise and find this app takes care of everything I need easily and cleanly.
It offers invoicing and credit processing, customer management (including accommodation for notes and reminders), extensive reporting, payments and deposit management. When it comes time to compile data for tax reporting, I’m truly happy I use this software. That data collection couldn’t be easier.
Oh, and this app is free. That’s right. It’s been free since it’s inception. I’ve been using it for almost 10 years. Thank you folks at Development-X!
