Online Observations

Free Screen Recording Software

When it comes to recording what is going on your screen, TechSmith is by far the leader – be it Screen Capture (through SnagIt) or Screen Recording (through Camtasia). However, these tools cost money. And since I am always trying to help people who don’t really need ALL the features of the paid software (only some) and don’t want to spend the money to pay for the software, I present two free alternatives to Camtasia (neither comes close to the feature set that Camtasia offers).

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Did you just receive a DOCX file?

With the release of Office 2007, Microsoft introduced a new format for all it’s Office products. One such format is DOCX. And since not everyone has adopted the 2007 version, there is a mix of formats going on around the Internet and sooner or later you are bound to receive a DOCX file in your inbox. So what can you do with this file if you don’t have the program (Word 2007) to open it? As it turns out, there are loads of options that you have. In this post, I am going to list out some of these options.

Of course, the best option, if you just want to view the file, is to use the Word 2007 viewer from Microsoft. This allows you to open the DOCX file and view it. It is a free utility from Microsoft. Another option from Microsoft is available to you if you have an earlier version of Office installed (such as Office 2003). It is called the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. This allows you to open, view, and edit Office 2007 documents in Office 2003 or Office XP. If you don’t like Microsoft, but still want to view the file that you have, there are other options, and I point out out 3 of these below:

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Google has Microsoft’s flaw

For years, I have had one complaint with Microsoft Windows. And that is the fact that the progress bars in Windows never show the right status. The amount of progress shown on the bar is never an indicator of the amount of time remaining versus amount of time taken so far. Ideally, equal amounts of length on the progress bar should represent equal amounts of time.

Google, it seems, can’t crack this either.

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SyncMyCal still one up on Google

Google just released an update to their Sync Utility a couple of days ago. The Google Calendar Sync Utility is a way to synchronize the Google Calendar with MS Outlook. Fans of Google Calendar have been clamoring for such a utility ever since the Google Calendar came on the scene. In the meantime, some people took up the opportunities to create their own utilities to sync between their Outlook and Google Calendars. One such utility is SyncMyCal.

I have used SyncMyCal for almost a year now and have been very happy with it all through this. So, I didn’t feel too bad when Google released their own utility. However, after having a look at the offering from Google it turns out that I would still go ahead and use SyncMyCal in place of Google simply because it offers so much more.

Here is a look at a comparison between the two utilities (picked up from the SyncMyCal site):

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The Online Mind Mappers Showdown – Mindomo vs Mindmeister

This article will compare two popular online Mind Mapping tools: Mindomo and Mindmeister. But before I begin discussion of these tools let me answer the question: What is a mind map?

Wikipedia says that a Mind Map is

a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central keyword and idea.

I use Mind Maps to organize my notes from meetings or to brainstorm. Which brings me to the topic at hand. While there always have been many desktop tools available for creating Mind Maps, lately we see that these offerings are moving online (largely due to advances in technology available for creating online applications).

Let’s dive right into the comparison. Below I compare the services feature by feature:

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Google Docs vs Office Live Workspace

Microsoft announced launch of Office Live Workspace Beta and immediately there has been comparison over this service and Google Docs all over the web.

Here’s my summary from the data collected:

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