[Last updated: 3-April-2011] Let's start a thread where we share our favorite utility programs--those "little apps" that we use: To make us more productive Or do that little job quicker and easier with Articulate or PowerPoint Or help us troubleshoot things. Also, identify if Windows or Mac. And if free or a cost. As we add things below, I'll update this list here. For measuring things on the screen: Pixel Ruler (Windows) - FREE For resizing any window to an exact, predefined size: Sizer (Windows) - FREE For getting color values on the screen: Pixie (Windows) - FREE ColorPix (Windows) - FREE For troubleshooting HTTP calls under the hood with Articulate content: HTTP Watch (Windows) - Free Version or Full Version ($395) HTTP Analyzer (Windows) - Trial version of Full Version ($119-$169) Fiddler - web debugger (Windows) - FREE For Sound Editing: Levelator (Windows or Mac) - FREE but "tip" suggested Audacity (Windows or Mac) - FREE PowerPoint Add-ins: Motion Path Tools (Windows only?) - FREE (Thanks to Tom K. for this one!) Print2Flash - print to Flash Office docs/PPTs (Windows) - FREE Jigsaw Maker (Windows) - $29.99 For Creating/Converting/Playing Media (e.g., videos): Format Factory (Windows) - FREE (but donation suggested ) - (Thanks to Brian B. for this one) Any Video Converter (Windows) - FREE YouTube - converting videos to MP4 (Browser) - FREE (see Will's post for how to do this) Xtranormal text to video (Windows or Mac) - FREE Account plus Charged Account Handbrake - media transcoder (Windows or Mac) - FREE SWIFF Player for playing Flash videos (Windows) - FREE VLC for playing any media file (All platforms) - FREE XVID for converting Windows LiveMeeting files to other formats (Windows) - FREE Codec Information Appliance or GSpot for finding out how a video was encoded and all the details about the video's file format (Windows) - FREE For Screen Captures: SnagIt (Windows/Mac) - $50 Windows 7 Snipping Tool (in Windows 7 itself) - FREE Screenpresso - simple screen captures and editing (Windows) - FREE Greenshot - simple screen capture tool (Windows) - FREE Zoomit for highlighting or annotating parts of the screen (Windows) - FREE For Web Development: FancyBox for displaying images, html content and multi-media in a Mac-style "lightbox" that floats overtop of web page - FREE FoxReplace: Useful FireFox Extension if you are editing content within a web browser (in wiki for example) and you need to do search-and-replace (Browser) - FREE Web Developer: FireFox extension that helps in web design. Especially useful for troubleshooting layout problems or figuring out how someone did something on a page (Browser) - FREE For graphics/photo work: ArtWeaver paint program (Windows) - FREE version or Plus version @ 29 EUROS TinEye reverse image search (Windows or Mac) - FREE GIMP for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring (Windows/MAC) - FREE Fotosketcher converting digital photos into art, automatically: (Windows) - FREE Poladroid create easily Polaroid-like pictures from your digital photos:(Windows & Mac) - FREE For picking color schemes (browser-based) - FREE Color Jack for help with color schemes (browser-based) - FREE Color Hunter - create a color palette from any image (browser-based) - FREE Color Scheme Designer - color scheme designer - (browser-based) - FREE Big Huge Labs - color palette generator: create a color palette from any photo (browser-based) - FREE Color Contrast Check - calculating / validating color combinations for readability - (browser-based) - FREE Color Contrast Visualizer - calculating / validating color combinations for readability (browser-based--requires Flash player) - FREE Official Seal Maker - adding seals to your course (browser based) - FREE Storytboarding/Idea-Generating/Mind-mapping Tools: Adobe Ideas Digital sketchbook (iPhone/iPad) - FREE Corkulus idea board (iPad) - $4.99 Evernote (Windows or Mac) - Free acount or $ for premium account FreeMind mind mapping (Windows/Mac) - FREE Online File Sharing and Storage: Dropbox - FREE or account (price varies on amount being stored) Text-toSpeech: Inova Text to Speech (Windows) - $ varies Text Effects/Editing: Wordle a toy for generating “word clouds” from provided (browser-based) - FREE PureText tool for pasting without formatting across all Windows applications (Windows) - FREE Notepad ++ source code editor and Notepad replacement (Windows) - FREE PDF to Word Converter (Windows) - FREE Office Suite: OpenOffice - open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases(note the Impress PowerPoint-like program does not work with Articulate Presenter) - (Windows/Mac) - FREE Browsers/Web/FTP: Delicious social bookmarking service (browser-based) - FREE FireFTP cross-platform FTP/SFTP client for Mozilla fitreFox - FREE iMacros for Firefox - record and replay repetitious web work - FREE but donation suggested Google Analytics - enterprise-class web analytics solution for website traffic - FREE Search/Replace: Effective File Search advanced search/Windows search replacement (Windows) - $29.95 grepWin simple search and replace tool which can use regular expressions (Windows) - FREE Desktop Productivity Tools: Fences desktop organizer utility (Windows) - FREE for basic; $19.95 for Pro version Soluto a utility that gives you easier control over what programs start up (Windows) - FREE

A great resource for these kinds of lists is here: http://c4lpt.co.uk/Directory/index.html Jane Hart is the Wonder Woman of free tools collections and general resources and info here: http://c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/openresources.html

For creating very cool text art, Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. This is a FREE web service. You can either take a screen grab or print to .pdf to save what you have created.

Video tools:For video conversion (something I'm betting is similar to FormatFactory) I use Any Video Converter (Free, Windows). If you deal with Windows LiveMeeting files (which uses a strange fussy but highly compact codec), I have found it particularly useful in converting these meeting videos to other formats (I would convert them to XVID format, which is then editable in Camtasia).Another useful transcoding trick is to upload a video to YouTube, mark it as private so it isn't viewable to anyone but you, and then download the transcoded version (MP4) for use in Articulate or other locations. You can then simply delete the file from YouTube. This gives you the power and reliability of YouTube's transcoding software, but the video is never made public.A good tool for video is the free Windows utility Codec Information Appliance (I'm using the alternate title) which is a gem for finding out how a video was encoded and all the details about the video's file format.web tools:I love FancyBox (not platform dependent) for making those Web 2.0 "Lightbox" windows that allow you to pop-up a video or image on a web page without making someone navigate to a new page. FoxReplace: Useful FireFox Extension if you are editing content within a web browser (in wiki for example) and you need to do search-and-replace. Web Developer: Another great FireFox extension that helps in web design. Especially useful for troubleshooting layout problems or figuring out how someone did something on a page. Audio:foobar2000: With this free Windows sound (and other media) player you can designate "global hotkeys" to control the playback of audio. If you create screencasts and you record the audio separately from the video this can be handy because it allows you to start/stop/rewind the audio while the audio player is minimized.Windows Utilities:PathCopy: Allows you to right click on any file and copy the path to that file. In my opinion this should be built into Windows. Useful when you need to send the path of a file on your network via e-mail (which helps avoid sending big attachments).I love software tools.

I had lost Pixie thanks Gerry! Artweaver - Graphic Editor - Free for basic program. Can buy full version. TinEye - A reverse Image Search - Free to a max search amount daily (donations accepted) Xtranormal - Text to Video - Not as free as they used to be but still pretty cool.

This is a great idea for a thread, Gerry. Something I have on my "list" of things to do when I get time is create a Screenr of iPad apps I use as part of my work as an ID. Even though we can't output Articulate things to iOS devices (a whole other discussion), it is a great tool with lots of possibilities. Two apps I use together are Adobe Ideas (free unless you want the layer capability) and Corkulous. Corkulous is currently $4.99. I use Adobe Ideas to do rough sketches of screens for a kind of pre-storyboard or what I've heard referred to as a low fidelity prototype. Then, I send those rough sketches to my photo album which Corkulous can import. Then, in Corkulous, I can create the pre-storyboard which I can email as a PDF to a SME to review my thinking about how a learning object I'm proposing might flow. The other thing I like about Adobe Ideas is that it does smoothing of whatever you draw so I've used it to draw arrows or other things to bring into PPT for creation of Articulate learning objects. So, maybe in the next couple weeks, I'll squeeze in the time to do a demo of these things. Currently, there is also the challenge of not being able to do a screen recording of iPad activity so will have to use another approach.

Forum Discussion

GerryWasiluk

Community Member

14 years ago

Your Favorite Utility Programs

[Last updated: 3-April-2011]

Let's start a thread where we share our favorite utility programs--those "little apps" that we use:

To make us more productive
Or do that little job quicker and easier with Articulate or PowerPoint
Or help us troubleshoot things.

Also, identify if Windows or Mac. And if free or a cost.

As we add things below, I'll update this list here.

For measuring things on the screen:

Pixel Ruler (Windows) - FREE

For resizing any window to an exact, predefined size:

Sizer (Windows) - FREE

For getting color values on the screen:

Pixie (Windows) - FREE
ColorPix (Windows) - FREE

For troubleshooting HTTP calls under the hood with Articulate content:

HTTP Watch (Windows) - Free Version or Full Version ($395)
HTTP Analyzer (Windows) - Trial version of Full Version ($119-$169)
Fiddler - web debugger (Windows) - FREE

For Sound Editing:

Levelator (Windows or Mac) - FREE but "tip" suggested
Audacity (Windows or Mac) - FREE

PowerPoint Add-ins:

Motion Path Tools (Windows only?) - FREE (Thanks to Tom K. for this one!)
Print2Flash - print to Flash Office docs/PPTs (Windows) - FREE
Jigsaw Maker (Windows) - $29.99

For Creating/Converting/Playing Media (e.g., videos):

Format Factory (Windows) - FREE (but donation suggested ) - (Thanks to Brian B. for this one)
Any Video Converter (Windows) - FREE
YouTube - converting videos to MP4 (Browser) - FREE (see Will's post for how to do this)
Xtranormal text to video (Windows or Mac) - FREE Account plus Charged Account
Handbrake - media transcoder (Windows or Mac) - FREE
SWIFF Player for playing Flash videos (Windows) - FREE
VLC for playing any media file (All platforms) - FREE
XVID for converting Windows LiveMeeting files to other formats (Windows) - FREE
Codec Information Appliance or GSpot for finding out how a video was encoded and all the details about the video's file format (Windows) - FREE

For Screen Captures:

SnagIt (Windows/Mac) - $50
Windows 7 Snipping Tool (in Windows 7 itself) - FREE
Screenpresso - simple screen captures and editing (Windows) - FREE
Greenshot - simple screen capture tool (Windows) - FREE
Zoomit for highlighting or annotating parts of the screen (Windows) - FREE

For Web Development:

FancyBox for displaying images, html content and multi-media in a Mac-style "lightbox" that floats overtop of web page - FREE
FoxReplace: Useful FireFox Extension if you are editing content within a web browser (in wiki for example) and you need to do search-and-replace (Browser) - FREE
Web Developer: FireFox extension that helps in web design. Especially useful for troubleshooting layout problems or figuring out how someone did something on a page (Browser) - FREE

For graphics/photo work:

ArtWeaver paint program (Windows) - FREE version or Plus version @ 29 EUROS
TinEye reverse image search (Windows or Mac) - FREE
GIMP for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring (Windows/MAC) - FREE
Fotosketcher converting digital photos into art, automatically: (Windows) - FREE
Poladroid create easily Polaroid-like pictures from your digital photos:(Windows & Mac) - FREE
For picking color schemes (browser-based) - FREE
Color Jack for help with color schemes (browser-based) - FREE
Color Hunter - create a color palette from any image (browser-based) - FREE
Color Scheme Designer - color scheme designer - (browser-based) - FREE
Big Huge Labs - color palette generator: create a color palette from any photo (browser-based) - FREE
Color Contrast Check - calculating / validating color combinations for readability - (browser-based) - FREE
Color Contrast Visualizer - calculating / validating color combinations for readability (browser-based--requires Flash player) - FREE
Official Seal Maker - adding seals to your course (browser based) - FREE

Storytboarding/Idea-Generating/Mind-mapping Tools:

Adobe Ideas Digital sketchbook (iPhone/iPad) - FREE
Corkulus idea board (iPad) - $4.99
Evernote (Windows or Mac) - Free acount or $ for premium account
FreeMind mind mapping (Windows/Mac) - FREE

Online File Sharing and Storage:

Dropbox - FREE or account (price varies on amount being stored)

Text-toSpeech:

Inova Text to Speech (Windows) - $ varies

Text Effects/Editing:

Wordle a toy for generating “word clouds” from provided (browser-based) - FREE
PureText tool for pasting without formatting across all Windows applications (Windows) - FREE
Notepad ++ source code editor and Notepad replacement (Windows) - FREE
PDF to Word Converter (Windows) - FREE

Office Suite:

OpenOffice - open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases(note the Impress PowerPoint-like program does not work with Articulate Presenter) - (Windows/Mac) - FREE

Browsers/Web/FTP:

Delicious social bookmarking service (browser-based) - FREE
FireFTP cross-platform FTP/SFTP client for Mozilla fitreFox - FREE
iMacros for Firefox - record and replay repetitious web work - FREE but donation suggested
Google Analytics - enterprise-class web analytics solution for website traffic - FREE

Search/Replace:

Effective File Search advanced search/Windows search replacement (Windows) - $29.95
grepWin simple search and replace tool which can use regular expressions (Windows) - FREE

Desktop Productivity Tools:

Fences desktop organizer utility (Windows) - FREE for basic; $19.95 for Pro version
Soluto a utility that gives you easier control over what programs start up (Windows) - FREE

General E-Learning

JosephSuarez
Community Member
14 years ago

Such a great list going here. Here's a few more:

colourlovers.com is another good color scheme creating site similar to kuler.adobe.com with a community of users sharing color schemes.

pixlr & splashup are both free online web apps that mimic basic Photoshop capabilities.

smushit is a free and simple image optimizer. Looks like Yahoo acquired it.
SamanthaJolie
Community Member
14 years ago
http://kuler.adobe.com/ is great for picking color schemes
RobertHetrick
Community Member
14 years ago

Ok, I got one more utility that should be added to the list.

For taking screen shots plus a lot more…(FREE)

Wink: http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.

Robert
MartaBurda
Community Member
14 years ago

Claudio Starace said:

Hi, my first day in Articulate world.

is there anyone that suggest me a recording tool that I can use into my LO and make my students record and listen their own voice, after they listened a correct pronunciation of a phrase/word in a language course exercise.

p.s. sorry for my "rusty" english...maybe need some more practice in writing

you should try

http://vocaroo.com/

it's pretty cool, you can easily embed it in your course
BudKeegan
Community Member
14 years ago

here's a couple:

http://screenshot-program.com/fireshot/

sim to snagit but works within browser itself and can capture entire pages

i also like soundsnap.com for sound effects-- you can DL five for free each month before having to pay

great finds on this list for me-- tks guys!
ManojSundar1
Community Member
13 years ago
To manage your customer requests, I would suggest HappyFox ( http://www.happyfox.com), an affordable solution. HappyFox would certainly be a great aid in increasing your efficiency in handling your customer requests.
DaveNeuweiler
Community Member
11 years ago

Backing up files during project development is a must, else we risk losing hours, days, or weeks of work to the gremlins inherent in our operating systems and computers.

Here's a backup program that offers a very robust free version, and I'm finding that it out-performs the software that comes with either HP's SimpleSave or Seagate's external hard drives: FBackup.

http://www.fbackup.com/

It's a clean interface with a lot of options, and it just works.
Nickna
Community Member
11 years ago

Very useful list so far.

Thanks for introducing the back-up program Dave.

Happy Holidays.

Nicholas
RutwinGeuverink
Community Member
11 years ago

4 great free tools that I find very useful:

For years I used to only make backups of important files, which didn't take care of the full day I'd lose when I had to do a complete re-installation of Windows, drivers, and programs.

Paragon Backup&Recovery 2013 Free edition can create an exact image of the system and puts it back in about 40 minutes!

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/features.html

Free online file converter - does what it says - supports lots of file formats

http://www.files-conversion.com/

Word Finder is a free utility that unscrambles words, finds anagrams, solves jumbles, finds rhyming words, and helps with Scrabble, crosswords, and other word games. For example, you can find all 6 letter words that start with "d" and end with "n" -http://www.design215.com/toolbox/wordfind.php

Realworld Cursor Editor is completely free and can create animated cursors as well -

http://www.rw-designer.com/cursor-maker
SidApolinario
Community Member
11 years ago
Thanks for sharing these resources guys. Happy holidays!