Here are some links to FREE programs, utilities, and other resources you will likely find quite useful. They are grouped by “Industry Related” and “General Interest.” Some of these you will find so helpful that you will wonder how you ever got along without them. Click on the names in red to go to the official websites or download pages.
Industry Related Free Software
XnView XnView is a free software to view, organize, convert graphics and photos files or to create slide show, contact sheet, HTML pages. It will also view Cineon and DPX files.
CamStudio CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs). It's great for making tutorials, and includes a codec with really clean compression and small size.
Celtx Basically, screenwriting software with lots of bells and whistles for notes, preproduction planning, etc. It’s quite impressive, especially for free!
Pop Peeper POP Peeper is an email notifier that runs in your Windows task bar and alerts you when you have new email on your POP3, IMAP (with IDLE support), Hotmail\MSN\LiveMail, Yahoo, GMail, Mail.com, MyWay, Excite, iWon, Lycos.com, RediffMail, Juno and NetZero accounts. You can have multiple email accounts, each with custom settings. This is a “must have.”
Sandboxie Sandboxie runs your programs in an isolated space which prevents them from making permanent changes to other programs and data in your computer. • Secure Web Browsing: Running your Web browser under the protection of Sandboxie means that all malicious software downloaded by the browser is trapped in the sandbox and can be discarded trivially. • Enhanced Privacy: Browsing history, cookies, and cached temporary files collected while Web browsing stay in the sandbox and don't leak into Windows. • Secure E-mail: Viruses and other malicious software that might be hiding in your email can't break out of the sandbox and can't infect your real system. • Windows Stays Lean: Prevent wear-and-tear in Windows by installing software into an isolated sandbox.
Erunt Free Registry Backup and Restore for Windows NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista. Can be run from Windows repair disk to fix Registry errors even on a machine that won’t boot. If you’re not backing up your Registry, your computer isn’t properly backed up.
Photocopier Got a scanner and a printer? Why not combine the two into a copier? You no longer need a real photo copier if you have Photocopier. This is how it goes: insert a document into your scanner, start Photocopier and press its Copy button. After a few moments your printer produces a copy of the document. That's it. No difficult settings to make, it's very user friendly.
Versaverter Versaverter has rapidly gained popularity world-wide as one of the fastest and most complete conversion tools around. Convert almost any measure from one to another. Great for converting inches to millimeters, etc.
Open Office Open Office is a free alternative to MS Office. It is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
Timesheets Lite Timesheets Lite is written for companies that cost bill their time on either a project or client basis. This could includes accountancy firms, consultants, or contractors. Tracking time spent on clients or projects is as simple as creating projects for each client and users for each of your staff and then having them enter time into the simple timesheet interface. Timesheets Lite integrates with Microsoft Excel to produce useful timesheet reports for easy invoicing, project time tracking, and project management. (The link to the free download is about half way down the page.)
www.logmein.com This is a remote login so you can access your computer from any Internet connection. They have a FREE version which works quite well, and across platforms (so you can log into a Mac computer from a PC, etc.) I use it all the time to help my mom with her computer. I can access her screen, and talk to her on the phone while I work on her computer. It's like I'm sitting right next to her. I no longer have to drive to her house to fix her computer.
http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/ Free production music for your film, video, or other project. Not just royalty free, TOTALLY FREE! You must see this to believe it!
http://www.sxc.hu/ Free stock photo site. Some very good and very high resolution photographs. FREE!
