11 Free Productivity Tools for the office

Here's a list of 11 Free Tools to increase productivity at Work:

1. 7-Zip:
   Category: Compression/Decompression
   Details: Compression utility that can handle almost all possible formats
   URL: http://www.7-zip.org
   
2. Eclipse:
   Category: IDE
   Details: Very popular IDE that supports a vast array of languages and configurations
   URL: http://www.eclipse.org
   
3. FileZilla:
   Category: FTP Client (& Server)
   Details: FTP Client and server with lots of options
   URL: http://filezilla-project.org
   
4. PuTTY:
   Category: Telnet/SSH
   Details: Very simple but powerful Telnet/SSH client
   URL: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
   
5. PuTTy Connection Manager:
   Category: Telnet/SSH
   Details: Allows docking of multiple PuTTY session windows as Tabs and allows user to create a database of connections that includes user names, passwords, script to run after login, etc.
   URL: http://puttycm.free.fr
   
6. Notepad++:
   Category: Editor
   Details: Very simple, but powerful and full featured editor that supports syntax highlighting, plug-ins, macros, regexes, etc.
   URL: http://notepad-plus-plus.org
   
7. OpenOffice:
   Category: Office Software
   Details: Full featured replacement for the cos$tly M$ Office Suite of products. Includes software for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more.
   URL: http://www.openoffice.org
   
8. PDFCreator:
   Category: Office Software
   Details: Create PDF files from any application.
   URL: http://www.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator/
   
9. VirtualDimension:
   Category: Desktop Manager
   Details: Fast and full-featured virtual desktop manager that allows you to create virtual desktops on Windows just like X-Win.
   URL: http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net
   
10. VistaSwitcher:
    Category: Task Manager
    Details: Replaces the default Windows Alt-Tab dialog with a nice box that shows a list of all running tasks, with their names and preview snapshots, and enables the user to take actions on them using the mouse and keyboard shortcuts.
    URL: http://www.ntwind.com/software/vistaswitcher/
    
11. WinMerge:
    Category: Development
    Details: Visual diff and merge tool for Windows that can compare both folders and files
    URL: http://winmerge.org
    

Other good free softwares that I also considered were:

1. PSPad:
   Category: Editor
   Details: Another powerful and full featured editor that supports syntax highlighting, plug-ins, macros, regexes, etc.
   URL: http://www.pspad.com
   
2. PDFReDirect:
   Category: Office Software
   Details: Another simple software to create PDF files.
   URL: http://www.exp-systems.com
   
3. DiffMerge:
   Category: Development
   Details: Visual diff and merge tool for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux that can compare both folders and files
   URL: http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/
   
4. Toad Free:
   Category: Database Access
   Details: Free version of the powerful Toad for Oracle with a few features disabled.
   URL: http://www.toadworld.com/Freeware/tabid/680/Default.aspx
   
5. SQLDeveloper for Oracle:
   Category: Database Access
   Details: Oracle client provided by Oracle
   URL: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/sql-developer/overview/index.html
   

Please let me know if you see other good free software worthy of including in the above list!

Full Version of Software for a Buck?!

How would you like to have a licensed copy of a Full version of a software for 99 cents ?!

While scanning SD for deals, saw a post mentioning that the full version of WinPatrol PLUS will be available for just 99 cents on January 29th 2010! This lead me to the blog Bits from Bill written by Bill Pytlovany who created WinPatrol.

While this in itself is a very good deal for those still using Win platforms, the blog post contents got me thinking deeper. His blog points towards a paradigm shift in the Business Model - Songs are being sold for 99 cents a pop from the likes of Amazon, many iPhone apps are being sold for 99 cents each too. This banks on the human psychology/thought process of "what the heck - its only a buck..." to trigger impulsive buying and increasing sales. The same guy would have contemplated a hundred times had the price tag been say even $5! Could this be an industry saving business model?! Only time will tell ...

But in the meanwhile, make the most of it by taking the WinPatrol PLUS 99¢ license only on Friday, 29th January - note the icing on the cake that this license will be good for life! And read more about Bill's views on his 99 cent software experiment, the results of which will also be published on his blog over the weekend. I am all for this software pricing model as it is in the interest of the consumers!

MariaDB drop-in replacement for MySQL

Since Oracle is in the process of buying out Sun & hence MySQL, the creator of MySQL Michael "Monty" Widenius went on to create MariaDB which is a drop-in replacement for MySQL.

Seems that they are working on lots of improvements and cleanup of the legacy code that had crept in. They have a better storage engine to replace MyISAM, speed improvements, more extensions, etc. Check out the differences here.

Some interesting reading on MariaDB & MySQL can be found on Monty's blog.

One of the very interesting things I stumbled across on the Monty Program website was their business model titled "The hacking business model". This is the model on which their company runs. It is very transparent and employee friendly model which works towards a win-win situation for the company as well as the employee. Read more about it here. This is a very good business model for companies that work on OSS - wish my company was based on this model ;)