Workrave
Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit.
Workrave is for Linux and Windows.
Download via Author’s Page
EyeDefender lets you avoid eyestrain and puts the sparkle back in your eyes
EyeDefender is a freeware rest reminder designed to prevent Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS) resulting from working on a computer for hours. CVS symptoms include eyestrain, blurred vision, delayed focusing, headaches, back and neck aches, dry and burning eyes, light sensitivity, distorted color vision, forehead heaviness, and sore eyes.
CVS is impossible to get rid of but you can reduce and even eliminate most of its symptoms. The recommendation is simple – take a short rest break from your computer every hour. The difficulty lies in scheduling a regular break and keeping to it. That’s where EyeDefender can help you. It’ll remind you to take a break and relax eyes at fixed intervals.
Once installed, EyeDefender sits in the system tray and displays the time left until the next break. When the time for a break comes, the program does one of the following:
- Displays a predefined picture;
- Runs the visual training to relax the eyes;
- Runs a default screensaver;
- Displays a popup timed reminder in the system tray.
EyeDefender can also help you prevent other problems related to computer use, which require a computer user to take short breaks. These problems include Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) or Occupational Overuse Syndrome (OOS), also known in the USA as Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) and in Europe – Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSD).
- Control the level of eye strain in the system tray
- Set up the time period for a popup reminder
- Set up how much time you want to rest
- Enter the rest mode instantly
- Reset the counter
- Stop the counter when you do not want to be interrupted
- Set the counter to stop automatically after some time of inactivity
- Four rest modes: image display, visual training, screensaver launch, or popup tray reminder
- Auto-run EyeDefender on Windows start
Screenshot:
Tinywatcher
Tiny Watcher scans the important folders and Registry locations during initial setup and reports on the changes only when it is started again. This has the advantage that no application is monitoring the system in real time which consumes system resources. The disadvantage is that the user will be notified about changes after they happened.
Tiny Watcher is therefor not a real time system protection application, more of a tool that allows a forensic analysis of system changes. It still offers functions to deal with the changes that have been made to the system.
It provides access to a web search to gather information about a change but also to confirm, disable or remove it. Those actions can be problematic, it is generally not advised to delete items unless it is known that deleting them causes no harm. It is normally not a problem to delete a startup entry but it could be highly problematic to delete a file in a Windows folder.
Tiny Watcher works best when executed during system start or closely after. Each action is written in a log file which is – again – excellent for tracing a file or system change.
Screenshot
Download via Author’s Page
Executor
This is a multi purpose launcher and a more advanced and customizable version of windows run. The program originated as I was sick of spending too much time searching for programs through my ever growing windows start-menu, and also I missed a tool that could ease and optimize my daily work flow. There was of course already programs like this available, but each had it’s annoyance or missing features or too(!) geeky.
Screenshots
Requirements
- Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista
Download via Author’s Page
Rocketdock, a Mac style docking program.
RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock.
Now with added Taskbar support your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock. This allows for better productivity and accessibility.
Watch it in action:
Features:
- Minimize windows to the dock
- Real-time window previews in Vista
- Running application indicators
- Simple drag-n-drop interface
- Multi-monitor support
- Supports alpha-blended PNG and ICO icons
- Icons zoom and transition smoothly
- Auto-hide and Popup on mouse over
- Positioning and layering options
- Fully customizable
- Completely Portable
- ObjectDock Docklet support
- Compatible with MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, and Y’z Dock skins
- Runs great on slower computers
- Unicode compliant
- Supports many languages and can easily be translated
- A friendly user base
- And best of all… its FREE!!!
Download via Author’s Site
Reserve desktop space with DesktopCoral
DesktopCoral is an unusual program designed to “reserve” some portion of your desktop which is shielded from maximized applications..
Essentially, it acts like an invisible resizeable docking bar, which can be docked to any side of your desktop. This invisible dock acts as a barrier to maximized applications and essentially shields this area of your desktop from other applications.
Within this shielded area you might put certain application windows that you want to be always visible, or you might put one of the many desktop tools like a calendar or system information component.
Screenshot:
Download at Author’sPage
Ease your program windows management with GridMove.
GridMove is a program that aims at making windows management easier. It helps you with this task by defining a visual grid on your desktop, to which you can easily snap windows. This program comes bundled with some predefined grid templates, that can be easily swaped, but also has ways of creating custom grids or sharing grids made by others.
GridMove makes moving windows, resizing windows, displaying them on cascade or on mosaic, making them on top or anything you can think of as easy as drag and drop.
This tool was made taking in mind those who own big screens and keep organizing their windows. This program is specially useful for anyone that keeps more than 1 window on the screen at one time, because it helps the user to maximize the usable space of the monitor, by resizing the windows in a much easier way than moving and resizing them one by one.
Thanks to its simple interaction methods, GridMove becomes intuitive and fast, helping you to improve your workflow.
Features:
- 3 different interaction methods to suit everyone’s likes
- Several pre-made grid templates that can be easily swaped
- Ability to set windows on top and maximize them vertically or horizontally
- Full keyboard support, which can organize windows with one hotkey press
- MultiMonitor Support
- Customizable hotkeys
- Customizable interface
- Possibility to create dynamic custom grids
- aComplete help file
Screenshot:
Download via Author’s Page
Set Firefox 3 to Launch Gmail for mailto Links
Log in your gmail account and type:
javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(”mailto”,”https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s”,”GMail”)
Organise your desktop shortcuts with Toolbox
ToolBox is an application launcher for Windows operating systems with many amazing features. Easy to install, you can get going in minutes. Its drag & drop interface creates shortcuts to almost anything; applications, drives, folders, even simple files. ToolBox helps you organise your desktop and get rid of numerous shortcuts that clutter it and take up valuable space.
The first version of ToolBox was written many years ago as a 16-bit Windows 3.1 application using Borland Pascal. Since then many features have been added to it, in order to maximize its usefulness.
A fully portable application, ToolBox does not need installation. All you have to do is unzip the distribution files on a directory and run the executable. Upgrading your operating system does not affect it. Moving it to a different folder is never a problem. To uninstall you just delete the directory you created for the first run.
ToolBox is particularly useful for removable media (USB drives) or as an application launcher in read-only media (CD-ROM).
Summary of Features:
For a full description of features, please refer to ToolBox’s online help.
- multiple application launching windows
- shortcuts to almost everything (files, urls, folders, drives)
- support for any icon size, Windows XP alpha-channel icon transparency
- transparency effects even on Windows 95/98/Me
- fully customisable user interface
- monitor drive sizes
- monitor operating system up-time
Screenshots
Below you can see a screenshot with three transparent windows, all with different border settings and different icon display modes (16×16 with text, 32×32 and 64×64). All icons featured in the screenshots below are designs and copyright by Dave Brasgalla (www.pixelhuset.se) or David Lanham (www.dlanham.com).
