OneNote (and Word for Mac 2004).

Look back here for notes about OneNote, one of the most interesting applications MS has developed in a long time.

Ink Desktop; Stickies for Tablet PC.

These two little programs that come with Tablet PCs can be very useful for day to day organization. You’ll find the Stickies program in your Tablet PC folder (click “All Programs” from the Start menu to find the Tablet PC folder). Stickies allows you to create stacks of inked sticky notes on your desktop, and to export and work with your inking from those notes. It also has a nifty voice memo feature. Ink Desktop makes your desktop inkable, so you can take notes on it. It also includes some useful templates for things like to-do lists and weekly calendars. You’ll find it in the “Microsoft Experience Pack for Tablet PC” folder. Click here and here for a short demo videos.

PDF Creator; ePrint.

Either PDF Creator or the BSU-supported program ePrint will add a "printer" to your list of available printers in any application; choosing that printer (called "PDF Creator") generates a PDF file of your document rather than printing to a physical printer. The PDF format is a little bigger than ordinary text documents, but it is readable on any computer, and it will look just like it looks on your computer. Saving as PDF would allow you to, for example, return papers with marginal comments in a format that makes tampering difficult. Mac users: OSX has PDF creation built into its print dialogue. Just choose "PDF" in the lower left part of the print dialogue from any application. 

Foxit Reader (and Preview on Mac).

Foxit Reader is a replacement for the lumbering Adobe Acrobat Reader as default PDF viewer. The advantage: it's super light and fast, and it allows easy selection and copying of text. You can also type comments into a PDF document with Foxit Reader, though the free version will add a little advertisement for itself as a sort of (not very intrusive) watermark. 

Agilix GoBinder.

Agilix GoBinder Lite (Start --> All Programs --> Agilix --> GoBinder --> Agilix GoBinder Lite) is included free with Tablet PCs, and it is a well-liked scheduling and organizing application--sort of a virtual Trapper Keeper for the digital era. It is also an inkable application. (The help files for GoBinder will help you get started quickly.)

MS Remove Hidden Data Tool.

The un-inspiringly (but clearly) named “Remove Hidden Data Tool for Office 2003 and Office XP” adds a menu item to MS Word that will, as the MS site explains, “remove personal or hidden data that might not be immediately apparent when you view the document in your Microsoft Office program.” That’s it. Follow instructions at the download site.  (Here’s a short USA Today article on hidden data and MS programs.)

Filezilla (And Cyberduck and Fetch for Macs).

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) applications are designed to help you move files between your computer and online storage spaces like BSU’s iLocker and iWeb accounts. You don’t need these programs to access iLocker and iWeb, but they can certainly make things faster. You can find Filezilla and Cyberduck online for free; and BSU is offering Fetch through its beta software site. This short demo video for Filezilla should make it clear what these programs can do for you.

Firefox.

As a research tool, Firefox has many advantages over Internet Explorer. To begin with, it is allows tabbed browsing (something also possible in Mac’s Safari browser, Netscape, and the very-late-in-coming planned new version of IE). Instead of making you shuffle multiple open windows, tabbed browsers allow you to open sets of related webpages in one window, with tabs along the top. Firefox also includes a search window that allows you to pick between different online search engines depending on your query (Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com, Dictionary.com, and so on). And--this is the kicker--there are many extensions available for Firefox, allowing you to add functionality to the browser. The Scrapbook extension, for example, lets you save and annotate an offline version of any site you are viewing, so that you can easily bring up the site (and your annotations) even if your web connection is failing you. (It’s a great way to give yourself a failsafe copy of any page you plan to work with in class.) The Highlighter extension allows you to highlight a page, as if with a normal ink highlighter. It also allows you to copy all of your highlights to the clipboard and paste them neatly into another document; it’s a great way to take notes online, and it even includes the site’s URL at the bottom of all the clipped notes. And the Sage extension is a lightweight “RSS” reader that opens in the sidebar. And that’s just the tip of the very large iceberg. (Some are fun to use, like “Nuke Anything,” which lets you remove any element you want from any webpage you are viewing.)

RSS Owl (and NetNewsWire Lite).

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is changing the way people access information from regularly updated sites ranging from the NYT to personal blogs to Google search queries. If you’re intrigued and would like to learn more about RSS, CommonCraft’s “RSS in Plain English” video is very helpful.  (Of Zen and Computing also has a simple explanation of RSS here, and education technology expert Will Richardson has a very helpful PDF document posted here, under the “RSS Guide” tab at the top of the page.) You can read RSS feeds in a lot of different ways, but one of the easiest ways to get started is with the Sage extension for Firefox, or just with Firefox’s live bookmarks function. You can also use online feed readers like NewsGator, Bloglines, and the very popular Google Reader.  But many people prefer to use a feed reader that actually downloads feeds to their desktops, the same way that desktop email programs download emails. For that purpose, RSS Owl is a simple, free desktop RSS reader that comes in both Windows and Mac OSX flavors, and NewsGator offers (for free) both NetNewsWire (for Macs) and FeedDemon (for PCs), both of which will sync your feeds with an online NewsGator account (if you wish).

Also Consider:

1. •   KompoZer, based on the out-of-date NVU, a free, open source, WYSIWYG web editor that includes good FTP uploading support.  See also Christopher Heng’s collection of free tools for web design and editing.
   

2. •  RocketDock, a simple little application that gives PC latops a Mac-style dock.  (I love this one.)
   

3. •  Google Desktop, which will allow you to search the contents of your computer far more efficiently than the built in search function.  See here and here for more about how it works.  (This will help PC users catch up to Mac users with Spotlight.)
   

4. •  Yahoo Widget Engine (formerly Konfabulator), which will give PC users something very much like Mac’s Dashboard feature.
   

5. •  AbiWord, a free, open source MS Word replacement that can save in all common word-processing formats; it looks and feels a lot like MS Word, so it’s easy to begin using.
   

6. •  Open Office, a free, open source replacement for the whole MS Office suite.
   

7. •  EverNote, a free alternative to OneNote.
   

8. •  Denim, an interesting little free application for visual planning and design of web pages.
   

9. •  Flock, a newer browser that offers support for Del.icio.us, Blogger, and Flickr accounts (among others); it is based on the Mozilla/Firefox browser and, as it develops, is compatible with more and more Firefox extensions.
   

10. •  Qumana, a desktop-based blog editor that works for both Macs and PCs.
    

11. •  Eraser, for securely erasing files on PCs.
    

12. •  Templates for Word from Microsoft and from Dumb Little Man.
    

13. •  Notepad++ and KeyNote, tabbed notepad applications.
    

Grab Bag:

1. •  Thirty free, open source applications (and toys) for Windows, from the Simple Dollar blog.
   

2. •  Lifehacker’s Top Ten Free Windows Downloads.
   

The Opposite of Productivity:

1. •  Neave Games
   

2. •  Air Monkey
   

3. •  Line Rider
   

4. •  The Onion