www.MarkTAW.com/reviews/MyFavoriteSmallware.html (printable version)

My Favorite Smallware
I use a lot of little programs to make my day-to-day life easier. Here are a few of them. Most of these programs are small, under a megabyte and don't require an install. I use some of them every day, and others I use only occasionally. Almost all of them are free. I'll be adding to this list as time goes on. I'm sure there are little programs I use that I forgot about, and there are some that are no longer available that I may make available if the license permits me to.

Multimedia

MP3Gain
15 November 06
You know how our MP3s all play at different volumes? MP3Gain analyzes your MP3s and determines which ones are louder/quieter and sets a hidden bit in the MP3 that tells your player how much volume to add or lower. Once you run MP3Gain on your MP3s, each one will sound just as loud/soft as the previous one and you can get back to doing what you were doing instead of constantly adjusting the volume.
   For you audio geeks out there, it simply adds an entry to the ID3v2 tag that tells it "play at -6.5 db" so it doesn't compress, clip, or otherwise alter the audio data in any way.

Audacity
07 January 06
Free, open source multi-track recorder & editor. Believe it or not, Audacity has become my go-to program for simple edits. I have a few gripes (the built in EQ sucks), but it accepts plugins, so maybe I'll find something...

Streaming Download Project (install)
07 January 06
Use this to capture streaming video and audio off the net.

File Management & UI

WinMerge
15 November 06
This is a diff program - it will detect changes between two text documents or between two directories. I used this recently when migrating between two computers to ensure a lot of my important files made the transition smoothly without some random Windows copy error preventing me from getting something I needed.

Contig
10 January 06
Command line tool from SysInternals that lets you defrag a single file or directory.

Folder Size for Windows Explorer
07 January 06
Adds a column to Windows Explorer that tells you the size of your folders. It takes a moment to grab information from your folders (like doing a rightclick/properties), but can replace the "Size" column by including folder size information as well. (via LifeHacker)

PC Inspector File Recovery (6MB, install)
06 January 06
When I needed to undelete a file that I'd erased, I googled for a program that would work for me. Out of all the programs I tried, PC Inspector was the best. It works with NTFS and FAT32, and it's extremely thorough. It may take a while to scan your hard drive, but it's well worth it if you can get your precious data back.

Agent Ransack - install
12 December 05
Agent Ransack is a great search utility that will search through folders and files based on regular expression searches. It also has a handy regular expression builder, though I find it only gets you about halfway to where you want to go.   (I don't use this program anymore, I think because I've become more organized). Google has a similar program called Google Desktop Search, which I haven't used.

PowerMenu 49 KB, no install
12 December 05
This program adds Always On Top, Minimize to Tray, Priority and Transparency menus to your taskbar rightclick. Sometimes I wonder how I've managed to live without it. Setting priority on the fly and minimizing to the tray (freeing space in the precious taskbar, and effectively allowing me to rearrange the order of my taskbar) are must-have tools for me.

WhoLockMe 22 KB, install optional
12 December 05
Don't you hate it when you're trying to move a folder, or delete a file and Windows won't let you because it's "In use?" Well WhoLockMe will tell you what programs are using that file or folder, so you can shut them down and move on with your life.

DoubleKiller - 721 KB, no install
12 December 05
This file searches your hard drive & finds duplicate files. You can select the paramaters - Name, Filesize, Date or CRC, folders, filetypes, folders, etc. Easy to use, no install. Works great, the UI is excellent and it runs extraordinarily quickly.
Update: They've introduced a "Pro" version of DoubleKiller with a bunch of new features. (Thanks to Robert Bull for the pointer.)
Update 2: I've purchased the Pro version. The advanced options make it well worth it. I've already used it to clean probably several gigabytes of files I had lying around duplicated either due to having several copies from upgrading my computer or due to downloading the same file twice, or retagging MP3s so a less sophisticated program couldn't spot the dups. Well worth it for a digital packrat like myself.

Oscar's File Renamer - install
12 December 05
I use this program on a regular basis. I hate getting files with extremely long file names and going to burn them them to CD just to find they don't fit and I have to rename 100 files. Or getting an audio book on mp3 just to find that the filenames are "Author - Book Title - Disc 1 - File 15.mp3" when my mp3 player only shows the first few characters of the file. Well, luckily, there's Oscar's File Renamer to the rescue. It's extremely simple interface lets you search & replace or record keystroke macro's. What really sets this apart is that it opens a directory like a text file, moving the cursor up and down doesn't just select a different file, it keeps the same character spacing as before, and you don't commit your changes until you're happy with them so you can experiment without fear of screwing up. When you use a program like this, you have to balance the time & effort you spend learning it/using it with the time it would take to rename all the files by hand. That said, here are a few other renamers you might be interested in.
  I've also used BKRenamer, which is a great regular expression, command-line no-install tool. BKRenamer is great when you have to do a change all the file names in several directories because it can search through subdirectories as well. Other products in this category are The Rename (too complex), Rename Master, Rename 4u, Flexible Renamer, Bulk Rename, and Batch Rename. None of which I've tried, except the first.
  Caleb emailed in a recommendation for Lupas Rename, which, again, looks complex, but the ability to rename based on file properties (such as MP3 tags) is pretty cool.

BKReplaceEm - no install
12 December 05
This is a great regular expression based search & replace utility. One of the great things about this software is that you can save your search & replace strings for later use. Very handy for repetitive editing tasks, like cleaning up documents you get from someone else.

SyncBack- 1.68mb, install
12 December 05
I searched high and low for a program that will not only copy my files to another drive or computer on the network for safekeeping, but FTP them to another location entirely. SyncBack does this. Now if the worst happens - a total hard drive failure - my most important documents will be waiting for me on my server (in another city thousands of miles away). Not bad for freeware!
  Karen's Replicator is another good free utility that lets you archive files to another drive on a schedule, but Karen's Replicator won't FTP for you.
  I wrote an article called Automated Hands-Free Backups about my search for the perfect backup solution.
  I wrote another article called Recovering From Catastrophic Failure about how SyncBack let me keep working even though my computer died.
  Second Copy (shareware) is consistently highly recommended as an excellent backup utility.

SpaceMonger - 212kb, no install
12 December 05
This program shows you visually how much space is taken up by what folders/files on your hard drive. Think of it as a sort of square pie chart that allows you to zoom in to a folder. This is a very powerful program that allows you to literally see where all of your space is going. Not as popular as SequoiaView, but I think it's better because SpaceMonger shows you directories and allows you to zoom in on them.
  WinDirStat is a free, open source program that does many of the things SpaceMonger does, and more. (Thanks to Robert Bull for pointing me to this one.)
  Folder Size (see above) is an excellent plugin for Windows Explorer that will show you the size of each folder.

Internet - email, chat, browsing, networking

Mailwasher
03 December 06
Using Mailwasher, you can log in to your email account & delete and bounce spam mails before they hit your inbox. Why is this cool? Because by sending a bounced email, you're telling the spammer "return to sender, address unknown" and spam bots will remove your email address from their list of valid email addresses. It won't solve your spam problems, but if used diligently, it should be a great way to cut down on the amount of spam that gets sent to you.
  Mailwasher Pro adds the ability to check multiple accounts, access to a global spam database, Hotmail, AOL, learning filters & more. A must if, like me, you have a second (and third) email account just for potentially spammy sources like mailing lists. (Disclaimer: The Mailwasher Pro link is an affiliate link. I get a free copy if 3 of you buy it. :-)
  Outlook users may want to check out BounceBully.

Pegasus Mail
28 November 06
Pegasus Mail has been around for a while. I've used it on & off for at least a decade. When I needed a program that could allow an online computer & an offline computer to sync email via a USB stick, I turned to Pegaus Mail. Smaller than Thunderbird, and much more powerful, Pegasus Mail is quirky and takes some getting used to, but once you do, you'll have a lot more control over your mail than with Thunderbird.
  Because of its quirks, I'm not sure that I'd recommend Pegasus Mail over Thunderbird to anyone but a power user or someone with a niche need that Thunderbird isn't meeting. I've also looked at The Bat! Email Client, which looks simpler than Pegasus Mail and has a heavy emphasis on security (encryption, authentication), but costs $25.

Off By One Web Browser
12 March 06
You're familiar with Internet Explorer, FireFox, and Opera, and looking for something new? Off By One is a tiny (1.2MB) web browser that will live in memory and erase all your tracks when you close it. It will fit on a thumb drive, or even a floppy. While it doesn't support the latest & greatest features (it supports HTML 3.2 only - no CSS, no JavaScript), there may be times when you need a no-install browser.
  I've found that it doesn't completely erase your tracks when you close it, even when you tell it to. Some information is left on the hard drive. But it launches much faster than FireFox, so if my computer is tied up doing something else & I get bored, I turn to OB1 as something that will launch even if my hard drive & CPU are tied up doing other things.

Wireshark (formerly Ethereal Packet Sniffer) - install
12 December 05
Want to know every bit of information entering and leaving your computer? Then use Ethereal Packet Sniffer. It's also great for learning about networking, the HTTP, FTP, TCP, etc. protocols. I discovered a potential virus on my girlfriend's computer when I noticed that it kept pinging random IP addresses in our network.

VNC (Virtual Network Computing) - install
12 December 05
Control any computer from any other computer. A buddy at work turned me on to this, works on nearly every platform from Unix to PC to Mac. It's strange seeing the Windows Desktop in a Mac window on OSX, but it was the only way he could check his e-mail. Now I leave a networked computer in the closet and control it from my main PC.
  There are many versions of VNC around, each with their own pros and cons. I've found that RealVNC is the least CPU intensive, though the free editions don't support encryption of any kind and is the least feature full of the VNC flavors. UltraVNC, which I've never used, allows you to preconfigure an EXE so that the persons computer you want to control (like your mom's when she can't figure out how to get her email) connects to you. Finally, TightVNC seems to have a strong emphasis on being able to vary the level of compression (more CPU intensive, less bandwidth). It shares a lot of features with UltraVNC, but isn't as comprehensive in it's networking capability.
  Some Windows power users swear up & down that Remote Desktop is the way to go if you need to control one computer from another. Rather than sending the whole desktop as a video, it just sends the data that's needed to allow Windows to draw the desktop itself.
  Finally, Fog Creek Copilot seems to be a pay-per-use version of UltraVNC with some tweaks to make it more user friendly.

WASTE - Install (some versions)
12 December 05
WASTE is a controversial chat client. Pulled by AOL just hours after the developer posted it under the GNU public license, Waste is a decentralized (peer to peer) chat client. Neary every other chat protocol depends on a centralized server to carry and sometimes store messages. Everyone connects to that server. With Waste, you connect to your friends directly by exchanging IP addresses. Oh, and did I mention that it's encrypted too? You exchange public keys as well.
  With Waste, you create a small private network with up to around 150 people (maybe more). Within the network, you can talk without fear of someone listening in - only people inside the network can see what's going on. The protocol & program are new, and I'm sure there are a few bugs that would need to be worked out, but the concept is very promising.
  Waste clients for the PC and Mac can be downloaded from SourceForge. I use the Waste 1.6 Special Edition, which adds chat that's encrypted from user-to-user so nobody else on the network can sniff your discussion.
  Learn more about WASTE on Wikipedia.

Jabber
12 December 05
This is another instant messaging client based on an open protocol. Jabber also has an open source server, so you can run it internally behind a firewall, or run a Jabber server for your friends to chat on. And if you don't want to run your own server, you can use one of the public Jabber servers available. Basically, Jabber lets you be AOL or MSN or Yahoo. You have complete control over who can connect to who and who can sniff your traffic. Also, Jabber supports multiple servers, so different departments can run their own Jabber servers and still talk to each other.
  Google Talk is based on Jabber.

Trillian - Install
12 December 05
The problem with Instant Messaging is I have friends who use nearly every protocol - AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo. Like Gaim (Gaim-Encryption is a plugin that supports encrypted conversations) and Miranda, this is a multi-protocol Instant Messaging Program, that also has a secure plugin. Trillian is the only one that isn't open source, and I paid to use Trillian Pro (currently version 2.0), but I like Trillian free a lot too. But, I don't think you could go wrong with any of the above, all of the above programs (especially Gaim) have a strong following.

MoonEdit - Install (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD)
21 January 05
This program is really cool. It lets you edit a file collaboratively - everyone in the group sees the changes (which are highlighted with a color that you choose) in real time. ICQ had a feature where you could see what the other person was typing as they typed, and it was a surreal experience, completely unlike regular chat. This takes that concept to a whole new level, and if you have any reason you do need to edit a single document with someone across the internet, this would be the way to do it.

Security

TrueCrypt
15 November 06
Need to keep some amount of data encrypted? TrueCrypt might be the tool for you. Create a file in TrueCrypt and you can load it as a drive. Really paranoid? You can also create a second hidden volume inside the first that nobody can find - nobody can even prove it exists. If forced, you can give up your first level password without revealing that a second hidden volume even exists.

AVG Antivirus
10 November 06
Though they popped up an ad for their 7.5 version the last time I rebooted, AVG remains the best free antivirus. I've tried others (such as the open source ClamWin, which filled by C:\ drive with hundreds of megabytes of temp files the first time it attempted a full scan), and came back to AVG.

Winpooch
12 March 06
Winpooch is a cool, and only sleightly annoying (compared to Trust No EXE below) anti-spyware & anti-trojan tool that monitors your computer for internet connections, file accesses, etc. and reports them to you, allowing you to approve or deny them. Advanced users only.
   The latest version of Winpooch (0.6.1) causes my install of Windows to crash, so for now I'm sticking with version 0.5.10. Version 0.6.2 is supposed to address many of these issues, but I'll wait for a stable (non beta) release.

Filemon
14 January 06
This program shows you all of the access to your hard drive in real time. It's a bit ovewhelming, but if you can sort through the information, you can look for odd behaviour that might be a virus. You should probably run this program once or twice bfeore you suspect there's a problem just so you can get used to the kinds of disk reads & writes that happen normally. What you should be looking for is strange programs accessing strange things.

Trust No EXE
14 January 06
For the mildly paranoid, this program will simply prevent any program that's not in its filter list from running. While it would be nice to have a one-click "Ok" to let a program run, rather than having to go into setup (it lives in the Control Panel) all the time, it does give you a certain peace of mind, and you learn to live with the mild inconvenience of disabling it to run a program, or putting that program in a sandbox you've set up to allow programs to run.
   It won't completely protect you from viruses - anything that lives in one of the approved directories will still run, but it will stop a plethora of programs from running.
  This is a great program to set up on mom's computer. She'll need to call you to install the latest version of weatherbug, or whatever it is she thinks will be useful, but you can rest in peace knowing she isn't accidentally launching every .EXE that lands on her cluttered desktop.

HijackThis & CWShredder (Alternate Link for Infected Computers)
12 December 05
HijackThis scans your computer for anything that might attach itself to your computer & browser (IE) - good and bad things. Use some discretion and decide what's good and what's bad. His download page also has a lot of great tools to get rid of spyware & adware.

BHODemon - install
12 December 05
Browser Helper Objects are things that plug in to your web browser to make it work better... Any toolbars you have installed, for instance. Acrobat Reader is a BHO as well. Unfortunately, hackers exploit the BHO to hijack your browser. BHODemon will show you all the BHO's you have installed, and allow you to disable them.
  The last time I checked, the site said they're no longer updating BHODemon.

Shields Up
12 December 05
Gibson Research Corporation's website that will test you computer to see which ports are open. Thanks to my firewalls, I get a perfect "Stealth" rating. What kind of rating do you get? Also, dslReports.com/scan.

Spybot Search & Destroy
12 December 05
Another excellent tool to help get rid of and prevent spyware from infesting your computer. This one caught some spyware on my friend's computer that Ad-Aware missed.

Ad-Aware
12 December 05
Want to keep your computer spyware free? Use Ad-Aware

Password Safe
12 December 05
We all have to remember more passwords than we can easily count, much less remember. Once we start using the same password over and over it becomes less secure. Password Safe is a program that will store all of our passwords for us in one secure place. It uses the popular Blowfish security algorithm, which has been extensively tested. Not only will Password Safe remember all your passwords, it will generate secure passwords for you so you can simply copy & paste them into the correct application or web page.
  Be sure to back up your Password Safe file on a regular basis and keep it in a safe place.
Update September 2004: I now recommend keeping your passwords in a two-pane encrypted outliner like Tranglos Keynote (see below under Information Management)

Pretty Good Privacy - install
12 December 05
Pretty Good Privacy was revolutionary when it came out. It allows two parties to communicate in a secure manner, and completely in the open. In the past, you had to privately transmit some sort of decoder when you wanted to send something encrypted. Using PGP you can tell the world how to encode a message or file so that only you can receive it. You can also sign messages and files so that someone who knows your public key can verify that you sent it. MIT maintains a PGP distribution that's free to use, and The International PGP Home Page also maintains a list of free versions PGP. If you're technicaly savvy, you can use GnuPG, an open source variant.

Graphic Design

Color Schemer
12 December 05
A simple program that does something unique. You can choose any color and it will tell you what other colors compliment it. The algorithm it uses to do this is fairly straightfoward, but being able to see them all in the same place has it's advantages. You can try the online version here.

FontEditor
12 December 05
Flash based Windows & Mac font maker, pretty crude, but it looks like it can be fun.

Color Schemer Online
12 December 05
See Color Schemer below in shareware, this website will let you enter any color and it will give you complimentary colors.

ColorPic
12 December 05
From the maker of Calipers is ColorPic. Zoom in on a section of your sceen and grab up to 8 colors in HEX and DEC format. The registered version of Color Schemer does this, but if you don't have the registered version, I recommend this program. (I don't use this program anymore, I use the full version of Color Schemer.)

Calipers - 142kb, no install (newer version is bigger)
12 December 05
A buddy of mine at work turned me on to this program. It measures objects on your screen. This is great for design work where you need to know exactly how many pixels something is on your screen.

ArtRage - 1.5MB, install, Mac & Windows
12 December 05
A painting program that least you literally "paint" as you would on a canvas. You can even load an image to trace, and it will pick up colors from the image as you draw. Tres cool.

PureJPEG - 40kb, no install, command line
12 December 05
Dennis Forbes wrote this tiny tool to strip EXIF data from your .jpg images. This is typically stuff like what camera took the picture, what sorts of conditions it took it under, and so forth, but can include large amounts of data, such as thumbnails of the picture. This tool strips all that out. See also jhead, another utility that can edit that data as well as delete it. (Via the Joel on Software forum.)

Dup Detector 1.2 MB, install
12 December 05
This program searches images on your hard drive & scans the actual image to see if the content is duplicated. Even if the image has been cropped a bit or resized, this will find them. There are a few "false positives" but the GUI allows you to compare two images fairly easy & determine which one to zap.

Macro

AllChars - optional install
12 December 05
This program is great. A few simple keystrokes and you can type any unicode character, like ¼ or û. Plus you can use it to playback certain keystrokes in Macro mode.

MacroMaker - install
12 December 05
Very robust macro program that can be programed to do just about anything you can do. I use it to automate tedious tasks, and create quick-launch keys to launch certain applications. Straightforward keyboard interface is easy to learn, though tedious to use. I don't use this nearly as much anymore now that I discovered than any shortcut on your desktop can have a shortcut key. Just right click on it and go to properties and choose a Shortcut Key in the appropriate box. Not as robust as other macro programs out there (like Maco Express), but this one has the advantage of being free.

RoboType - v2 = 333kb, no install, v3 = install (Shareware)
12 December 05
This is a great time saving macro. Any text you type can be replaced with any text in the robotype database. For example, any time I type ?latin, it's replaced with the Lorem Ipsum Dolor blurb text. This is great for sig files, or standardized bits of text you use all the time (like bits of code).
Version 3 adds a lot of great features, such as categorization, getting rid of the extra space after the replace text, merging two .rtl files, a "launch when windows opens" option (before I had to add my .rtl file to the Startup group), and the ability to prompt for input.
Note: RoboType is no longer free, it's now part of the PC Magazine Utilities, which are available inexpensively on the Ziff Davis website. See below under Miscelaneous for more information.

Information Management

Action Outline - install
12 December 05
Another two pane outliner. Action Outline is good because you can attach colored flags to each node indicating it's current status at a glance. Plus, when you export to text there are a number of options such as node numbering and commenting of notes.

Tranglos Software's KeyNote
12 December 05
A feature-rich open-source/free as in beer outliner that has lots of features like text formatting and encryption. I use it for all my sensitive data. No longer in development, but the latest release is stable.

TreePad Lite - 314kb, no install
12 December 05
Outliners are great for obsessive organizers like me. Not that you'd know it to look at my apartment. This is a "two pane" organizer. The left side looks like Windows Explorer, and the right side is a plaintext editor. You can use it to organize your notes or write your novel. I use it for all sorts of things, especially taking notes on projects, and keeping tips and hints that I pick up. It's small size lets it fit on a floppy so you can take your notes with you whever you go, though I tend to forget the floppy behind...  See Action Outline & Treepad Safe below in the shareware section. I use this program on a daily basis.

More Outliners
11 December 05
John Buckman has some reviews of Outliners & Brainstorming programs. His views are different from mine.
Added June 05, 2003: Here's a good thread about outliners in the Joel on Software forum. And in September, there were 3 more. Organizing Random Notes, Knowledge base software ??, Personal Information Storage Retreival Application,
Added November 13, 2003: WikiPad was recommended as a shareware cross between an outliner and a Wiki. WikiServer is a free program that is similar, though it doesn't seem to have as slick a UI. Instiki is a personal wiki that should run on your own machine.
Added January 18, 2004: FreeMind is an open source and free as in beer mind mapper.
Added August 31, 2004: MemPad is a tiny two pane outliner. So is Quick Outliner.
TKOutline is one of the very few one pane outliners I've seen.

Games

MedWar "Medieval War" PBEM game
12 December 05
This little wargame is simplistic by modern standards, and the Play By Email function seems quaint in the world of always-on-broadband and Playstation2 or XBox Live, but there's still a soft spot in my heart for this game.
  It was published in 1993 by Burnham Park Software, Inc. Written by Mark Brownstein. Download from pbm.com, or do a Google Search for "medwar.zip" and "medwar16.zip"
A modern version is Declaration of War, which includes modern weapons such as airplaines and aircraft carriers. Search for "dowar11.zip" on Google. Also medoor11.zip, is a BBS door version of the game... I have no idea how this one works, as I never ran a BBS.
  I was in contact with the programmer, who was developing a 2.0 version (which I was waiting for before I registered) but it never came out, and the company fell off the face of the Earth. I never did get a registered version (which would allow you to build your own scenarios).

The Original Daleks Game - Daleks.exe
12 December 05
Another addictive puzzle game. You play Dr. Who, and you have to avoid the Daleks. They move one space every time you move one space. You kill them by getting them to crash into each other, or destroying them with the one-use sonic screwdriver. You can also teleport, but that's dangerous. While you won't teleport directly onto a dalek, you may teleport next to one, and it can kill you on it's next round. Download directly from my site. This DOS game was written by Robert Paauwe in 1985. Again, numerous other versions have been written of this game, including several online versions, but the first remains the best. Though some of the online-only versions have some good features, like, well, not having to install it at all, and you can compete against hundreds of other people for the high score.
See my article A Complete Waste Of Time for some online versions of this game.

The Original Samegame 1.11
12 December 05
"The ultimate time waster." In this addictive puzzle game, you have to clear the board of colored blocks. You can only clear 2 or more adjacent blocks, and the more you can clear at once, the more points you get.

A Complete Waste Of Time
12 December 05
My lengthy list of online, free games, and sometimes just plain sillly inks.

Project Management / Getting Things Done

Sciral Consistency (Shareware)
12 December 05
This program, which I didn't fully understand until I used it, tracks tasks that you have to do "every 3-4 days" or "about once a month." You input them and it shows you around when you need to do it using a color coded grid. It's shareware, but the freeware version lets you have up to 4 tasks per instance, and you can have 2 instances on your desktop.

Allnetic Working Time Tracker (Shareware)
12 December 05
A simple tool that's part clock, part spreadsheet. By clicking on it you can start tracking the time you spend on any task. If you're idle, or come back from idle, it will ask you whether or not you want to end/resume a task. At the end of the day, week, month, or year, you will know exactly how much time you spent doing what. The only drawback is that you have to be near a computer to use it.
Update September 2004: Unfortunately, this program is now shareware. The new shareware version adds a number of new features, but you will have to pay for it from now on.

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