The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
A lot of the best pieces of software are not the expensive office or Web design suites, but are the neat little pieces of shareware that you find somewhere that seem to be just the thing you have long been looking for. I always keep a few neat programs on my hard drive. One thing I currently have is a program called Sitesucker. A small piece of freeware, Sitesucker does just what its name says. It pulls entire sites off of the Internet and downloads them to the hard drive of your machine. Something like this is great for me, because I have high-speed net access at work but not at home. I use Sitesucker to pull things down to my hard drive which I need when I am working at home at night. But be warned. Even the most basic sites can be quite large and take a long time to download. They can also take up a lot of hard drive room, so I use the things I need and then often dump the sites straight off of my machine. Did you ever have a Spirograph as a kid? Mac users now can get MacSpirograh which is exactly the same as the version off of your computer. You set the size of the rings you want to use, the colours of the pen, how many revolutions you want it to make and set the program free. My kids make neat little designs which we can then print off and hang on the fridge. Earth Browser is another incredible piece of software, while costing around $20, it is definitely worth it. Earth Browser is a real time rotating globe on your machine which shows the real, constantly updated weather and cloud patterns, the temperature in thousands of cities and towns around the world as well as links to webcams in cities around the globe. A truly amazing piece of shareware giving an interesting look at the globe any time you want it. As much as I have trouble with a lot of Microsoft's company policies, the new office suite being released this summer features some interesting updates. One of the most note worthy being the ability to record an audio file of a meeting as it is occurring and as you are taking notes on your laptop. Later, when you are going through your notes and trying to remember what was said, Word will allow you to automatically jump to the appropriate place in the audio file, just by highlighting the written note you took and clicking a button. Finally, one of my students found a fun little piece of software called MacTreb (or WindowsTreb) that allows you simulate a medieval trebuchet (something like a catapult). We had a running contest in my classroom for a few days seeing who could get the furthest throw. A lot of these little pieces of software can be found on the CDs that are starting to come with almost any computer magazine. PC World and MacWorld each month come with an ever-expanding archive file filled with neat little games and programs such as these. As well, magazines such as these are a great source of files that need constant updating such as media players, drivers for programs, and updated web browsers. Software is constantly under development. With many more people each year learning how to design small programs, if you want, you can probably find it. If not, consider figuring out your self how to build it. ([email protected])
