My call for your favorite utilities for UMPCs has gotten me some good recommendations and one of those is our Freeware of the Moment. Our friend HG pointed out that the Rocketdock program is good for UMPCs as it provides a customizable dock that is very finger-friendly on UMPCs. I had to try it out right away, and HG wasn’t kidding; Rocketdock allows you to create a tailored launcher/ taskbar/ gadget dock that fits your needs as well as your screen.

Rocketdock is donation-ware so if you use it you should drop them some coin so development can continue. The program is great, with all aspects of it customizable, from the skin to the icons used. The developers have a nice collection of gadgets you can download for free to extend the usefulness of Rocketdock. Rather than try to explain how cool and useful the program can be just take a look at my current UMPC desktop. I’ve included snaps in both landscape and portrait orientation to show how well Rocketdock makes the transition.

I stopped using Microsoft Outlook some time ago, but I know many of you are still using it. And why not? It’s a great mail client and is often found in the corporate world. When I used it, I was always looking for ways to save space in my mail store, mainly because of hard storage limits in the environment. It’s too late for me, but you might be interested in the free Thread Compressor for Outlook.

I’ll warn you now that this free add-on will delete mail from your mailbox. Of course, that’s the intent of it, but I wanted to disclose the risk right up front. Thread Compressor uses the “conversation” threading feature of Outlook to identify and then remove redundant messages in the thread. Essentially, using TC will remove all messages in a thread except for the most recent, that way you have the entire thread in one single message and the rest are deleted to save space.

Again: This add-on is designed to delete mail from your mail account, so be careful! Thread Compressor for Outlook works on all versions of Outlook on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

(via Jason Langridge)

A partition manager is something that you rarely need, but when you do, you really, really need one. These utilities are the ones that let you reconfigure your hard drive partitions in your operating system. Good ones make it simple to modify partition sizes and to merge partitions when that makes sense.

I have used commercial solutions, but it’s hard to justify paying more than $50 for one when you use it so rarely. That’s where freeware EASEUS Partition Master steps in. This free utility (personal edition) does everything the big boys do but at a cost that makes sense for seldom-used utilities. The program can do all of the copy, re-size, move and conversion functions you’d expect and works on Microsoft Windows XP and Vista.

(via Techblog)

A professional’s work time often revolves around phone calls and the information that’s gleaned from them. Perhaps talking to a client leads to information that needs to be remembered for some future dealings. Some professionals need to keep track of phone call information for billing purposes. What is needed to make this work better is a good call list manager.

Call Client is a free manager for the BlackBerry that aims to address this need. It is a simple-to-use call list manager that keeps track of every call made or received on the BlackBerry and adds the useful ability to add call notes by hitting a button. Information can be added as appropriate to make sure nothing gets overlooked.  Call Client has a decent feature list for a free program:

• Handles multiple call lists
• Unlimited phone numbers with Call Client call lists
• Add notes
• Unlimited Call Client call lists supported
• Indicates status of each phone call (complete or incomplete)
• Import and export any properly formatted .CSV file
• Tons of shortcuts for easy use in one hand

The ability to export the call list comes in handy at client billing time.

(via Blackberrycool)

It’s no secret that we’ve enjoyed using Skype for audio and video calls for the past several years on our various mobile devices. Aside from free Skype-to-Skype calls and paid SkypeOut services, the company also offers unlimited monthly subscription plans as low as $2.95 a month, although they’re subject to a Fair-Use Policy. That restricts the total number of calls, minutes used, etc… So how do you keep track of your usage against the Fair-Use terms? That’s where the free Subscription Monitor for Skype comes into play, which I found through Voice on the Web. This Windows application summarizes your Skype subscription usage in real time.

The compelling factor to me is how this works even if you use multiple clients with Skype, as I often do. Call history is normally localized to your machine, so if you Skype with more than one device, you’d have to manually aggregate your call data; But not with this freeware. Of course, this requires you to configure the app with your Skype credentials, so be wary. Another nice touch? The icons change in color from green to yellow to red, giving you a visual indicator of where you stand against the limitations at a given point in time during the month.

I don’t know what it is about desktop widgets, but we love them as much as we love widgets that tell us what the weather is currently like outside.  Maybe we like them because they save us having to look out the window, I don’t know.  Good desktop weather widgets are definitely good and free ones are the best.

The Freeware of the Moment is from the folks at AccuWeather, who know an awful lot about the weather.  Their new Stratus desktop widget proves they know a bit about those, too, and this Adobe Air widget is first-rate.  It blends in with any desktop as the frame and controls all fade to nothing as the Stratus widget sits on the desktop, leaving only the pertinent information you crave.  Move the cursor over the widget and those controls come back to let you configure Stratus just like you like it.

You have to have Adobe Air installed to use Stratus but it will work on any system with Air.  Which is appropriate for a weather widget, don’t you think?  Head over and give Stratus a try and when they ask tell AccuWeather that jkOnTheRun sent you.  I guarantee you they’ll say “who?”. 

Last night, I gave Epiphany Recorder a spin on my iPhone. The application, which is free (for now) in the iTunes App Store, is at its core level a voice recorder. When you dig a little deeper, however, you’ll see a fairly unique feature in the way it records the past. Sorta.

When you fire up Epiphany, it begins recording right away. That’s a similar function to the DVR in my home: While I’m watching the television, the DVR is recording up to an hour of content automatically. This enables the features to “go back in time” by rewinding what was live programming. Epiphany does the same, but for audio.

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One of the features of Mac OS X I use daily is the window scrolling even when the window doesn’t have the focus. It’s super handy when dealing with multiple apps. I don’t click an app to gain the focus, I just move the cursor over any window and start scrolling. Wouldn’t it be nice if Windows could do the same thing?

What’s that? It can?!? Son of gun, the Business Hacks folks apparently found the answer in a bit of freeware. WizMouse sends scrolling and mouse wheel commands to the window under the mouse pointer, whether that window has the focus or not. This 649KB download officially supports Windows 2000, XP and Vista. I’ll tell you a little secret though: I tested it and found that it works well in Windows 7 too. No need to tap on a window to gain focus before scrolling now!

I can’t partake in this one, but I won’t be bitter. Instead, I’ll point this freebie BlackBerry theme out and pay it forward. Owners of a BlackBerry Bold, 81xx, 83xx, 88xx or 89xx series handset can grab a Chalk 2D theme for their handset right here. Pity I can’t use it because I actually like the grade-school look. Better hurry though: the free bit Chalk gets erased at the end of the day. While you’re at it, you might want to check some of the other themes at GemBlock; they’re pretty slick!

(via IntoMobile)

If you’re like me, when you are knee-deep in work at your computer, you don’t like distractions.  I have been known to constantly minimize windows to get the desktop clear so I can concentrate on the one task at hand.  It keeps my focus where it needs to be and it’s not a big deal other than the constant minimizing of the extra windows.

That’s where the Freeware of the Moment comes in.  SpiritedAway does one thing and one thing only: After a user-configured amount of time (I use 60 seconds), any window that has not been touched automagically disappears.  The program is still running and can be retrieved when needed from the dock but it is no longer in my way.  It sounds trivial but I can’t emphasize how big an impact this has made on my productivity to get these distractions out of my way.  My desktop stays clean, with only the window I am actually working in on the screen.

SpiritedAway sits in the system menu where you can configure the time delay before windows disappear as well as temporarily deactivate it.  You can also tick certain windows to be excluded so they always stay visible if desired.  I do this with my Mail window, which sits off to the right on the second screen where it doesn’t distract me.

The latest version of SpiritedAway won’t work on Leopard, I’ve been told, but there is an earlier version that I am using that works fine.  Thanks to Merlin Mann for pointing out this great free tool.