Recently I rebuilt my Windows Vista installation after a failed attempt to upgrade to Windows 7. Ok, I’m envisioning lots of raised eyebrows already. Vista was much maligned when it was released, for reasons that I’ve never quite been able to fathom. My laptop (my main PC) has been rock-solid on Vista since late 2007 and is still going strong (this is the longest I’ve actually had a PC without it starting to feel outdated). Anyway, I was pretty surprised at the range of software I’ve become accustomed to using without really thinking about it. I learnt this because I had to reinstall it all again. I also use Linux (Mint, and Ubuntu) quite regularly, and I like to be able to access my data between machines. That’s mainly what this post is about; and it’s the culmination of many fruitful and fruitless hours spent researching, using, breaking, and abandoning various lines of inquiry. Here follows the software I take for granted…
- Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org; available for Windows, Mac, Linux)
It’s the plugins that do it. These days web standards have converged a lot, and to a large extent, a browser is a browser. But the number of useful plugins available for Firefox are what makes it stand out. It might not be quite as fast as Chrome, but I couldn’t care less about a few nanoseconds here and there. - Adblock Plus (add through the Firefox plugins manager; platform independent)
A Firefox plugin, it blocks ads. Your web browsing experience instantly becomes more serene. Simple as that. - Zotero (http://www.zotero.org; platform independent)
Although they’re in the process of writing a stand-alone application, Zotero is actually a plugin for Firefox. It’s extremely easy to install, and allows you to manage a growing list of references, along with file attachments (like PDF documents) and written notes. Some kind of reference manager is vital for anyone in academia, and most people use Endnote, known as the industry standard. It’s expensive, and in my view not as good as Zotero, which is free! One of the best things about Zotero is that it is cloud-enabled. All of your data is stored on your own PC, but it’s also synchronised online. This means that your references are always backed up, and that you have access to the latest copies whether you’re on your work PC, home PC, home Linux, Mac, etc… I’d be in trouble without it. - Zotero Word/Openoffice Plugins (http://www.zotero.org; platform independent)
Zotero isn’t just a database for storing references, it’s also has (separate) Word and Openoffice plugins, which means you can directly insert items from Zotero into your written papers. Zotero will also write the usually time-consuming bibliography for you, in less than a second! - Xmarks (http://www.xmarks.com; platform independent)
Another Firefox plugin, Xmarks synchronises my Firefox bookmarks so they’re backed up and available on any PC I use. - Allway Sync (http://allwaysync.com; available for Windows only)
So you have a folder containing a bunch (about 8Gb) of files (let’s call it a Ph.D thesis) that you might edit at work, or you might want to edit at home. You might knock out a draft at home over the weekend and want it available at work on Monday. Fine, if you’re able to keep track of what you’ve edited, which is the new copy and which is the old, but if you’re human, and fallible, one day you’re going to get confused, and start to believe you actually have two Ph.Ds, each with subtle and unquantifiable differences. This is a bad sign. So, how did I overcome this? With a nice, simple, reliable piece of software called Allway Sync. Install it on your work, home, and anywhere-else PCs where you keep a copy of your work folder(s), and every time you’ve finished a day’s work, pop in your USB-stick and let Allway Sync do the work of figuring out which files have changed, been deleted, added, and the rest. Back at home, do the same before and after you start work to ensure you’re always working on the same copies of your files. This is also a pretty good backup solution: at any one time you’re going to have 3 copies of all of your files: at home; at work; and in your pocket. Pretty good insurance. - Truecrypt (http://www.truecrypt.org; available for Windows, Mac, Linux)
We’re all prone to losing things from time to time, particularly when that thing is the size of a UBS-stick. But when that small thing contains your entire Ph.D thesis – 3 years of your life – you’d better do something to protect it. Losing your USB key shouldn’t be a problem in itself, because you’ll have two other copies of your work (if you’ve been sync’ing it as above!), but perhaps you don’t want the lucky finder to see the last 3 years of your life – all of your papers, drafts, dead-ends, results, as well as confidential material. Enter Truecrypt. Truecrypt effectively ensures that the data stored on your USB stick is indistinguishable from random data: it’s encrypted, very strongly so. Using Truecrypt means there’s one further step you have to go through when sync-ing your USB stick, but it also means that, should someone find your lost USB stick, it’s essentially useless to them. - Foxit Reader (http://foxitsoftware.com/downloads/; available for Windows only)
PDFs are everywhere. They’re a pretty handy way of sharing and reading documents formatted for paper, and they can’t be avoided. Fortunately the industry standard application for reading them – Adobe Reader – can. Adobe are well known for making some pretty decent applications: Photoshop comes to mind. But their flagship PDF reader is anything but decent. What ought to be a small, efficient fast application is a behemoth: one that is slow to load and constantly pesters you to update it. Foxit Reader, on the other hand, is what a PDF reader should be. Small, fast, fully featured, and (as with every other application on this page, in case you hadn’t noticed), free. - PDF Creator (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator; available for Windows only)
So you can read PDFs. What if you want to create them? PDF Creator does what it says. It’s a virtual printer, to which you can print any document, and it pops out as a PDF. Simple, brilliant, and open-source. - Todo Backup (http://www.todo-backup.com; available for Windows only)
The Windows Backup application is a treacherous beast, and that’s not what you want out of something you entrust with so much, something you don’t notice is deceiving you until it’s too late. The confusion arises mainly because WB asks you which files you’d like to back-up, one of which is ‘Applications’. Well, no, you reply, I only want my documents folder backing up, but thanks anyway. What WB doesn’t tell you is that the the application installation file you downloaded (and hence don’t have a CD), paid for, and placed in your documents folder, won’t therefore be backed up (even though everything else in your documents folder is. Todo Backup is a more honest beast: asks you what you’d like to do, tells you what it’s going to do, and then does it. It has more options than WB, but is still very easy to use. One small thing to be careful of though: When you create a new backup, Todo Backup’s ‘keep file permissions’ checkbox is ticked by default. If you don’t untick it, you’ll have problems restoring your files to a new installation or different computer. Not big problems, but you’ll have to rebuild the permissions on all of your files. Otherwise, it’s excellent. - Google Calendar Sync (http://www.google.com; available for Windows only)
On the desktop, Outlook is still an essential application for many people, but what if you want to sync it with your smartphone? Through Google Calendar, that’s how. Most smartphones today will happily sync their calendar data with Google Calendar, but how do you sync your Google Calendar with your Outlook? Yep, you guessed it. GCS is a small application that sits in your system tray and quietly, reliably, keeps your Outlook and Google Calendar in check. - GO Contact Sync (http://sourceforge.net/projects/googlesyncmod/files/; available for Windows only)
This does the same as Calendar Sync for your contacts. It’s not a pretty application, it throws up cryptic error messages from time to time (particularly when you ‘wake’ your computer), so it isn’t perfect, but it usually works, and it’s free! - F4 (http://www.audiotranskription.de/english/f4.htm)
If you’ve ever had to transcribe a lot of audio you’ll know how time consuming it can be. Despite the wonders of modern technology, there’s still no substitute for sitting down and typing it out manually – if you’ve ever tried to use voice recognition software to do this, you’ll have been disappointed. The old-style professional tape-based transcription machines used to have a foot pedal to play, pause and rewind the tape, and these days you can get USB foot pedals that interface with your transcription software, but unless you enjoy getting cramp in your foot, such things are unnecessary. F4 is a free piece of transcription software that cleverly puts the play, pause and rewind (a preordained number of seconds) functions under one key – unsurprisingly the F4 key. I’ve transcribed in lots of different ways, and this is by far the fastest. Remember to save your work though. F4 is a simple piece of software and doesn’t have all of the clever autosave/recover functions of a fully-fledged word processor.
well, those are my top 13 for now. Now, I have a Ph.D thesis to write!