Web Worker Daily

One of the problems with having a lot of apps installed on your PC is that it’s hard to keep track of all the hotkeys that might be in use — testing them all manually would be a very laborious process. New freeware Windows utility ActiveHotkeys can quickly list all of the hotkeys that are currently active, helping you to figure out which are used and, importantly, which might still be available for apps that you might like to use.

ActiveHotkeys is a standalone .EXE (no installation required, which is great as it’s not something you’re likely to want to use very frequently). Select which key groups (alphabetical, function, numeric keypad, etc.) and modifier keys (Win, Alt, Ctrl, Shift and combinations thereof) you’d like to test and hit “Test active hotkeys.” ActiveHotkeys will return a sortable list of the hotkeys currently in use.

Unfortunately, ActiveHotkeys doesn’t tell you which app each hotkey is reserved for, which would make it more useful. This comes down to a limitation of Windows, however, rather than a fault of ActiveHotkeys, so you’ll need to do some further investigation if you want to know what each hotkey actually does.

ActiveHotkeys is free to download and use and works with Windows 95 onwards.

Found any nifty freeware apps like ActiveHotkeys recently? Let us know in the comments!

(via Freewaregenius)

The first thing I look at when looking at a new application is the feature list. Many of those feature lists tend to be really long, and most of the time I find myself using an app without taking advantage of its lesser-known features.

A program’s usefulness isn’t necessarily proportional to the size of its feature list. There are some apps out there which have only one function and a minimalist interface. This doesn’t mean that they’re less useful than their feature-rich brethren.

I’ve compiled a short list of free, single-function Windows apps that web workers can add to their toolbox. They’re worth looking at if you want some added useful functionality without putting too much strain on your computer’s resources.

PushPin

What it does: PushPin gives you the option to have any window “always on top”. This means that you can have inactive windows on top of your active window.

Why it’s useful: It’s a helpful tool when you’re copy-pasting text or code from one window to another: you don’t have to go back to the taskbar to choose another window. This is especially useful if the source of the text can’t be copy-pasted and you have to retype it, such as text embedded in PDFs, image files, etc.

Details: You can learn more about PushPin here. According to the web site, it runs on Windows 95 to NT4, but I’ve used it on both Windows XP and 7 without any problems. Read the rest of this entry »

Love it or hate it, iCal comes with the Mac OS X operating system, so I’m always on the lookout for how to use it better.

Once Google added synchronization support for iCal back in July, I did integrate the basic scheduler into my web work, but I always found it cumbersome to add events quickly. For a while, I actually found it easier to just create events in my Google Calendar since I already had my browser open. Then I stumbled onto FlexCal, a freeware utility that’s not glitzy, but does the trick.

Read the rest of this entry »