Tools and Utilities

It's fun to try out new software! Here are some free tools and utilities that I've found to be useful. Please be aware that I am not paid to endorse any of these products, I list them here as honest recommendations.

Doodle is a great planning tool for events when you need to pick a date and time and need to know when all of the invitees are available. While many organizations can do that easily with Microsoft Outlook, this site has the advantage of allowing anyone with a Web browser to participate. There are both free and paid versions, depending on what degree of customization you’d like.

F.lux  is a really interesting utility that adjusts the colour of your monitor according to your current location and time of day. It will slowly adjust the brightness and colouring of your display as the day progresses, similar to the way the sun rises and sets. You will find it brightest during the day, but then getting less glaring at night. It seems to really help in terms of easing you into your normal sleep cycle at the end of the day. I like that it has included a setting to temporarily turn it off in case you need true colours for graphics work. I initially thought the whole idea sounded bizarre, but I was completely sold after one day of using it.

Can’t get your hands on Adobe Photoshop but still want to be able to work with your images in something more flexible than MS Paint?  GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) just might be the program for you. I used GIMP for quite some time before I was able to get a copy of Photoshop, and I found it to be a very good free alternative. Unless you’re looking to do something super technical, you’re likely to find that GIMP has all of the functionality you need.

This is a really simple web-based utility that lets you convert ICO, PNG, GIF, and JPEG files to PNG or ICO format. It won’t cost you anything and you don’t have to download any programs to your computer to use it.

http://www.rotatepdf.net/
Need to rotate a PDF but aren't on a computer that has the right software to do it? You can rotate a PDF file using this free online utility without installing anything extra. Awesome!