March 21st, 2008 by Brian Cors
One of the applications that I’ve used for several years is a file backup utility called Second Copy, made by Centered Systems. It has come in handy several times when hard drives have crashed or disk errors have been encountered. I’ve also gone back several times to the “backed up” versions of files because I’ve made ill-advised changes to the “live” versions resident on my PC.
What I really like about Second Copy is that once you set up your file structure (more on that later) and the Second Copy backup routine, the software backs up your files automatically and in the background from that point forward. Mine are fully backed up on a daily basis, so I would never be more than a day behind if my hard drive crashed. I’ve basically created an insurance policy against a tremendous loss of productivity and intellectual assets if my hard drive was to crash.
Hard drive crashes are inevitable. The need to go back to older version of files is inevitable. Is it worth $30 to protect all of the intellectual property that you’ve created, and to save the hours and hours that you would have to spend recreating files if a crash occurred? If so, read on!
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March 8th, 2008 by Brian Cors
Previously I’ve reviewed Dictionary.com, a wonderful utility for looking up definitions and synonyms for words that you highlight in any of your PC-based applications. But for intensive synonym searching, http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ provides an unusual “visual” approach to viewing relationships among words that can’t be matched by dictionary.com and simply can’t be reproduced in hard-copy format.
Visual Thesaurus allows you to explore your word options in a web-like fashion. Type in a word, and the Visual Thesaurus shows you a “web” of synonyms for that word. When you click on one of those synonyms, the Visual Thesaurus centers the web around that word and generates another list of synonyms for the new word.
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February 11th, 2008 by Brian Cors
Are you looking for tools to help you become a better writer? Nothing beats a dictionary or thesaurus for helping you to find words that better express what you are trying to communicate. But it takes time to look up words in a hard-copy dictionary or thesaurus, and quite often these lookups take the writer out of their “flow” and train-of-thinking.
For those of you who are connected to the web via a broadband connection (cable or DSL), http://www.dictionary.com/ provides great (and FREE) tools to help you quickly look up definitions and synonyms. Simply go to the web site, type in the word, click on either “Dictionary” or “Thesaurus”, and click “Look it up”.
But it’s the free “Cleverkeys” add-in that really makes dictionary and thesaurus lookups a snap. From any PC-based application (word processor, web browser, email application, etc.), I simply highlight the word that I’d like to look up and press control-L.
Microsoft Word does provide a built-in thesaurus that you can access by clicking Tools, Language, Thesaurus (or shift-F7). But you can only use that thesaurus in a handful of Microsoft-only applications, and you can’t quickly look up the exact definitions of the synonyms that you find. The www.dictionary.com/Cleverkeys combo is easier and faster to use, and available from any PC application. And it’s free!
To download CleverKeys, go to http://www.cleverkeys.com/.
One of the applications that I’ve used for several years is a file backup utility called Second Copy, made by Centered Systems. It has come in handy several times when hard drives have crashed or disk errors have been encountered. I’ve also gone back several times to the “backed up” versions of files because I’ve made ill-advised changes to the “live” versions resident on my PC.