It really is amazing how much free tech is out there. Scanning over my desktop, I realized just how many of the programs that I use on a regular basis don’t cost me a dime. Some of them, I couldn’t live without. That means it is time for a list of the free applications that I find to be essential. To qualify for my top ten list, a program has to be installed on my machine, regardless of whether its functionality uses the internet or not. I’m leaving Evernote off of the list, because I’ve upgraded to the paid version. At some point in the future, I’ll take a look at cloud applications. Without further adieu, I present the first five. In a later post, I posted the next five. Photo by Robert S. Donovan. Read more
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I’ve talked about Evernote a few times here already. 
At the risk of suffocating you with another post about it, I want to call some attention to a time-saving tip from Elldove over in the Evernote official forums. Elldove posted some javascript for a bookmarklet that combines the Readability bookmarklet and the Evernote web clipper bookmarklet into one bookmarklet.
Readability is a tool, in the form of a bookmarklet, that removes the clutter around what you’re reading and presents a page in a format that is easy to read. Here is a before and after look at a page formatted with the Readability bookmarklet (images have been resized to fit the page):
Your reputation is important, especially if you are established and have a job that depends on public perception. At the same time, the internet can be a dangerous place for your reputation, as one false story or news item can spread like wildfire. Two tools that can help you keep tabs on what people are saying about you on the web are Google Alerts and Backtype. With Google Alerts and your Google account, you can enter search terms, and have emails automatically sent to you when there are new Google results for those terms. I’ve set up alerts for various permutations of my name (my whole name in quotes, first name and last name in quotes, etc.), as well as for each one of my websites (to track when my sites are mentioned elsewhere). I imagine this would be less handy if you have a common name. You can schedule alerts to be sent once a day, once a week, or as they happen. You can also configure an alert to be accessible via an RSS feed.
When is choice a bad thing? When the choice comes from YouTube, that’s when. Over on Technologizer, Jared Newman discusses a new advertising model that YouTube is trying out on a limited basis. Let’s get one thing out of the way- ads aren’t going away. The streaming of online video is expensive. One report predicts that YouTube is on pace to lose $470 million in 2009, thanks largely to bandwidth costs that exceed $1 million a day. It is only natural that YouTube needs to find a better way to monetize its service. The Technologizer article indicates that you’ll be able to "select from two advertisements to watch at the beginning, or intersperse a grab bag of ads throughout the video." Depending on how YouTube implements it, this could be an annoyance for tech-savvy users and busy users, who would be better off having no choice in the ads that are fed to them. Why?
I previously have professed my love for Evernote as a way to unclutter my life. One of the nice features of Evernote is its cross-platform support. I use Evernote on my iPhone to take photographs of notes, business cards, and even wine labels. The iPhone isn’t ideal for this, as its camera doesn’t have autofocus, and is not designed to take clear photographs of text at close range. To address this, I purchased the Griffin Clarifi iPhone case. Read on for my take on the Clarifi, using the Griffin Elan iPhone case as a point of reference.
What makes the Clarifi different from other cases is the lens on the rear, that slides over the iPhone camera lens. The Clarifi lens acts as a magnifying lens of sorts, making most text much more legible. The lens slides with the touch of a finger to cover or uncover the iPhone lens. I had read other reviews that complained that the lens would slide on its own, but I haven’t experienced that problem. There is plenty of friction, at least on mine, that prevents the lens from sliding until I want to slide it. Here is an example of the same text taken first with the Clarifi lens in place (top), and then without it (bottom):