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Free Web Services and Windows Software

The following is software in which I have no interest, apart from being a happy user.

They are (mostly) available.....

FREE!   COSTS NOTHING!   GRATIS!!

But! Be careful. Not all, "free" software is a good thing. Be sure you learn a bit about spyware before you get too adventurous with trying things from the internet. (Elsewhere, I've put together a little introduction to spyware avoidance for you.)

This page is a "waiting room" for things I intend one day to write up "properly" for you, and move to one of my more polished pages of such things, e.g. . In the meantime, maybe even these short notes will help you find something you want. I hope so! While I haven't investigated all of these extensively, I have at least had a quick look at their websites, and there was some reason that I set about investigating every one of them... this list is more selective than Google.... even if "a little" less extensive!
There are two parts to the rest of the page: The 3-CAD section that starts in a line or two, and further down the page, a bunch of odds and ends, not 3-D CAD related.

Three-D CAD : I don't know a lot about 3-D CAD... it is a "project too far" that I want to do more with one day. However, that said, if you are chomping at the bit, the following MAY be worth investigating.... but remember your time is worth something when you think merrily, "It's okay, the software is free..."

I have been looking for years for a way to model cathedrals programmatically. That is, I want to write...

draw(nave, north-transept, tower, south-transept, east-end)

... after writing definitions of user defined objects called "nave", "north-transept", etc, somehow. (I use the term "object" in the narrow, OOP, sense.) There would also be variables such as origin-nave, origin-north-transept. I can do it, after a fashion, in the excellent free MS-Logo.

3D CAD programs come in several varieties. One big divide is those that offer animations and those that don't, i.e., those that only produce a static image. Want it all? The be prepared to do LOTS of work, and have a powerful PC! Want to get something done in the first month? Accept limitations!

The scope and quality of what you can get in free software never fails to astonish me. But do keep in mind that what some of the following say they can do is incredibly ambitious. Some of them may live up to their claims, but if you "go for" a more modest program, you may find fewer "features", or something that runs faster than molasses on your machine. If you want to do high end graphics, you really do need good hardware. Even 2D photo manipulation can take "oomph" if you want more- than- bog- standard resolutions.

Stop Press: Having started this section (3D CAD), and worked on merely collecting material (let alone editing it!) for about an hour, I came across Wikipedia's entry on 3D Modelers, which even includes a section on available free modelers. That's probably more valuable than what follows!

(See Stop Press. The following not tested by me.... but looked worth investigation....) Friedmann's POV-Ray This section about 3D modelling programs started because I stumbled across this on the homepage of ExIFier's creator... looks just the thing, looks like I can have my user-defined objects, and you can have animations (which I can live without) but the relevant pages are in German, and even with Google's "translate this page", I hesitate to get into something so complex in a language I don't speak! Even so, I'm greatly tempted! It certainly offers programmability... It uses the name "POV-Ray", which crops up frequently with a Google search... maybe I'm mis-guessing the German, and what Friedemann is offering is an editor to use with a more widely supported program?

(See Stop Press. The following not tested by me.... but looked worth investigation....) POV-Lab.org - Dated (1999, will run under Win95!)... but that suits me just fine, if it works! It will run fast on my c.2004 machine! Seems not to offer animations.

(See Stop Press. The following not tested by me.... but looked worth investigation....) SketchUp, the program Google has made available. It has a scripting language... but whether it can be used to create user-defined objects, I have yet to discover. The small flash presentation is breathtaking.... reveals numerous features. I guess that if a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth a million? For programming SketchUp, and it seems that you can do it with the free version, too, not just SketchUp Pro, you use Ruby. There's a book about Ruby viewable online. Ruby is an object oriented language.

(See Stop Press. The following not tested by me.... but looked worth investigation....) Anim8tor - animations allowed, and there's a scripting language, which may give me my "programmable" feature. It exports and imports files for the commercial "3D-Studio", which may be one of the commercial "big boys".... but remember that I don't know the genre well. Note: Anim8tor created by an Nvidia employee, but in his own time, I believe, i.e. don't assume it is "Nvidia endorsed".

(See Stop Press. The following not tested by me.... but looked worth investigation....) Blender - animations allowed. I didn't find an indication that user defined objects can be created.

(See Stop Press. The following not tested by me.... but looked worth investigation....) ArtOfIllusion Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. It is written entirely in Java, and should be usable on any Java Virtual Machine which is compatible with J2SE 1.4 or later." (virtues/ vices of java) Certainly programmable.

If none of the above float your boat, then there's about 30 more to try listed on a page about 3D graphics programs on the Free Software Foundation's site. (Some (many?) of them are for Linux.) If you find I've overlooked some thing good, and free, and for Windows, do let me know?

That's it for the 3D CAD stuff. Now we turn to a varied selection of other things.....

The following are in a random sequence.

Panoramic photos I know you can get Serif Panorama Plus version 1 on some magazine cover discs, and I imagine it will be in their library of free software before long, if it isn't there already. If you want something more complex, you might like "AutoPano". It may do more than the Serif product in such areas as correcting for lens induced distortions, tweaking resolutions. It may be more capable in quilting. It costs 99 euros if you want the full product, but the terms for trying the download are generous. To quote from their site: "You can try Autopano in a demo mode. In this mode, some features will be disabled ( you cannot save the project file, export to panotools is limited and a watermark on every rendering). No other function is limited : full resolution rendering is allowed, every format supported and you have no time limitation of the demo mode. You can judge output's quality by yourself."

For Gantt chart project planning: there's a sourceforge project. Windows/Linux/Mac

Want to turn your PC into a music jukebox? Who needs an iPod? Try WX Musik

HTML editor: Why code your web pages the hard way, like i do, with Notepad? If you want to be "fancy", try NVU Web Authoring System, available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

The NVU (pronounced N-view) team say of their product: "Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML"

File re-namer: Personally, I'm happy with Irfan and EXiFier, which do the job well, and I need for their other strengths, but if you want to try a different file re-namer, consider Ant Renamer

Instant Messaging: The sourceforge project once called "Gaim" is now called Pidgin. It gives you support for many "instant messaging" type services with just one client- no need to install all those separate proprietary alternative interfaces. To quote from their website: "Pidgin can work with: AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, Groupwise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, XMPP, Yahoo!, and Zephyr" Whew! Who would have thought there were so many?!

FTP client: The "devil I know (and like) is Terrapin... but I'm not sure (shame on me) that it does secure transfers. Filezilla, the one from the nice people who brought us Firefox almost certainly does, and how can you not like it with a name like that?

Video, DVD and audio player with radio and TV functions. Requires Win XP, w/ SP 1 or 2, DirectX 9.0c or higher, and the MS .NET framework. Allows recording movies to disc, and you can choose what codec you want to use. Called MediaPortal. Also reads RSS feeds.

Mind map designer: Organize your thoughts for presentations. Freemind. (No, a new mind doesn't come with it!)

For administrators of pcs on a network... Health Monitor. Allows "Big Brother" oversight- from CPU tture to changes in files, etc.

Calendar, address book, to-do list, email client: Aethera. (I'd also check out the online versinos offered by Google and Yahoo, if I wanted such services.)

"Database dictionary": JDictionary.I wasn't too clear from visiting the site EXACTLY what this means! PARTS of it seem to work only if you are online... but I suspect that others will work stand-alone, offline. It may (or may not!) give definitions of words. It may or may not also have built in thesaurus and look-up-in-another-language facilities.

A way to store your passwords: Kee Pass. I'm not sure quite what it offers beyond creating a textfile in any sensible wordprocessor (e.g. Open Office), and save it with a password... but that's the basic idea, probably made better...

Disk encryption software: True Crypt. It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file, etc. For Windows XP/2000/2003 and Linux.

Combination word processor and databaseKeynote.With good search facilities.

For taking screenshots: Screencopy.

Text editorSyn Text Editor.Can highlight text according to syntax rules. Useful to programmers and others. If I didn't use Textpad, which I paid for, althouh there's a good, capable, free demo, I'd certainly try this.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition): Nuance. If you are looking for a free OCR program, "SimpleOCR" from www.scanstore.com may fill your needs. You have to create "an account" with ScanStore, but it doesn't cost anything. Before you follow that path, try downloading it from the CNet download library, where it was called "SimpleOCR 3.1" at about 9/2006. (9.3MB download)

I only needed a .bmp file turned into editable text by SimpleOCR, but from the menus, it would seem that it will accept jpeg or tif files, and direct capture from a scanner. It seemed to support "profiles", so can perhaps be "trained" to recognise individuals' handwritng?

After the initial conversion to text, there's a well conceived feature: You can compare an image of the graphic that was the source side- by- side with the computer's attempt at turning it to text. This makes quick manual correction of any errors easier.


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Be careful. Not all, "free" software is a good thing. Be sure you learn a bit about spyware before you get too adventurous with trying things from the internet. I've put together a little introduction for you.
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