Software & Utilities Archive

Brief reviews of useful software (mostly free), tools and online utilities for students

I have a fetish for checking out new technologies. While most things I check out turn out to be useless for my purposes, a few are life-changing. The following articles are about some such technologies, websites, plugins, gadgets or utilities that caught my attention over the years. These will be of particular interest to students and are relevant to others as well.

  • Zotero is a free-software to manage bibliographies and citations with advanced functions and an easy interface As a doctoral student a lot of my time goes into managing my references. Thankfully there are many tools around to help me manage my references and to speed up the process of inserting citations while I write my papers. After a lot of trial and error I settled on Refworks that I was really happy with. Unfortunately it is a paid software with a stiff fee that I may not be able to afford once I leave the university. Thankfully, a friend told...

    Zotero: The best citation tool around, and it’s free

    Posted on September 7, 2009 | 1 Comment
    Zotero is a free-software to manage bibliographies and citations with advanced functions and an easy interface As a doctoral student a lot of my time goes into managing my references. Thankfully there are many tools around to help me manage my references and to speed up the process of inserting citations while I write my papers. After a lot of trial and error I settled on Refworks that I was really happy with. Unfortunately it is a paid software with a stiff fee that I may not be able to afford once I leave the university. Thankfully, a friend told...

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  • An application to send custom auto responses in Gmail Gmail’s Canned responses feature allows you to send fairly sophisticated customised auto-responses based on incoming mails.  First we have to draft different kinds of responses we would like to send and label them.  For example, being the party animal I am becoming, I’d want a mail like, “This sounds great, I am on my way” for any e-mail inviting me for a party.  I will create it and label “Party mail”.  I can then create a filter in Gmail to scan all my incoming mails based on senders, keywords in text,...

    Custom auto-reply in Gmail for grad students and secret lovers

    Posted on June 24, 2009 | No Comments
    An application to send custom auto responses in Gmail Gmail’s Canned responses feature allows you to send fairly sophisticated customised auto-responses based on incoming mails.  First we have to draft different kinds of responses we would like to send and label them.  For example, being the party animal I am becoming, I’d want a mail like, “This sounds great, I am on my way” for any e-mail inviting me for a party.  I will create it and label “Party mail”.  I can then create a filter in Gmail to scan all my incoming mails based on senders, keywords in text,...

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  • Creating neat bibliographies can be a pain, Word 2007 makes it easy Note: There is an easier way to cite in MS Word and it’s free.  Check out my note on Zotero citation tool. There are hundreds of formats for citations like Chicago, APA, etc.  The only thing in common between them is that each of them is a nightmare!  I cannot imagine how people did extensive citations before the coming of automated help.  I am a big fan of refworks, endnote and other bibliography managers.  Unfortunately, these are costly and cannot be afforded by everyone.  For those who did...

    Citations using Word 2007: Bibliographies made easy

    Posted on May 17, 2008 | 4 Comments
    Creating neat bibliographies can be a pain, Word 2007 makes it easy Note: There is an easier way to cite in MS Word and it’s free.  Check out my note on Zotero citation tool. There are hundreds of formats for citations like Chicago, APA, etc.  The only thing in common between them is that each of them is a nightmare!  I cannot imagine how people did extensive citations before the coming of automated help.  I am a big fan of refworks, endnote and other bibliography managers.  Unfortunately, these are costly and cannot be afforded by everyone.  For those who did...

    Continue Reading...

  • Finally found the perfect voice recorder with great clarity, space, battery life and other great features I have tried my hands on four to five voice recorders so far. When I left to India for my fieldwork I was determined to get a good one that matches all my requirements. I will be doing long interviews and attending conferences – so I needed one that has a powerful mic and could record for long durations. When I read or when I work on some topic, I like to record my thoughts as they come. I needed a voice recorder that...

    Perfect voice recorder for fieldwork, interviews, conferences

    Posted on July 22, 2007 | No Comments
    Finally found the perfect voice recorder with great clarity, space, battery life and other great features I have tried my hands on four to five voice recorders so far. When I left to India for my fieldwork I was determined to get a good one that matches all my requirements. I will be doing long interviews and attending conferences – so I needed one that has a powerful mic and could record for long durations. When I read or when I work on some topic, I like to record my thoughts as they come. I needed a voice recorder that...

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  • The best task manager online now goes offline! I have been excited with the prospect of Google Gears that will allow many online applications to be used when we are offline.  After the announcement there was a little lull and I was waiting for the products to be rolled out – and the first of them that I have seen is my favourite Task Manager – Remember the milk.  With this the task manager can now be used when we are offline as well. Google gears is a product that allows developers to create applications for us to use online...

    Remember the milk available offline with Google Gears

    Posted on June 25, 2007 | No Comments
    The best task manager online now goes offline! I have been excited with the prospect of Google Gears that will allow many online applications to be used when we are offline.  After the announcement there was a little lull and I was waiting for the products to be rolled out – and the first of them that I have seen is my favourite Task Manager – Remember the milk.  With this the task manager can now be used when we are offline as well. Google gears is a product that allows developers to create applications for us to use online...

    Continue Reading...

  • Online news is more than just reading the same stuff online…it’s a great way of comparing how news is presented across different news papers Given that newspapers are our sole source of information on a variety of issues, news bias is a serious issue. In the days of reading on paper, I would subscribe to one, or at most two newspapers and read through them cursorily. But thanks to Google News (and other such news search engines), I now compare the presentation of news across newspapers. Google news puts together articles on a topic from newspapers across the world, and...

    Google News: Advantage of using news readers

    Posted on June 1, 2007 | No Comments
    Online news is more than just reading the same stuff online…it’s a great way of comparing how news is presented across different news papers Given that newspapers are our sole source of information on a variety of issues, news bias is a serious issue. In the days of reading on paper, I would subscribe to one, or at most two newspapers and read through them cursorily. But thanks to Google News (and other such news search engines), I now compare the presentation of news across newspapers. Google news puts together articles on a topic from newspapers across the world, and...

    Continue Reading...

  • Though I am an intensive user of various features of Google, I was surprised to find that it has an inbuilt calculator that I had not discovered till today.  Normally, I open MS Excel painfully or some other application to do simple calculations.  I found that one can do these by using the calculator function in Google by using standard methods that one would in Excel.  If one has the browser open, it’s a quicker and easier way to get answers than looking for an application.

    Google calculator for quick calculations online

    Posted on April 9, 2007 | No Comments
    Though I am an intensive user of various features of Google, I was surprised to find that it has an inbuilt calculator that I had not discovered till today.  Normally, I open MS Excel painfully or some other application to do simple calculations.  I found that one can do these by using the calculator function in Google by using standard methods that one would in Excel.  If one has the browser open, it’s a quicker and easier way to get answers than looking for an application.

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  • Map wy word creates a graphical output of various meanings of a word and enables us to find related words with a click Note: This feature has been disabled in Google Personalize, and visual thesaurus is not a free product anymore I often struggle for words when I am writing long pieces.  Beyond a point it becomes boring to use the same word again and again across pages and I desperately start looking for new words to express my ideas. I then started using Wordnet of Princeton University.  Wordnet lets me navigate to related words (going beyond synonmys).  Apart from...

    Map my word dictionary in Google Personalize

    Posted on March 21, 2007 | No Comments
    Map wy word creates a graphical output of various meanings of a word and enables us to find related words with a click Note: This feature has been disabled in Google Personalize, and visual thesaurus is not a free product anymore I often struggle for words when I am writing long pieces.  Beyond a point it becomes boring to use the same word again and again across pages and I desperately start looking for new words to express my ideas. I then started using Wordnet of Princeton University.  Wordnet lets me navigate to related words (going beyond synonmys).  Apart from...

    Continue Reading...

  • With some great new improvements Google Personalize is finally something to take seriously The last time I used Google Personalize, it was not a greatly attractive thing.  But in a span of few months some new features have been added that make Google Personalize a great online utility that one could use on a day to day basis.  To start with, instead of going to google for search, I can set it to go to Google personalize.  In that page, I can have snippets of news from selected sources, local weather, my custom search engines, and an assortment of other...

    News, weather, fun with Google Personalize

    Posted on March 20, 2007 | 1 Comment
    With some great new improvements Google Personalize is finally something to take seriously The last time I used Google Personalize, it was not a greatly attractive thing.  But in a span of few months some new features have been added that make Google Personalize a great online utility that one could use on a day to day basis.  To start with, instead of going to google for search, I can set it to go to Google personalize.  In that page, I can have snippets of news from selected sources, local weather, my custom search engines, and an assortment of other...

    Continue Reading...

  • The finest online task manager can easily be integrated with Google personal home page Google personalize has improved by leaps and bounds in the last year. Apart from a sleek Ajax page where we can drag and drop (and rearrange) various items of our interest, they have now added a “tab system”. Most importantly, it now permits us to “add stuff” that includes an assortment of Google widgets including, remember the milk. To add your tasks from rememberthemilk.com into my Google personalize home page all I have to do is to click on “add stuff” on the top right, and...

    Remember the milk task manager in Google personalize homepage

    Posted on March 20, 2007 | 1 Comment
    The finest online task manager can easily be integrated with Google personal home page Google personalize has improved by leaps and bounds in the last year. Apart from a sleek Ajax page where we can drag and drop (and rearrange) various items of our interest, they have now added a “tab system”. Most importantly, it now permits us to “add stuff” that includes an assortment of Google widgets including, remember the milk. To add your tasks from rememberthemilk.com into my Google personalize home page all I have to do is to click on “add stuff” on the top right, and...

    Continue Reading...

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