Archive for the ‘Software’ Category

(Found via blogger Jennifer Fulwiler at Conversion Diary.)

ToneCheck Beta by Lymbix is for real, though if it performs as described, it sounds like something you might dream up but only be able to wish would exist. Or maybe even like something from the Onion or an old SNL spoof commercial.

“ToneCheck™ is an e-mail plug-in that flags sentences with words or phrases that may convey unintended emotion or tone, then helps you re-write them. Just like Spell Check… but for Tone.” Or more to the point, “ToneCheck™ helps people to communicate more effectively and quite frankly, prevents your employees from saying stupid things,” says the company on its Enterprise page.

The site offers a free download, although the Enterprise page refers to “volume pricing”; you may have to wade deeper into the user agreement than I have or ask someone at the company to determine whether you may use the free download for business purposes. We won’t be testing it at this time, because unfortunately, it’s currently available only for Microsoft Outlook 2003, 2007, and 2010. The site allows you to submit a request for notification when it is developed for Outlook Express, Apple Mail, Gmail, or Thunderbird.

While I was training a client to use GIMP to manipulate images, the client asked me if I’d heard of Light Artist. I hadn’t so I gave it a quick try and wow, am I glad I did. This tool lets you add lighting effects to photos that look as if you had a light kit at the photo shoot. In just a few minutes, we took a photo that the client had described as “not that one, it’s too dark” and turned it into a front page feature shot.

Here’s how it works. You add multiple light sources, adjust the angle, size and intensity of the light, and apply it to the original image. There are three types of light sources to choose from: spotlight (like shining a flashlight), omni (like having a light bulb shining on part of the image) and parallel light source (like having the sun shining as a distant light source all at the same angle). You can also change the ambient light and/or the light source colors and even add a texture to the red, green or blue channel. All in all it makes for some very nice effects.

Here’s what I was able to do with a simple photo of some strawberries from our garden. The first shot is the original, a little dark and the front strawberry looks rather dull. The “after” shot fixes those problems quite easily.

Anyway, a great find, and it’s even freeware. Note though that when you install it, it piggyback installs another program (Web Photo Album, also from the same programmer) but you can uninstall it easily and it won’t remove the Light Artist application. Nice to know you’re never too old to learn something new, even from a client.

Ever needed to capture an entire web page, top-to-bottom with no browser and all elements visible? This used to be a huge pain in the you-know-what, but not any more. ScreenGrab to the rescue! This handy tool lets you grab and save or copy the whole page, the visible portion, the window (with browser), or even just a selection.

The ScreenGrab image to the right took me just a few seconds to capture.

No more pasting and stitching in your image editing software. No more erasing the surrounding window elements. This is a must-have plug-in on all of my machines. Enjoy!

I’m still surprised that some of my serious web developer friends and colleagues don’t know about this one.

The Web Developer Toolbar plugs into Firefox, Flock, SeaMonkey, and Chrome, and works on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux. This little extension has been an amazingly valuable debugging tool for just about any website related-problem you could dream of. Image errors? Got you covered. Can’t find the div? Found! What font size is that H2? Identified! Anyway, you get the idea.