Lately, I’ve added a few free tools to my system, little helpers:

Meesoft’s Diagram Designer:

— a simple but useful tool for designing charts, graphs, and so forth.  In fact, I used the program to design some recent diagrams for 5GW at D5GW.  Some of the syntax is unusual (for instance, formatting text) but not difficult to master.  Admittedly, I’ve not used the Diagram Designer for much yet; so I don’t know everything it can do.  (My general modus operandi is to focus on current projects; not, test driving applications fully!)

I downloaded it from CNET, but it can also be downloaded from the developer’s site.


ALZip 6.7:




A very useful zipping utility.  Granted, WinZip is the most common application; but AlZip is nearly as good and is totally free.

Nearly as good:  I have had only one difficulty, which occurred when I tried to extract the file and folder structure from a peculiar archive downloaded from the ‘Net.  But I’ve only had that one difficulty.  ALZip has performed well in every other instance.

ALZip can be downloaded from CNet as well, or from the developer’s site.  (ALTools, the developer, has a slew of utilities available for free download; I may have to check out some of the others, eventually….)


IrfanView:

Okay, I’ve used IrfanView for over a year, but I’m adding it here because I think it is a very useful tool for quick editing of images.  (Typically, it’s a viewer capable of displaying images, video files, and slideshows of images and videos in a wide range of formats; but IrfanView has some nice editing features as well.)




—that’s actually a screen capture of a screen capture of a screen capture!  Adding borders to an image via an editing of the canvas size makes easy the addition of text below or above an image.  Normal resizing, sharpening, color enhancements, etc., are fairly simple with IrfanView.

I also recommend downloading and installing the plugins package from the developer’s site:  a great portion of the utility of Irfanview is available only after the plugins have been installed.

Downloadable from CNET or the developer’s site.