Sounds interesting?  Well that is what was quoted on the developer’s site and instantly caught my attention. After trying it (and ignoring minor quirks in UI and spellings) I must say I have not been disappointed.

I am talking about capture.NET. The tool is aptly called the Swiss army knife of PC tools because it just does so many things. I must confess that after looking at the site and its presentation I was a little wary of malware. However I submitted the file to VirusTotal and the results were 0 positive on 38 engines, so I went ahead and double-clicked to launch.

The tool has a Professional Version and a Free Version. The Professional version requires you to pay $15 for a license. However the Free Version is quite a handful in itself.  The features I am discussing are all available in the free version.  If you need something extra than you may like to have a look at the Professional offering.

Let’s just have a look at some of the features that capture.NET has to offer:

Screen Captures

Capture.NET allows you to take screenshots. Just like some of the commercial applications you can take screenshots by isolating windows, regions or take full screen grabs. The tool offers you a zoomed in view of the screen to help you precisely grab just the area you like.

Basic Image Editing

The captured image is then presented to you within an image editor, where you can do some basic editing. The image editing features include the ability to:

• Crop
• Rotate
• Add edge effects like shadows, torn edges, soft edges
• Convert pictures to Ascii (Cool!)
• The basic cut, copy paste, save etc

Post it Notes

Capture.NET provides you the capability to post notes on your screen. Just hit Ctrl + Shift + N and type in your note. You have now got an instant sticky note. You can also manage your sticky notes from the context menu accessed via the tray icon.

A Privacy Eraser

A mini tool that allows you to clean temporary files, the recycle bin, clipboard, cookies, MRU lists, Windows Events Logs and perform some minor tweaks like clearing the pagefile on shutdown.

A Color Picker

A great tool for web designers and programmers.  The color picker allows you to pick any color off the screen. It also provides you with sliders to generate color schemes or if you are really stuck, hit the random button to get a random color suggestion.

A File Format Convertor

This allows you to inter-convert between the various image formats. Just browse to images you wish to convert on your hard disk, select all images that you want to convert and choose the appropriate command. File Format Converter also allows you to convert chm files to html files.

A Tweaker

Tweaker allows you to perform some basic registry tricks on your system. It provides you with detailed information about your system and ready access to the device manger and the Windows System Information utility. Tweaker also has options to restore the settings for a hijacked Internet Explorer.

A Backup Expert

Backup Expert allows you to backup your mail (Outlook) as well as Internet Explorer favorites and feeds. Though honestly I missed Firefox support here.

Alarm Clock, World Time, Timer and Time Synchronization

Apart from the basic alarm clock functionality, the tool also offers count-down/count-up timer and time synchronization with a NTP server. You can also view the different time zones and time differences readily accessible through keyboard shortcuts.

Some Other Utilities

There are plenty of other features offered by capture.NET which I would have to leave for you to explore yourself. Some of them are great for programmers like the customizable Ruler or the Window Spy which gives you important information about windows, buttons, and other UI elements. Indispensable if you are into writing Autohot key scripts, Windows Programming or something similar. Others like the font viewer, calendar and lunar phases are more for your general use.

Definitely give it a try and let us know which ones you liked or if you use any other tools for accomplishing similar tasks.

The kids in the mail room were bringing me a few new packs daily. I stuck them everywhere. On monitors, servers, laptops even on interns. (Hey I have problems remembering names more than IP addresses!)

So when I came across this simple <1MB application that brought stickies into my computer world I was in love. If you are a “sticky” person and have a need for a great sticky notes software then this is an application you won’t want to miss – and of course it is free. So go grab this Windows only installer from here.  You can visit their homepage here.

I’m sure you are all saying to yourself….stickies?  Really? This is your innovative software?

Stop your chuckling freeware loving reader because there is more to Stickies… Something your precious 3M pads can’t do. How about syncing your post-it notes across multiple machines? And how about for the low low price of free?

Yup Stickies makes use of Amazon’s web services and lets you bring your sticky notes to whatever machine you want!

Let’s check out Stickies simplistic goodness. You install it and then you get a little icon in your system tray like so:

When you click on the icon you will get this context menu where you can create notes, show all notes, delete them, modify your preferences and the option to Synchronize your notes online.

You can change your stickies colors from the normal yellow to anything your sticky heart desires. As well as the font and transparency of the note.

Under application settings you have the option to start Stickies Automagically when the system comes up and the option to use your own custom icon in the system tray – that is very cool and an option rarely seen in a programs preferences.

This is the screen where you can configure your Amazon S3 account. You simply need to give it your Secret Access Key and your Access Key ID. Click the test button to verify you copied the information off your sticky pad correctly .

You can vary the color, font and transparency for each different sticky as seen below.

So instead of your office looking like this:

Throw those stickies on your puter’! What are you guys using to remind you of stuff your meat computer won’t retain? Let us know in the comments.