• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Best free obscure software

I found FREEDIFF very useful in a previous job. It allows quick comparisons between ascii files. I haven't used their other programmes.

Strangely, their Help file has a bizarre "Help on Life" section which, despite not reading in full, seems to be a long-winded argument against atheism!
 
RoughDraft (sorry, no links allowed yet) is a terrific program geared towards scriptwriters. Best feature: automatically formats action, names and dialog correctly.
 
Gevaudan said:
RoughDraft (sorry, no links allowed yet) is a terrific program geared towards scriptwriters. Best feature: automatically formats action, names and dialog correctly.
Click to expand...

Linkypoo:
http://www.salsbury.f2s.com/rd.htm

I also second RoughDraft. I have used it in a couple of short screenplays I've written.

And Gevaudan, you should be able to use links by now. I think it's 15 posts before they allow linking.
 
AutoHotkey

AutoHotkey website said:
* Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder.
* Create hotkeys for keyboard, joystick, and mouse. Virtually any key, button, or combination can become a hotkey.
* Expand abbreviations as you type them. For example, typing "btw" can automatically produce "by the way".
* Create custom data-entry forms, user interfaces, and menu bars. See GUI for details.
* Remap keys and buttons on your keyboard, joystick, and mouse.
* Convert any script into an EXE file that can be run on computers that don't have AutoHotkey installed.
Click to expand...

AutoHotkey has an active forum with many user-created utilities. I have a simple script for accessing Wikipedia, YouTube, Google, Dictionary. All I have to do is highlight words in any web page or application and then hit the appropriate hot key.


Phun. A 2d physics simulator. The link is to the Wiki, which contains a demo video and a link to the download. This is a really fun (phun, geddit?!) and interesting tool.
 
Ok well we had a little from linux/unix people, so I'll add into that bunch - however most of what I am going to list is cross platform by personal preference:

My favorite editor so far (next to vim in a shell) was recommended by El_Spectre:

http://www.activestate.com/komodo_edit/

I prefer this media manager/mp3 player manager to itunes etc. mainly due to it being built on the gecko engine and neat as hell plugins:

http://getsongbird.com/

Calendaring via Sunbird (Or the Lightning extension for Thunderbird) this also works with Google Calendars with a few small tweaks:

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/lightning/

Cross platform control of multiple machines via one keyboard/mouse (assuming they all have their own monitor):

http://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it yet, but I am a big fan of Pidgin, and it's smaller console-based finch. I like it mainly for the killer OTR encryption plugin (stands for Off The Record) that provides excellent in transit ecryption between clients. Finch's only drawback is I had to write my own plugin for OTR encryption to be used. I hope this changes soon. Granted Pidgin isn't exactly obscure, but the OTR plugin isn't well known.

http://www.pidgin.im/

http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/

This one is cross platform, only insomuch as you'd better be a ubuntu 8.10 user and newer to easily install (though you can compile from source) and is one of the easiest and best DVD ripping tools out there, IMO:

http://handbrake.fr/

Also to use with ubuntu you'll need to follow these direction to get dvd encryption working (other platforms have similar how-to's all over google.):

http://lifehacker.com/350015/enable-dvd-playback-in-ubuntu-in-two-commands

Cross platform free video editing (via a sign up):

http://jahshaka.org/

I like many different bittorrent clients, but these three stand out as the best of easy and functional:

http://deluge-torrent.org/

http://www.transmissionbt.com/

http://www.vuze.com/app

Then again, I mainly just use rtorrent. That's found here or in your favorite linux repo: http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/

Not obscure, but always needs to be mentioned due to awesomeness:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Also, There are several good options for encryption that are cross platform, but many are not free. TrueCrypt is very effective, and on a windows machine supports full disck encryption with an option to install a hidden OS accessed by a different passkey (for "under duress" situations you need to boot a clean/different OS):

http://www.truecrypt.org/

Full disk encryption on my *nix boxes is done via LUKS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LUKS

All of the above is cross platform. Now at home I only run *nix (opensolaris and ubuntu) I'll get into the very cool platform specific for those:

SSHerminator:

http://lifehacker.com/5135130/ssherminator-splits-ssh-terminal-windows-into-panes

(This is included in opensolaris builds newer than nv105)

While OpenOffice is very good for full featured office suites, often my machines only need lightweight installs so I use these:

http://www.abisource.com/ (This is cross platform)

http://www.gnome.org/gnumeric

And for my accounting needs:

http://www.gnucash.org/

I've converted my small recording studio to ubuntu studio edition and use the following:

http://ardour.org/

http://www.rosegardenmusic.com/

VM/Virtualization via Sun's VirtualBox:

http://www.virtualbox.org/


On a side note, for those who love VIM, you can make firefox act like vim (this serves no good purpose I can find except to be a neat novelty):

http://www.developernotes.com/archive/2008/06/30/vim-firefox-vimperator.aspx
 
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Some more Windows ports of programs that are originally written for *nix (mainly Linux) that I use a lot, to the point that I install them on my Windows partition as well.

LyX: A LaTeX editor that I use for writing papers because it's pretty much LaTeX for dummies. The Windows installer comes with an installer for LaTeX too.
http://www.lyx.org

Inkscape: A nice vector-graphics program (like Adobe Illustrator). It's a little buggy and slow, but it's free.
http://www.inkscape.org

XChat: An IRC client, and about the best one I've found, though it can be annoying to configure.
http://www.xchat.org

And GnuCash, which ducky already mentioned, has a Windows port, so you needn't feel left out if you don't want to pay for Quicken.
 
theturtlemoves said:
Some more Windows ports of programs that are originally written for *nix (mainly Linux) that I use a lot, to the point that I install them on my Windows partition as well.

LyX: A LaTeX editor that I use for writing papers because it's pretty much LaTeX for dummies. The Windows installer comes with an installer for LaTeX too.
http://www.lyx.org

Inkscape: A nice vector-graphics program (like Adobe Illustrator). It's a little buggy and slow, but it's free.
http://www.inkscape.org

XChat: An IRC client, and about the best one I've found, though it can be annoying to configure.
http://www.xchat.org

And GnuCash, which ducky already mentioned, has a Windows port, so you needn't feel left out if you don't want to pay for Quicken.
Click to expand...

Forgot about inkscape! Good call!

Also, there's the Gimp which is not obscure, but is a good graphics editor:

http://www.gimp.org/

Also cross platform.
 
theturtlemoves said:
In all fairness, I just noticed that BillC mentioned it first...

Also, not at all obscure, but very useful and cross-platform.
Eclipse: Very fully-featured IDE with support (via plugins) for most popular languages, and a few obscure ones.
http://www.eclipse.org/
Click to expand...

Yeah there's another thread in here with editor wars going on. I mentioned in that one I like kdevelop and komodo. No one really commented on kdevelop.

Granted Eclipse and Netbeans are both very good.
 
DVD Decrypter for ripping DVD's. Also good for manipulating DVD image files. You'll have to search to find it, it moves around a lot.
 
Blender- 3d modeling/animation. I'm not sure you could call it obscure since there's a large community of users. I didn't know about it before February.
 
While we're in asking mode, let me ask this:

I have a utility I've used since W95 called SnapIt. It was written in Japan, and the programmer stopped supporting it soon after I got it.

What it does is TSR, and when you open a folder it rearranges the files in it so they are as near a rectangle in your screen's aspect ratio as possible, then shrinks the borders to fit. It works in any folder display mode (icons, small icons, lists, detail lists, but not tiles or thumbnails, which I never use anyway). I happen to like icons for most uses, so this is useful to me. No more huge, empty windows with three files in them filling the screen.

I've searched in vain for a replacements. It still works, usually, in Windows XP (which of courtse it was never designed for), but sometimes fails. It does other things, like saving and restoring the icons on the desktop in various resolution settings.

Anyone know of a replacement that might do these things?
 
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