High Wired: Do what you like with your screenshots

Handy Application of the Week: FastStone Capture

FastStone Capture is a tiny little application that allows to you take a photo of your computer screen (aka “screenshot”) and then do just about anything you’d like with that image.

FastStone Capture is quite handy for people who like to put screenshots into their Word or PowerPoint documents — especially if they wish to mark up the image or add effects to it first. The program also enables you to e-mail screenshots to friends, print them out into hard copies, crop them down to emphasize specific portions of the screenshots, or magnify them to get an even closer look at that webpage you were viewing.

Some of FastStone Capture’s main features include a screen color-picker, a screen magnifier, an “add-caption” capability, its small size (so it never slows down your computer when you use it), undo and redo options, its send-screenshot-in-an-e-mail feature, and global hotkeys that allow you to “activate the program’s capture capabilities anytime, anywhere.” (Though I have a sneaking suspicion that I could prove their boast of “anytime, anywhere” a bit misleading if I tried ...)

A lifetime license will run you $19.95. To learn more, hop over to http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm.

Cool Webpage of the Week: Zipdecode

Please note that the site I’m about to share with you here will not make you a better person, help you better understand your computer, give you reason to chuckle, nor save you time. All this aside, it’s still one of those ... well ... really neat things that you’ll look at for 30 seconds or so whilte thinking “Huh. This is pretty cool.”

Here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/37he7.

A few years back a smart fellow from M.I.T. by the name of Ben Fry developed Zipdecode, a little program that accounts for every single zip code in the United States. Click on the map and type in a number, any number. Try typing in the number 9, for example See all the dots along the entire West Coast turn white? Try typing another number, then another, then another. Delete one of the numbers and try another. Isn’t this clever? Isn’t this just neat?

Again, it won’t save the world, but it’s always interesting (to me at least) to see people exploring the realm of technology mixed with fresh ideas and design.

Free Download of the Week: Gnucleus

If you’re still using LimeWire or BearShare to share and download files, stop. Right now. Those programs involve spyware and loads of other junk that are guaranteed to slow down your computer. Try using Gnucleus instead. It’s free, it’s spyware free, yet it’s still powerful and easy to use. See for yourself: http://tinyurl.com/yvv3vp.



Have a great weekend, everyone! I’ll see you next Friday.

Based in Frisco, eRin pheiL is the primary creative force behind timeforcake (www.timeforcake.com). She can be reached via phone at (970) 668-0709 or e-mail at info@timeforcake.com.