GE Geek Tech Toolkit
- Details
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 10 August 2014 16:10
- Written by Christian Dunn
Do you ask your painter to fix your car or ask your mechanic to landscape your garden?
This may seem like a silly question but there are two key things critical to deciding how you request assistance; The right skills and the right tools.
When you take your car to your mechanic you don't give him a socket set, a couple of screwdrivers and a wrench. You expect that he has the tools needed to do the job required. This is the same in IT. Every IT Technician should have the right tools to do the job. Unfortunately in this very diverse industry that can mean a lot of tools and you probably know them or use them depending on the job at hand but where do you keep them? I have a very long list of solutions to various issues and the appropriate tools to use kept in my head. Unfortunately that is not always the best place and when a problem arises valuable time can be lost finding and downloading those tools.
That is where the GE Geek Tech Toolkit is your new best friend. This great utility is a portable collection of over 300 freeware tech related programs. Download this to a USB key and you will have all the tools you need at your fingertips when you need them. It includes an update utility to keep them all up to date and a taskbar menu to find the right tool at the right time. This is the most powerful and complete toolkit of tech related utilities I have seen and it contains nearly all of my personal favourites. I will definitely be keeping a copy close at hand and so should every IT Technician. The initial download is nearly 600MB but after extracting and updating I have nearly 3GB of tools available. Download it today from the GE Geek website.
In addition to this great toolkit the GE Geek website is a treasure trove of links to invaluable resources and documentation so make sure you bookmark it for future reference.
Yo
- Details
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 28 July 2014 01:11
- Written by Christian Dunn
Yo is a simple application for iOS, Android and Windows Phone which has only one purpose, to send a simple notification message.
Like many others I struggled to understand how such a simple notification application could be useful. Until the Yo API was released it was hard to see a practical application for Yo but the more I look the possibilities are endless.
Playing with Yo led me to develop SendYo, a desktop application designed for sending a Yo via the command line or a simple user interface. Now I can use Yo to send notifications for system outages, serious alerts or daily warnings. This means I can be notified when an event occurs clearly and simply without needing to have my email running 24/7 to receive these messages. It also means my team can subscribe to the notifications they need to receive on their mobile devices providing a simple global mobile communication network.
If you haven't used Yo check it out today and if you are a system or application administrator check out SendYo and how you can use it to provide simple alerts for your team.
Yo!
Screenr
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- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 07 May 2014 00:17
- Written by Christian Dunn
Screenr is an instant screencasting service. With just your web browser and Java you can record up to 5 minutes of your screen and publish that as a screencast to share with others. After your screenshot is published you receive a URL instantly which can be shared with your viewers, or your screencast can be published to YouTube.
With no software to install and the ability to record and publish in minutes screenr is an indispensable tool.
For those managing customer support service desks or involved in software development this is a must have. Check out the PRO plans for additional features to tailor the service to your business.
Dimensions
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- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 23 November 2013 23:15
- Written by Christian Dunn
In this age of mobile devices every website must be able to cater for a wide range of formats from a small screen iPhone 4 to a premium Android phone to an iPad and laptop.
If you have been following my recent articles on building responsive websites or you currently are working to make your website more mobile then Dimensions is the tool for you. Dimensions works either in your web browser or as an extension in Google Chrome and allows you to test how your website looks at a variety of scales to suit different size devices and can even show how your website would look on those devices.
LucidChart for Chrome
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- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 23 November 2013 22:57
- Written by Christian Dunn
Visio users, the future is here. If you are like me and constantly need to generate functional charts, flow charts, mind maps or presentation images then you are probably a very familiar user of Visio.
Lucidchart is a new Chrome extension that provides all the same functionality online and offline. This fantastic tool has a very wide range of graphing options and pricing packages starting with free.
Aview ABC iView client for Android
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- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 12 November 2013 17:00
- Written by Christian Dunn
Aview is an unofficial Android client for ABC iView.
There has been much discussion and debate online about the ABC not producing an Android client for iView. While this is unofficial and likely to break when any updates occur this client is fantastic and is highly recommended.
This application works really well in my testing on all devices from phone to 7" and 10" tablets running Android 4.0 and up. This is one of the best unofficial apps I have tested.
Get Aview here | View iView here
Free web hosting with biz.nf
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- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 11 November 2013 17:00
- Written by Christian Dunn
If you have been following my articles in recent months in relation to setting up a WordPress or Joomla site then this will whet your appetite.
A free biz.nf website comes with:
» 250 MB web space
» 5000 MB of data transfer
» Host 1 Domain name free
» FREE domain name (.co.nf)
In addition to this they offer a quick installation process to automatically create and configure a Joomla or Wordpress website in minutes. This means all you need to do is worry about how you want it to look.
If you begin to outgrow your website or want to add a custom domain name then you can easily upgrade to one of their affordable plans.
Check out biz.nf
TeamViewer Quick Support for Android and iOS
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- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 14 July 2013 01:50
- Written by Christian Dunn
Finally there is a simple solution for supporting mobile devices....
Whether you are a support engineer, developer or the family tech go-to-guy, TeamViewer Quick Support is your new best friend.
Using the traditional TeamViewer application you can now connect to any Android or iOS device with the Quick Support application installed.
Get Real-time screenshots, chat and nudge users, push text to the device clipboard, push and pull wifi settings, pull system logs, see a list of installed apps and view running processes.
For those with Samsung, Sony or Alcatel One Touch devices you can also get full remote control of the device.
Best of all, just like the normal TeamViewer application all connections are secured with 256 bit AES encryption ensuring security of your information.
The standard TeamViewer application is now also available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8/RT for connecting to other devices.
Debut Video Capture
- Details
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 10 July 2013 23:09
- Written by Christian Dunn
Debut Video Capture is a Windows video recording application by NCH Software.
Debut allows you to record from a webcam, external devices, your computer screen or streaming video. You can even schedule recordings to occur at certain times.
The free version provides basic functionality but the full version is very affordable and well worth it. The best bit is it is simple, affordable yet very effective.
Check out this introductory tutorial:
With a massive range of features Debut enables you to record video in a range of formats suitable for everything from a PSP to the Playstation 3 to your iPhone.
Most of the videos I have added through this site have been recorded on Debut and now I have the full version there will be plenty more.
Net Limiter 3 - Ultimate Bandwidth Shaper
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- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 01 July 2013 00:53
- Written by Christian Dunn
Trying to identify application or network performance issues in an internet connected world is difficult. With a wide range of factors you can never be sure whether there is a problem with the server, the site, the datacenter, the internet connections or the network. You can also never be sure how well an internet site or application will perform for users on a slow internet connection.
As a support engineer you can always find out the speed of the internet connection but how can you replicate the problems or performance they are experiencing? This is the purpose of NetLimiter. NetLimiter provides the ability to control or monitor internet bandwidth on a computer or process level. Now, sitting on your high bandwidth office internet connection you can replicate the speed on a remote machine by setting arbitrary download or upload speeds. Basic functionality is also free.
