Tag Archives: cool

Cool Tool: Taskbar Shuffle

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OK folks, here is a nifty tool for you.  It’s called Taskbar Shuffle, and if you are running Windows this is a handy little item.  Just like the name implies, you can take items that are in the Windows taskbar and shuffle or move them around.  This is pretty cool in many ways, but I know from my own use, it can be nice to organize items together that go together or in some way that makes more sense that just the way they were opened, especially if you have lots and lots of windows open like I often do.  It’s easy to use too, just drag ’em around to wherever you want them, it’s that easy.  Best of all, like many of the best pieces of software that I have come across, it’s totally free so go check it out now.  Go ahead, RFN!

Here is the URL: http://nerdcave.webs.com/

While you are at it, check out all of the Cool Tools we have in the Cool Tools section, as well as everything in the Library, there’s lots of good stuff in there …

**Note: Don’t forget that the author of Taskbar Shuffle, just like many others out there including Solarum here, gives away the product for free despite all of the personal time invested in bringing you that product.  If you find something that you really like and find useful, think about the last time you paid for an app the didn’t live up to your expectations and make a donation to the little guy(s) and gal(s) out there writing the good stuff for free.

Revo Uninstaller, One Bad Program Remover!

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revo_box2Bad as in good, as in one bad motha’SHUT YO MOUTH!  Jus’ talkin’ ’bout Revo.

Sorry, I digress.  Anyway, this cool tool is called Revo Uninstaller as if you didn’t catch that already, and it’s one of the most useful Windows tools I have come across in a long time.  Don’t get me wrong, all the Cool Tools are great, but this one is a real gem.  What does it do?  The short version is that it uninstalls software.  In reality it does far more than that.  Yes, it interfaces to the standard Windows uninstaller, but it also can find stuff the uninstaller left behind (both registry items and files/directories) and remove them.  It can even monitor an application that doesn’t have an installer and figure out how to go in and remove it.  Now that’s cool.  All in all this has been superb at helping me keep my hard drive clean when I remove applications, and it keeps me from having to do all of that searching by hand like I used to do.  Best of all, it’s FREE!  Yep, you heard me, it’s free.  So go give it a test drive today, I am certain you will love it as much as I do.

http://www.revouninstaller.com/

Be sure to check out the rest of the Cool Tools that we have listed, you never know, you might find that perfect utility that you have been looking for!

Splunk is awesome, get it NOW!

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I found a cool tool, and that doesn’t even do it justice, I found a freakin’ awesome tool for monitoring whats going on with your servers and server logs.  It’s called Splunk, and it’s been around a while (a couple years at least, maybe more), but I just recently got the chance to check it out.

Wow.  Now, remember, I don’t do ANY paid reviews on this site.  So this is not me promoting something because I got a check for it.  This is me promoting something because of the principles of what I started this site for.  I found something totally cool, useful, well worth the time and money to invest in it and I want to tell all my readers about it.  That being said, just in case someone from Splunk is reading this right now and would like to send me a check, or a free license for the good promotion, I am all for it just drop me a line! 🙂

Anyway, this software can run on Windows, Linux, UNIX, you name it.  It accepts syslog input, flat file log parsing, interfaces with WMI and more.  So far, it knows what to do with everything I throw at it.  All that log data is chopped up and stored in a database so you can easily get meaningful information back out.  Probably the best feature of this whole darn thing is the interface.  Splunk has a CLI which rocks, but the web interface is one of the best I have ever seen.  Very slick, very nice, very easy to navigate, very easy to sort and search, truly amazing.  I have used other systems similar in theory (I won’t name names), and they didn’t do a half bad job at collecting the data, but it was getting anything useful out of it later that was the tough part.  Plus their appliance was much, much more expensive.

Now, do you want to know the best part?  Wait for it …. yep, it’s free!  No, really, it’s true.  They have a freely available and usable version of the software that 100% works.  The catch is that some advanced features are not enabled, and you are limited to 500MB of log data per day.  That’s great for most small shops, and to buy the Enterprise license for more features and data logging capacity, the pricing is not near as bad as the others I have seen.  Top that off with this being a better product and it’s like win, win … win … win … or something.

Go check it out, you’ll thank me if you haven’t done so already.  It’s free and installs in seconds, it’s so easy to setup you’ll laugh when you are done.  Go … now … go!  Enjoy!