Six Softwares I cannot live without!

I thought this time I will write about some not so popular but very useful software. This list is in no particular order but I use all of these everyday!

1. XMind http://www.xmind.net
XMind is a mind-mapping and brainstorming software. It was a big help to chart our thoughts, during the time we were running the startup.

2. 7-zip http://www.7-zip.org
This is the one zip / unzip software that can unzip all the zip files from rar, zip, tar, gzip and even its own 7z format.

3. Techsmith Jing http://www.jingproject.com/
Jing allows you to take screen shots, make screen casts and even annotate your screen shots. Web developers spend time writing back and forth comments about a screen without clearly explaining what they mean. “Instead of talking at people, show them what you see…”. It is a must have for all people who work in web development, testing or design.

4. Keepass http://keepass.info
How many of you use the same password in all of your accounts so that it is easy to remember them? Most people I know share passwords keeping only a maximum of 3 easy to remember passwords. There were some commercially available password safes where you can encrypt and save your passwords. But I was not comfortable using a proprietary software from some unknown company. Now we have a popular open source password safe. Since its code is open source it would have been reviewed by many developers. Better yet Keepass is available in most platforms including mobile platforms like Blackberry and Windows Mobile. An iPhone app is also user development. I now use that to remember all my passwords and I no longer use a single password for all sites .

5. Dropbox https://www.getdropbox.com
Dropbox allow you to synchronize your files among multiple computers. One easy way to synchronize my Keepass file and other files between my home and work PC! It also keeps the versions of your changes to the files. They also support multiple OS including Windows, Mac and Linux. A 2 GB basic account is free.

6. Vim for Windows http://www.vim.org
I love Unix and I always say the old line lifted from some unknown author: “Unix is User friendly… but it chooses its friends”. If you learn how to use vi, it becomes a necessity. I love the easiness by which I can repeat a command or record a macro. For people who are vi-challenged, I recommend Notepad++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net. It is also a wonderful text editor which I use. It is a must have editor for all developers.