Five free Chrome tools for faster, easier searches

Your search for the perfect search is over. Five free tools from the Chrome Web Store work with the Chrome browser to make searching easier, or help you tweak your search queries to minimize unwanted results. If you want to delve only into Wikipedia, or if you want to ignore certain sites—especially ones that seem suspect—you can do it with one of these helpers.

I’m lazy. I admit it. Sometimes, the idea of typing a query into a search engine is enough to discourage me from running a Web search altogether. But with Highlight to Search, I can embrace my laziness and still conduct the Web searches I need.

Highlight to Search adds your highlighted text to its search field, and then displays other suggestions based on the search term.

Once you've installed this Chrome extension, Highlight to Search lets you conduct searches for keywords you select on a webpage. Highlight a word or phrase, and Highlight to Search will display a small magnifying glass icon.

Click that, and you’ll see your highlighted phrase along with other search suggestions. Pick one, click again, and your search is complete: Highlight to Search opens a new tab, displaying Google’s search results for your query.

Searching doesn’t get any easier than that.

I resisted the allure of Wikipedia for a long time. It can’t be trusted, I said. It’s not reliable, I claimed. And now I’m over it.

Wikipedia Search displays its results in a drop-down window that lets you read them without leaving the page you're browsing.

Opening my mind to Wikipedia also opened the door to Wikipedia Search. This Chrome App and browser extension lets you search Wikipedia without leaving your current webpage.

Wikipedia Search displays images in easy-to-browse results.

All of the information you seek appears in a window that drops down from the Wikipedia Search icon added to your browser bar. The attractive and well-designed window includes images and links. You also have the option of clicking a button to view the Wikipedia page in a new browser tab.

Wikipedia Search isn’t perfect: On two occasions, it returned an error page in response to a basic search query. (In both instances, however, the error disappeared when I repeated my query.) Nevertheless, it remains a great way to dig up information from a vast trove of content without interrupting your browsing.

There's such a thing as TMI (too much information) in search, too. Say that you prefer the food reviews posted on Urbanspoon to those on Chow or Yelp. A reliable way to prevent sites that you don't want to read from surfacing in searches is to use Google’s own Personal Blocklist (by Google). Make no mistake: That's its name.

When future searches return results from sites you've blocked, Personal Blocklist lets you know with a message at the bottom of the page and a link to view those results.

This Chrome extension adds a link to all of your Google search results, so you can block search results from a given domain. Click it, and all such results disappear from view. The domain goes to your personal blocklist, which you can manage by clicking the Personal Blocklist icon added to your Chrome bar. Here, you can choose to block only subsets of certain domains, remove sites from your blocklist, or add others simply by typing them in.

When future searches return results from those sites, Google notifies you with a message at the bottom of the page and a link to view those results. Personal Blocklist (by Google) isn’t a universal cure to search-engine overload, but it is a handy way to tailor your results.

You know better than to trust everything you find on the Web, but distinguishing what you can trust from what you can’t is often difficult. To help you figure it out, WOT (a Chrome extension from the website reputation and review service) crowdsources the job.

WOT adds small traffic-light icons next to your search results, showing you how others regard each site.

WOT adds small icons next to search results that all major search engines return, along with links that appear on your social networks and Webmail services. The icons use the traffic-light scheme: Green means the site is widely considered to be reliable; yellow suggests that you should treat the site with caution; and red indicates that it may pose a security threat.

Clicking the icon takes you to WOT’s site. There you see more details about the site, and you can read what other users have to say about it. WOT allows you to add your own information about any site on the Web, just by clicking the WOT icon on to your Chrome menu bar.

WOT doesn’t guarantee your safety on the Web, but it does help you navigate its dangers with the help of thousands of cyber-friends.

One of my all-time favorite browser tools, the Google Toolbar, isn't available for Google Chrome. According to Google, that’s because many of the Google Toolbar's features are built into Chrome itself. Still, I miss having a toolbar, which is why I love SearchBar. This Chrome extension adds a customizable search toolbar to Chrome.

SearchBar is accessible via the small icon in your Chrome menu bar, or it can live at the top of your browser window permanently.

SearchBar adds a magnifying-glass icon to Chrome’s menu bar. Click it, and a search toolbar appears. For easier access to the toolbar, use the settings menu to create a custom key combination, or have it display whenever you're browsing. To use it, enter your query, and click the site you’d like to search.

Highlight text on the webpage, and SearchBar automatically adds it to the search field.

The default options are Google, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Wolfram Alpha, but you can customize the choices by using SearchBar’s settings menu. SearchBar lacks the slickness of Google’s own toolbar, which becomes its own part of your browser. But since Google Toolbar isn’t available for Chrome, SearchBar is the next best thing.

Anyone can type a search term into a text bar. But these five tools do more, helping you dig exactly what you want out of the search results more quickly and easily. And they're free, so you don't have to dig out your wallet at all.

Liane Cassavoy is a veteran technology and business journalist. She contributes regularly to PCWorld and has written about business issues and products for Entrepreneur Magazine and other publications. She is the author of two business start-up guides published by Entrepreneur Press.
More by Liane Cassavoy

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

So you want to be a coder! These tools can get you there

Coding is powerful magic, and learning to code is like reading a pile of moldy spellbooks while grinding alchemical ingredients into fine powders—at least, it used to be. But new, interactive learning tools put the exercises front and center, promoting you from apprentice to sorcerer at your own pace. Some make you prove that you understand a lesson before letting you move forward, resulting in a more engaging learning experience—and ideally, greater understanding. Not all are for beginners: Experienced coders sometimes need to pick up a new language, too. But they’re all available on the Web, and most are free.

Codecademy offers a range of browser-based interactive tutorials about CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and more. All of its courses are free. If you want more than just a quick course, you can opt for one of four “tracks” (structured learning pathways spanning several courses).

An elegant code editor--with syntax highlighting and real-time error checking--occupies most of Codeacademy's interface.

I tested Codecademy with an accessible, sensibly structured beginner-level course called Getting Started With Programming that let me skip ahead when I already knew the material being covered. The site also lets expert programmers create their own courses for teaching aspects of JavaScript, Python, and Ruby, all for free.

Unlike Codecademy, Code School charges users a fee of $25 per month—though the site does offer a few free courses, too, including a Git tutorial and a Ruby on Rails programming course called Rails for Zombies (zombies included).

With Code School's Git tutorial, you simply type into a virtual console within the browser--no download necessary.

The Git tutorial requires no programming knowledge, and you can complete it in a matter of moments. It requires setting up a real (free) GitHub account, and pushing a repository to that account. Code School’s Git tutorial doesn’t have any videos, but the text is clear, and the design is pleasant and distraction-free.

The Rails for Zombies introductory video explains how zombies can help you learn Ruby on Rails. Plus, zombies.

The more-complex Rails for Zombies tutorial includes videos followed by practical exercises. It assumes a higher level of initial knowledge than the tutorials at Codecademy and Rubymonk do, and it doesn’t let you skip ahead: You must complete each level before moving to the next one. You can download the videos and review them as you do the exercises. The course is very fast-paced, and it can become frustrating at times.

Neo (formerly EdgeCase) offers two free interactive tutorials, one for the Ruby programming language and one for the Git version control system. Like Code School, these tutorials assume that students already possess a bit of coding knowledge.

Unlike real Zen Buddhist koans, Ruby Koans questions have logical solutions.

You can step through Ruby Koans either in a browser or by installing Ruby and downloading the koans. Each koan is a simple drill requiring you to fill in the blanks to get an expected result.

The texts accompanying each exercise attempt to be Zen-like, and they succeed in this to the extent of sometimes being more confusing than helpful: “To understand reality, we must compare our expectations against reality. The answers which you seek: is not true.” Still, if you have some programming background and wish to learn Ruby syntax quickly, the koans can be fun.

Git Immersion makes you install Git from the get-go, but it helps you learn a lot.

Neo’s Git tutorial, Git Immersion, is more extensive than the quick Code School alternative, but it also requires more setup. You must install Git on your machine to step through the tutorial, which doesn’t interactively check your work as you step through it.

RubyMonk is a simple, free Ruby course with built-in code evaluation and exercises. It assumes a modest level of initial knowledge, such as knowing what an array is.

RubyMonk isn't as visually polished as Codecademy or Code School, but it has more pizzazz (and Ajax) than does Ruby Koans.

The explanations accompanying each RubyMonk exercise are simple and clear, and the site is free of banners and other distractions from learning.

These tools are just the thing for setting your own pace and learning by doing. Together, they become an entire magical laboratory. Just cruise over to any of the links and start crafting your code. The results can be spellbinding.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

5 free compression tools zip your files just dandy

Sending and receiving large files: It's something we all need to do. Even cloud storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive can't replace the convenience of a quick email. But email poses problems, starting with the strict limits that many ISPs impose on the size of file sent or received. To get the file size down without losing important data, you zip it with compression software.

If you're willing to fork over some cash, you can opt for a commercial compression application, such as WinZip or WinRAR. But each sells for about $30. Luckily, these paid applications aren't your only options when it comes to compression tools. There are some fantastic free alternatives out there. Some are even open source.

To compare these free alternatives to their commercial cousins, I created a 30MB folder full of PDF files and compressed it with each program. Doing so with WinZip created a 26MB folder—still too big for most email services. WinRAR fared better, compressing the folder down to an impressive 14.3MB, which would get those files through anything but the most draconian mail restrictions.

Now let's see how the free alternatives fare.

7-Zip

7-Zip is a well-known open-source alternative to paid compression software. It has earned a large user base, despite its plain (almost dull) interface because it works well—and for most people, that's more than enough to make up for bland design.

7-Zip's 7Z format packs down smaller than the standard ZIP.

Although it can use the standard .zip format, 7-Zip touts its own compression format, 7Z, which makes smaller archives. 7-Zip shrank my 30MB folder down to 25.8MB when I opted for the zip format, but compressed that same folder down to 22.1MB in 7Z.

7-Zip offers strong encryption, which includes password-protecting the actual files as well as encrypting the file names. It also integrates into the Windows Explorer right-click menu, so you can immediately compress any file with a click of the mouse. There's even a command line version for those who are more at home in the Windows command box.

The downside is the wait time for this relatively small boost: Compressing the folder into a 7Z file took well over two minutes, versus 15 seconds for compressing to ZIP.

PeaZip

PeaZip has a lot going for it right out of the gate. It's open-source, it claims to open up to 150 different kinds of compressed files, and it has a portable version that doesn't require installation. True, its interface is a bit plain, but I can forgive that when considering the pros of using PeaZip.

PeaZip is a hyper-competent free compression utility.

One of PeaZip's best features is its random password generator. Just specify how many characters you want in the password and, with the click of a button, it makes a password for you. Don't like it? Hit the button again and get another one. Additional security features include strong encryption and the ability to securely delete your files. To take advantage of this, just click the "Secure Delete" button in the toolbar, and your files are gone for good.

In terms of compression, PeaZip's performance was mixed. It compressed my 30MB folder into a 26MB zip file, just as 7-Zip did. But PeaZip includes additional compression methods—16 in all—and includes the ability to split the file up into different pieces.

You can specify your own file size for each piece, or choose one of the pre-set sizes. For example, if you wanted to email a 30MB folder, you could split it up into two chunks, one of them 24.5MB and the other one 1.5MB, and send them separately. However, the person at the other end would need the PeaZip software to put it all back together again.

Hamster Free Zip Archiver

Hamster Free Zip Archiver makes a great first impression, especially compared to all-business 7-Zip and PeaZip, thanks to its attactive user interface and a bouncy GIF animation. From the start, Hamster feels fresh and new, a pleasure to look at and use.

Among compression utilities, Hamster Free Zip Archiver is a real looker.

It's easy to use, too. To create a compressed file, you simply drag-and-drop the files you want to include onto HFZA main screen. Hamster tells you the folder's current size and asks you to choose between the ZIP and 7Z formats. Choose your file format, whether or not you want to split the file, and whether or not you want to lock the file. You then press "compress," and Hamster does its job.

Hamster Free Zip Archiver is fast. The Hamster Soft website claims that the program takes advantage of multi-core computing, and the results I got testing Hamster on a new Windows 8 PC Quad-Core supports that assertion. The company claims to best competitors on older machines, too.

Hamster reduced my folder to the usual 26MB file, so there is no extra advantage. But, like PeaZip, Hamster offers the ability to split compressed files and let your recipient reassemble them.

Another downside to Hamster Free Zip Archiver is that the company's support team did not answer my many emails. For tech support, you might as well consult your hamster.

Universal Extractor

Universal Extractor is extremely useful for opening archives, but it does have a limitation if you want to create an archive. And that limitation is severe: UniExtractor can't create anything. As its name implies, UniExtractor only extracts. But despite this limitation, it is a neat little app to have.

Universal Extractor decompresses everything, compresses nothing.

UniExtractor lives in your Windows right-click menu, waiting for compressed files that need opening. The user-interface (such as it is) is spartan, with a tiny box and few preferences to select.

But Universal Extractor isn't getting by on its looks. It's surviving on its functionality.  It claims to be able to open any type of compressed file available. Whether it's a ZIP, a RAR, a TAR or a JAR, UniExtractor claims to be able to handle it with ease...and it did manage all of the files I threw at it. If you need to only open compressed files (and not create them), UniExtractor is the only software you'll ever need.

That said, Universal Extractor's developer gives no precise information about what versions of Windows the software runs on. In my tests, it worked well on Windows 7 and Windows 8 desktop. For anything less than Windows 7, you'll have to make your backups and try your luck.

ZipItFree

ZipItFree knows when to stay out of the way. You can roll this compression software's UI into its top bar, minimizing it screen space without closing it entirely. When you need ZipItFree again, just click the button and the interface drops down, just like window blinds.

ZipItFree may not look great with its default skin...but hey, you can roll it up when you're not using it.

That design sense doesn't extend to the software's default burnished steel skin, which is, frankly, ugly. Fortunately, ZipItFree comes with Vista and Windows 7 design skins as well, and either is an improvement.

ZipItFree gets a lot right. It features strong encryption, support for 15 compression formats, and, like PeaZip, the ability to split up the file into multiple chunks of a set size to make it easier to send, or to burn onto portable media. For example, it can make an exact size to fit onto a 700MB CD disk or a 4GB DVD disk. You can also attach comments to your archives, letting you make more than a filename's worth of notes about the contents.

ZipItFree performed very fast on my 30MB folder, nearing its promised maximum 40 percent time reduction. It compressed the folder down to 20MB.

However, watch out for the extra software that ZipItFree tries to make you install. Pay attention and uncheck the boxes for anything you don't want.

Zippy contenders

Having compression software on your PC is a must. If money were no object, I would opt for WinRAR, as its compression abilities are very impressive. But, when considering only the free options, I'd choose PeaZip, thanks to its strong security features and impressive compression options. I'd also keep Universal Extractor on hand for opening those rarer compression formats.

For occasional compression, the free alternatives hold their own against the paid stalwarts—especially when you consider features such as secure deletion, strong encryption, and the ability to send files by chopping them up into sizes of your choosing.

Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
More by Mark O'Neill

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

5 free Web tools to organize your thoughts

You’re full of good ideas, but putting them in writing is easier said than done. Maybe you like to start from the end. Maybe you work from jumbled notes, gradually polishing them into a cohesive piece. No matter what your workflow, a good outliner can help.

Much like mind maps, outliners are thinking aids. But while mind maps appeal to visual thinkers, outliners are great for working directly with text. Both are hierarchical: In a mind map, a main idea branches out into sub-ideas, which then branch out even further. In an outline, a master topic has sub-topics, each with its own sub-sub-topics. And, just as it is with a mind map, what you do with an outline is up to you: You can use it for drafting text, but it also works well as a to-do list for a project.

The best outliners stay out of your way, letting you focus on your text without thinking about the interface. Some outliners even let you forget about the computer you’re using: Cloud-based versions are accessible using any computer, as long as you’re using a modern browser and have an Internet connection. The four cloud-based and single browser-based products reviewed here are useful, but their appeal varies depending on your level of commitment to outlining. Each one starts out free.

Many Web apps go for the Google approach. They try to impress with a sparse homepage decorated by a large leading image. Not The Outliner of Giants. Its homepage features a wall of monospaced text offset by an orange banner, and one single button (“Sign in with Google”). This no-nonsense aesthetic sets the tone for The Outliner of Giants: It takes outlining seriously.

The Outliner of Giants is very full-featured, down to letting you highlight nodes in different colors.

It’s easy to get started with The Outliner of Giants. You don’t even need a new user account: Just log in with your Google credentials. Clicking the top-right corner leads you to an Outline About Outliners, a document covering the history and process of this useful task.

Even the documentation takes the form of an outline in the Outliner of Giants.

The Outliner of Giants uses key commands for many basic features: Enter adds a new node; Space edits the current one; Tab and Shift-Tab indents and outdents nodes. One feature that’s sorely missing, however, is Undo. I once accidentally converted a single node into its own outline (i.e, “tore it out” of an existing outline) and was unable to revert the change.

Because an outline is a rigidly hierarchical document, it’s important to be able to tag your nodes. This allows you to easily look at all of your nodes that involve a certain character in a story (for example), no matter where it appears in the plot. The Outliner of Giants supports tagging, but not via simple, Twitter-like hashtags: You need to hit Ctrl-T and fill in a dedicated tagging field.

In general, The Outliner of Giants feels powerful and robust—perhaps a bit too robust for casual outliners to use. Its crisp, retro aesthetic is enjoyable, and you can customize it in many ways, from the theme to the syntax you wish to use in your notes (Textile, Markdown, or a rich text editor). The free plan limits you to five outlines, but the paid one ($10/year) offers unlimited outlines, as well as more space for files, more collaborators, and other perks.

Fargo feels decidedly more modern than the Outliner of Giants. It links with your Dropbox account, and it saves any changes you make to your outlines into Dropbox as OPML files (a format commonly used for exchanging information between outliners). Unlike The Outliner of Giants, Fargo is entirely free.

Fargo looks clean and modern, with far less chrome on the screen than The Outliner of Giants.

Fargo lets you make text bold or italic using keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl-I and Ctrl-B, as you’d expect), but oddly enough, it does not include a keyboard shortcut for creating a link (it does offer a button for this). You can also use the keyboard to reorganize your outline, promoting, demoting, and moving nodes around as needed.

Fargo supports many keyboard shortcuts, and displays them in an overlay similar to the one Gmail uses.

Fargo offers somewhat limited support for formatting your text using Markdown, but it will render only when you export the file. Until you do, any text you marked as bold will just show surrounded with two asterisks, even once you’re done editing the node. This feels inconsistent, because if you use the toolbar button or Ctrl-B to make text bold, it immediately renders as bold.

One feature notably missing from Fargo is text search. There’s no way to search through your outline. If you’re working with a large outline that is mostly collapsed, that could leave you blindly rummaging through the outline looking for the node you need. There is also no support for tagging nodes, or any sort of filtering, making Fargo useful mainly for smaller outlines in which you won’t easily get lost.

Checkvist is a fast, mature, polished outliner with innovative keyboard shortcuts. Where most outliners (and applications in general) use Ctrl-key combinations, Checkvist uses Vim-like keystroke sequences. Want to add a note to a node? Hit ‘nn’. To open the actions context menu, tap ‘aa’, then use the arrow keys to navigate it.

One of the coolest things about Checkvist is its unique shortcut keys.

Unlike Fargo, Checkvist lets you easily undo operations with a quick tap of Ctrl-Z, or by clicking a button on the screen. You can also filter your outline according to tags, keywords, or due dates. Search is live: Just start typing, and the list filters down to whatever you’re typing. If the node you need is collapsed, Checkvist will automatically expand it and highlight the string you’re typing. And despite all of this power, Checkvist is very responsive and fast.

Checkvist lets you undo operations, a feature not available on all outliners.

Checkvist supports its own text-only syntax for including links, and you can use HTML tags for making text bold or italic, or adding images. Markdown support is available, but it’s switched off by default. You can enable it in the settings.

Checkvist’s free version offers more than enough functionality for most users. If you need full HTTPS support, file attachment, repeating tasks, and task assignment options (for collaborating with others), the paid version costs $3 per month.

Oak Outliner is as simple as it comes. Think Notepad, only in your browser, and with some outlining features. It lives in your browser, but not in the cloud, so it does a couple of things a little differently from what you’d expect from a native application or even a cloud-based service. Most notably, it saves the outline as HTML5 local storage, automatically and in the background. Also, you can’t edit more than one outline at a time in the browser. Within these minimalist confines, however, it gets the job done.

Oak Outliner feels almost like Notepad in your browser.

Like any outliner, Oak Outliner lets you collapse nodes, indent and outdent them, and shuffle them around. You can also format text using Markdown. That’s about it.

It doesn’t offer a way to filter nodes according to tags, search collapsed nodes, or an explicit way to save your work. There’s no export functionality, either. While most outliners let you export to OPML, Oak Outliner’s export features are limited to copying and pasting your work into another document.

Oak Outliner is simple to use, but it does include documentation, just in case.

What you gain with Oak Outliner is simplicity. There’s practically nothing to fiddle with: It’s just a page with text. It doesn’t require an Internet connection, and it has no user accounts. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes sophisticated software can get in your way rather than help you get things done. Not Oak Outliner, which is about as bare bones as it gets. It’s also entirely free.

WorkFlowy is an outliner that wants to change the way you manage information. It starts out as a single master document, but it encourages you to create an ever-deeper hierarchy, starting with two overarching topics, “Work,” and “Personal.” From there, you can begin outlining and journaling your entire life.

With its elegant looks and uncluttered interface, WorkFlowy is a joy to use.

Yes, it’s ambitious, and I’m not saying you have to use WorkFlowy this way. But WorkFlowy just might be polished enough to pull it off. Its interface uses animations in a simple, non-distracting way that makes everything feel more engaging. It features excellent keyboard shortcuts, and you can use it as a to-do list and mark items as completed.

As befitting a product that prides itself on supporting a deep hierarchy, WorkFlowy lets you tag items using both hashtags and people (@name), and it smoothly autocompletes your tags based on any tags you’ve created before. It also has live search, for quickly and effectively filtering your outlines. And to help you use its power, documentation is offered as a series of short, no-nonsense videos demonstrating every aspect of the product.

What really makes WorkFlowy special is how it handles scoping. Many outliners let you zoom in on a specific node and make the rest of the outline disappear. But there’s something about the WorkFlowy interface, and the animation used for zooming, that makes a zoomed-in node feel like its own document. If you do use WorkFlowy to outline your entire life, you’d likely have to upgrade from the free version (which is limited to 500 monthly documents) to the $5/month plan (which supports unlimited outlines and includes Dropbox sync).

When zooming in on a subnode in WorkFlowy, it feels like its own document.

It doesn’t take long to decide which outliner works the way you do. Just pick one of these five—they’re all free to start—and see where it takes you. No matter which you end up choosing, or even if you outline using just a regular text editor or Microsoft Word (which has an outlining mode of its own), creating an outline of your ideas is a great way to overcome writer’s block and say what you have to say.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Five free Dropbox tools you're not using (but should be)

Dropbox is handy, but you can make it even easier to use with a wide range of products and services that work hand in hand with the cloud-based storage, syncing, and sharing service. Check out these five favorites for getting even more bang for your Dropbox buck.

Dropbox lets you easily share files for other people to download, but it’s harder for people to upload files to your account—unless you have the free service DropItToMe.

To use DropItToMe, you simply allow the service access to your Dropbox, and it creates a DropItToMe folder in your account. You then claim a username, which becomes part of the link that DropItToMe creates for you. I scored “Liane” as a username; with this link, anyone can send me files, which then appear in my DropItToMe folder in Dropbox.

DropItToMe’s interface is easy to understand, but also slick and attractive.

I appreciate that DropItToMe provides an easy-to-remember URL rather than a random link. You also get to create a password, which is required for uploading content to your Dropbox account and provides a measure of security. (As with any password, share it carefully.)

DropItToMe also provides a convenient way to upload files to your own Dropbox account. You could use Dropbox’s Web app when you’re on a computer without Dropbox installed, but DropItToMe’s upload link makes things simpler.

DropItToMe requires a password before a person can upload content to your account, which is a nice security feature.

Compared with Dropbox, DropItToMe lets you upload files with fewer clicks. It allows you to place them only in the DropItToMe folder that it has already created, though, and it limits you to files that are 75MB or smaller. But it offers a free, simple way to allow other people to share content with you without their having to sign up for Dropbox.

Dropbox’s security pitfalls make some users hesitant to store any files there, especially sensitive documents such as tax returns or bank statements. Free service BoxCryptor automatically encrypts your files before they’re uploaded to your Dropbox account. It also supports Box.net, Google Drive, and Microsoft SkyDrive.

Once you download and install the Windows client, BoxCryptor automatically adds a virtual drive to your computer. It finds your installed cloud-storage services and pulls those into the BoxCryptor folder. BoxCryptor uses AES-256 bit encryption to secure your files.

You can view all of your content in your BoxCryptor folder, but you can still use your original Dropbox folder, too. To encrypt a folder, you right-click it and select the Encrypt option. If you look at the file through Dropbox, it becomes unreadable. Through BoxCryptor, however, you get the original, unencrypted file.

To encrypt a file, simply right-click it.

You can choose to encrypt individual files or entire folders. Once a folder is encrypted, any new content is encrypted as it syncs to Dropbox. Using the BoxCryptor view, you can identify files and folders that are encrypted by their green labels. In the Dropbox view, you’ll see a .bc extension added to the name of encrypted files.

BoxCryptor bills itself as “zero-knowledge” software, meaning it does not have access to any of your data. All the encryption happens on your computer, not on BoxCryptor’s servers. This hands-off approach also means that the company does not have access to your password, so if you forget it, you can forget accessing your encrypted data, too. Make your password memorable.

Files and folders that have been encrypted are marked with green text.

BoxCryptor is free for personal use, which covers one cloud-storage service and includes access to the mobile (iOS and Android) apps. The $48-per-year Unlimited Personal account adds file-name encryption and access to unlimited cloud services. The $96-per-year Unlimited Business account adds the ability to create groups for sharing files and folders.

BoxCryptor strikes a nice balance between safety and convenience when it comes to securing Dropbox. It adds an extra level of security without the hassle of switching to an entirely different cloud-based service.

Dropbox is a great place for storing your digital music collection, but its music playback features are limited, to say the least. Sure, you can use Dropbox to access the song files stored on the service, but if you want to listen to the tunes, you need to download them to your device—defeating the purpose of storing them in the cloud in the first place.

Free Web app DropTunes serves as a streaming music player for the audio files in your Dropbox account. (A $1 iOS app takes its features mobile, too, but no Android version exists at the moment.) Simply point your browser to droptun.es, and give the Web app permission to access your Dropbox account. It automatically finds any audio files stored there and allows you to play them back without downloading them.

The $1 DropTunes iOS app is basic, but effective for streaming music.

DropTunes displays your Dropbox folders in a column on the left side of the screen. Click a folder there, and any audio files it contains will appear in the main window at the center of the Web app. DropTunes lacks advanced features (such as creating playlists, or scrambling the order of the songs you’re listening to) but it works for basic music streaming.

The interface is simple, and the Web app lacks truly advanced features, but DropTunes makes streaming music easy.

Saving data to your Dropbox isn’t difficult, but you can make almost anything you do on the Web even easier with the help of IFTTT, a handy free tool that creates links between Web services. IFTTT stands for “If This Then That,” and the phrase perfectly describes what IFTTT does: When one thing happens on a service you use, IFTTT triggers an automatic reaction.

IFTTT lets you create “recipes” using channels, which consist of the Web services that are the building blocks of all that IFTTT can do. Channels include Facebook, Evernote, Email—and, of course, Dropbox. As of this writing, 68 channels are available on IFTTT. To create a recipe, you select the first channel and then the trigger (the “If This” part). Once you’ve chosen a channel, IFTTT displays applicable triggers. The trigger is the action that must occur for the result to happen. In the case of Dropbox, a trigger could be a file or photo arriving in your Dropbox.

Not sure what you can do with IFTTT? The service offers community ‘recipes’ that you can adapt for yourself.

After selecting the trigger, you choose the channel and the action (the “Then That” part)—what IFTTT will do when the trigger occurs. You can use IFTTT to automate much of the work you do in Dropbox, or ask it to notify you when actions occur. You could, for example, ask to receive a text message anytime a photo is saved in your Dropbox. Or you could automatically save all Gmail attachments to Dropbox, or save all of your Instagram snapshots to Dropbox.

The list goes on and on, but the end result is the same: You save time while getting things done. IFTTT is a complex but extremely powerful service that can make Dropbox a lot more flexible and useful. It does take some time to understand, though, and I recommend browsing the wide selection of public recipes that the service shares. They’re very helpful for demonstrating just what IFTTT can do, and you can use any of them on your own account.

IFTTT can, for example, save any Instagram photos directly to your Dropbox.

IFTTT offers plenty of options for adding content to your Dropbox automatically—enough options to overwhelm. If you’re seeking a simpler way to send content directly to Dropbox, Send to Dropbox has you covered. This free service generates an email address, and any attachments sent to that address automatically get saved to Dropbox.

The free version of Send to Dropbox doesn’t allow you to create a custom address.

Getting started with Send to Dropbox is a breeze: Just connect it to your Dropbox account, and it instantly generates an email address for you. Remembering it may be a challenge, though: My address contained a short, but random, string of numbers and letters.

Upgrading to the $29-per-year Pro account lets you customize your email address, which is a nice feature for business users—especially for sharing the address with colleagues. The Pro account also provides for multiple addresses and an email whitelist, so you can control who can send files to your Dropbox.

By default, Send to Dropbox saves your files to a new folder it creates in your Dropbox called “Apps/Attachments.” You can change this name and add subfolders that contain the name of the sender and the subject line, if you prefer. However, you can’t share this folder with other Dropbox users, as it is a special type of folder for Dropbox applications.

By default, Send to Dropbox saves files to a folder it creates, but you can create subfolders in there, if you’d like.

In my tests, all of the attachments sent to my Send to Dropbox address appeared in Dropbox almost instantly and were organized in the folders I’d selected. If you’re looking for a quick way to send files to Dropbox, Send to Dropbox can’t be beat.

Dropbox doesn’t need much help. After all, it’s already simple to use and incredibly convenient. But whether you’re looking to access more files, add security, automate your tasks, or listen to music, there’s a Dropbox app to make your life a little easier. And chances are, it’s free.

Liane Cassavoy is a veteran technology and business journalist. She contributes regularly to PCWorld and has written about business issues and products for Entrepreneur Magazine and other publications. She is the author of two business start-up guides published by Entrepreneur Press.
More by Liane Cassavoy

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Power up your PDFs with these five free tools

There's no point to drowning in PDF features you don't want (and really, really don't want to pay for) when you can stock your toolbox with exactly what you require. These five freebies push the boundaries of what you can do with a PDF file.

Whether you long to edit, watermark, or otherwise tweak your PDF; add a Creative Commons license, or just cut your PDF down to size, one of these can make your PDFs what you want them to be...for free.

This portable app's website says "Bright Snippet Sire," but everybody calls it Briss. An open-source favorite, Briss crops a section of a PDF file and creates another PDF file of the cropped area. It's easy to use, and it's awfully handy.

Snipping out unwanted areas of a PDF—then saving to a new PDF—is Briss's specialty.

E-bookworms with e-readers have a particular need for Briss. To read a PDF on an e-reader, you normally have to format and convert it, and traditional ebook converters (such as ePub converters) frequently make a hash of PDF conversion. Briss converts two-column pages into single-column pages, cuts out the unnecessary margins, and automatically removes unwanted fluff, such as page numbers and chapter headings. You can successfully pass the resulting clean PDF through an ePub converter.

With Creative Commons licenses, you can distribute your creative work for free and specify the conditions under which it can be used. For example, you can offer your work free for use, provided you receive attribution. Or you can say that it's fine for personal or nonprofit projects to use your work, but that commercial ventures have to pay you. Attaching one of these licenses to the work removes any ambiguity or doubt as to the terms and conditions under which you share your work.

CC PDF Converter helps you find the best Creative Commons license for your creative work (in this case, "you" means Randall Munroe nd "your work" is the webcomic XKCD).

CC PDF Converter converts your Word document, Excel file, or Internet Explorer HTML file into a PDF doc...but it's no ordinary PDF. This free, open-source beta program asks you a series of questions about the type of license you want, then stamps a small but legible Creative Commons license on the pages.

Open-source developer Michael Schierl describes his jPDF Tweak as the "Swiss Army Knife for PDF Files," and it certainly lives up to that promise. With it, you can add watermarks, change the metadata, combine PDF files, encrypt files, make printable booklets, rotate pages, and more. I love this program so much that it has a permanent place on my PC (and there are Linux editions, too).

jPDF Tweak gives you a great deal of control over your images, and it's free and open source.

This Java-based portable app makes a nice addition to the road warrior's USB drive or Dropbox folder. Simply double-click the BAT file to run it. Then load the PDF file from your PC in the "input tab" and choose the next tab you need. When you've made changes, go to the "output" tab to generate your tweaked PDF.

Bear in mind, though, that if a PDF has existing restrictions protected by a password, that password will hold. jPDF Tweak does not allow you to remove or break the password.

PDFill is similar to jPDF Tweak, but with a nicer user interface. As well as the usual features, PDFill includes other goodies, such as file conversion and adding headers and footers. The only downside is that it costs $20 to work watermark-free.

If you don't mind a watermark on your saved files, then don't worry about this nag screen.

In a default installation, a PDF button appears inside Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint to start PDFill directly. You can also insert the same button into the Internet Explorer browser, and into the Quick Launch and SendTo functions of Windows.These integration options are voluntary and easy to de-select at installation.

PDFill consists of Editor, Writer, and Tools. Editor, whose interface resembles Microsoft Word 2003, is the paid $20 version of PDFill. If you decide not to pay, Editor remains fully functional, but it pops up a nag screen upon saving and stamps a watermark on files. PDFill Editor provides a variety of pro-level functions such as creating form fields; writing, drawing, or highlighting pages in a PDF; and exporting and importing form data; as well as the usual PDF file management tools, such as converting, cropping, and rotating.

PDFill Writer creates PDF files by attaching itself to your PC printer function. When you want to create a PDF, open your printer dialog box and choose the PDFill Writer as your printer.

The watermark an unregistered copy of PDFill Editor adds to saved files can be distracting.

PDFill Tools provides even more editing tools, some of which overlap with the paid Editor. This includes merging, splitting, watermarks, rotating, cropping and much more.

PDFill packs a punch when it comes to PDF editing functions, and the free version is fine for anyone who doesn't mind nag screens and watermarks. That said, the $20 full version is a really good deal, considering the features that you get.

For sheer handiness, it's hard to beat Debenu PDF Tools. It integrates into your Explorer right-click menu, so it's easy to go to town with the PDF editing.

Debenu PDF Tools puts an array of PDF functions in the right-click menu of File/Windows Explorer.

Right-clicking and scrolling down the Debenu menu reveals features such as converting a PDF to an image (and vice versa), combining multiple images into one PDF file instantly, converting a PDF to text, adding and removing passwords, removing all bookmarks or extracting them to a text file, adding or editing metadata, and much more. Any functions that won't work on the selected file are grayed out.

With the PDF Preview function, you can quickly open the file to get a sneak peek, which is nice if you don't have a PDF reader installed.

The Debenu PDF Tools menu has a good selection of features even in the free edition, but many more are available in the $59 Pro edition. Pro includes many more editing features such as adding, editing, extracting, splitting, and removing text and images; removing annotations; and applying digital signatures.

When you think of PDF, don't think of it as a restricted, locked-down file format manageable only with big-ticket Acrobat or still-pricey imitators. These five tools show you that whether you need a Creative Commons license, a PDF book converter, or a wide array of editing tools built into your Windows PC, you can have impressive PDF features for a fraction of the cost…or even for free.

Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
More by Mark O'Neill

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference