OpsTube

Windows: You’ve got a web page, a file folder, and a chat window open, and they’re all about the same project. WindowTabs, a free-to-try utility, can group together all those app windows with top-most, Google-Chrome-like tabs.
More »

Windows only: System notification tool Growl for Windows is a slick, customizable, universal alert system for your applications—so you don’t have to be jealous of your Mac friends anymore. After installing the utility, you’ll have to download plugins to support application-specific notifications—the current set of plugins supports iTunes, Firefox, Microsoft Outlook, Pandora’s AIR application, Visual Studio, and there’s even a command-line utility to send notifications to Growl, which you could launch from your own custom AutoHotkey scripts. More »

Windows only: Portable freeware application SiteShoter takes screenshots of web sites with a powerful array of features. Using the utility, which (like all of the excelllent NirSoft applications) requires no installation, is easy—just add the URL to the web site you want to capture, choose a filename to save the image to, and click Start to save the screenshot. What makes this utility great is the wide range of powerful More »

Linux only: Font manager application FontyPython organizes system fonts into “pogs”—easily installable groups of fonts that can be organized on a per-project basis. Getting started with the application is simple—just add the fontypython package through the Synaptic package manager, or use the apt-get command line to install it from the repositories. More »

Media Keyboard 2 Media Player Adds Keyboard Support to Popular Media Players: Windows only: Your system’s got a fancy keyboard with a host of handy media shortcut buttons, but they only work with a select few apps. Media Keyboard 2 More »

Mac OS X only: Screen locker utility LockTight adds a shortcut key combination for OS X users to quickly lock your workstation from the keyboard. Windows users switching to using a Mac might be surprised to More »

If you’ve ever done any serious Windows troubleshooting, you’ve no doubt come across a freeware utility or two by Sysinternals—like the excellent, previously mentioned Process Explorer. You may also know that Microsoft eventually bought up every Sysinternals utility More »

Windows only: Free application Disable Startup keeps just any old app from adding itself to your list of startup applications, keeping your boot time snappy and RAM happy.

At its core, Disable Startup is a startup manager similar to the built-in Windows System Configuration Utility. It does the trick if you just want to use it for that, but it’s really nothing special strictly as a startup manager. If you’re willing to run Disable Startup in your system tray (which will cost you about 4MB), it’ll closely monitor your startup applications for new additions. The app gives you the option to disable all new startup entries, warn you when new startup apps are added, or allow any new additions. Likewise, Disable Startup can prevent new software installations from changing your IE start page. It may not be worth the added system tray app for some, but if you install a lot of software that ends up sneaking entry after entry into your list of startup apps, this simple utility is perfect. Disable Startup is a free download, Windows only.

The free, cross-platform application Dropbox—which readers voted the best file syncing tool available—has updated its web interface, adding new and improved navigation and drag-and-drop support for all the files and folders in your Dropbox. If you’re looking for ways to put your Dropbox account to good use after the holidays, the photos section of their web interface offers a simple way to get started sharing photos with anyone, whether they use Dropbox or not.

Windows only: Stalled Printer Repair is a portable application that detects and effectively removes stuck print jobs that are backing up your printer queue.

For whatever reason, Windows can be finicky when you try deleting a print job from the queue. Often that means you’re stuck staring at the queue, trying to delete the same job over and over again, and wondering if your efforts are actually helping anything. Stalled Printer Repair hunts down stalled print jobs and removes them with the force necessary so that it actually works. It’s portable, so you can stick it on your thumb drive, it’s freeware, and it works on most versions of Windows.

Stalled Printer Repair