"CREAM of the CROP" Programs and Utilities
I cannot do without
Knoppix (Debian
Linux) - A CD-bootable operating system, no foolin'. It will allow
an amazing number of maintenance operations on a machine from data
recovery to hardware diagnosis to configuration failures on both Linux
and Windows machines. This OS has pulled "my feet from the fire" on
numerous occasions. It also provides an ideal learning environment for
UNIX/Linux. I helped rewrite some of the Wake Forest Tech Shop
procedures for data recovery with Mike Terry -- these now include using
Knoppix to copy data from the disk to removable or SMB based file
shares.
ZIP Backup to CD - An awesome program that allows you to backup to CD/DVD with disk spanning and Zip compression. Simply the best yet. A must have for any A+ tech.
PUTTY/SSH - simple, powerful easy GUI config. I can't believe its free!
WinSCP - secure copy,
ftp now OPEN SOURCE. This client will allow your Winbox to talk to
Linux, Unix, and MacOSX and transfer files to your hearts content. Who
needs a stinkin' VPN?? The only downside is that the performance
is a little slow, mostly due to the encryption.
Acronis TruImage - The BEST imaging
utility going and affordable too. If you're an A+ tech, you have to
have this. It works well in multi-boot scenarios and has many features.
I use it to create install images that will bring a machine back to its
original condition without a great deal of hassle. I used to use Norton
Ghost, and PowerQuest drive image but greedy parent companies ruined
them by changing their licensing and making them too expensive.
TEXT TO SPEECH (TTS)
and
Sound Manipulation
While
in graduate school I did some research on Natural Language
Generation. So it's a natural step to also learn (and care) about
the actual synthesis of speech/text that was produced by the NLG
system. I have spent some time producing various tools that can
"verbalize" information, typical using template schemas which took
advantage of various TTS systems.
I did
a bit of work with the Microsoft Agent, and it was pretty good,
although the visual "avatar" was a good idea, many people found them
annoying and childish. It is nice to script movement and emphasis
to different points on the screen, but there are better ways to pull
that off.
The
state of the art in Text-to-speech (TTS) is quite polished now and gets
better every day. It is particularly polished in "domain"
based speech. An every-day example are the weather forecasts
(on-the-eights) on the Weather Channel. I'm getting a little
off-track here, but it is AMAZING to me that the current TTS engines do
an extremely credible job of producing well formed words from text --
the thousands of pronunciation rules in English just makes my head spin.
You
can put TTS technology tp work on your Microsoft windows-based
computer. To see what you have available, check your Windows
Speech control-panel and select the Text to Speech tab.
Text Aloud - Their website states the
following: "TextAloud 2.0 uses
voice synthesis to convert text into spoken audio.
Listen on your PC or create MP3 or WMA files for use on portable
devices like iPods, PocketPCs, and CD players." If I had a 5 star
system, it would get 6 stars. TA is a general
all-around tool for reading text in understandable computer
voices. TA has a "document" based format, which is handy if you
are "producing" audio for later consumption, because you can cut and
paste together your "script". You can also compensate for TTS engine
phonetic, punctuation, or inflection inadequacies.
(Eventually, you will get sick of hearing Windows default voices like
Sam and Mary, so make sure to buy a nice sounding voice). The
Next-up website has an online store so you can purchase other voices.
Optional... get better TTS Voices to go with SAPI (includes Text-Aloud and Jeff's Hotkey program below)- My favorite is UK English AT&T Audrey. But I like the small memory footprint of Cepstral voices. I also like Neospeech Paul/Kate. Neospeech has built a good compromise TTS engine; it's somewhere between the smooth but resource intensive AT&T Voices and lean and mean Cepstral offerings.
Natural
Voices Demo Page
Cepstral Voices
Neospeech - look at Nextup.com for a sample
Jeff's Hotkey TTS - This is a
free TTS (text to speech) program I wrote. It's not anywhere as
good as Text-Aloud, but it does a pretty good job of reading any text
highlighted with the mouse. Its quick, small, simple, and
free, free, free, so enjoy and install anywhere (WindowsXP or Win98SE
with SAPI 5). The interface is activated by clicking on its icon
in the Windows "tray". The interface is relatively unrefined and
not well suited for sight-impaired users. This program comes with no warranties or
guarantees or licensing restrictions. Just drop me an
email if you like it or have some ideas to make it more useful to the
community.
The program allows the built-in
Speech API of MS WinXP to read any text that is selected by your mouse
after a HOTKEY is pressed.
It was written as a single executable file (no DLLs needed). You can
also convert a file to a WAV (22KHz), but its only an experimental
feature. I won't implement MP3/WMV encoding since I don't
want to get mired in licensing issues.
The program is installed on more
than 4000 computers at Wake
Forest, so I can claim a rather wide distribution (a captive audience
heh heh).
Audacity - A Free,
Cross-Platform Sound Editor
"Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing
sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and
other operating systems." Use it. It's excellent!! I
used to use Cool-Edit, but now I can do almost everything I want with
Audacity.
Acid
Music - very cool loop-based music production tool now sold by
Sony, was part of the SoundForge stable. Some things about this
product have gotten better since its introduction in 1999, but some
have gotten worse.
Adobe Acrobat - flexible document
creation tool. What are they going to add next to PDF? Video?
Adobe Photoshop - Expensive raster
graphics manipulation program. maybe someday I can recommend "The
Gimp".
Adobe Illustrator - The best
program for vector-based illustrations. Again, this program is
overpriced like its sister Photoshop.
Camtasia
Studio - presentation tool, especially well suited for producing
computer-based demonstrations and tutorials. This product could
be perfect if they had a KDE or Gnome Linux version.
MS Office Pro - come to think of
it, I can't do without this. Especially important to me is Excel,
scientific graphing in Excel is simply awful. Sigmaplot is not flexible
and awkward to use, but it is capable of producing better graphics than
Excel. Powerpoint is extremely easy to use, but it is a
much-abused program; please, please don't use any Microsoft stock
transitions and sound effects.
Time synchronizer that is NOT spyware- "AboutTime" (author's web site)
My Batch Rename FileTool (far from perfect, but useful)- "Filetool"
SpaceMonger
- A tool that presents a graphical representation of files on your
disk. And you can delete them too, so BE FOREWARNED. Recover Files
- A tool to help "unerase" files works with FAT, FAT32, NTFS (caveat emptor). more to come... JAM