brainsnorkel.com

I subscribe to the view that if you use a piece of free demo software a lot, and there is a means to donate or pay for the software, then once in a while you should take the plunge and pay. For a (usually) small amount of money you can reward your favourite developers, feel good inside and occasionally get access to useful new features only available in the paid-up versions.

EverNote is software I install on my regularly used Windows machines. EverNote provides me with an always-on alternative to notepad.exe that understands text formatting and graphics, and keeps track of where things were pasted from. The downside is that it doesn’t have an official online sharing site (apparently there is one in beta) to compete with Google Notepad’s webby ubiquity. A synced EverNote database on a USB drive — or (previous to owning the sync feature) remembering to use Google Notepad to save data I need to access from somewhere unpredictable yet Internet-enabled — serves much the same purpose for me. Unlike Google Notepad, EverNote works offline. I don’t have a pen device, but EverNote seems to be the darling of tablet PC enthusiasts for its ability to capture and manage pen-entered text and graphics.

EverNote stores notes in a searchable, indexed, tagged and otherwise categorized virtual endless tape. I’ve never seen it crash, and never seen it complained about by Windows at shutdown. It’s fast and easy to get used to.

The price was US$49.95 to upgrade to EverNote Plus, which I did out of loyalty to a couple of years good service and access to the the sync feature.

Tomato is an alternative firmware for Linksys WRT54G Linux-era routers. It’s reliable, fast, simple and sexy.

I had stuck with Sveasoft firmware for 2 years waiting for specific features to turn up. I gave up too long after its history of never achieving promised functionality or feature release schedules should have sent warning signs that even a $20 subscription was too much. I dabbled with a few alternative firmware releases before settling on Tomato and making a donation.