Noteflight (tested Beta 3)
Music composition and sharing website
Developer: Noteflight
OS: Web-based
Price: Free
Site:
http://www.noteflight.com/
The bulk of music composition software today focuses on recording live sound or digital input from instruments and manipulating the resulting clips to create a song. Everything from Apple's GarageBand to high-end professional recording studio products work on a variation of this principle. But if you're the type who takes to sheet music, your options have been somewhat limited, especially if you don't want to splash out for expensive packages. Noteflight is an attempt to bring basic composition tools to the masses, requiring nothing more than a Flash-enabled web browser and a little inspiration.
If you can read music, you'll feel right at home in Noteflight. At the center of the interface is a set of blank staffs, upon which you can create notes by clicking or by typing them in via the keyboard. Composition via the keyboard works a lot like a word processor—the letters A to G create notes of the respective pitch, the arrow keys move the cursor through the music, and other keys change the duration and pitch of selected notes. Before long you'll be able to build songs almost as easily as if you were playing them (or perhaps even easier, depending on your performance abilities).
Considering it's basically just a Flash applet, Noteflight's song composer is remarkably deep. You can change time signatures, add lyrics and dynamics notations, and even make your piece swing a little by changing the "swing eighths" setting. It won't beat more expensive composition software on features, but Noteflight's cost and accessibility make it a convincing alternative.
BatteryBar (tested v3.0 build 48)
Laptop battery monitor
Developer: Osiris Development
OS: Windows
Price: Free, $7.50 USD for Pro version
If you're a laptop owner and you're running Windows XP, chances are you could use a bit more information about how much juice your system has left in its batteries. Because laptop batteries never seem to meet the lofty manufacturer estimates even when brand new, and because aging batteries lose their ability to retain a charge, it can be difficult to get a good idea of just how long your battery will last.
BatteryBar adds a large battery meter to the taskbar with a display showing the percentage charge remaining and the running time left. Immediately BatteryBar is an improvement over the Windows battery meter because you can actually read it at a glance; the tiny system tray icon is no match for the bright colours and big display. BatteryBar also shows additional information if you mouse over the meter, including an estimate of the total runtime and the power drain in milliwatts—useful for determining if your laptop is sipping power or gulping it down. To deal with deteriorating runtime issues, BatteryBar can also adjust the total and remaining runtimes based on prior battery performance, so that the figures get more accurate over time.
The Pro version of the BatteryBar offers a few more features, including the ability to customize aspects of the utility's operation and low battery warnings that you can set to trigger at specific percentages or when a certain amount of time is left. These extra options aren't necessities, but the relatively low price point makes it an easy purchase if you need the features.
Fences (tested v0.96.1533 beta)
Desktop icon organizer
Developer: Stardock
OS: Windows
Price: Free
The desktop is one of the primary work areas in modern operating systems, acting as a easily accessible space for files and a launching pad for frequently used applications. Unfortunately, it's very easy to let your desktop spiral out of control. Most programs add icons to the desktop by default, and file save dialogs make the desktop one of several standard save locations. Unless you're the type to keep things organized, your desktop soon becomes covered in unsorted icons. And Windows doesn't make it very easy to keep the desktop free of clutter, offering few organizational tools.
To fill in some of the blanks, Stardock created Fences. The desktop utility allows you to create and arrange translucent containers you can use to hold your desktop icons. Fences offers a simple and elegant interface: drag icons to place them into fences, rearrange fences by dragging their title bars, and create new fences by right-clicking and dragging. You can also double-click the desktop to automatically hide all icons temporarily—a neat little trick for hiding the visual clutter.
To get you started, Fences will automatically dump all your icons into various fences according to type—application shortcuts, files, recently used icons, etc. Unfortunately, Fences won't continue to sort icons automatically, which is a shame for especially lazy organizers. But if you're willing to put in the time to keep your desktop tidy, Fences is a great way to do it.
