PhraseExpander Standard

Today, Giveaway of the Day (GAOTD) is giving away the standard edition of a program called PhraseExpander.  What this program does is basically watch everything you type and when you type certain key words, the program will recognize that and replace it with predefined text.  For example, if you are chatting with someone online and type "ttyl," you can have that automatically turn into "talk to you later."  The program comes with its own key words and abbreviations, but you can add custom ones too.  I read some of the comments on the download page and noticed that many people think that this program is simply for replacing text and having an autocorrect feature.  I even saw a couple comments saying that Microsoft Word or OpenOffice does the same thing, but those programs can only replace text within themselves, so if you were typing a comment on the GAOTD site, you wouldn't be able to us MS Word's autocorrect.  PhraseExpander lets its users replace text universally on your computer, no matter where you are typing.  This program does much more than just replace text though.  Other things it can do include opening documents and files, running programs, searching the internet, navigating to websites, and opening and sending new emails using Outlook using key words.  It is really a productivity saver.

When using this program to execute commands, the user doesn't even have to type into a text area.  For example, you could be on your desktop, then decide you want to check your email, you can just type the word "email" on the desktop and this program will open up your web browser and navigate to gmail.com (or Hotmail or Yahoo or Outlook, whatever you use for your email).  There are other practical uses for this program as well, such as storing passwords.  I found out about a program called ActiveWords last summer and I have been using it ever since.  ActiveWords is the same type of program as PhraseExpander.  My main uses of ActiveWords (which could be your main uses for PhraseExpander) are to open up certain files that I use a lot, navigate to websites, launch programs, and replace text with my passwords.  An example of a password replacement: if my password for Gmail is "B4ukfj*(3kHK39+ksai," then that could be hard to remember, but at the same time it is very secure.  When I go to gmail.com, I could just type "gmailpw" into the password field and it would replace that text with my password  (you may want to be cautious of replacing passwords on a shared computer) and then I don't have to memorize or copy and paste my password.  This can even be more secure than typing your actual password, especially if you have a laptop and you type in your passwords in various locations.  An example of this would be if you're sitting in a coffee shop and, as luck would have it, there is a hacker sitting at the table right next to you.  If you type your password, he may be able to see what keys you are pressing and later be able to get into your account, but if all he sees you type is "gmailpw," if he tries to login with that as the password, it won't work.  

Now I want to talk about a few of the comments from the download page of GAOTD.  Some of the people who commented said that this is not a good program because it is like texting and it will ruin a person's sense of grammar and spelling.  However, if a person uses this program like I do, text is rarely even replaced, except for passwords.  A person could use this program mainly for launching other programs and doing other tasks that may be annoying to do with the mouse every time.  It can be seen kind of as an advanced hotkey program.  It would be tedious to have to use the mouse every time you wanted to copy and paste something because then you would have to right click then copy, go to the place you want to paste, then right click and then click paste.  Knowing that Ctrl+C means copy and Ctrl+V means paste is much more handy.  

Another thing I saw in the comments was something about the .NET framework having to be installed.  The commenter was angry (as far as I could tell anyway) when he found out that the .NET framework had been installed and then commented to complain.  Well, the framework does need to be installed, if it isn't already, for this program to work properly and that will likely mean changes to the registry.  However, I don't think it is right that he complained about this because during installation, a notice pops up letting the user know that it needs to be installed.

If you want to try out PhraseExpander, I encourage you to do so.  However, if you don't know if you want to keep it and are afraid of the registry changes and the .NET framework being installed, I suggest you download and install Deep Freeze by Faronics.  This program will "freeze" your hard drive in the its current state, then restart your computer in frozen mode.  Anything you change on your computer when it's in frozen mode will disappear once you restart your computer again.  You can change the Deep Freeze settings by holding shift and double clicking its icon in the system tray (the icons next to the clock).  You can download a 30-day evaluation here.

If you have any questions about anything mentioned (or something I left out), feel free to ask them in the comments below.

DOWNLOAD LINKS

GAOTD PhraseExpander Standard Edition (page)

PhraseExpander Standard 21-Day Evaluation

Deep Freeze 30-day evaluation

ActiveWords Free / ActiveWords PLUS 60-Day Trial

WhiteSmoke

Today Giveaway of the Day (GAOTD) is giving away WhiteSmoke 2011 which is a word processor that mainly checks documents for mistakes.  I wrote a short article about it a while ago which you can find here http://everything-823.blogspot.com/2010/07/whitesmoke.html.  The program seems to be pretty good at finding mistakes and things that you should fix and normally costs about $250.

In this article I will basically go through the steps of downloading and installing WhiteSmoke 2011 from Giveaway of the Day and show you what to expect and also show you how you can install WhiteSmoke 2011 on your computer even after the giveaway is over.  Then in the end (or maybe just as I go along) I will give my opinion on this program.

Jump to:
INSTALLATION
VERDICT
NOTE/APOLOGY
INSTALLING AFTER SEPTEMBER 2, 2011
EDIT: VERY IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ

INSTALLATION

First thing you need to do is download WhiteSmoke 2011 from http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/whitesmoke-2011/.

It will download as a .zip file, so you may have to unzip it before you can install it (however, in most cases you probably won't have to unzip it though).  Just browse into the zipped folder and double-click "Setup.exe" (if you do not have file extensions showing, it will just be "Setup") to open the installer.

Double-Click "Setup.exe" to open the installer

When you open the installer (if a message pops up, click yes) you will get a window that asks where you want to install/extract WhiteSmoke 2011.  However this will only extract the installer, the one provided by WhiteSmoke.  This may be confusing because you probably thought that you already just opened the installer.  Basically the simplest way to explain it is that you have to install the installer.  You will notice at the top thought that it says self-extracting archive, so really you need to extract the installer, but the button at the bottom says "Install."  Anyway, back to this article, you may want to extract it to your Desktop just for ease of access.  It is only one file that extracts so don't worry about crowding your desktop with tons of files. Then just click install when you set the place you want it to extract to.

In this example I saved it to my Desktop

Once you click install, the self-extractor should disappear and a window that says you successfully activated it will probably popup or be there.  My suggestion is to just close it unless you want GAOTD favorited or bookmarked.  When you close that window, it will automatically open what I call a "Thank-You Page" on GAOTD's website, you can just close that out as well.

Now go to the Desktop (or wherever you extracted the file to) and double-click "WhiteSmoke.exe" to open the installer.

When you open it, if a notification appears click yes or allow.

In the installer you will probably want to choose the Custom (advanced) Installation otherwise you will also install the WhiteSmoke toolbar and make its search engine your home page.  When you set everything the way you want it and you have read the License Agreement, click Accept.

After you accept, it will install the program, but won't give you any notification showing that it finished, the installation window will just disappear OR you may get a completely white window (this happened to me the first time I installed it) and I had to just start clicking around in there, and eventually text showed up asking for my email to register it, it may have just been my computer being slow which is why it was white, but unlikely because my computer is new and fast.  After I registered I never got an email from them, or at least not yet.

Once you open WhiteSmoke for the first time there will be a sample document already typed up.  I originally thought this was just a tutorial but was surprised to find out it was the actual program.

Screenshot of WhiteSmoke

The Program does look pretty dinky and it doesn't automatically check your work.  You have to click "check" every time you want it to check it.  Also, it doesn't register a line break—in the program if you hit enter it goes to the next line, but when you are ready to save your work, and click apply, it will transfer all of your text to Notepad and all of your line breaks will disappear. For instance, in the example in the screenshot above, the output in Notepad looks like this: "This is where the text goesThis is where the text goesThis..."

There is also a plug-in-type-of-thing for Microsoft Word, that many may not even know about.  All you have to do is open Word and start typing.  A little icon from WhiteSmoke should appear and you can click it to have WhiteSmoke check your work.

That is as much as I can stand writing about how good this program is.

VERDICT

I honestly have chosen to uninstall it and never want it again.  When I first heard of WhiteSmoke, I thought that it was really awesome and have wanted to try it ever since.  However, now that I have tried it, I am extremely glad it was for free.  I would have been very angry if I had bought the program for nearly $250.  It looks like a simple text editor and all it virtually does is check your grammar and not very well.  I didn't really put any examples in here about how not good WhiteSmoke is at checking grammar, but I have read comments on the GAOTD download page which said that it isn't good and I have experienced it for myself a few times since downloading.  Really, the post I wrote a while back basically tells the truth about WhiteSmoke—it is not very good.  If you have Microsoft Word already, I would suggest just sticking with that and not using WhiteSmoke.  What also annoys me is that for me (I am thinking it is just my computer) when WhiteSmoke is opened, it does not appear in the taskbar.

I had installed WhiteSmoke shortly before writing this post and THEN I decided I wanted to write a post on it.  Most of my dislike for WhiteSmoke came while I was writing this post for several reasons:
I stated earlier that I am using a new computer.  It is still practically factory condition and this is the first time I have ever had troubles with it.
When I tried to uninstall the program to make this post, my computer basically froze, which was the first time that has happened since I bought it last month.  I could move my mouse, but that was it.  I hit control-alt-delete and opened the task manager, but again, I could only move my mouse; I couldn't click on anything or minimize, maximize, move, or close.  I hit control-alt-delete again and this time chose to shut down the computer.  I really didn't want to do this because I had a lot of unsaved stuff opened.  Luckily a screen came up asking to confirm shutdown because I had so many windows opened.  I chose to cancel it.  After that everything (out of what I checked) worked fine except the start menu and control-alt-delete did not do anything.  I saved everything then proceeded to force my computer to shutdown by holding in the power button (because at the time I couldn't think of any other way because the start menu was broken along with the control-alt-delete menu).  When the computer came back on I had to uninstall it via the Control Panel just to make sure that didn't happen again.
Also, right after I took the screenshot of MS Word, one of those annoying "not responding" windows appeared and forcibly closed MS Word without saving.  Good thing I didn't care to save that file.
There were also some minor problems that arose while trying to make this post and while I just had that installed, those were just the two that really bothered me.

NOTE/APOLOGY

To those of you who read this when I posted the comment linking to this post on GAOTD, sorry about that.  I hadn't finished writing it and I was not expecting my comment to be approved that fast.  I just wanted to get it near the top.  It also didn't help that my internet randomly* died for about an hour which prevented me from continuing to write this.

*It actually isn't too random, every night my internet just decides that it doesn't want to work for a while.  The time is not always the same though, so in that sense it was random, but it is always shortly after midnight, so I guess I should have seen it coming.  I think my ISP just wants to save a little extra money by turning off peoples' internet when the ISP doesn't think they are using it...which is why I am calling them later today.

INSTALLING AFTER SEPTEMBER 2, 2011

I almost forgot about this.  If you want to be able to install this program on a computer after the giveaway period (September 2, 2011) follow these steps:

1. Download the file from GAOTD TODAY.
2. Run the Setup which extracts the installation file TODAY.
3. Copy the installation file that was extracted (default location is C:\ ) to a flash drive or wherever you want.
4. Just run that installation whenever you want on any of you computers**

P.S. I am only assuming this will work. It can't really be tested out until tomorrow. I will update this when I test it, but it may be a few days or weeks.

**You computer must run one of the supported operating systems.

EDIT: VERY IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ

I was recently informed by TK about a very important something that every user should have knowledge of before using this program.  I will quote his words directly,

"The grammar checking is done in the 'cloud' on their server and the connection to that server is using plain HTTP transactions so our text is open for any packet sniffing spy or criminal or law enforcement agency. People must never check any text that has anything incriminating, embarrassing or otherwise private within it. The software must never be used for any information covered by any data protection legislation! I posted this in GAOTD comments section along with another post warning about the default search engine and homepage hijack and tool-bar installation and how to avoid them but neither made it past the moderator. Also be aware if anyone did want to install this using the web installer tomorrow or any other day, GAOTD have no control what is included in the web-installer download and the vendor may block install downloads at any time. Also because this is a cloud processing tool if the company ever goes out of business you lose the processing engine forever."

People's Reviews

I haven't posted anything in a while, but I don't think it matters because I don't think that anyone reads this blog, but anyways, I made a website at the beginning of this month, called People's Reviews, it is a website where you can rate and review and rank anything and everything.from products, to companies, to general everyday things like paper. So if there, by chance, is someone reading this, you should visit that site at http://peoplesreviews.99k.org. Also I need to make two more websites, one next year and the year after, so if you have any ideas on what the should be for or about, use the comments to tell me, thanks.

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