Earlier this week we previewed Bento, the new personal database application by FileMaker. Today we take a look at another Leopard-only Mac application aimed at keeping your files organized and easy to find: Together 2.0. Together, previously known as Keep it Together (KIT), is a pretty slick application from Reinvented Software that promises an easy way to keep all kinds of files in one place, making it easy to find them again later. Using a drag-and-drop interface and taking advantage of both Spotlight and Quick Look in Leopard, Together shows a lot of promise as an easy to use data organizer.

Together works, essentially, by dragging and dropping files and folders into either the application itself, or to a designated group or folder in the Shelf, a side menu that can be quickly accessed from the desktop, regardless of what program you are using. You can then label or tag those items and add notations or make small edits. Parts of the program reminded us of the Google Notebook, but without being exclusively web-based. For instance, we were able to drag and drop graphics from a web page directly into Together 2.0, without first saving or opening the file in a separate window. Likewise, selected text is copied (sans markup) to a new text file. Web archives can be created from within Together 2.0, either from existing bookmarks or a manual URL - and the text on those pages can be edited instantly.

Here at Download Squad HQ, we install and uninstall a lot of applications, tweak a lot of settings, and do a whole bunch of other things that generally makes Windows unhappy with us.

When I brought home my shiny new laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium earlier this year, I didn't know how lucky I was. My new PC shut down when I asked it to, slept when I closed the lid, and didn't cause glitches every time I started playing audio.

After spending some time pulling my hair out trying to get to the bottom of things, I figured the easiest way to solve some of my problems would be just to do a clean install of Windows. While programs like CCleaner are great for dusting the cobwebs of your windows registry, nothing works as well as reformatting the hard drive.

Of course, this was also an excellent opportunity to make sure I have a good backup of all my important data files, and to download and install just the applications that are most important to me in daily life. So after the jump is a list of the applications I started loading on my PC after restoring Windows. We'd love to know what programs you can't live without and what are the first things you load on a new PC?

Looking for a good replacement for the built-in contacts, calendar, and tasks applications on your Windows Mobile PDA or phone, but don't feel like shelling out $20 to $30? Handango's got you covered. Well, today anyway.

The mobile software store is offering up a free copy of Agendus for Windows Mobile today only. Agendus is a popular personal information manager that made a name for itself on PalmOS. Last year, Iambic decided to port the application to Windows Mobile.

While it may not have the name recognition of Agenda Fusion or Pocket Informant, Agendus does pack a bunch of features missing from Windows Mobile's default PIM suite. For example, you get more detailed week and month views, icons, and better integration of tasks, calendar, and contacts.

Usually a full license would set you back $25.

Genius is a free memorization software app for macs. It has an easy user interface and it makes studying a lot more fun and hi tech than flipping pages in your notebook or worse, having a drone drill you on flashcards.

It has an easy question and answer format which you load with your own study materials, such as foreign language vocabulary, math facts, chemistry elements, states and capitals, - well you get it.

The program then begins in a slideshow fashion where it advances a few slides with the answer showing, and then goes back and shows the same slides without the answer. If you input the correct answer, you hear a soothing "green light" sort of sound, and if you put in the wrong answer, you get a Family Feud abrupt buzzer sound.

Genius then takes you through the series advancing with new questions and then going back to the ones you missed for review. Genius organizes your information and carefully chooses questions using an intelligent "spaced repetition" method that's based on your past performance.

Genius could also be a kind of timewaster for the overachieving crowd who want to learn at the same time they waste time. So for those of you in this category, Genius might be just perfect for you. On install, the app comes with some sample files like Swedish verbs, Canadian Provincial Capitals and US states and capitals. Give it a whirl.

As opposed to iFlash which will set you back about $15, Genius is free and available for download at VersionTracker or MacUpdate. You can also join the Genius Yahoo group and download genius file packs in the genius file format for more learning opportunities.

Looking for a good solution for organizing all the notes in your life? EverNote is an application for saving web articles, snippets of Office documents, to-do lists, images, and other notes all in one handy package.

There's also handwriting recognition for Tablet or UMPC users, an OCR that lets you search for text inside of images, and a Google Desktop indexer, making it easy to search for notes stored within EverNote.

An EverNote license will normally set you back $50, but Giveaway of the Day is offering up a free copy today only. You'll have to download and register EverNote 2.2 before the end of the day in order to get a free license.

[via jkOnTheRun]

iCal is a great calendaring app, but if you're a heavy user, you'll sympathize with us when we say it drives us nuts. Really, the most troublesome part of using iCal is adding events. Lots of unnecessary clicks and options that you can hide and show combine to slow you down when you're creating an event. Something that should take ten seconds takes forty.

So we went in search of something to speed the process up--and we found it. Do-It is an Automator app that has a single screen for entering iCal events, and it is much faster that iCal itself. Almost every option is there, though recurring events aren't implemented. Do-It is definitely going in our dock.

What the world needs is another RSS feed reader, and specifically one that is 3D. Heck, isn't any productivity application made better if you can add the word 3D to it?

Sarcasm aside, Voyage is actually a fairly compelling take on a 3D feed reader. Headlines float nebulously in space in varying layers. The ones closest to you are easiest to read, and they get smaller and fuzzier as they go off into the distance. Clicking on a headline (on any layer) will zoom to that layer and expand a story synopsis.

Stories that are further away are older, a fact that can be seen by watching the horizontal timeline that bisects the screen. Using your keyboard's up and down arrows you can travel into the past, or back towards the present. You can also directly click on a headline that is in a layer beneath the one you are currently looking at; the interface will zoom to the layer and show you the synopsis you've selected.

Voyager defaults to a number of popular RSS feeds, but you are free to delete them and use your own feeds. Unfortunately, there is no bulk upload functionality, so you can only add feeds one at a time.

At this stage Voyage is fun to play with for a few minutes, but doesn't appear to be ready for any RSS feed heavy lifting.

Have you tried to move big files by attaching them to email? Are your attachments disappearing? With the advent of reputable and long-needed antispam services, it's getting more difficult to move large files with email (as well it should be; email was never designed to transfer huge attachments or executables). Many email servers will block executable files (ending in .exe), Access (.mdb) and even compressed (.zip) files. It's time to get with the program and use free services to send big files or pay a small amount for a business account.

In the olden days, we "Old Net Folks" used FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and there are plenty of free apps still around if you're willing to learn something new and your recipient can get permissions set up for this method of transfer. Figuring that (a) you don't want to learn anything new and (b) your recipient's sysadmin raises one incredulous eyebrow at the request, here are some free or low-cost ways to move big files around the Internet.

As more and more users start seeing the new version of Gmail, they're finding that their favorite Firefox add-ons and Greasemonkey extensions may no longer be working. One of the most popular Greasemonkey extensions for Gmail has to be Macros, created by Google employee Mihai Parparita. Luckily, a new version has now been released.

Those of you that are aware of the Macros script for Gmail have probably already all left to go grab the latest version. The rest of you still reading are probably wondering what all the hubbub is about, so here's a quick rundown of what Macros is, and why you need it.

Macros is a Greasemonkey script that adds a bunch of very useful keyboard shortcuts to Google's already very keyboard-centric Gmail control mechanism, like the ability to jump directly to a label by typing "L" then the label's name. While that's some pretty sweet functionality, Macros is worth installing for one specific shortcut: the D (for dismiss) key.

If you check the box for a few unread emails in your inbox that you know you don't need to read, you can press the D key to dismiss those messages. This will automatically mark them all as read and archive them in one fell swoop. It's amazing how fast you can process your inbox by first making a pass through and dismissing anything that is not relevant or necessary. This is a favorite trick for when you're returning from vacation or even on a Monday morning with a weekend's worth of messages piled up.

If you're not interested in installing Greasemonkey to get this functionality, consider just grabbing Lifehacker's Better Gmail Firefox add-on, which has Macros built right in, as well as a number of other useful features.

Virtual machines have been around for years, but it's only been in the last couple of years that performance on them has become good for regular and productive use. When Apple made their big switch to Intel processors, an upstart company named Parallels came along and did what seemed at the time to be the unthinkable: they created a virtual machine environment in OS X that allowed users to run Windows at virtually full speed.

Of course, veteran virtual machine company VMWare apparently took notice, and although they were later to the Mac virtual machine game, they arrived with years of experience behind them. Today, it's a toss-up as to who has the better product - and that's great for consumers. We're in the position of being able to watch a horse race between two very capable and competitive companies, and that means that performance and features are going to continue increasing at a rapid pace on both platforms.

VMWare has recently upped the ante with the release of VMWare Fusion 1.1, their aforementioned Mac virtual machine platform. As reported by our sister site TUAW, the new version of Fusion comes with Leopard support, experimental DirectX 9.0 support, full Vista and XP support, a beta version of VMWare importer, and overall improvements to speed and performance.

Parallels, it's your move.

If you've got a hankerin' for Gmail over IMAP bliss using Mozilla Thunderbird as your mail client, we can show you how. This sub 4 minute video walks you through configuring Thunderbird to stay synced with your Gmail account.

Small business travelers depend on out-of-office technology and are frustrated at almost every turn in using it when they need it the most. Having a great notebook is one thing; having a table to put it on so you can type apparently is another.

What are the travel frustrations for business users and what can they do about it?

Most travel challenges involve not having a decent place to use your notebook. Airplane travelers are shunted into tiny seats with seat backs that, if not in the upright condition, prevent you from lifting the top to see the screen. Want to check the seating configuration and potential screen room? SeatGuru is the hub for finding exact seating specs on all major airlines. Today you have to know the plane model to see the seat map, limited or full recline, reduced legroom, misaligned windows, in-seat power port locations and where the head is. The color coding on SeatGuru's graphics is invaluable.

As an infrequent flyer who'd rather take the train if it went where I needed to go, the best part of train travel is the big wide seat with lots of legroom and an electric outlet at hand. SeatMaestro provides airline seating information plus if and where electric outlets are available on your flight. Find your plane type here and then look for the power and other resources. You can review an assortment of airplane power adapters for PCs and Apple's to-die-for accessory: the AirPort Express Base Station that creates a wireless network from any broadband network – a common hotel and conference room setup.

Hotel wifi can make or break your stay and not all wifi is equal. In fact, you better check out where in the hotel your room is to get the best reception and some hotels have problems connecting certain brands of computers. Dell's wireless card is a known issue with some hotel chains' wifi. HotelChatter has an annual report of the best and worst wifi hotels. They even compiled a wifi heaven, or the best of the best hotel wifi. Did you know that corner rooms often provide the best wireless reception?

Worse than for-pay hotel wireless is having nowhere to plug in your computer or other toys. How many times have you tried to move a bed that's nailed to the wall just a couple of inches so you can recharge your mobile technology? Hint: pack an extension cord with a multi-plug for hotels that skimp on the reachable outlets or consider a Solio charger for under $80. It's easier than trying to pack your own lamp to pump up the dim lighting many hotels provide in the official room workspace.

Speaking of workspace, airports used to have small workstation areas with a telephone, table and chairs for a traveler's convenience. Nowadays, business travelers are often strewn all over the floor (usually near electrical outlets) trying to use their airport dead time to do something productive. Say "airport wireless" to a business traveler and step back in anticipation of the tirade:

• Why don't all airports have wifi and why isn't it all free?
• Why do I have to pay three different wireless carriers on a single trip with one plane change?
• Why do I have to sit outside a private club to catch seeping wifi?

Find airports with wireless connectivity and pricing (if not free) at TravelPost. Their guide includes 219 airports with wireless connections and free wifi.

If you're a serious business traveler, you might want to attend the Travel Technology Show in London, February 5-6 , 2008. If you want more and geekier travel gear, check the TravelGearBlog.

After surveying some harried but experienced business travelers in the seats next to, in front of and behind me, we've started a wish-list for travel technology that goes beyond free in-hotel breakfast. We want:

1. Tables and chairs in airport waiting areas (electric outlets would be a plus)
2. Brighter lights in hotel workspaces
3. Unblocked (and more) electric outlets in hotel rooms
4. Better and more reliable hotel wireless speed
5. A place to print documents in a hotel from our rooms
   
6. In-flight Internet ['nuff said]
   
7. Firewalls that don't block useful sites or prevent VPN connections

What's on your list besides an overpriced but ultra-cool laptop bag?

If there's one thing that users of David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) system suffer from, it's typically the temptation to mess with their system. Nothing feels better than having all of your stuff under control, except maybe having all of your stuff under control in a sexy new system.

So if you've been rocking the same GTD application for too long and feel it's time to mix things up a little, check out this amazing survey of the GTD application landscape at About This Particular Mac.

While it originates at a Mac-centric site, the list should be of interest to any GTD practitioner since many (if not most) of the listed applications are web apps, with the occasional cross-platform app thrown in.

For good measure, here are our favorite GTD apps based on platfrom:

Windows: ClearContext (an Outlook add-in)
Mac: iGTD
Web: Backpack or Remember The Milk

Microsoft appears to be taking a cue from Google, and is rolling out its latest web service to just a few Windows Live users at a time. LiveSide reports that some folks are able to access the new Windows Live Calendar today, while others will be taken to Hotmail or MSN Calendar if they follow that link.

The updated calendar application seems to be a decent Google Calendar competitor, with many of the same features:

• Day, Week, Month, and Agenda views customizable by name and color
• Create multiple calendars
• Share your calendars with other Windows Live users
• Receive email reminders of scheduled events
• Share calendars via xml
• Import ICS files from Outlook, Google Calendar or other calendar apps

There's no way to synchronize calendars. Yet. But LiveSide reports that Microsoft is working on the ability to synchronize your Windows Live Calendar with Outlook and/or Windows Mobile. And that could make this a killer web app. Right now you need a third party solution like GooSync or GMobileSync to synchronize a PDA or phone with Google Calendar.