Software Essentials

System Rescue CD (www.sysresccd.org)

Linux live CD that has all sorts of useful tools:

* GNU Parted creates, resizes, moves, copies partitions, and filesystems (and more).
* GParted GUI implementation using the GNU Parted library.
* Partimage saves / restores partitions to an image file on another partition or to another system.
* FSArchiver flexible tool to save/restore a filesystem to a compressed archive.
* File systems tools (for Linux and Windows filesystems): format, resize, and debug an existing partition of a hard disk
* Ntfs3g: enables read/write access to MS Windows NTFS partitions.
* sfdisk saves / restores partition table (and more).
* Test-disk tool to check and undelete partition, supports reiserfs, ntfs, fat32, ext2/3 and many others
* Memtest+ to test the memory of your computer (first thing to test when you have a crash or unexpected problems)
* Network tools (Samba, NFS, ping, nslookup, ...) to backup your data across the network

And more...

I started using it for partition backups. I recently discovered it has a tool to access windows account details and reset passwords.
 
sikuli automates just about anything with a gui http://bit.ly/9MxeUt

Sikuli is a visual technology to search and automate graphical user interfaces (GUI) using images (screenshots). The first release of Sikuli contains Sikuli Script, a visual scripting API for Jython, and Sikuli IDE, an integrated development environment for writing visual scripts with screenshots easily. Sikuli Script automates anything you see on the screen without internal API's support. You can programmatically control a web page, a desktop application running on Windows/Linux/Mac OS X, or even an iphone application running in an emulator.
 
Jython! I introduced that to some middleware folks at Stanford a few years ago and they blinked their eyes furiously!
thanks for the post.
 
Notify Me.
 
Notify Me is an Alexa skill that lets you push notifications to your Amazon Echo using a simple REST API.  This skill is great for home automation ("A leak has been detected in the laundry room"), home security ("Your garage door has been open for over an hour"), and many other creative uses you might think up ("It's Tuesday. Did you put out the trash?").

More info: www.notifymyecho.com
 
Interesting thread... like a time capsule of utilities. Unfortunately (and predictably for a thread this old), many links are dead, some go to porn sites, and at least one appears to be a security risk. Might not be a bad idea to clean it up a bit.
 
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