IT Pro Tuesday #233

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Welcome back to IT Pro Tuesday!

We're looking for your favorite tips and tools we can share with the community... those that help you do your job better and more easily. Please reply or leave a comment with your suggestions, and we'll be featuring them in the coming weeks.

As always, we’re updating the full list on our website here. Enjoy.

A Free Tool

X-Mouse Button Control enables you to create application- and window-specific profiles that produce different mouse behavior for different applications or windows. Each profile can contain up to 10 configuration layers, with hot-key or mouse-button switching among layers. Kindly suggested by DisturbedUnit.

Another Free Tool

NsLookup.io is an efficient online tool for searching through DNS record information by domain name. Able-Stretch9223 adds, "Nslookup.io is endlessly useful to me. Displays all the DNS records I need without having to run a ton of commands. Also lets me select a different DNS server."

A Tip

Some helpful advice from MrTenseJACOB, "Don’t take canned air to a running projector. The bulbs get so hot that it can cause a dust fire when the dust becomes un-settled… Just caused a flash fire and horrible smell in front of a classroom of 32 fifth graders. They enjoyed it, the teacher and I did not… [and] the projector doesn’t work anymore."

Yet Another Free Tool

BRLTTY provides access to the text-mode Linux/Unix console via a refreshable braille display, driving the display with complete screen review functionality as well as some speech capability. NoConfidence_2192 explains, it's basically an "open-source daemon for refreshable Braille displays."

One More Free Tool

Porteus is a small, complete linux operating system optimized to run directly from any bootable storage media, which can be a nice way to offer a "locked-down" computer for direct customer use. joshghz explains, "It basically installs itself as read-only using a config on every boot, and launches a kiosk-mode Firefox and Chrome." Cremageuh appreciates that "since it basically runs on a potato, you save on costs, too. It takes a bit of fiddling around for the setup, but once you're done, you barely have to touch it (except for updates). Really fast and stable, definitely recommend!'

P.S. Bonus Free Tools

Caffeine is a simple tool for keeping a computer active. Simulates a keystroke each minute, so the machine won't attempt to sleep or lock the screen because it thinks the user is still working. fleaver1 adds, "It runs in the sys tray and will prevent a computer from locking regardless of policy."

Google Admin Toolbox is a set of utilities for troubleshooting any issues you're having with Google Workspace services. Recommended by Squid_At_Work, who explains, "Google has a nice small admin toolbox. My personal favorite is their simple UI for DIG."

Have a fantastic week and as usual, let us know any comments.