Online tools

Turning web apps into native apps

5 Ways I Fight Linux’s App Gap and Use All the Software I Need

Project management

Trello vs. Asana: The Best Free Project Management Tool

IP address

• https://api.ipify.org/ ,github. curl https://api.ipify.org
• curl ifconfig.me/

Students

5 Useful Web Tools Every Student Should Use

Non-boring presentation

Prezi. Also funny comics can be found from xkcd.com.

Comics

Washingtonpost

Infographics

The 5 Best Free Tools to Make Infographics Online

Extract the values of data in a plot

• How can I extract the values of data plotted in a graph which is available in pdf form?
• WebPlotDigitizer
  • https://apps.automeris.io/wpd/ works fine
  • Desktop version download

Other similar tools:

• Engauge Digitizer
• Plot Digitizer

Flow chart/Mind-mapping/Diagram

• Windows → Mind mapping software
• These 5 visualization tools make brainstorming actually productive. Mermaid, Excalidraw, Freeplane, Obsidian Canvas, and yEd.
• The 7 Best Free Online Flowchart Makers. Lucidchart, draw.io, Cacoo, Gliffy, Wireflow, Textographo, Google Drawings.
• Top 10 Microsoft Visio Alternatives for Linux Top 10 Microsoft Visio Alternatives for Linux
• Coggle https://coggle.it/
  • Use google or microsoft to sign in
  • Can embed diagrams in any website
  • Cannot have an interactive/collapsible/expandable diagram
  • Create Flow Charts with Coggle
• MindMeister: In the mind maps you can open and close individual branches.
• MindMup
• LucidChart
  • How to Create a Data-Flow Diagram to Visualize Data of Any Project
• yEd
• ASCII text
  • http://asciiflow.com/. You save the result by copying it to your local text editor.
  • http://www.asciidraw.com/#Draw
• (Mac) 5 Free Mac Apps to Visualize Your Ideas, Tasks, and More

Mermaid

• https://mermaid.live/
• Stackedit (online markdown editor) support it. Demo
• Mermaid is the best Obsidian feature you didn't know about

Draw.io

• diagrams.net (draw.io)
• diagrams.net Integrations including Self-hosted, secure, container
• It has a off-line version, desktop (Linux/Windows/Mac/Web app)
• Online manual
• I tested on Ubuntu 20.04. The file format is *.drawio. I can export it to svg file. But *.drawio takes only 1.8K vs 15K for svg file.
• Authorise draw.io to access files in Microsoft OneDrive
• Nextcloud with draw.io app and self-hosted draw.io

Excalidraw

https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams

Drawing

• AutoDraw A.I. based, by Google Creative Lab. It can quickly let you create an art. Good for power point too.
• Quick Draw
• The 10 Best Interactive Online Art Games for Kids
• 為何 Google、Facebook、Adobe 都愛這種插畫？ Alegria style art
• 9 Fun and Free Online Drawing and Painting Tools
• The 8 Best Free Browser-Based Adobe Illustrator Alternatives

Design

Figma

Image sharing

• https://imgur.com/register
  • https://uploadimgur.com/ No sign up is needed. UploadImgur.com describes itself as a service that “uploads images directly to Imgur’s servers,” acting as a front-end for uploading to Imgur. Their privacy policy states they “do not store your images on our servers; they are immediately transferred to Imgur.” It looks more like a third-party tool or wrapper/interface built around Imgur’s upload API.
• https://postimages.org/. We do not impose strict limits on our users.
  • Sign up by entering an email. A password will be given in an email.
  • Support a URL upload (imgur.com does not)
  • Do not support SVG. For SVG, use a free SVG to PNG tool like Freeconvert or Canva.

Image editor

Pixlr Editor (vs Pinta or Shotwell in Ubuntu), 中文

Create gifs on any platform. An online tool is called Giphy. The source file can be a video file (local < 100MB or youtube). If the source file is a series of png file, click slideshow option. The resulting file can be embedded in html files or downloaded to your local machines.

5 One-Click Websites to Make Your Photos Look Better

5 Little-Known Free Online Image Editing Tools to Replace Photoshop

Collage

7 Free Photo Collage Makers to Turn Photos Into Memories

Remove background

• https://www.remove.bg/. It works to remove white background from the plots created by R.
• IOPaint,
  • Online https://huggingface.co/spaces/Sanster/iopaint-lama
  • https://github.com/Sanster/IOPaint, (fully self-hosted) Image inpainting tool powered by SOTA AI Model. Remove any unwanted object, defect, people from your pictures or erase and replace(powered by stable diffusion) any thing on your pictures.

Compare before and after images

https://imgsli.com/

Slideshow

http://theslideshow.net/# For example, search 'Natural wonders' in Google/Bing and copy/paste a destination to the website.

curacao, Yamdrok Lake, Guilin, Greenland, Valletta, Patagonia, Atacama, Machu Picchu, Hallstatt

Big Bend National Park, Yosemite National Park, Death Valley National Park (Badwater Road, Dante’s View, Artist Drive、Golden Canyon, Ubehebe Crater)

Iguazu falls (Bazil and Argentina), Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (Argentina), Muir Woods, El Calafate (Argentina), Torres de Paine (Chile), Costa Rica

(元謀) Yuanmou County, China

Animation

The 5 Best Online Platforms to Create Animations

Photos to GIFs

The 5 Best Free Websites to Turn Your Photos to GIFs

Window swap

https://window-swap.com/

Video editor

WeVideo (vs OpenShot in Ubuntu)

Video to GIF converter

ezgif.com

Radio

• radio.garden - Listen to Radio Stations Around the World, Free, News 98 時時刻刻報新聞, NPR 24 Hour Program Stream, ICRT
• The 5 Best Websites to Listen to the Radio in Your Browser
  • Cloud Caster works fine. You can play or download each podcast
• VLC -> local radios

Podcast

My Favorite Podcast App Now Has a Free Web Player

Transcribe audio to text

• http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/transcribe-audio-text-free/
• oTranscribe

Virus

Virus Total

Finance

Mint

OneDrive

• Dark mode in Word: View -> Dark Mode.

Free Word Viewer

• Xodo. It seems it does not require to sign in.
• GroupDocs

Google

Third-party apps

That Old App Still Has Your Google Data, Here's How to Take It Back

Google Discover feed

• https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-discover
• Google’s personalized Discover feed is (finally!) coming to PCs soon

Google search

• 21 Tips and Tricks to Master the Art of Googling as a Developer
• Search torrent: 倫敦陷落:torrent
• Search pdf: survROC:pdf
• Site search: KEYWORD site:URL
• forward slash key - modify the current search keywords
• How to Perform a Country Specific Web Search
• It’s Now Easier to Remove Google Search Results About Yourself
• This Google Tool Can Help Hide Your Personal Info From Search

Google photos

• Choose the upload size of your photos and videos
  Photos are compressed to save space. If a photo is larger than 16MP, it will be resized to 16MP.
  • You can print good quality 16MP photos in sizes up to 24 inches x 16 inches.
  • Videos higher than 1080p will be resized to high-definition 1080p. A video with 1080p or less will look close to the original. Some information, like closed captions, might be lost.
• How to Prepare For Google's New Cloud Storage Restrictions
• 7 Ways to Free Up Storage Space on Google Photos
• How to Enable Google Photos Memories on Chrome’s New Tab Page
• Backup/export: https://takeout.google.com
  • How To Backup Google Photos To Your Computer With gphotos-sync
  • How to Export Your Google Photos Library
  • This Is the Easiest Way to Download All Your Google Photos 2024
• Screenshots Were Wasting My Google Photos Storage, Here's How I Fixed It

Google Cloud Shell

• https://console.cloud.google.com/,
  • Cloud Shell Your online development and operations environment
  • Quotas and limits
  • How Cloud Shell works
  • Getting Started with Cloud Shell & gcloud About this codelab
  • Install the gcloud CLI in order to ssh
• No localhost? No problem! Using Google Cloud Shell as my full time development environment
• What can you do with Google Cloud Shell?
• Google Cloud Shell via a ssh

Google drawings

I need to install the "Google Drawings" extension on chrome. It can be used to create shapes and diagrams.

It has an option to 'Download' the file as svg.

One problem is the canvas is not trimmed to the shapes.

PDF

You Can Now Markup and Modify PDFs in Google Drive Using Adobe Acrobat

Google Drive

• How to Export Your Google Drive Files and Google Takeout
• rclone to upload/sync to google drive
• How to install and use the Duplicati cloud backup solution

Browser extensions

Google Drive Is So Much Better When You Use These Extensions

Google Docs Spreadsheets

• How to Make Digital Flashcards With Google Docs Spreadsheets
• Google updated features with Alternating Colors features in Format menu item. There you can easily select a default scheme and customize as you like.
• How to Resize Columns and Rows in Google Sheets

Google Tasks

Here’s How I Use Google Tasks to Organize My Life

Google Calendar

• Event is better than reminders. Event will show on the locked screen and the notification area.
  • Event can be used to send an email reminder
  • Another way to get a reminder email is by scheduling an email in Gmail.
• How to Use Google Calendar as a Personal Journal From Today
• Add reminders in Google Calendar
  • You'll only get notifications for reminders that are scheduled for a specific time. If you created an all-day reminder, you won't get a notification for it.
  • Be sure to change the Settings for the notifications. Make sure 'Allow Notifications' is one. Choose Banner Style from Temporary to Persistent.

Google Timeline

• I use this free open-source app to track everywhere I’ve been — without giving Google a thing, Dawarich

Google map

• 5 Tools to Take an Auto-Guided Google Street View Tour
• 5 Free Sites and Extensions to Make Google Maps Incredibly Useful
• How to Optimize Multiple Stops Into a Round Trip on Google Maps using Routora extension
• How to Save a Route on Google Maps. Use the Pin button.
• GPS Coordinates Converter
• How to Save and Find Your Parked Car with Google Maps
• Google Just Announced a Bunch of New AI Features for Maps 2024/10

Offline maps

I Tested 6 Offline Maps for iPhone—This Is the Only One You Need

Google earth

Marble: An Open-Source Google Earth Alternative for Linux

Google Input Tools

https://www.google.com/inputtools/

Gmail tricks

• 9 Hidden Gmail Features You Probably Didn’t Know About
• Your Gmail Account Has Unlimited Addresses. Suppose [email protected] is the original.
  • Plus sign: [email protected], or [email protected]
  • Period: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
  • [email protected]
• Gmail stopped loading hidden trackers when I changed this one setting

gmailify

• Gmailify: The best of Gmail, without an @gmail address
• Get Gmail features for your other email accounts: Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, Hotmail, or select non-Gmail accounts

How to Remotely Sign Out of Your Gmail Account

go to myaccount.google.com and then “Sign-in & security” followed by Device activity & notification.

Gmail app always showing one unread notification

Try this one in the search bar: "category:primary is:unread"

Free up Space in Gmail

The Fastest Way to Free up Space in Gmail

How to Use Gmail Like a Desktop Email Client: 7 Simple Steps

How to Use Gmail Like a Desktop Email Client: 7 Simple Steps

Back up gmail

How to Back up Your Gmail to a Local Mailbox the Easy Way

Why You Should Use Third-Party Sign-on (OAuth) for Your Web App

Why You Should Use Third-Party Sign-on (OAuth) for Your Web App

Google keep

• How to Export Your Google Keep Notes and Attachments
• Google Keep has 7 hidden features that make work so much easier

Google review

How to Delete a Google Review

The 15 Best Alternatives to Search, News, Docs, and More

The 15 Best Alternatives to Search, News, Docs, and More

• Google -> duckDuckGo
• Gmail -> Outlook.com
• Google map -> Here WeGo
• Google docs -> Office online
• Google sheets -> Proton Sheets
• Google drive -> Dropbox
• Google news -> Yahoo news
• Google calendar -> Fruux
• Google translate -> Microsoft translator
• Chrome -> Opera
• Google domain -> Flame domain
• Google site -> Weebly
• Google photos -> Amazon prime photos

Reddit

• What Is Reddit and How Does It Work?
• Reddit Has Hidden Search Tools

Free online courses

440+ Free Online Programming & Computer Science Courses You Can Start in February

Scribd

https://scribd.vdownloaders.com/

Online poll/voting/scheduler

• https://www.surveymonkey.com
• https://doodle.com/free-online-voting

Share files

• Firefox
• How Dropbox Transfer compares to the competition

Internxt Send

Do You Miss Firefox Send? Internxt Send is Ready as a Replacement

Virtual file system

• Owncloud Virtual Files. Let users sync a virtual file instead of the full file, downloading the real thing on demand only. It saves on storage and bandwidth.
  • 私有雲解決方案ownCloud用戶現也能在Linux桌面使用虛擬檔案功能
• Nextcloud introduces Virtual Drive in Desktop Client to simplify desktop integration
• How to use Dropbox Smart Sync
• Introducing OneDrive Files On-Demand and other features making it easy to access files
• How To Mount Google Drive Locally As Virtual File System In Linux

Password

• How to Use LessPass to Manage Your Passwords
• 12 Great Password Ideas
  1. Choose 4 random words
  2. Use an entire phrase
  3. Create an acronym
  4. Use the keyboard
  5. Use a deliberate misspelling
  6. Create a formula
  7. Add spaces or brackets
  8. Add a random word
  9. Repetition
  10. Turn it into an email address
  11. Swap the letters around
  12. Add other punctuation

Email

• How to Get Free Email Forwarding from Mozilla (and some alternatives)

Alias email

• How to Set Up and Use iCloud Email Aliases

Hide Your Real Email Address

How to Hide Your Real Email Address

Use a Custom Reply-To Email Address

How to Use a Custom Reply-To Email Address in Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo

The 8 Best ProtonMail Alternatives for Your Email Security

The 8 Best ProtonMail Alternatives for Your Email Security

How to Trace Emails Back to Their Source IP Address

How to Trace Emails Back to Their Source IP Address

Temporary Email Addresses, burner emails

• How to Generate Temporary Email Addresses Using the Linux Terminal
• The 5 best disposable email services in 2021 | Get a temporary email address for free
• https://tempail.com/en/ (1 hour)
• https://www.emailondeck.com/eod.php (1~? hours)
• Burner Emails Aren't Just for Spam—I Use Them for These 6 Handy Purposes
  • https://temp-mail.org/en/
  • https://10minutemail.com/
  • (Non-temporary) https://simplelogin.io/
  • (Non-temporary) https://proton.me/mail

Sound

• Recreate Your Noisy Office with “The Sound of Colleagues”
• https://asoftmurmur.com/

Track website (eg price) changes

• Wayback machine from archive.org. What Is the Wayback Machine, and Why Is It Important?
• Distill.io mentioned in 5 free Chrome browser extensions we can’t live without

Old websites

• https://web.archive.org/.
• How to Find Old Websites That No Longer Exist
• 8 Tools to View Old Versions of Any Website

Slack

What Is Slack and How Does It Work?

Discord

What Is Discord, and Is It Only for Gamers?

Bluesky

• Why You Should Be Using Bluesky’s ‘App Passwords’?