Software I use (2022 Edition)
I am a so-called ‘digital native’, meaning that I was growing up with computers my whole life. When I was a child, I learned coding, build my own computers since I was a teenager, worked basically my whole life with them and even use them to relax after the work is done. I have therefore used quiet a wide range of software and utilities. Here, I want to list the software I currently use on a daily or weekly basis. This list is not specific to academia or archaeology and therefore not complete. Nevertheless, there might be some items on that list, you did not know until now.
Communication
eM Client
This software is my go-to eMail client and here is why: I used Outlook, Thunderbird, and several others and always had something to complain about. This is not the case with eM Client. It just works! It synchronises my contacts over multiple accounts, I can use tags properly and it even looks good. I like it so much, I actually have two licenses. You can get them pretty cheap on a Black Friday deal.
🔗 Website: https://www.emclient.com/
Mail Store
Even the best eMail client can get slow with too many messages. As I do not want to simply delete my messages, I archive them! Mail Store is a free software (for private users) that does just that. You enter several mail accounts and from time to time archive your mail. You can even let Mail Store delete archived messages from the mail server, so you free up space, but don’t loose your mails. The search function also works pretty well, so that I find all the mails I need. If you store the archive in the cloud, you can also access your old mails from different machines.
🔗 Website: https://www.mailstore.com/
3D Software
Cinema 4D
Well, what can I say: I am not working in 3D, I work in 4D. Since I was a student, I use Cinema 4D for 3D visualisations and since I am a lecturer, I use Cinema 4D for teaching about 3D visualisations. Why? It is not better than 3D Studio Max or Blender, but it is so much easier to learn! As a student or lecturer, this software is even nearly free.
🔗 Website: https://www.maxon.net/de/cinema-4d
MeshLab
What Cinema 4D can’t, MeshLab can and it is even completely free! MeshLab is an open source software for processing and editing 3D meshes. It provides a set of tools for editing, cleaning, healing, inspecting, rendering, texturing and converting 3D data. It offers features for processing raw data produced by 3D digitisation tools/devices and for preparing models for 3D printing.
🔗 Website: https://www.meshlab.net/
Organisation
Zotero
Zotero is my go-to bibliography manager. It is not the only one, but I already wrote about what I like about it especially. It is free, offers an easy to use UI and works on different machines, if you store the library in the cloud (e.g. OneDrive). The best feature however is, that it is so easy to simply change the citing format. This saves a lot of time.
🔗 Website: https://www.zotero.org/
KeePass 2
I have a lot of passwords and I definitely can’t remember them all. As I do not trust my browser to store all my passwords, I do it myself with KeePass. It is a Standalone, free software, that simply stores your passwords. It can also generate them for you as well and if you use also the Android app and store the library (password-protected, so I have to remember at least this one myself) in the cloud, you have your passwords everywhere!
🔗 Website: https://keepass.info/
ScanTailor
This is a rather unknown software, that I used quiet often in the past, and now only sometimes. ScanTailor can transform photos of book pages into de-skewed and organised images, that then can be combined into a PDF with an external software. I know that there is a lot of software that is doing what ScanTailor does, but I do like the simplicity and control of the software and use it ever since.
🔗 Website: https://scantailor.org/
Coding
Atom
I already wrote about a very nice plugin for Atom, but never about Atom itself. It is a software to code and it is very well integrated into Git and Github. It offers collaboration (Teletype), auto-completion, a package manager and many ways to customise the appearance and functionality. It is free, but unfortunately will not be continued.
🔗 Website: https://atom.io/
FileZilla
If you work online, you also have to access a lot of web space. FileZilla is a pretty old software, although updated regularly and I love it. It is very simple, you can easily store several online accesses and if for some reason a down- or upload did not work, it is easy to resume. This is especially interesting, when you uploading several hundred files at once.
🔗 Website: https://filezilla-project.org/
Security
BackBlaze
Backing up is important. I always need a service that silently works in the background and backs everything up in the cloud. The good thing is, Backblaze does all that and does not limit the amount of data you are uploading. You just pay per device. Pricing is reasonable in my opinion and knowing everything is save in secure is great.
🔗 Website: https://www.backblaze.com/
