It is always a good idea for Webmasters to carry their favorite portable apps in USB so that they can blog or work from any computer without installing any new software. If you are constantly on move or work from different places, it makes more sense to have these handy portable freeware apps with you. Here are 10 useful apps that you may consider carrying with you as you go.
Firefox Portable
Firefox is still most popular web browser due to a large range of extensions and add-ons and the best thing is there is a portable version of Firefox that you can carry in your USB drive. It is same as regular version of Firefox, does not need any installation and works pretty well. Having a portable browser with you, you do not have many security risks when working from a public computer.
LinkSpirit
LinkSpirit is a portable pagerank calculator that calculates pagerank of your website’s internal pages making it easy for you to analyse external and internal links to a specific page of your website. It runs on a USB and does not need any installation.
Avira AntiVir
If you are looking protection against viruses, malware, spy ware or root-kit while working on a public computer, Avira AntiVir is your best bet. It is very light on resources and performance is much better in testing against other antivirus software. Carry it in your USB to keep yourself safe while working outside your home or office.
Fire FTP
A great tool for web management and transferring files between your computer and your web server. Browser integration, cross platform capability, ease of use and light weight software works perfectly for webmasters who need file transfers when working on websites.
IrfanView
A very light and compact software that can do all basic stuff with images and photos. If you need to resize an image for blog post or change extension of an image, this is your best choice. It is only 1.35MB, works without installation and can do most of the basic editing stuff that you need in daily work.
VLC Media Player
You can carry one media player with you that can play a wide range of audio and video formats which means you do not need to worry about any video or audio file just because you do not have a software to play that. VLC Media Player is a portable freeware app for both Windows and Mac and can play formats including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, XviD, WMV, mp3, ogg, DVDs and VCDs.
Open Office
A great alternative of Microsoft Office that can be very useful on a system that does not have Microsoft Office installed. It comes with word processor, spread sheet, presentations with Microsoft compatibility which means you can open and work on MS Office files anywhere and everywhere having this freeware in your USB.
GIMP
Another useful tool for image composition, photo retouching and image authoring. This is your requirement if you want to work a bit on your images and photos and also useful for converting image formats. It can work from a simple paint program to expert quality photo retouching.
7-Zip
A very useful file archiver that can extract 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR and many other formats and is available as a freeware portable app. You can carry it with you for file extractions of many formats.
KompoZer
A free HTML editor that is useful for newbie and expert users alike. The key features of KompoZer include integrated file management (upload to and edit files on a web server), tabbed editing (work on multiple pages), and support for forms, tables and templates. You can have this WYSIWYG HTML editor as portable freeware app.
These are some of very useful freeware apps for webmasters, let us know which ones do you use regularly and recommend for fellow webmasters.
About Author: Sohail Ahmed blogs at PakBlogger, a blog that is dedicated to address all computers and mobile phones related problems and one stop resource for computer and mobile phone users. You can check his blog article about some more portable freeware apps. If you would like to submit a guest post, please use this form.
