I found the perfect free web app. Then I checked what it was doing

You have a task that absolutely must be accomplished. You don’t know how to do it. You search. A result pops up: this free, web-based app can solve your problem! Should you use it?

Sure. But be careful. Here’s what to look out for.

The genesis of this column came from something simple: I noticed that there’s a tiny bit of distortion in my lead photo of my Framework Laptop 13 Pro review, a monster which took me most of a week to complete. By then, the image had published. I wasn’t sure if it was referred to as fisheye distortion or some other name, but I figured I could learn how to correct it for future shots. (No, I don’t shoot with a DSLR; I gave all that up when my kids arrived, along with pleas to “carry me, Dad” and snacks and backpacks and diaper bags and all that.)

A quick web search brought me to ImageOnline.io’s Perspective Crop tool. All I had to do was upload the image, adjust the perspective by dragging the corners of the image to their “true” perspective, and then either download or just copy the image to my clipboard. It all took just a few seconds. ImageOnline.io collects over 220 other similar image-editing tools, all single-purpose tasks with an extremely straightforward interface, and none of it runs in the cloud. That’s what I want in a productivity tool!

Yes, Adobe Photoshop can do all that, too. But my problem is that everything is baked in. I have to open Photoshop, discover the tool I want, figure out how to use it, and then get what I need to get done, done. At this point, I just don’t use it holistically with the ease and flow of a natural digital artist. That’s why I asked Microsoft’s AI visual aid, Copilot Vision, for help using Photoshop. And that’s why ImageOnline.io’s tools are so useful: Photoshop may be the Bible of the photo-editing business, but Imageonline links you to chapter and verse.

Here, the productivity aspect wasn’t the variable in this equation. I could solve that in seconds. Instead, the process took a lot longer because I needed to ask the question: Is this productivity tool safe?

Checking it out

My first stop: documentation. ImageOnline.io’s Privacy Policy is simple and direct, and ends with this summary: “Your images are processed entirely in your browser and never uploaded to our servers. We do not see, access, or store your images. We collect minimal analytics data to improve our service, but no personal information is required or collected.”

The Terms of Service are equally simple, brief, and straightforward. The problem is that I then realized my ad blocker was on. What would happen if I turned it off?

As it turned out, very little, at least on the surface. I saw a few floating ads for the Wave browser. That’s a little sketchy: my wife had poked her head in last week and asked me to help her uninstall it, as it had landed on her PC. Malwarebytes considers it a Potentially Unwanted Program, or PUP. Still, there were just a couple of ads — obtrusive, yes, but not totally annoying. I didn’t click anything, naturally. The next step was to try and figure out what was going on under the hood..

Viewing the page using Microsoft Edge’s developer mode revealed a single call back to Google’s ad server with ad blocking on. Turned off, it was a far more complex arrangement of interactions with various sites. Nevertheless, the site’s functionality still worked normally, ads or no. From what I could see, Google received a lot of information about me: my IP address, browser identifiers, page URL, ad-viewability signals, and interaction data, but neither ImageOnline nor Google saw the image I uploaded, and my browser information wasn’t released to any other service providers that I could see.

In this case, cross-checking my conclusions with some AI assistance seemed reasonable, so I did that too. I let a few AI services browse the page. They, too, found no problems.

(Looking back, the one thing I probably could have done differently would have been to open a Windows Sandbox, navigate to the site, make the necessary adjustments, and then save the file. I wasn’t concerned about malware hiding in the file, but whether Edge or Chrome would have caught some malicious process. Paranoia? Probably.)

Paying for “free”

That left me with something of an ethical quandary. PCWorld.com serves ads, and so do most media. I’d love to work for a print magazine funded by subscriptions, but that ship sailed long ago. Our ads are perfectly safe, I’m told. Why couldn’t I turn off my adblocker and just let ImageOnline.io pay its bills using my information? Another piece of information helped sway me: All of the back and forth ad interaction completed in just a handful of seconds, rather than the constant ad refreshes that can occur on mainstream sites.

To be fair, I went a little further than my colleagues do. Sam Singleton’s Try This newsletter rarely recommends ad-based services; they’re all downloadable apps or free websites. That’s the direction I like to go: I look for code that’s been published and/or open-sourced to a site like GitHub, then compiled by the developer into an app.

One of the free image upscalers Sam recently wrote about, Upscayl, gives users the choice between a free download or a paid cloud model. That feels reasonable, too. (I also messaged him to note that Upscayl’s basic upsizing feature is reproduced within Windows — and exceptionally well, too — where it’s completely safe.)

There’s an old cliche: when something is free…you’re the product. That’s the model for so much of the Internet these days, as various services try to collect as much data as possible to build an advertising model around you. In this case, you rarely win. In this case, I decided to do something I rarely do: I’m whitelisting the site and viewing the ads. I know there’s some risk, but the site seems clean and otherwise straightforward, with tools that honestly seem valuable.

It just goes to show that choosing an online tool, and “paying” for it, sometimes requires more than just consideration for whether or not it can do the job.

Speaking of which, what are some good free utilities? Start out with the best free software for your PC, a dozen more free PC utilities from Computerworld, then dive into more than a dozen open-source Windows apps, which have their source code available for anyone to pore through and check out.

In productivity news

• If you’re going to download a productivity app, you might want to download it straight from a storefront like the Microsoft Store: productivity apps are being domain-jacked (or spoofed) and are distributing malware, Windows Latest reports. So, yeah, even more reason to be wary about Googling a solution to your productivity problems.
• Back-to-school season is nearing, and I’m already shopping for my first-time college student. Dorm rooms add a unique challenge to productivity. Here’s what I’m buying (or bought).
• Framework’s Laptop Pro 13 DIY Edition: fun and relatively painless to put together, and it’s a solid PC with excellent battery life, my review shows. But ordering one is no fun.
• Sam Singleton suggests an open-source app (aha!) as a great way to send files between devices, regardless of operating system.
• Microsoft’s Xbox is being updated to add a service to detect and download from faster servers. I’d just like to see this feature added to Windows. Those damn monthly security Windows Updates take forever to download!

Productivity tip of the week

Speeding up by slowing down. Many organizations (including ours!) are implementing days of the week where meetings are minimized or eliminated, and employees are encouraged to work on longer-term projects or simply contemplate how to move forward on various tasks. I have no problem using some of that time for busy work: updating laptops with various software updates (including Windows Insider builds) or tidying up. It’s like a mini sabbatical, and you should gently push your management to adopt it.

Procedural work — just buckling down and filing an expense report, for example — requires a particular mindset. But longer-term, big-picture solutions often require a different approach. I’ve suggested going for a walk to get the juices flowing, but anything that frees your mind and allows it to meander works: taking a shower, sitting outside in the sun, or even just staring at a wall. I don’t worry if my mind starts wandering off-topic. People might call this meditation. For me, that surrounds the process with all of this context and expectations. I just chill.

If I do come up with something, I try to jot a mental note. Some people like to tuck a small notebook in a pocket. That’s great! Don’t feel compelled to flesh it out, and don’t judge whether it’s stupid or not. Just get it down. (Using your phone, however, can inadvertently suck you back into the world of notifications, messages, and to-dos. be careful.)

Remember, you’re just coming up with ideas. Acting upon them is a different exercise.

Thanks for reading!

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