Duct tape fixes everything

Weapons on the war against Trojans, viruses and worms oh MY!

techlies — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:12:38 +0000

Malwarebytes is still a good tool, combofix, also getting a boot cd or usb key and running fixmbr to fix the master boot record, you have to boot into recovery mode and may need to have the same service pack 3 on both disk and pc

Easy to use and free MP3 ripper encoder

techlies — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:03:57 +0000

http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

Although Exact Audio Copy might work better and produce better results, CDEx is easier to use and also free. It is easy to install and use with the following features.

What’s CDex?
CDex can extract the data directly (digital) from an Audio CD, which is generally called a CD Ripper or a CDDA utility. The resulting audio file can be a plain WAV file (useful for making compilation audio CDs) or the ripped audio data can be compressed using an audio encoder. Many encoders are supported, to name a few:

Lame MP3 encoder
Internal MP2 encoder
APE lossles audio format
Ogg Vorbis encoder
The Windows MP3 encoder (Fraunhofer MP3 encoder)
NTT VQF encoder
FAAC encoder
Windows WMA8 encoder

In addition, WAV files on the hard drive can be converted to a Compressed Audio File (and visa versa). CDex also supports many audio file tag formats like the ID3V1 and ID3V2 tags, which can be automatically inserted as part of the ripping process.

Give it a look, “don’t cost nothin’” as John Belushi would say.

8) CCleaner because we all need to clean some C

techlies — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:21:17 +0000

The other C used to stand for Crap : ) now it is a better app to mention when you are in mixed company. CCleaner has 2 different functions first to clear out old temporary files, memory dumps, junk you don’ t need any longer. I have used it on a variety machines and clear everything and have never had a problem. It can be pretty amazing how much space is wasted on files you don’t need. It can range from hundreds of Megs to a Gig of junk files. Sometimes spyware hangs out and lives in these locations so its good to clear it out and make your machine run more efficiently. The second feature is to clear out old registry issues. You can find it on Filehippo.com. Thanks for cleaning up my Blog header Justin!

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

Over 260 million downloads!!!

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware!

Don’t know where your short url goes (tinyurl, bit.ly, etc)?

techlies — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:15:09 +0000

When I first heard about http://www.longurl.org/ I just smiled and thought thats kind of a smarty pants idea, just randomly making a url extra long, but it actually is a useful website. (Here is the funny site http://www.freakinghugeurl.com/ ) thanks Muncher!

Check out longurl.org it “rehydrates” uncompresses your tiny or shortended urls. Just copy the suspicious url and paste it into longurl.org’s website and then it tells you:

The URL tinyurl.com/tonypictures resolves to http://www.flickr.com/photos/24776861@N02/

At least it gives you some idea where you are headed. You might want to browse with a safer web browser like firefox with the noscript plug in.

http://longurl.org/ left long for your safety-to tell where a shortened link goes by pasting it, for bit.ly digg , twurl , tr.im , is.gd

About LongURL

TinyURL and other like services solved a problem brought on by the advent of micro-blogging—limited message length. They do this by taking (sometimes incredibly long) URLs and creating a small compact one that redirects to the original.

Solving one problem, though, created another one: obfuscation. There’s no way to tell (for sure) where a shortened link goes by just looking at it. So, then, I could send you this link http://is.gd/2kz and tell you to check out the photos from my recent trip, when in fact I’m sending you to a video of Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up”. This is bad for users.

To help with the situation many URL shortening services provide some sort of “preview” feature that lets you see where a link will take you before actually going there. But, yet again, this creates another problem. With so many URL shortening services, each with their own way of previewing URLs, it would be troublesome for developers to try and support a preview feature for all the services. This is where LongURL comes in. LongURL provides a standard API for multiple URL shortening services. And since it’s open source, it’s easy for people to add support for new services.

Update: Well, that was the original idea, and it worked. We came up with a different approach, though, that allows us to support pretty much every shortening service without touching any code. Now our list of supported services is just a list of known services. The list is still updated though, and is used for things like determining which links on a page have been shortened.

9) The video player that works with almost any file ###NEW VERSION###

techlies — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:37:23 +0000

VLC 1.0.1 is out!

2009-07-28

One of the best keeps getting better.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

VLC media player – the cross-platform media player and streaming server

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Its pretty annoying in XP when you get some kind of non sense about not having the right driver this or not qualified for that. This small program just gets the job done and runs on almost any OS. It is missing a few of the fancy pluses of the paid software such as multi channel audio support or smart stretching the video. But for what it does it works well, and is free and a great piece of open source software.

10) Tree Size because a hard drive is never big enough

techlies — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:34:07 +0000

Great free software comes from all over the world from the excellent file manager Servant Salamander from the Czech Republic to this choice from Germany from the Jam Software company.

http://www.jam-software.com/company/about_us.shtml

http://altap.cz/

You often wonder why my drive is full, you can scan it with Treeview and track down by the top 100 files, by user, by size of directory almost any way you can conceive of and clean up your hard drive space. It has great charting and visual options to see what is on your drive and how the drive space looks over time. The paid version gets you much better analysis by different charting options and a list of features too numerous to start in on right now. Give it a try I would recommend the paid version, they update it several times a year and it has worked quite well anywhere I have needed it.

Free:

http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/TreeSizeFree_9x.zip

Paid:

http://www.jam-software.com/treesize/

Malwarebytes (yes it does)

techlies — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 14:03:51 +0000

The latest anti-spyware software. The offer the best scanning software free to use and try, 25 bucks to upgrade for realtime scanning and updating.

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware is considered to be the next step in the detection and removal of malware. In our product we have compiled a number of new technologies that are designed to quickly detect, destroy, and prevent malware. Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware can detect and remove malware that even the most well known anti-virus and anti-malware applications fail to detect. Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware monitors every process and stops malicious processes before they even start. The Realtime Protection Module uses our advanced heuristic scanning technology which monitors your system to keep it safe and secure. In addition, we have implemented a threats center which will allow you to keep up to date with the latest malware threats.

http://tinyurl.com/d5jtuz

Unleash the cartoon search hounds!

techlies — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:08:30 +0000

Ever forget the name of a file or where you last saw it (who hasn’t). You click on search from menu by right clicking on my computer or your c: drive and up pops the cute little cartoon dog. Aw he is so cute, a throwback to “Bob” Microsoft technology. On my computer that dog don’t hunt. Why does microsoft search and indexing run so slowly? Maybe they are trying to always run a search to update the index and contents. In most cases you just want to search by the name of the file,date or size. Here is the perfect tool for doing that:

From voidtools:

Everything is a search engine for Windows that replaces the normal Windows search with a much faster one. Unlike Windows search, Everything initially displays every file and folder on your computer. You can type in a search filter to limit what files and folders are displayed. Everything only uses file and folder names and generally takes a few seconds to build its database. 1,000,000 files will take about 1 minute.

It is so simple fast and easy to use it is almost a yawnfest, but it is a great tool to have running or to launch and quickly find a file. Download link: http://tinyurl.com/cbkesp

Photoscape does it all and its free!

techlies — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 01:03:44 +0000

Photoscape

Great for viewing, correcting, modifying, printing collages and doing all sorts of fun stuff with your pictures. The only shortcoming is its lack of documentation, you have to figure it out yourself or watch the videos. Great multipurpose tool for pictures. Give it a shot, don’t cost nuthin’

Photoscape is the fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos.

Key Features

Viewer: View your folders photos, slideshow
Editor: resizing, brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal, blooming
Batch editor: Batch editing multiple photos
Page: Make one photo by merging multiple photos at the page frame
Combine: Make one photo by attaching multiple photos vertically or horizontally
Animated GIF: Make one animation photo with multiple photos
Print: Print portrait shot, carte de visite, passport photo
Splitter: Divide a photo into multiple parts
Screen Capture: Capture your screenshot and save it
Color Picker: Zoom in screen on images, search and pick the color
Rename: Change photo file names in batch mode
Raw Converter: Convert RAW to JPG
Face Search: Find similar or same faces on the internet.
Photo Bookmark: Photography Web Links favorites. –>

–> Photoscape is provided free-of-charge.
We are always upgrading Photoscape.

http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/index.php

free movie, screenplay, storyboard editor

techlies — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:33:17 +0000

Celtx is the world’s first all-in-one media pre-production software. It has everything you need to take your story from concept to production. Celtx replaces ‘paper, pen & binder’ pre-production with a digital approach that’s more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share.

Unlike scriptwriting software and sites, you can use Celtx for the entire pre-production process – write scripts, storyboard scenes and sequences, develop characters, breakdown & tag elements, schedule production, and prepare detailed and informative production reports for cast and crew.

http://www.celtx.com/overview.html