I currently use BitComet, but this one’s been getting a lot of exposure lately. May check it out, although I don’t have any complaints with BitComet.
Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
uTorrent.Com – Up and coming Bittorrent client
Wednesday, October 19th, 2005Wilders Security Forums – Extra settings for Nod32 v2.5
Thursday, September 1st, 2005Great walkthrough of the setup for NOD32 anti-virus software.
Wilders Security Forums – Extra settings for Nod32 v2.5 – revised 17-06-2005
PDFCreator
Monday, April 4th, 2005A freeware tool for creating PDF files. The installer creates a new ‘printer’ so whenever you want to create a PDF, open the file in the appropriate application and print it to the PDFCreator printer.
Movie Catalog Software
Wednesday, March 16th, 2005Want to catalog your movies? Keep track of who has borrowed a movie, and check it back in when they return it? Output an HTML document listing your movies? Then here’s a freeware solution that I’ve been using for awhile now.
When you add a new movie, you can retrieve the information from IMDB using a built-in script. Then you can customize any information retrieved. Sorting, grouping, custom reports and scripts. Quite powerful.
JottoSoft Pixort
Tuesday, February 8th, 2005A great piece of software for reviewing your images. I have started using it because it supports Minolta Raw files (it supports others too). This way I can run it and let it do a huge conversion of all my files that need to be reviewed. I can then select an image, or multiple images, and it shows it almost immediately, rather then having to wait for it to be rendered.
Extremely useful for reviewing individual photos to quickly check focus and other items to see if the picture is worth keeping.
Also very good for comparing multiple images of the same basic subject. Can have up to 6 images at once, and allows for zooming on all images at once.
A free version is available, but it doesn’t appear to support RAW. 30 day free trial, so check it out.
VBRFix
Tuesday, February 8th, 2005Some VBR mp3s will cause problems on some MP3 players because of invalid or incomplete headers.
This program will help fix them up so they should work correctly on all players.
Free Linux Software for Education
Monday, January 10th, 2005From Computer Power User:
Freeduc-cd was the best of those looked at in the January 2005 issue.
Only works on Linux, but makes for a less expensive computer for your budding student.
Home Theatre PC
Monday, January 10th, 2005A great Linux based system called Myth TV It provides all the functionality required.
Used to be difficult to install, but a number of people have been working on easy installs. Their work can be found at Axel Thimm’s ATrpms site.
An additional useful guide is Jarod Wilson’s Fedora Myth TV site.
Less expensive then installing Windows on your HTPC, and the hardware requirements are also less.
Video tips for Pinnacle Studio and Edition
Friday, January 7th, 2005Formerly a Studio user, this individual has posted a number of hints and tricks for Studio users.
Also, since he switched to Edition, he has also posted pointers for people switching from Studio.
Copying CDs and DVDs
Tuesday, December 7th, 2004Want to make backups of your DVDs or CDs, but not sure how to do it? Here’s some software that will help.
I rarely take original CD’s into the car, although thus far, I haven’t had one that was copy protected, so I’ve been able to copy it.
I haven’t made copies of any of my DVDs yet, but the more I read about longevity, the more I think it’s a good idea. Perhaps when/if I buy a dual-layer burner and the media is available and inexpensive, it will be time to consider backing up my DVDs to.
Note: I don’t have any connections to this company, and I haven’t tested it. They have a 21 day trial, so give it a try first.
SlySoft Inc. Multimedia Solutions | dvd copy, burning dvd, dvd ripper, dvd copying software
Open Source Password Safe
Monday, December 6th, 2004I was using Password Corral, which is also very good, but I’ve switched to this for 1 reason. It is easy to put KeePass onto a USB drive and take it with you. Tom’s Hardware has kindly provided a guide to doing this with KeePass.
PureJPEG – Filter Unnecessary JPEG Data
Sunday, December 5th, 2004If you’re posting jpgs to a website, this utility could help reduce the size of the files without impacting their visual quality.
Basically, it strips out any non-image related items from the jpg like EXIF, comments etc. DO NOT do this to your original images from your camera as you will likely want to keep the EXIF info.
Try it on a few images and see if it helps. In my case, it would only save 31 bytes/image since the program I use for generating my images already strips out most of the information
Free file renamer
Sunday, December 5th, 2004I was looking for a file renamer as I had a number of files that I wanted to intelligently rename. Did some searching, and found this renamer.
It’s UI isn’t the greatest, so it took a little bit of effort to figure out, but the price is right, and it did what it promised.
Rename mp3 files. 1-4a-rename. Freeware file renamer for Windows 95/98/2000/XP
Half-Life 2 tweak guide
Thursday, November 25th, 2004An extensive guide to tweaking Half-Life 2. Includes explanations for all the parameters available to be changed.
Image Zoom
Friday, November 19th, 2004Allows for easy zooming of images. Firefox (and other browsers) allow ‘zooming’ on text (i.e. making the text larger) via the view menu, and this extension provides something similar for images. Now you can zoom in on an image to see it larger. Obviously if you zoom too much, the quality degrades, but I find this feature handy.
The homesite for this extension is here
Tabbrowser Preferences
Friday, November 19th, 2004Provides even more level of control over how new windows will be created. Firefox 1.0 added some of this by allowing you to tell it to create new windows as new tabs instead, but Tabbrowser Preferences takes it to the new level. I have it set to open all new windows as tabs instead, in the background and have Firefox hopefully not take focus from the program that sent it. This allows me to click on links in email newsletters without having Firefox come to the front, but also without having to manually create a new tab for each one. I can now open all the links I’m interested in, and read them later.
And here’s the link.
IMatch script updates
Tuesday, November 16th, 2004I’ve made some minor changes to the Export IMatch info to IPTC script. It now puts the filename into Object Name (rather than the property Title). The categories are now put into Keywords rather then Supplemental Categories (since Keywords allows 64 characters and Supplemental Categories only allows 32).
IMatch workflow and image version control
Thursday, November 11th, 2004I’ve finally put together my workflow when using IMatch. If you use IMatch for your photo management, and are looking for ideas, check it out
Extra keys on Windows and Mac keyboards can be handy
Monday, November 8th, 2004A list of useful shortcuts that take advantage of the ‘Windows’ keys on most newer keyboards.
Firefox Tuning and Customization
Friday, November 5th, 2004Reading through my latest CPU magazine, and noticed some tips for Firefox. The biggest thing I miss from Mozilla is the Google search from the address line. After reading the article, I now know how to implement this feature in Firefox, and it’s even faster to use than in Mozilla.
By default, if a non-URL entry is put into the address line of Firefox, it will display the first entry from a Google ‘I Feel Lucky’ search. If you want it to do a standard Google Search, then first, put ‘about:config’ in the address line and press enter.
Scroll down until you find ‘keyword.URL’. Change the setting to ‘http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=.’
Restart Firefox and enter something that doesn’t look like a URL. You should be presented with a Google search using the words you entered as the keywords.
Also in the article was a reference to this forum topic:
Firefox Tuning – MozillaZine Forums
The article discusses potential performance improvements by making changes to various other items in about:config. Also included is sample entries that can be cut-and-pasted into your prefs.js file in your profile directory. On XP, this is under Documents and Settings{user name}MozillaFirefoxProfiles{some keyname}. You will see a file called prefs.js. If you copy the suggested lines into this file, and restart Firefox, you should/may notice performance improvements.
If it doesn’t work, or it appears to be causing problems, you can always remove the lines from your prefs.js.
I’ve put them into mine, but haven’t done any testing as of yet, so please be cautious!