Caintech.co.uk

The Ten Most Popular Browsers

Alan Cain — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:51:22 +0000

Internet Explorer may remain the world’s most popular browser by most measures, but StatCounter is reporting some numbers that put Firefox on top. One particular version of Firefox, that is: 3.5, which StatCounter says is now the single most popular browser version in the world.

Doing the math by version number rather than for all versions of a particular browser radically shifts the result, since IE users as a lot are clearly the browser users least likely to promptly upgrade to a new version: IE 8, IE 7, and IE 6 are all still in wide use, presumably because IE remains the default browser in the Windows world, and plenty of folks who find themselves with a default never bother to change it.Which is why Microsoft must still go out of its way to urge people to upgrade from IE 6--an eight-year-old browser that dates from an era before there was a Firefox, a Safari, or a Chrome.

So how does browser usage by version break down among Technologizer visitors? Glad you asked. Here are the top ten browser versions–Firefox 3.5 has a humongous lead, Safari 4.0 is in second place, and IE doesn’t show up until third place. The numbers below are percentage of visits to the site over the past month…

Posted in All Teched UP!, Browsers, Firefox, IE

The Three Phases Of Owning A Computer

Alan Cain — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:52:12 +0000

Posted in comedy, fun

How to test a laptop or a desktop computer memory

Alan Cain — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:47:04 +0000

A lot of laptop and desktop computer problems are caused by a failed memory or a failing memory module. As a technician I test memory modules every time I get a laptop for repair. I have tried many different memory testing utilities but finally I stopped on Memtest 86+. So far it is one of the best free memory test utilities and I use it everyday. You can find this utility on the Memtest 86+ homepage.

To test your memory modules you have to do next:

download Memtest 86+.

Choose Download – Pre-Compiled Bootable ISO (.zip) if you want to burn it on CD.
Choose Download – Pre-Compiled package for Floppy (DOS – Win) if you want to place the utility on a floppy disk. I usually use CD because most computers have a CD drive and it’s much faster to start the test from a CD disc. Don’t forget to get some cd’s

Change the boot order on your computer to boot from a floppy drive or from a CD/DVD drive.
Insert the floppy disk or the CD disc with Memtest 86+ into the computer.
Start the computer.

If you did everything right, you computer will start from the floppy or the CD and the memory testing utility will start automatically.
If your memory passed the test, you will not see any red error messages.

I usually allow a memory module pass the test 4-5 times. I’ve seen many times that a failing memory doesn’t fail the test on the first pass and then fails on the second or third pass.

If your memory failed the test you will see red error messages.

Posted in How to...., Tutorial, Windows

The Best iPhone Tower Defense Games 2009

Alan Cain — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:46:07 +0000

“Warning, meltdown imminent!” Your mission: build defenses to kill the creeps and protect the tower. Sounds easy enough, right? Don’t for one moment think that it’s not going to be a challenge.

We’ve come to love these tower defense games for what they have to offer — they’re simple, easy to learn and most importantly, really fun to play. But which are the best tower defense games for the iPhone? The first name that comes to mind is Fieldrunners — I’m pretty sure that almost everyone who owns an iPhone would have played or seen this game in action. It’s exciting and honestly, pretty darn addictive.

What? You think I’m just going to hand the trophy over to Fieldrunners? Think again. I’ve found a couple of challengers vying to reign victor. Find out which games got Fieldrunners’ panties in a knot, after the jump.

Giveaway: We have 5 promo codes for every game listed here to be given away to our readers. How do you get one? Instructions are at the end of the post.

Fieldrunners

For those who aren’t familiar with this game, let me run you through a brief intro. If memory serves correctly, Fieldrunners was the first proper tower defense game for the iPhone. During that time, it had no sound (if I’m not mistaken) and only had 1 map but it sure has come a long way since then.

Fieldrunners now has several maps and gameplay modes as well as some exciting new firepower in its arsenal. Unlike other tower defense games, it doesn’t have a fixed path for the creeps to walk in. And that’s not a bad thing because you can create your own path by building your weapons in such a way to determine where the creeps should go. This allowed a certain mode of cheating by directing the creeps back and forth the rows of guns.

Fieldrunners is the kind of game that just goes on and on. Not much planning is involved so you can have fun with it whether you’re playing for 5 minutes or 5 hours. The next version of Fieldrunners will integrate social play networking which will allow you to submit high scores and challenge friends.

What I like about Fieldrunners:

Fieldrunners [iTunes Store link] is available from the iTunes Store at $2.99.

Star Defense

A very worthy contender indeed. Star Defense is a stunning, graphically-intense 3D tower defense game set in space. Your mission is to protect the universe consisting of 7 worlds from alien invasion.

What’s different in Star Defense is the fact that it pulled away from the norm, took a simple tower defense game and made it 3-dimensional. The result? Simply fantastic. When ngmoco debuted Star Defense in WWDC earlier this year, I was blown away. Realistically, playing this game on my 2G iPhone isn’t optimum, to say the least. Nevertheless, it didn’t stop my friends from constantly borrowing it just to play Star Defense.

In this game, the creeps attack in waves; with a small interval in between to allow you to buy new defenses and upgrade existing ones. When you’re done, hit the timer and the next wave of creeps will emerge. There is a fixed pathway so you’ll know exactly where the creeps will start coming from.

Having shown you the galaxy map with 7 worlds to protect, a finishing point was implied. This game puts the pressure on your early. In other words, you have a mission and this game isn’t entirely just for fun. You sort of have to finish it.

What I like about Star Defense:

Plus+

Star Defense is perfect for average to serious gamers with the drive to complete the game.

Star Defense [iTunes Store link] is available from the iTunes Store at $0.99. There is a free version called Star Defense Prelude [iTunes Store link] that offers one of the 7 worlds to anyone who is willing to defend it.

Geo-Defense & Geo-Defense Swarm

I’ve grouped these 2 games together because they were developed by the same company but in fact, they’re quite different. Geo-Defense (GD, for short) offers the same type of gameplay as Star Defense i.e. fixed pathway. GD Swarm, on the other hand, allows you to forge your own pathway — akin to Fieldrunners. All I can say for both of these games is: don’t be fooled by the simplistic graphics. My initial (and honest to God) reaction when I killed my first creep was, “Wooooaaaw!”

GD isn’t particularly concerned about its interface and presentation, as you can clearly see from the retro-looking screenshots above. What it lacks in the presentation, it makes up in gameplay — that, after all, is more important. The explosions after killing creeps are nothing less than phenomenal — shock waves spread out over the map and sparks fly everywhere. It’s bleeding chaotic! Sometimes, the blasters kill so many creeps that I can’t see anything through the sparks but still, I’m sitting there going, “Oh, yeeeah.”

GD Swarm is basically the same game but it allows you to place your defenses anywhere you like, molding a pathway for the creeps to go through. The creeps come out through the green hexagon and move toward the red one. And since the starting and end points are hexagons, there are obviously multiple entries and exits.

Static images don’t justify the awesomeness of the gameplay. You have to try it for yourself.

What I like about GD and GD Swarm:

OpenFeint

Geo-Defense [iTunes Store link] and Geo-Defense Swarm [iTunes Store link] both go for $1.99. There’s a free version of GD with 2 out of the 3 levels of difficulties and 6 maps [iTunes Store link] — still loads of fun.

Sentinel 2: Earth Defense

This is a slightly more complex tower defense game compared to the first four. In Sentinel 2, you play a Commander in charge of defending Earth against alien invasion (sound familiar?). Graphically, the game is way up there with Star Defense and Fieldrunners.

In addition to the weapons you can build around the pathway, there are also several other defense options that can be claimed after accumulating sufficient energy. They come in pretty handy if the creeps managed to pass by your turrets unscathed.

Like I said, Sentinel 2 is slightly more complicated because of the types of creeps and different weapon options. Nevertheless, the feeling of satisfaction you get after killing every wave of creeps is roughly the same. The game is also mission-based that is rewarded by playing it frequently.

What I like about Sentinel 2:

OpenFeint’s

Sentinel 2: Earth Defense [iTunes Store link] is priced at $2.99 but the prelude, Sentinel: Mars Defense [iTunes Store link] is free for a limited time.

TriDefense

Probably the toughest and most challenging tower defense game for the iPhone, hands down. There is a reason why it’s called TriDefense — creeps attack from the ground, air and water. There are also multiple entry sites, which is what makes this game really difficult to win. Strangely, even though its graphics are pretty good and offers a decent zoom level, it didn’t bog down on my 2G iPhone.

As soon as you start playing, you’ll notice the enormity of the map you’ll have to defend. Entry sites are indicated by waves on the sides of the screen. The game supports 3-dimension positional audio — by using headphones, you can “hear” where the next wave creeps will be coming from. Yup, that’s pretty mind-blowing.

TriDefense allows you to manipulate the map. By building around the entry points (or on water), you can dictate the direction for the creeps move. Although, air-borne creeps continue to travel as the crow flies. Again, the map is pretty huge so you’ll have to keep an eye out for creeps from every direction.

What I like about TriDefense:

TriDefense is really hard to beat. It takes a dedicated player to win it; so it offers long-term gaming possibilities.

At $2.99, TriDefense [iTunes Store link] is a steal for hours of fun it provides. There is a free version available [iTunes Store Link] that packages the tutorial and Mission:01.

Original Post By Jackson Chung on Dec. 18th, 2009

Posted in iPhone, mobile

The 10 best games machines of all time

Alan Cain — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:54:36 +0000

Everyone’s got their favourite console, and usually that choice goes arm-in-arm with the games they grew up with.

Some machines were better than others, but what’s really important is what gave rise to today’s enormous gaming landscape.

Raise a glass, then, to 10 landmark home gaming machines. Some were smash hits, others were dismal failures – but they’ve all earned a proud place in history.

1. Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K
A singularly British machine (it was Sir Clive Sinclair’s finest hour), its graphical and sound limitations made it, on paper, more a computer than a gaming platform. Everyone still bangs on about copying its cassette-based games and the horrible loading noises, but that’s doing its great legacy a huge disservice.

It clocked up well over 10,000 games during its long history – it was the first home to the likes of Manic Miner, Dizzy and Rebelstar, and received ports of most of the major arcade titles at the time. Never mind that its keyboard felt like zombie skin – the thing was relatively easy to program for, and as such was something of a training ground for many of today’s big developers and unrepentant geeks. Hell, people are still making games for it even today.

2. Mattel Intellivision
In 1980, the Atari 2600 reigned supreme – which inevitably inspired a slew of other technology companies to seek a piece of home videogaming pie.

Perhaps the most successful was Mattel’s ‘intelligent television’, with its infamously hyperbolic (“the closest thing to the real thing”) ad campaign that shouted about its technical superiority over the incumbent Atari machine.

The Intellivision sold an impressive 3 million units, despite a games library of just 125, before becoming one of the major casualties of the 1983 videogame crash.

While the history books give it less space than its major rival, it’s notable as being the first 16-bit home games machine, the first with 16-way directional controller, the first with real-time voices (so long as you had the Intellivoice add-on) and the first with downloadable games – which vanished when you turned the thing off, as it lacked writeable storage.

3. Sega Dreamcast
The turn of the 21st century does, of course, belong to the PlayStation 2, but Sega’s final console was the first of that sixth-generation of home gaming systems, and to this day inspires unbelievable loyalty amongst its fanbase.

Hardware shortages, mediocre marketing, the lack of EA’s otherwise omnipresent sports games and Sega’s bad rep off the back of the preceding Saturn and 32X consoles meant it couldn’t compete with the PS2’s eventual blitzkrieg.

It was a pioneer of online gaming, however – the shining light of the modem age. Its MMO Phantasy Star Universe still runs to this day. It even had a web browser and supported keyboards (the latter was also memorably employed in bonkers spelling-shooter The Typing of the Dead).

The Dreamcast might be long off the shelves, but its scene continues to thrive – which is at least partly due to the crazy ease of running pirated and homebrew games on it.

4. Nintendo Game boy Advance
The heyday of pre-3D home gaming in your hand. While Nintendo’s portable consoles’ huge success tends to rely on the kiddie market, the third-gen Gameboy really hit all the right beats for nostalgics and the hardcore.

Gorgeous remakes of classic Marios and Zeldas made it seem like the NES/SNES golden years never ended, while new sequels to beloved series kept 2D gaming very much alive in an age obsessed with 3D. The GBA still lives to this day, its design simplicity and lack of gimmickry lending it an appeal its follow-up, the DS, never quite managed.

5. Atari 2600
The flagship of the first big home console boom, the Atari 2600 popularised the idea of games appearing on swappable cartridges (the more costly forerunner to today’s CDs and DVDs) rather than being built-in to the hardware. In 1977, home gaming was Pong, Pong and more Pong: the Atari (as it was simply known to most) changed all that, reinvigorating the market with ports of arcade darlings such as Space Invaders.

The Atari was everywhere in the early 80s, and it spawned a raft of competitors – including Nintendo’s first console, the NES/Famicom. The 2600 both partly caused and was primary victim of the 1983 videogaming crash, but you could still buy one new as late as 1992.

6. 386/486 IBM compatible
PCs had been around for years, but it was the early 90s 386 and 486 processors that really defined the system as the thinking man’s gaming platform.

This was the age of Doom, of Monkey Island, of Sim City, of Civilization… PC gaming never looked back, and the level of invention and intelligence birthed in those crucial years still continues in today’s thriving indie and mod scene.

7. Nintendo Entertainment System
The Phoenix from the ashes of the 1983 crash that almost killed home gaming. The NES (or Famicom, as it was known in its home Japan) was held aloft by a fantastic port of the arcade smash Donkey Kong, but it was the likes of Super Mario Bros and lightgun classic Duck Hunt that booted it into the public consciousness.

Zelda, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Castlevania and Mega Man (amongst a raft of others) all began life on the NES, and its classic controller remains the essential template for today’s gamepads. The NES might not have been the great innovator of the machines that preceded it, but it’s the major root of today’s consoles. History would be entirely different without it.

8. Sony PlayStation

Sony’s first console would be the best-selling home console of all time, were it not for its even more successful follow-up, the still-popular PS2. Incredibly, it began life as a planned CD-ROM add-on for Nintendo’s then-ubiquitous SNES, but contract arguments saw Sony go it alone.

Its CD-ROM drive, a technology Nintendo remained resistant to with its competing, cartridge-based N64, was one of the major causes for its success. Loading times may have suffered for it, but discs were dramatically cheaper to manufacture than cartridges, which were fast proving a turn-off to third party manufacturers.

Couple with that the PS’s shift into being the first major 3D home console and the fact it soon proved remarkably easy to pirate its games, and you have yourself a landmark machine that eventually cropped up in most every gamer’s home.

9. Amiga 500

Before the IBM compatible (the template upon which today’s PCs are still based) became dominant, the Amiga series was the main name in home computing.

Its graphics and sound were ahead of the competition, it was astonishingly versatile at creating graphics and music (even Andy Warhol was a fan), and many of today’s big game names – including EA, Rockstar, Peter Molyneux and Will Wright – cut their teeth on the platform. The 500 may have been the baby of the bunch, but it remained the best-selling.

10. Nintendo 64

Far from Nintendo’s biggest commercial success – it was quite the flop compared to the SNES that preceded it or today’s Wii – but, like the rival PlayStation, it was one of the major blueprints for modern console gaming.

The Nintendo 64 pioneered the shift from 2D to 3D, the likes of Mario 64 and The Ocarina of Time proving that the third dimension meant so much more than simply graphics, while the analogue stick and four controller ports gave rise to Goldeneye, one of the main parents of the first-person shooter deathmatches that dominate today. Nintendo might have dropped the ball with the N64’s tiny catalogue of games, but it did define the future.

Posted in Console, General

USB Hacking

Alan Cain — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:58:18 +0000

“Hey can I charge my iPod on your laptop for a few minutes? Hey thanks man, have a free USB stick, a friend gave it to me and I already have a ton of these things, oh check out the photo he put on there it’s hillarious!”

iPod Sneakiness

Bruce Schneier discusses an article recently published in the Spring issue of 2600 titled “iPod Sneakiness” where the author mixes a combination of social engineering with an iPod running a podslurping application (see details below). Imagine if you (or your employees) were at a Starbuck’s with your laptop and someone came up to you and innocently asked if they could plug their iPod into your computer to power it up. If that iPod has a podslurping application installed on that iPod they would be sucking more than power from your laptop, they would also be sucking down files and passwords from your system.

I used to work for a large public technology company that actually has a Starbucks on campus. Since the Starbucks is not company owned, anyone can sit in the coffee shop without security badges. The amount of potential information that could be compromised from an attack such as this is beyond comprehension, as engineers, IT staff and top level executives all visit this “hub” with their laptops.

Making a Trojan Clickalicious

In an further discussion of the Dark Reading article discussing a recent penetration test on a credit union, using USB sticks and a Trojan; it appears that Autorun was not used to run the application. Instead the application was masked as a JPEG image using Windows ability to mask extensions, and embed an icon into the executable, so the credit union employees thought they were opening an image, not executing an application.

Podslurping

Podslurping is a term to describe where a portable storage device such as an iPod is used to illicitly download large quantities of data by directly plugging it in to a computer, where the data is held, or which is on the inside of a firewall where the data is held. As these storage devices get smaller and their storage capacity gets larger it is becoming an increasing security risk to companies and government agencies. Access is gained while the computer is unattended.

USB DRIVES ON AMAZON

Posted in Hacking, USB

5 Online Photo Sharing Sites Which Are Free Alternatives To Flickr

Alan Cain — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:00:38 +0000

My Flickr premium subscription has just expired. I have been very happy with the paid service but I have the feeling that I can find a good replacement for free somewhere.

The free version of Flickr is also nice but really lacks if you want to use it as your main photo storage. Only the last 200 photos will be shown for instance and you don’t get to view and share images in their original resolution.Let’s try to get all those benefits for free with a review of the online photo sharing sites that challenge Flickr.

Picasa (Web Albums)

Picasa is Google’s take on a photo site. It’s clean, it’s free, it’s fast and reliable. Picasa is especially known for its desktop application that can organize and edit your photos. I can recommend this software whatever photo sharing website you’re going to use.

For more information on the desktop software have a look at our Picasa articles here on MakeUseOf. Jim has written an excellent 5 piece guide with Picasa tips.

The free web component offers 1GB of space for photos and videos and unlimited bandwidth. A feature that you’ll not find quickly somewhere else is facial recognition. The only paid advantage that you can get is a storage upgrade that you’ll be able to share with your Gmail account. Yearly prices in dollars or euros (they’re the same, oddly enough) range from 5,- for 20 GB to 4069,- for 16 TB (yes, that’s terabytes). I’m not sure who’d have four thousand dollars to spend on photo storage, but I guess they’re the same people who have 16 terabytes of photos.

Share.Ovi

Ovi is the portal of Nokia. Their photo sharing site is inconveniently named “Share on Ovi” or “Ovi Share by Nokia” or something. What’s important however is that anyone can use the site for free whatever mobile phone you have.

The latest Nokia smartphones do come with an easy way to synchronize their photos to Ovi Share however. Nokia bought the company Twango in 2007 and rebuilt it to Ovi Share, which opened to the public in February 2008. Earlier this year however Nokia announced they will not improve the site much further due to disappointing usage numbers. This excellent site will remain live and free though.

Ovi actually comes closest to the features you get with a paid Flickr Pro membership. Unlimited storage and bandwidth and a very nice clear interface.

Zooomr

Zooomr is a very complete photo sharing website, more geared towards social sharing. You get practically all of the features for free, a paid account only frees you from ads and lets you know who faved and commented on your images. There is a page called the Zipline which shows all the latest photos and activity of your contacts. Also, it’s possible to make a profile for yourself.

Zooomr also offers unlimited storage space and bandwidth, but doesn’t support videos. As it focuses more on social interaction you get profiles, an overview of activity and people tagging and geotagging.

Snapixel

Snapixel is a very clean photosite. So what’s special about Snapixel? It’s a photo sharing site and marketplace in one. You can use it to sell and buy stockphotos, but also just use it as your photo storage. There is a free version and a $9.95 / year Pro version.

It’s geared towards professional photography and therefore offers 5GB of space but a limited bandwidth. Another limit is that images must be .JPG and have to be wider than 665 pixels. It is nice though that selling your images is very accessible, so it’s great for any semi-professional or starting photographer.

Guess what, there is a coupon code to get the first year of Pro for free. Click here to sign up.

Photobucket

Another well known photo site is Photobucket. The free version is very similar to the free Flickr when you look at the figures. Many people use it for small images such as avatars and images and videos shared on social networks. But it’s also possible to store your photo collection there.

They have just lowered their amount of free storage space however to 500 MB. But that still holds quite a lot of photos. You will not be able to see the original size though like on Flickr. So use this if you’re looking for a no-hassle photo and video site and have a small sized collection.

Migratr

When you have picked a photo sharing site, you can easily migrate your photos to it using Migratr. This application downloads all of your photos to your computer and then uploads them to a site of your choice. It’s really easy and the best thing is, it also exports all of your metadata such as titles and tags.

You can also just use it as a backup system for your photos. A bummer is that you will not be able to retrieve any photos over the 200 limit of Flickr if you don’t have the Pro membership. It doesn’t support Ovi and Snapixel yet, but you can make a Flickr backup with Migratr and than use bulk upload on your new site. Snapixel does support adding tags and titles to images by IPTC.

So please give me some advice. Should I transfer my photos to another site? Will I choose the dependability and clearness of Picasa, the complete features of Share.Ovi, the social functions of Zooomr, the marketplace and professional setup of Snapixel or the easiness of Photobucket? Or should I just invest in another year of Flickr Pro membership? Or do you know another even better photo sharing site?

Image credit: murilocardoso

Original artical By Tobias Verhoog

See original here

Posted in Bits and Bobs, General, Tools, Tutorial, Windows

Top 50 free software for Windows

Alan Cain — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:23:52 +0000

Are you tired of buying utilities or renewing license to your utilities on your already expensive Windows system? Here is a list of 50 such applications that are free to use. Furthermore, these applications do not require any fees and are available absolutely free.

1 Advanced SystemCare Free

Helps to protect, repair, clean and optimize your PC.

Owner : IObit

2 Wise Registry Cleaner Free

Helps you speeds up your PC by cleaning up your registry. Basically it provides windows registry clean up features with pretty easy to use interface.

Owner: WiseCleaner

3 Ccleaner

Helps you optimize your system by cleaning up the system. Cleanup includes Browser history, Trash Files, Temporary files and Log files. Further, it features un-installation of unused application and the registry cleanup.

Owner : Piriform Ltd.

4 Adobe Reader 9.1

Adobe Reader lets you
• Open up and interact with all PDF documents.
• View, search, digitally sign, verify, print and collaborate on Adobe PDF files.

Owner : Adobe Systems Incorporated

5 PDF-XChange

PDF – Xchange standard features includes
•    Add Comments and Annotations
•    Add & apply Custom Stamps
•    Mark-up pages with text and objects
•    Type directly on any PDF page
•    Extract text from a PDF page and few more.

Owner : Tracker Software Products (Canada) Ltd

6 AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition

Protection against viruses and spyware
• Compatible with Windows Xp or higher
• Light weight and less overhead on OS.

Owner : AVG Technologies

7 avast! Home Edition

Simplest of application in terms of usability.
•    Daily automatic updates
•    Continuous data protection against all types of malware and spyware
•    Available in 30 different languages.

Owner : ALWIL Software

8 Avira AntiVir Personal – FREE Antivirus

Provides Basic protection
for your computer against dangerous viruses, worms, Trojans.
• Available in 5 different languages

Owner : Avira.com

9 Avant Browser

Its salient feature include online profile storage to let user save users’ bookmarks, RSS Feeds, configurations or web passwords etc, in Avant Online Storage.

Owner : Avant Force

10 Open Office 3.0

Open office is an open source office suite for Windows. This is available for free download and serves as good alternative to well know Microsoft’s Word & Excel. It has full-featured set of office applications for word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs.

Owner : CollabNet, Inc., Sun, Sun Microsystems

11 DropBox

This application lets your share files with an account and you could use up to 2 GB (greater space requires paid accounts). This is quite handy tool for sharing your file over internet.

Owner : DropBOX.com

12 SKYPE

This popular freeware is VOIP based application which helps you voice call and is available for free download. You may make computer to computer calls for free. Moreover, Skype is one of the cheap VOIP service available to make computer to Phone calls.

Owner : Skype Limited

13 Smart Defrag

Smart Defrag helps defragment your hard drives more efficiently.
• Ease of use along with Data Safety and Reliability Guaranteed

Owner : IObit.com

14 Download Accelerator Plus

Provides Mirroring Speed Boost to download from the fastest sources.
Available in 38 languages
Built-in Twitter integration to Tweet directly from DAP

Owner : SpeedBit Ltd

15 Flash Player

Plays multimedia design made with Flash.

Owner : Adobe Systems Incorporated

16 VLC Media Player

• It supports various audio and video formats which include MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, etc.
• Further, it is handy for use with DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

Owner : Videolan.org

17 YouTube Downloader

• YouTube Downloader is software that allows you to download videos from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and many others
• This lets you convert them to other video formats for Ipod, Iphone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid and MP3.

Owner : Biennesoft

18 Irfan View

•    Fast directory view (moving through directory)
•    Batch conversion (with image processing)
•    Multipage TIF editing
•    File search
•    Email option
•    Multimedia player
•    Print option and many more.

Owner : Irfan skiljan

19 Notepad++

•    It is a very good source code editor with support for several programming languages.
•    Very good search and replace option.
•    It has good Bookmarking and Multi-document support feature.

Owner : sourceforge.net

20 Textpad

•    Huge files can be edited, up to the limits of 32-bit virtual memory.
•    Good search and replace files in huge files.
•    Warm Start feature lets you restart exactly where you left off.
•    And many more.

Owner : Helios Software Solutions

21 Word Web

•    Provides Definitions, Synonyms and Usage for 150000 root words.
•    Includes audio pronunciations
•    Light-weight to the system

Owner : WordWeb Software

22 Applian FLV Player 2.0

•    Play FLV Files on any PC
•    Zoom to 2x or full screen.
•    Includes free audio/video recorder & converter option.

Owner : Applian Technologies Inc.

23 Easeus Partition Manager 3.5

•    Resize/Move partitions without data loss
•    Extend system partition easily and safely
•    Create, Merge, Split, Delete and Format partitions
•    Support up to 2TB partition or hard drive

Owner : CHENGDU YIWO Tech Development Co., Ltd.

24 Free YouTube to MP3 Converter

• Lets you convert the YouTube video and download it as MP3 or Wav format.
• Automatically fills the title tag and the artwork in the downloaded mp3 files.

Owner : DVDVideoSoft Limited

25 Undelete Plus

• Restore accidentally deleted files
• Image recovery from Compact Flash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards.

Owner : Phoenix Technologies Ltd

26 Video mp3 Extractor 1.8

•    Convert Video Files (AVI, ASF, WMV files) to mp3
•    Fast audio extraction algorithm
•    Easy to use interface.

Owner : GeoVid.

27 Diagram Designer 1.22

•    Creating flowcharts, UML class diagrams, illustrations and slide shows.
•    Import/export WMF, EMF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, MNG, ICO, GIF and PCX images.
•    Consists of slide show viewer and Simple graph plotter to plot mathematical expressions.

Owner : meesoft.logicnet.dk

28 Real Temp

•    Reads temperature information for all inter Core processors.
•    Keep track of the minimum and the maximum temperature of the processor.
•    Provides calibration features for each core of your processor.

Owner : www.techPowerUp.com

29 Pidgin

• Free chat client with support for Msn, Yahoo, AIM Google Talk and other chat networks all at once.
• Supports more than 60 different languages.

Owner : pidgin.im

30 VNC Viewer Free Edition 4.1

•    Easy connect and use remote computer screen.
•    Easy to install and use.
•    Supports loading and saving of .vnc a file which contains a set of connection options.

Owner : RealVNC Limited

31 Free Video to iPod and PSP Converter

• Helps convert full video or the part of video to Apple iPod, Sony PSP, BlackBerry and mobile phones MP4 video format

Owner : DVDVideoSoft Limited

32 LimeWire

•    Helps user connect to P2P network and share the file they want to share.
•    Faster starup and less waiting time.
•    Better memory usage
•    Free download and usage for basic usage.

Owner : Lime Wire LLC

33 FrostWire

• Completely free and open source.
• Provides Faster Torrent Speeds, I-Tunes compatibility, Friendly online chat rooms, easy navigation and many more.

Owner : frostwire.com

34 JetAudio

Even though plus Vx cost but basic version is absolutely free. Features it consists are as
•    Audio CD ripping
•    Voice recording
•    File conversion between various formats and
•    Audio CD buring.

Owner : JetAudio Inc.

35 Sql Tools

•    This tool is for Oracle 8/9i/10g PL/SQL development.
•    Provides good basic editor services
•    Easy to install and connect to ORACLE server

Owner : Aleksey Kochetov

36 Tortoise SVN

Tortoise SVN is Subversion client having features such as
•    Atomic Commits
•    Directory and File versioning,
•    Versioned Metadata
•    Consistent Data Handling
•    Reliable and quick tagging and branching and many more.

Owner : subversion.tigris.org

37 7 Zip

•    High Compression ratio
•    Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format
•    Supports multiple formats such as 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, CHM, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB formats

Owner : Igor Pavlov

38 The Gimp

The GIMP is a more of the complex image editor like Photoshop available for windows platform. This application is free for download. It is quite good alternative Adobe’s Photoshop with similar features available for use.

Owner : The GIMP Team

39 iTunes

ITunes is a freeware that helps you play your digital music and video. It helps you synchronize your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV.

Owner : Apple Inc.

40 JCreator

Jcreator is a light weight IDE for Java Programmers. Project management, project templates, code-completion, debugger interface, editor with syntax highlighting, wizards and a fully customizable user interface are some of the functionality that it provides.

Owner : Xinox Software

41 Eclipse

Eclipse is Software Development environment with support for multiple programming languages such as Java, C++, perl, PHP and others.

Owner : The Eclipse Foundation

42 MySql

MySql is a free open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). This is the most popular open source RDBMS and offers free download and usage. Further this has adequate features needed by small to medium scale database.

Owner : Sun Microsystems, Inc

43 Cygwin

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows.
This provides a DLL which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.

Owner : Cygwin

44 Apache

• This is free/open source http web server.
• This provided Server-side programming language support to authentication schemes.

Owner : Apache Software Foundation

45 Xampp

• Xampp is a comprehensive set of web development resources under a bundle.
• This is integrated package that consist PHP, PHP myAdmin, Mysql RDBMS, Apache Web server, Filezilla Ftp Client and few more.

Owner : Apache Friends

46 HTTrack

•    This is freeware that you download the full website into your local folder.
•    Arranges the file in the same directory structure.
•    Further, lets you browse the pages with offline browser utility.

Owner : Xavier Roche & other contributors

47 AVS TV Box Free

•    AVS TV Box Beta is a FREE universal software TV viewer and comes along with Personal Video Recorder functionality (PVR) .
•    PVR allows you to schedule TV recordings.
•    It works with any windows video capture device like satellite, TV and DVB cards, miniDV cameras, video capture cards and others.

Owner : Online Media Technologies Ltd., UK

48 Mozilla ThunderBird

• This is good alternative to Microsoft’s Outlook. This is an email client email and Usenet client.
• Provides features such as easy mail setup, attachment re-minder, One click Address Book and many more.

Owner : Mozilla

49 Free Guitar Tuner

Free guitar tuner provides features for tuning acoustic and electric guitars. It provides few set of tones to tune it.

Owner : GCH Guitar Academy

50 mTorrent

mTorrent is free to download and use torrent client. This is one of the finest, speedy, efficient, and free torrent clients. Ease of installation and use along with user friendly GUI makes it quite popular.

Owner : BitTorrent, Inc.

Posted in free stuff, Windows, Windows 7, XP

The Best Startup Management Tools

Alan Cain — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:59:08 +0000

You boot up your computer and you wait, and wait… and wait, as all sorts of programs, helper apps, widgets, and remnants of forgotten installations load. Grab one of these five popular startup managers and beat back the startup clutter.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite startup management tool for Windows. You shared what you liked best and why, and we’ve rounded up the five most popular tools. If you’ve never used a startup manager before, how would be a great time to start and trim your Windows startup routine back to a more manageable form.
Autoruns (Free)

Autoruns means business. You’ll find no stone unturned in your startup configuration by Autoruns, with options for delving into everything from Windows services and third-party apps that start at boot to print spoolers and more. Autoruns is definitely a tool best applied cautiously and thoughtfully, lest you disable a portion of Windows you’d really preferred to have kept on. Thankfully it has a handy feature that allows you to hide all core Windows components to limit your enabling and disabling to third-party applications.

Startup Delayer (Free)

Startup Delayer’s claim to fame isn’t that it helps you easily remove applications from your startup routine—it does that, but that’s old hat for startup managers. The value of Startup Delayer is its ability to delay and stagger the launching of startup apps. Often times it isn’t so much that you don’t want the application to start when you boot up your computer—it’s that you don’t want 20 applications all launching at one time and leaving you waiting to reclaim control of your computer for 10 minutes. With Startup Delayer you can delete entries, edit entries, and assign a delay time to each entry to stagger the load on your CPU.

MSConfig (Free)

Microsoft System Configuration Utility first made an appearance back in 1998 with the release of Windows 98. The Windows built-in default, MSConfig is a simple utility for managing several key startup-related configurations, including which services start and which applications launch when Windows boots. Beyond simply turning things on and off using checkboxes, you won’t find many bells and whistles—but MSConfig is included in every version of Windows. It’s as easy to use as typing “msconfig” in the run dialogue (Win+R) and unchecking the items you don’t want to launch at startup.

Startup Control Panel (Free)

Startup Runs is a simple alternative Windows startup manager. It’s a mere 34k, portable, and its options are diverse enough to help you manage most startup functions without offering so many options you could mess up your boot process with some overzealous clicking. You can disable startup applications by user, whole group, or by registry entry. Deleted entries are stored for future restoration if you decide you actually did want the entry you removed.

CCleaner (Free)

CCleaner isn’t strictly a startup management tool. Most people use it to clean out cookies and other undesirable elements and to tidy up the registry. A secondary but helpful tool in CCleaner: it also allows you to delete entries from the startup file—hence its inclusion here. It’s a bit of a one trick pony, though; you can’t alter, tweak, or insert entries. You can only delete them. Still, it gets the job done if the task you want isn’t advanced tweaking, but just to get that annoying program to stop popping up every time they reboot.

Posted in free stuff, General, How to...., Tools, Tutorial, Windows 7, XP

Gift for a Geek

Alan Cain — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:52:01 +0000

RJ45 Ethernet Loopback Cuff link/Keychain

I know that this is the time of year when we are all looking for gifts for our friends and love ones so if you have a geek friend or are even married to one here is a gift that can’t go wrong.

First things first, you need some materials! Obviously, you’ll need at least two crimp-on RJ45 plugs and 6-8″ of twisted pair cable. I’m using Category 5 because I am a cheap bastard. Then, you’ll also need an RJ45 crimper. Also, you’ll need a wire-cutter if your crimper doesn’t have one built-in.

Take all the cable out of the sheath. Throw away the sheath and the thread inside the sheath. We won’t need them.

We will only need two wires for a simple loopback capable of 10/100. I opted for the Blue and White-Blue. You will need four wires for a full loopback (I’ll cover that in a moment). It’s easier if you use all four solid colors for that, although I opted for the Blue and Green, and their white pairs for my example here. Fold them in half, then cut them with a wire cutter so you have four or eight similar lengths of wire.

The below diagram shows how to make a full loopback. Looking at the plug with the pins facing you and facing up, the pins are numbered left to right.

For a normal loopback, you only need to connect Pin 1 to Pin 3 and Pin 2 to Pin 6, as shown below:

A full loopback looks like this, but the wiring is hard to follow from the photo. Use the diagram above for reference.

Now, carefully insert the plug into the crimp tool without disturbing the wires. Crimp the connector, and you’ve got a loopback tester!

Make another one just like it, and you can use them as cuff links. To fasten them, just pass the wires through the button-holes from the outside of the cuff, then spread the wires out to hold everything in place. This part will be facing you most of the time and isn’t likely to get noticed at all.

Alternatively, you can put the loopback tester on your keychain.

Using the ethernet loopback tester:
As I already mentioned, a loopback tester simply connects an ethernet adapter to itself so that it thinks it’s on a network. This is good for troubleshooting physical layer stuff. For example, you could use this to determine if the port on the ethernet switch, the port on the adapter, or the cable between them is to blame for connectivity problems. Some switches and ethernet cards (particularly auto-crossover cards) aren’t fooled by this trick and some switches will see this adapter and report a “Partition” on the port. Here’s what happens on my Sun Ultra 5 when I unplug it from the network (errors) and plug the crossover into the port in its place:

Posted in How to...., Tutorial