TechZilo » Windows

Get Mac OS X-style system alerts with Growl for Windows

Sumesh P — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:41:53 +0000

Mac OS X has had system alerts with Growl, a Mac-exclusive app until recently. However, with Ubuntu getting native system alert system, and Windows users can now install Growl for Windows for system notifications.
Growl is a a beta software as of now, and hence may have some quirks. There were a few memory corruption errors when I installed it, but was otherwise working fine. The graphics used in it looks inferior compared to the Mac OS X version, but it will noly improve as time goes.

Growl plugins

You can view plugins for Growl on downloads page.
As of now, there are plugins for iTunes, Firefox, Outlook, Visual Studio etc. As it is being developed, support for applicatoins will only increase.

Snarl is a Growl-alternative that has been around for longer and appears more polished – if you find Growl quirky, you might want to give Snarl a try.

An original article by TechZilo

Get Mac OS X-style system alerts with Growl for Windows

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View your clipboard history with Clipbox

Sumesh P — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:11:01 +0000

Clipbox is a free, open-source clipboard utility for Windows. It holds text you copied (writes to disk). It is a very simple tool, with minimal resource usage.

The advantage of writing to disk is that you can recover copied data even if your computer hangs or crashes. It works with only does plain text. In its window, the clipboard entries can be viewed and recovered.

It is portable software and does not require installation. It does not add any entries to your registry either.

Download Clipbox

An original article by TechZilo

View your clipboard history with Clipbox

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Free Hulu video download / converter

Sumesh P — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:28:37 +0000

Hulu is a video streaming site that has gained popularity recently. Unlike YouTube and similar services, Hulu hosts legal, licensed content and serves video only to visitors from USA.

This tutorial will show you how to download and (optionally) convert Hulu videos to formats like MPEG, WMA, DivX or 3GP (suited for mobile phones). We will be using the aptly titled Hulu Video Downloader. It is free to use for normal videos, and you need to purchase a Pro version license only for HD downloading.

Also see:

Download and convert Hulu videos

Getting a video to your computer is as easy as pasting the URL of the video into the application window and hitting Start. The video file will be downloaded into the folder of your choice. It shows you size and length of a file before you start downloading. Hulu Video Downloader supports simultaneous downloads. They can then be put into your iPod, Zune, PSP, mobile phones etc. easily. Hulu Video Downloader works on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista.

Download Hulu Video Downloader and install it. You will need to click Next a few times – there are no settings that require tweaking. Once installation is complete, it will show you a confirmation window – uncheck all options except “Launch Hulu Video Downloader” and click Finish.

Open Hulu Video Downloader and enter the URL of the Hulu page on which contains the video you need. Choose the folder to download into and select Hulu.com in the Download From option.

If you want to convert the video for easier playback, choose MPEG 2 format (works best in most cases).

Click “Add” to begin downloading.

Note: Hulu videos cannot be accessed outside USA, so downloads will not work either. However, I will be sharing a trick to access and YouTube videos soon, so stay tuned

An original article by TechZilo

Free Hulu video download / converter

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Foobar: free, lightweight media player

Sumesh P — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:39:16 +0000

Foobar is a free media player for Windows. Foobar is more than just play good audio.

It has good audio quality – I say ‘good’ because I am not an audiophile. Several users (some of which are audiophiles and sound professionals) say it has better audio quality than other players like iTunes, WinAmp etc. provided the hardware is good and remains the same. It also has support for ripping and conversion, batch editing ID3 tags.

Unlike a lot of media players that add features and get bloated, Foobar is noted for its excellent resource management. Startup time is minimal, it manages large media libraries without any lag or performance issues.

The interface is customizable. There are also customizable shortcuts, so if you do not like any of the defaults, just edit them to suit your tastes (or habits with your previous media player of choice).

There are lots of components (which are like plugins) to add and extent features not present by default in Foobar. The component architecture is open, so if you are a programmer, you could code your own. This puts it above a lot of closed media players – because users know best the features required by them, and often, closed source players lag behind in feature implementation.

It has support for a wide variety of formats – MP3, MP4, AAC, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WAV and AIFF. There are components for even more formats.

Download Foobar

An original article by TechZilo

Foobar: free, lightweight media player

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Close out known vulnerabilities with Windows Worms Doors Cleaner

Sumesh P — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:11:43 +0000

Windows Worms Doors Cleaner is a handy utility to close unsafe and known vulnerable aspects of Windows, like services and ports.

Windows, being the most widely used operating system, also happens to have tons of known vulnerabilities. Microsoft usually fixes them by pushing out updates, but there are known vulnerabilities, information being widely available on the web. Many popular and destructive worms use vulnerabilities in Windows services. They also disable registry editing, so fixing them would be a pain.

This is where Windows Worms Doors Cleaner comes in: it disables vulnerable services and processes, checks process names with lists of known worms and monitors svchost.exe memory usage levels.

The user interface for Windows Worms Doors Cleaner is relatively good, providing you information about what services and ports are disabled, a button to re-enable them and a link to the official Microsoft security bulletin.

When it finds that something is to be disabled, it modifies existing registry entries instead of creating new ones, so you do not have to worry about a bloated registry after using it for some time.

Download Windows Worms Doors Cleaner

An original article by TechZilo

Close out known vulnerabilities with Windows Worms Doors Cleaner

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Windows 7 startup time 20% faster than Windows Vista

Free audio CD ripper and MP3 converter

Sumesh P — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:46:41 +0000

Free Rip is a freeware audio CD ripper and MP3 converter for Windows. It supports most ripping from WAV files in audio CD, to most of the popular formats. It can also convert audio files from one format to another (say, WMA to MP3).

Free Rip features

Convert from audio CD .wav files to MP3, OGG, FLAC, WAV and WMA formats.
Convert between MP3, WAV, OGG, WMA and FLAC formats
Two-pane interface, with audio file list on the left and track information on the right
MP3 tagging that can connect to online databases (FreeRIP CD database and freedb.org)
Multi-track ripping
Runs on Windows 95 to Vista

Rip CD and convert audio files

During installation of Free Rip MP3, you will be given an option to add My Search toolbar (on by default).

Make sure to uncheck the option to add “My Search Toolbar” during installation.

The FreeRip manual is a good place to start if you need assistance in ripping or converting audio files.

Download FreeRip 3

An original article by TechZilo

Free audio CD ripper and MP3 converter

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Al Image: free tool to convert and resize images

Sumesh P — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 09:31:10 +0000

Al Image Converter is a tiny utility (setup file of just 49 KB) to convert and resize images. It can convert to most of the popular formats and supports resizing to various sizes.

click to enlarge

Features of Al Image Converter/Resizer

Convert to commonly used formats (GIF, JPG, PNG, TIFF)
Resize images to small, medium or large thumbnail sizes
Resize images to all available sizes at once
Batch resize and create thumbnails by drag-dropping all files you need, choosing the appropriate sizes and formats and hitting “Create”

Perhaps the only feature that I miss in Al Image Converter is a lack of support for resizing to custom sizes. I usually use Al Image to resize images when I’m writing tutorials which require large-size images for each step.

Download Al Image Converter

Do you use any other free image converter/resizer with all these features? Recommend them in comments below.

An original article by TechZilo

Al Image: free tool to convert and resize images

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Transfer music from iPod / iPhone to Windows

Sumesh P — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:05:27 +0000

Apple, as impressive as their products are, have an annoying habit: of locking customers to their devices as they see fit. iPod and iPhone owners cannot transfer music from iPod / iPhone to another device. DRM is to blame for this, but we have a solution for it.

Much like the previously featured Pod to Mac software for Mac OS X users, Pod to PC is a small freeware application for Windows that lets you pull music from your iPod to your Windows-based PC.

iPods and iPhones which have been undergone jailbreak can also be used with Pod to PC – such compatibility was added recently.

Pod to PC works with iPod, iPod Touch and iPhone. It has search features, and you can also set it to transfer all files at once.

Download Pod to Mac

An original article by TechZilo

Transfer music from iPod / iPhone to Windows

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Cleano: delete Windows temporary files

Sumesh P — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:24:19 +0000

Cleano is a tiny (~180 KB) freeware that removes Windows temporary files. If it is unable to remove temporary files, you can choose to let Cleano delete the files during startup.

Cleano: Remove temporary files

Cleano removes

user’s temporary files.
user’s recent items.
user’s Internet Explorer temporary files.
user’s Desktop Run history.
Windows prefetch files.
Windows temporary files.
user’s custom folders.
user’s NetHood items.

Cleano is portable and does not require installation. This makes it possible to carry Cleano in a USB drive and clean up multiple computers if you are the tech guy for your family/friends/office.

Download Cleano

An original article by TechZilo

Cleano: delete Windows temporary files

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J Downloader: Free MediaFire download manager

Sumesh P — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:20:39 +0000

Media Fire is one of the more popular free file hosting services. Rapidshare is the most dominant in this category, but Mediafire has its share of fans.

I have already written how to use Rapidshare premium link generators for unrestricted access, and Raptor, a free Rapidshare download manager.

J Downloader is a free Mediafire download manager. It is cross-platform (works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) and runs on Java Runtime Environment (JRE). It integrates with Firefox.

Free Mediafire download manager

I tested J Downloader on Mac OS X. Upon starting the installation process, it asks you for the language, download directory of choice and gives you an option to integrate J Downloader with Firefox.

As you can note from the screenshots above, during installation, J Downloader’s interface is not spectacular, but once the install is done, the app inherits the native look of the OS used.

Download J Downloader

Here are direct links to J Downloader for all three OSes:
Windows, Linux and Mac.

If any of these links do not work, you can get more download links for J Downloader on its download page.

An original article by TechZilo

J Downloader: Free MediaFire download manager

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How to install Windows Live Messenger 2009 offline

Sumesh P — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:40:34 +0000

Microsoft has joined an increasing number of companies (like Skype, Yahoo and Google) in providing only web installers for their instant messenger, Windows Live Messenger 2009. Web installer is a small file that, when you open, downloads the full setup file from internet and installs the program.

The reasons to provide web installers may be many – to collect statistics, to force-install other software etc. However, web installers are a maor irritant. This is especially true if you need to install Windows Live Messenger on multiple computers – you would have to download and install it on each computer, wasting bandwidth. Users on slower internet connection may also suffer network connection timeout.

Download Windows Live Messenger offline (standalone) installer

While Microsoft’s own site does not provide offline installers, you can get offline standalone setup files from other trusted websites. Hit the link below to download:

Download Windows Live Messenger 2009 standalone installer

An original article by TechZilo

How to install Windows Live Messenger 2009 offline

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GPlus: Smileys and other useful features in Google Talk

Sumesh P — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:05:34 +0000

Google Talk is a paradox in software: a minimalist, clean application, which unfortunately suffers from excess of those very qualities. Google has likely not given Talk much priority, hence it has always lacked features that other IMs like Yahoo, MSN etc. have. Common features like smileys, chat logging, video chat etc. are missing even today.

Get smileys and other features in Google Talk

Gplus is a Google Talk addon which brings functionality that is found in most other IMs (but lacking in G Talk).

GPlus Features

Emoticons
Emotisounds
Chat Logging (in HTML)
RTF (Rich Text Formatting
Text filters to filter abusive words from conversations

GPlus official website is offline but you can download GPlus [Download.com]

An original article by TechZilo

GPlus: Smileys and other useful features in Google Talk

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Backup / restore your system drivers with Driver Backup

Sumesh P — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:57:52 +0000

One of the headaches when reinstalling Windows is installing all the drivers correctly. You can use any of the freeware tools to backup your system drivers.

Driver Backup is one such free, open-source tool to backup your drivers. Driver Backup can backup, restore and remove drivers. It also has command line options, although that feature is not likely to be used a lot

Driver Backup also supports automatic driver restoration from discs.

Get Driver Backup

An original article by TechZilo

Backup / restore your system drivers with Driver Backup

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Windows Live skin for Winamp free download

Sumesh P — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:02:06 +0000

Winamp is one of the most popular ~~media~~ audio players for Windows. I like it because of its functionality, but am also a fan of plugins and skins available for it.

If you like the modern Windows look, you might want to download this Windows Live skin for Winamp. I am personally not a big fan of gloss and Live style in general, but we all have our choices, don’t we?

Windows Live Winamp skin

Download Windows Live skin for Winamp

This Winamp skin misses some minor UI elements like the volume and equalizer elements. However, these can be accessed using keyboard shortcuts. Up/down arrows control volume. For equalizer, the shortcuts below should work:

1 – 0 : Increase EQ bands 1-10
Q – P : Decrease EQ bands 1-10
N : Toggle EQ Enabled
S : Open Presets Menu

You can find a list of Winamp shortcuts on the official Winamp blog.

An original article by TechZilo

Windows Live skin for Winamp free download

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IE PassView: Reveal passwords saved by Internet Explorer

Sumesh P — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:33:34 +0000

I have already written about viewing saved passwords in Google Chrome and a bookmarklet to view saved passwords in any browser. IE PassView is an app specifically for Internet Explorer users (particularly if lightweight solutions like the bookmarklet does not work).

IE PassView: Reveal saved passwords

IE PassView is a tiny (just 48KB) software utility to show passwords saved and hidden with asterisks in Internet Explorer.

IE Pass View features

Recover saved, HTTP authentication and FTP passwords
Requires no installation and is portable
Works with Internet Explorer versions 4 to 8
Recovers passwords from external drives, including those in which the OS is not operational

Download IE Passview

An original article by TechZilo

IE PassView: Reveal passwords saved by Internet Explorer

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