With so many different video (or even audio) converters around it’s pretty hard to make a good choice if you need such a tool. Almost each one of them is described by their producers as being the best in its own way – easy to use, reliable, powerful, fast, supporting a large variety of multimedia file formats, and so on. In the end, you’ll get to know, just as I did, that most of them are pretty much the same thing, being based on similar encoding engines and providing only different graphical interfaces and having only different names. Not all of them, but anyway, quite a lot of them. (more…)

This time I won’t speak about a single freeware program that rocks, but about 13 of them. All of them are created by Bluefive Software (which is actually a single guy - David De Groot. Congratulations to him for the great job he did with these utilities).
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It is well known the fact that even the latest version of Mozilla Firefox web browser runs slowly using a high amount of free RAM when an increased number of tabs are open. With over 2.5 millions downloads, FireTune is a free Windows based Firefox optimizer designed to automatically improve various hidden configuration settings.

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Depending on the Windows operating system version you may use, number of simultaneous running processes and the type of the computer hardware, the performance of a certain application could depend mainly on the amount of free RAM. Various shareware and freeware software that could improve the performances of an operating system by overriding the built-in RAM management process are available for download. (more…)

A new stable version (1.8) of one of the most downloaded BitTorrent clients, uTorrent has been released after a year of development and testing. This new version comes with major improvements and new features that are expected to exist in any BitTorrent client. Among the most notable features implemented in the 1.8 version are the built-in support for Teredo tunneling and IPv6. (more…)

Quite often I’m being called by friends or relatives to help them with various computer-related problems. Many times these problems are caused by malware such as trojans, spyware, etc., or viruses. Only by checking the running processes and their details is usually enough to let me know if malware is the cause of the problems. Until now, I managed to solve this kind of problems, the ones caused by malware and viruses, only by relying on just a few smart tools: Kaspersky Antivirus, Spybot, Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, a-squared Free, a-squared HiJackFree, etc. I never failed on disinfecting a computer and making it run smoothly once again since I’m using these utilities. So I won’t hesitate to recommend them to everybody, as the feeling of satisfaction I may enjoy after I leave a computer clean and a friend happy once again is truly great.

Since a new version of Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (1.24) has just been released on the 30th of July, I’ll talk about this tool this time. (more…)

Another freeware tool that rocks is the little FreeSnap. This simple yet smart little software allows you to move or resize the windows on your desktop to specific positions and sizes only by pressing some keys.

Imagine how tedious it might be to have to move a window exactly to the left side of the desktop so that it touches the left edge of the screen. Having to drag it there using the mouse might be somehow uncomfortable, tedious, especially if you have to do this a lot of times while you work on your computer. Also, if you need to resize a window to a specific size, lets says 640 x 480, you will notice it might be a little  difficult, unless you use this tool.

FreeSnap is extremely simple. There’s actually no interface, not even a tray icon. What could be more unobtrusive than this? You just install it and start it from the Start menu. Except for a simple banner displayed for about one second after you’ve started FreeSnap, there’s nothing else to remind you this tool is running. You may also disable the banner if for any reason you don’t want it. Just add a “-nobanner” command line option to the shortcut to cancel it’s display.

Once FreeSnap is installed and launched, you will be able to resize and move the windows as easy as never before. You may resize the windows in two ways: either to a specific size, either to a specific position so that it will touch one the four edges of the screen.

Pressing the “Windows” key (the one between the Ctrl and Alt keys) and the “Plus” and “Minus” keys on the number-pad will resize the active window to the following specific sizes: 640 x 480, 800 x 600, 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864, 1280 x 1024.

Pressing the “Windows” key and the “5″ key on the number-pad will center the active window on the screen without resizing it while pressing the number-pad “Enter” key maximizes the window when it is in normal size and vice-versa. The num-pad “0″ key (”ins” key) will minimize the window (this is a good way to quickly hide a window in the taskbar too).

You may also quickly resize the active window to a specific position so that it will touch one the four edges of the screen. Just press the “Windows” key and the four “direction” keys - up, down, right, left.

Moving the window to the corners of the screen without resizing it might be easily done by pressing the “Windows” and the Home, End, PgUP, and PgDn keys.

As you may see, the keys are chosen in a logical way, so you will find them very easy to remember.

As the latest FreeSnap version comes with support for multiple monitors, when multiple monitors are detected, the “5″ key will be remapped to move the window from one monitor to the next.

The undo function is also supported (just repeat the last command) .

FreeSnap also has an alternate set of keys that are more suitable for laptop users. You may see which are these keys on the producer’s website.

Except for the “-nobanner” command line there are two more command line options you might use: the “-noalternatekeys” command suppresses the set of keys added for laptop users and the “-stop” option stops FreeSnap.

Good parts: a lot. It’s a simple tool, light, works great and it may be incredibly useful. The keys are well chosen and therefore easy to remember and use.

Not-so-good parts: you can not change the default keys. Hoping the next version adds the feature to let the user customize the window moving and sizing keys, as some users may want for any reason to use other keys than, for example, the “Windows” key.

Streamripper is an Open Source (GPL) application that allows you to record streaming mp3 to your hard drive. It comes as a stand-alone application too, but it’s better known for its Winamp plug-in version.

There are quite many applications intended to allow the user to capture mp3 streams / internet radio stations and save them as separated songs, but few of them are free and even fewer are truly reliable and do a good job. Well, there’s a saying - “best things in life are free”, and Streamripper for Winamp manages to proove this saying is quite true.

Probably the nicest feature of this tool is not that it records quite flawlessly the shoutcast-compatible streams, but it is able to find the “meta data”, the track separation data, and uses this data as a marker for where the track should be separated. And it does a really good job separating the tracks as they should be. Furthermore, it will automatically name/tag the ripped tracks based on the original track tag received from the stream. This file naming feature is also user configurable.

Ripping the streams is easy - just choose a stream from the Winamp Media Library’s Internet Radio station or select one from www.shoutcast.com and wait to see the “press start to rip…” message on Streamripper’s interface. Then press “Start” and watch as what you’re listening to is instantly recorded to an audio file on your hard drive.

Checking the “Options” window first might be a good idea. In the “Connections” tab of this window you may enable the “Create relay stream” setting. This is particularly useful if you don’t have a fat pipe connection (cable modem/dsl, T1, etc.). Otherwise Streamripper creates a new connection to the stream you’re listening to, increasing your bandwidth usage. This won’t be a noticeable matter if you have a good connection, but otherwise it may count quite a lot. This option will make Streamripper rip the stream and send it on to Winamp. You might also want to use this option if you’re listening to streams that won’t accept a high number of listeners or if you don’t want to waste their server capacity. Once this option enabled Winamp will actually be playing through the Streamripper.

Here in the “Connections” tab of the “Options” window you will also be able to set a size limit for the ripped streams.

In the “File” tab you will find some more important options, such as selecting the output directory for the ripped streams or choosing between ripping to a single file or to separated files. Overwriting and ID3 tag adding options are also available here. You may also even configure Streamripper to automatically add the ripped tracks to the current Winamp playlist.

Browse the other tabs of the “Options” window to check other settings such as the output filename pattern, the Streamripper skins, the silence length for track splitting, etc.

I’ve also noticed that there’s no need to keep listening to the stream this tool is ripping from. I checked what other radio stations were playing or start playing a track from my computer, and Streamripper kept on ripping the stream it was set to rip. I was testing Streamripper 1.63.1 on Winamp 5 with no relay stream created when noticing this.

As some streams also broadcast announcements, commercials, advertisments or other non-music metadata,  you should know that by ripping using this tool you may handle this type of issues in two ways - either you’re recording the songs to separated files and then you may easily remove the unwanted metadata from the ripped files afterwards, or edit the file parse_rules.txt that came with the Streamripper distribution and add rules that describe the metadata you want to be ignored. For this second method you may check the producer’s website for an example and further details.

Well, Streamripper is not a sound recorder, so don’t expect it to rip online conversations or the music played directly in some websites (Flash-based or other similar) but as a stream ripper for mp3 radio stations, this Winamp plug-in is simply great.

Good parts: works really great, it’s light, simple and efficient. Its track separating and track auto naming / tagging features are truly great.

Not-so-good parts: lacking comprehensive, rich documentation and help, which may make this great tool  a bit hard to understand and use for the not-so-experienced users in the beginning. Anyway, it’s just a Winamp plugin after all, so, in the end, everyone should be able to use it properly.

NOTE:

You can use Streamripper to copy the streams of the following kinds:

-.mp3 Shoutcast streams - the kind of streams found on shoutcast.com.
-.mp3 Icecast streams - a GNU GPL/Open Source version of Shoutcast. Both Icecast 1.x and Icecast 2.x are supported. However, UDP metadata is not supported for Icecast 1.x.
-.nsv (Nullsoft Streaming Video) streams - which Winamp tv uses.
-.aac Shoutcast/Icecast streams - the kind of streams found on tuner2.com. NOTE: Streamripper can’t rip RealAudio AAC streams, only shoutcast/icecast AAC.
-.ogg streams - these streams are found at dir.xiph.org.

Streamripper can’t help with ripping stuff like RealPlayer, Windows MediaPlayer, MusicMatch or anything else similar.