Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.8

Description: TrIDNET is a very small program that can identify unknown file formats (with or without an extension in the file name). It relies on a continuously updated database of definitions (2400+ as of this writing), and allows the user to add and upload their own definitions to the TrIDNET site.

Have you ever had a file that you simply could not identify? Let’s say that the file in question had no extension in its name for you to look it up in Google. Enter TrIDNET, a program that can scan any such file and present you with a percentages of file format probabilities that total 100%. Usually, in my testing of this tool, the highest percent probability is correct every time (see screenshot).

I tested this program with a number of files where I removed the extension. These included the following formats: XLS, DOC, TXT, CSV, FLV, SWF, WMV, AVI, MPG, PPT, PNG, JPG, MOV, MP3, MP4, RMVB, EXE, VCS, and CBR. Here’s what I discovered:
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 1.1

Description: Pekka Kana 2 is a highly playable old-school 2D platform game that offers big detailed levels and excellent visuals and audio.

Pekka Kana is the name of the exceedingly cute rooster who is the protagonist of this game. His (and your) goal is to travel from the beginning to the end of each of the levels, in a quest to rescue chickens from an ‘evil crow’. This involves avoiding and/or fighting evil characters and collecting bonuses and other useful items, while solving various puzzles along the way.

All the typical platform game elements are there; moving platforms, monsters patrolling specific areas, hidden bonuses, locked doors, bottomless pits or lakes that you should avoid, traps that you trigger that cause objects (or walls) to fall or give way. Objects you can collect include eggs (for bombing foes, obviously), megaphones (a rooster’s makeshift gun), feathers (for restoring energy), keys (for opening doors), and a number of others.
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 4.2

Description: Freespell is a memory-resident spell-checker that can be be invoked through a hotkey combination from within any application. It uses the Aspell open source engine.

Here’s how this progam works: From any application, select the text that you would like to spell-check and press the hotkey combination (Windows Key+Z by default). A DOS-based window will appear (see screenshot). It will serially highlight all misspelled words and will offer all the usual spelling checker options (a list of suggestions for misspelled words, ignore, ignore-all, replace, replace-all, add, and add lower). That’s all; fast and simple.

Things I like about this program:

• Provides solid and reliable spelling checking functionality
• Can be used anytime, anywhere, from any application.
• Is 100% free.
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Radio.blog.club, if you haven’t heard of it, is a sort of YouTube for mp3’s. Users can join the community for free and upload songs. Like YouTube, there are literally thousands of songs uploaded in every conceivable genre/category.

Is it legal, you ask? It is if users upload non-copyrighted audio. Which is to say that it is legal in the same way YouTube is legal (it isn’t). Whether sites like this will eventually be shut down or will find a way to work together with the copyright holders is another story. For the time being it is there for all to use.

One cool thing about Radio.blog.club is that when you search for a song it comes pre-situated in a playlist of other songs. Although I am not sure about this, I am guessing that there must be an algorithm in place that makes sure all of the other songs in the playlist similar in genre or style to the song that was searched for, at least this is what it seems like. It is truly a great way to experience and learn about music you haven’t heard before.

Another cool thing that Radio.blog.club offers is a widget that can be installed on your own website. I am not sure if the widgets connects to the Radio.blog.club site for content or if you have to provide it yourself, though.

How to download audio from Radio.blog.club: Read more »

Rating: 5

Version tested: 2.0

Description: MP3myMP3 is a program that can record any sound coming into or out of your PC straight into MP3 format. If it can be played on your machine MP3myMP3 can record it.

This is a very straightforward yet useful program that has a variety of uses, as follows:

• Allows you to record any input through the mic jack directly into mp3. This can be useful for, say, creating podcasts using a microphone or creating audio files from non-digital sources (such as cassettes).
• Can be used to record streaming radio. (Alternately, you can try to determine the URLs for streaming radio using URL Snooper and download these directly).
• Can circumvent any digital rights or protection that may exist your audio files. Simply play these and record using MP3myMP3.
• Can play audio files in the following formats: mp3, wav, aif, swa, or sun au. No need to use an external player, unless you want to.
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 2.05 beta

Description: Widdly is a free tool that allows you to download and analyse data for stocks, indices, macroeconomical data, currencies, funds, and other financial instruments. It is designed to allow the publication of financial analysis on the widdly.com website and sharing these with a community of users. The tool has a heavy focus on charting and provides numerous charting-related features and options. You can publish your own analyses and/or browse other people’s, with the basic objective of creating a forum-style conversation where members of the community rate the analysis and leave comments.

Widdly.com is aims to bring together a community of financial-analysis-minded users who can publish and share financial analyses. The idea is that users can rate the various published analyses within a 5-star rating system in order to validate the published content. These analyses consist of elaborately constructed charts which may or may not have a sentence-long caption underneath. You have to create a user account to download and the tool will automatically log in every time you use it.

What’s really cool about this program is the ability to instantly download historic data going back 3 years for any conceivable stock and/or financial instrument. You can choose from a multitude of different chart types and charting options; the array of charting possibilities is nothing short than dizzying. These include moving averages, time-series forecasting, trends charting, standard deviation and variance charting. volatility charting, volume/volume based charting, and many, many more. I should also mention the option to outline trends or identify significant event manually on the chart itself, much like you would with any drawing program. What I really like is the ability to overlay the charts for multiple stocks for comparison. Of course you can save any analysis or chart that you build and update it with more current data as you go along. You can also export downloaded data into CSV for analysis with another application such as MS Excel.
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 2.1

Description: Documeron is a small memory-resident program that keeps track of all the files and documents you access at any time in order to enable you to find and/or locate these later on. It provides a number of functions such as filtering by date and type and tracking of deleted or moved documents.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you where working on a file but cannot remember what the file name is and/or cannot remember where you saved it? For myself I work with so many files and/or create different file variations that sometimes when I come to work Monday morning I have no recollection of exactly which files I was working on before the weekend. Which is why I am so excited about this program. Here’s a list of some of the notable features this program has to offer:

• Documeron resides in the system tray for easy access. Hovering over the system tray icon provides a quick glimpse of the files accessed for the view period defined.
• The program will display documents accessed for the current date by default. This can be changed to show a custom period and/or a group of selected dates.
• Documeron will automatically create a different tab for each type of files accessed in the main dialog. Alternately, you can tell it to list all files in a single tab, and not classify by type.
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 2.0.1407

Description: Altiris Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) allows you to install and run programs virtually so that they do not reside on your system but in a virtual ’layer’ which you can switch on or off at will. It enables you to test an application and completely ’turn it off’ if you choose without altering the Windows installation. It also enables you to avoid conflicts/.dll conflicts between applications. Alitiris SVS is free for home, non-commercial use.

Have you ever suspected that an application might have an adverse effect on your system or that it might conflict with other installed applications? Or perhaps you would like to have both an older version (or versions) of an application as well as the most recent release. With Altiris SVS you can do this easily and elegantly. Here’s how Altiris SVS works:

• Before installing the application in question, run Altiris SVS and create a new virtual layer (a layer is the program’s terminology for the virtual ’space’ that the program will exist in). All other virtual layers have to be turned off.
• Browse to the new application installer from within SVS. Note that you have the option of capturing all the change made to the system by the application or capturing all the changes made to the system even if these were not made by the application you installing.
• That’s it. The program will now be listed in Altiris SVS’s interface, and can be turned on and off.
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 2.17.01 beta

Description: URL Snooper can identify URLs that are hidden behind javascript or activex scripts. It can be used to identify the URLs for streaming video and audio files so they can be downloaded locally.

URL Snooper is a so-called packing sniffing program. You need to tell it to start ’sniffing’ the network before you launch the browser page that contains the multimedia files you want to download. Here’s what you need to know about it:

• URL Snooper filters by multimedia sniffed URLs by default . If you’re looking for non-media URLs you can set it to ’show all’.
• Can filter by keyword (or keywords). This is useful if you know something about the URL you’re trying to identify. For example, by filtering a specific domain name, you might increase your chances of honing in on the URL you want (assuming that the URL is from that domain name).
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Rating: 5

No this is not freeware; these are hilarious video sketches that, um… play with some religious concepts. And yes they are free; the makers have released these on YouTube with the hope of generating enough buzz that they may be able to get somewhere with them. And since we at Freewaregenius are all about viral marketing, I’ve decided to post them.

What’s remarkable about these videos is the simplicity; each episode is really just a filmed conversation; all the actors needed to create this were themselves, a script, and a camera. Shows you how far good solid writing can go. Oh, and you’ll notice that the skits are very much centered around Christian/monotheistic dogma, but who knows, if these guys hit it big, perhaps they can be persuaded to mock other traditions as well ;).
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Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: b29

Description: Floola is a small, cross platform app that can copy music files, video files, and playlists to and from your Ipod on any computer without having iTunes installed.You can also use it to manage your audio collection straight on the Ipod, including editing or deleting files and or artist/album/genre information, as well as creating playlist and/or playing your Ipod-resident music files. It can also manage Motorolla phones that are supported by iTunes.

Here’s what you need to know about this software:

• Yes you read it correctly; finally a free iTunes replacement that can move video files to and from the Ipod
• Installation is a breeze, and involves simply moving the Floola executable into the Ipod from within the Windows file system. Note that you have to (a) enable the Ipod as a portable hard drive (Ipod will appear in ’My Computer’), and (b) switch off the Auto-sync option in iTunes (to prevent iTunes from erasing the files you independently copy to your Ipod with Floola). To uninstall, simply delete Floola from the Ipod.
• Installing Floola on the Ipod itself means that you could copy files to/from your Ipod on any PC; just plug it in, run Floola, and you’re on your way.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.72

Description: PC Wizard 2007 is an advanced hardware detection, system analysis and benchmarking utility. It provides information on both your computer’s hardware and software.

I don’t build computers, nor am I a modder. I stumbled into PC Wizard because I recently got my hands a computer that badly needed a clean Windows install. Once I did this I was subsequently able to use PC Wizard to identify the computer’s hardware components (a job that it performed very well), in order to be able to go to the manufacturers’s websites and download all the drivers that I needed for the various hardware components to function properly.

All of what this program does is give you information: information on what hardware you have and the details of your software setup, such as what technologies you have installed, the details of your internet connection, your file associations, your startup programs, your installed version of DirectX, etc. But where it adds the most value is the benchmarking information functionality. You can look at your computer’s overall performance or otherwise you can benchmark individual components or processes, such as your CPU, memory, hard drives, or video performance.
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 1.8

Description: Folder2MyPC is a small free app that can add folders, application-shortcuts or system services to ’My Computer’. It can also add any application(s) to ’Control Panel’.

Here’s what you need to know about this program:

• Folder2MyPC can add any folders and apps you choose to ’My Compuer’ (see screenshot).
• It can add applications to ’Control Panel’, within or without a category.
• Adding a folder to My Computer can be a handy way to access these from save/open file dialogs within any app when the ’My Computer’ button is pressed.
• It can also add Windows services to ’My Computer’ (e.g. Recycling bin, Start Menu, Temporary Internet Folder, etc.)
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 2.3

Description: Free YouTube to iPod Converter is a tool that can download YouTube flash (FLV) videos and convert them into Ipod Video, PSP, or Mobile device compliant MP4 video file formats.

Here’s how it works. Find a video on YouTube that you want and copy its URL, then paste it into “Free YouTube to iPod Converter”. Next choose the quality setting for your desired video and, after a brief wait (depending on the size of the video file) your file is done, ready to be uploaded into your Ipod or device.

What’s really cool about this program is that for each type of supported device (Ipod, PSP, mobile) it has three predefined quality settings that you could choose from that make it extremely easy to use. The user has nothing more to decide than low, medium, and high quality. After that the video is downloaded and converted efficiently and , in my experience, without problems (no missing audio, no audio/video sync problems).
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.25

Description: Rooms is a free point & click flash puzzle game where the goal is to find a way out of a mansion set in some sort of alternate reality. The game can be downloaded or played online in the browser.

In Rooms, your objective is to guide your character (a Keanu Reeves lookalike replete with a long black coat straight out of the Matrix) as you try to find a way out of a mansion which looks like it belongs in Sherlock Holmes’ victorian England. The mansion is made up of rooms that can be traveled through as well as moved around, sliding-puzzle style. Each stage consists of a handful of rooms that have to be arranged and navigated such that your character can get to the exit.

But there’s more; finding your way to the exit in each level is just one part of your mission. The other part consists of a sort of meta-puzzle, whereby the arrangement of the rooms for each level you complete is in itself part of a larger puzzle.
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