You might have noticed that I’ve not been able to post for a few days. The company I work for flew everyone in the office from Seattle to NYC for a company function on Thursday, and it was an opportunity to take my wife and kids along for a long weekend in the big city.

I figured since I already had a couple of half-written reviews, that I might be able to steal the time here or there (on the 5 hour flight for example, when my two kids might be asleep) to post a couple of reviews. Needless to say it didn’t happen. I didn’t even have the time to check my email. I’m realizing that it takes quite a bit of time effort to find interesting software, test it out, and write about it, etc.

Can you write these reviews? if you think you can write reviews in the format you see here on Freewaregenius, and if you would like to do it, send me an email and let me know. Not only will you become, um.. famous, but I could also offer a monetary compensation and/or link to your site if you have one.

Description: This posting will present a number of free options that can provide access and/or allow surfing of sites that are blocked by a corporate firewall or by your Internet Service Provider. Options presented are (1) using a proxy service site, (2) Web2mail (3) getting internet from your home machine via VPN, (4) using an internet anonymizer, and (5) using Google.

Have you ever been in a situation where you where prevented access to certain sites on the internet because you were behind a company firewall or because of a restriction imposed by your Internet Service Provider? If so, you might be able to use the solutions provided below as a workaround.

Although I’ve been asked variants of the question "how do I surf blocked sites from my job" often enough to decide to investigate some potential solutions, let me begin by saying that I present these without experience in a restricted internet situation myself and therefore can not attest to the efficacy of the solutions below.

1- Use a Proxy service site: such as hidemyass.com, can’t bust me, or anonr.com. Many of these sites in fact all belong to the same network and work in the same way: they will act as a go-between between you and the sites you want to access.

The easiest way to find these is to search Google for "proxy service sites" or a similar keyword. Once you are able to access one of these sites you will find an address box where you can enter the URL for the site you want and the proxy site will grab the content for you and present it within the proxy site URL, allowing you to surf your desired content while its actual URL is being masked by the proxy site. Note that some of these sites will also provide anonymous internet surfing by disguising your IP address and location info.

Click on the image to the right for a list of some proxy service sites. Bear in mind that your corporate firewall or ISP may have already blacklisted some proxy sites, preventing you from accessing them. In this case you might simply search for some new ones that may have not been blacklisted or considering another solution.

2- Web2Mail: this is a free service that works as follows: send a blank email to send[at]web2mail.co.cc with your desired site URL as the subject. After less than a minute the Web2Mail service will send you an email that contains the web page you requested in HTML format, which you can read in your email client.

As you might imagine, "browsing" your desired site using this service involves receiving the initial email, clicking on a link on that page that most likely be blocked in your browser but that you would use as the subject line in another email to Web2Mail, and repeating. Not the highest quality surfing experience, but will work in a pinch.

One thing I might add: the Web2mail servers are at times unresponsive and there was a point when I was testing it a few days ago and having my emails sent back to me. Since then the issue seems to have been fixed and it is working just fine.

3- Get internet from your home machine via VPN: this stands for Virtual Private Networking. If you are behind a restrictive company firewall you can in most cases set up a connection to your home PC and get unrestricted internet through your home connection. You might want to signal to your network admin that you are doing this; it should not be much of an issue in most settings (you will not need any technical intervention from your network guy to set a VPN up necessarily).

There are many free VPN software options: OpenVPN (and GUI version, pictured above), UltraVNC, TightVNC, LogMeIn Free, and Windows’ own built in VPN. This post is not intended to be a tutorial on how to set this up, but if you search the internet you will find a lot of further information on this. If you know of a good tutorial or tutorials on this please post them in the comments.
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Description: this posting will describe how to create program shortcuts on the root folder of a USB drive that preserve the relative path of the USB drive’s folder structure (such that these shortcuts will always work no matter what drive letter Windows assigns the drive). It will also aim to preserve the icon of the application in the new shortcut.

The problem: say you have a portable app that in a folder on a USB drive with, for example, a path such as “F:\EjectUSB\EjectUSB.exe”. Say, moreover, that you would like to create a shortcut to “EjectUSB.exe” and place it on the root folder of your USB (”F:\”, in this case). You might be tempted to simply copy a shortcut and place it on the root folder; except for one thing: that shortcut will always refer to “F:\EjectUSB\EjectUSB.exe”, and should you plug your USB drive into a computer that assigns a different letter to the USB drive (i.e. a letter than is not “F”) the shortcut will break down and not work. Hence the need for a shortcut with a relative path.

The solution:

• Windows does not support relative paths in shortcuts. Instead, this article will describe a solution based on creating a so-called batch (.BAT) file and converting that into an executable (which nonetheless displays the original program’s icon).
• I will use the example outlined above (”F:\EjectUSB\EjectUSB.exe”).

Step by step:
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Description: the new Radiohead music video for their song "House of Cards" was created using a technology that captures 3D images as data, without cameras or lights. A version of the video was released on the Google code page, which allows you to manipulate and move in or around the objects as the video is playing using a 3D viewer. You can also download and modify the data to come up with your own version of the video.

Its hard for me to wrap my head around this but apparently neither light nor a camera was used to capture the images in Radiohead’s "House of Cards" video, but rather it was created using a combination of technologies that model objects as data. A "Geometric Informatics" scanning system was used to obtain the close-up images of the singer’s head, while a "Velodyne Lidar system" was used to capture the large cityscape environments, apparently by shooting some 64 lasers in a 360 degree radius.

To see the video, go to the bottom of this posting. If you want more information check out "The Making of "House of Cards" video on YouTube. (Where, interestingly, I learned that the distortions seen in the video were not only intentional, they actually had to work hard to create them).

What’s cool here (aside from the inherent coolness of camera-less imaging) is the following:

1. You can play around with the images using the 3D viewer on the Google code page.
2. You can download the data and use it to create your own visualizations.
3. If you do create your own version of the video, you can upload and share it to the House of Cards YouTube group for the world (and the band) to see.
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Description: Evri is a web service that indexes parts of the internet, reads and linguistically “understands” it and discovers connections between entities based on the activity of texts and articles. It then allows you to browse information within the dynamically built (and constantly changing) structure of interconnected entities that it finds.

Not freeware, but a free web service that helps users browse some of the most popular subjects on the net (popular people, popular places, and popular things) and discover connections between them. Evri is a bit of a combination between a recommendation engine of related links and a sort of dynamic, self-creating Wikipedia.

While Evri might look like a news and/or media portal with some nice, flash based links, this startup is based on a robust technology that should raise some eyebrows. Evri is in fact powered by a search technology that scours parts the net (focusing mainly on news, politics, and general media related web pages) and actually understands references within the text to people, places, and things. So, for example, when indexing a news article that talks about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigning together in Unity, NH, it will “understand” that Barack and Hillary are people and that Unity is a place (and it will do so on its own, without any human intervention). If it sees a lot of texts connecting Obama, Clinton, and Unity on the web, it will be able to gauge the “strength” of these connections, as it were.

What this enables Evri to do is construct a web of links and interrelations that mirrors the flurry of activity (expressed in texts, articles, etc.) that takes place on the internet. It is designed to reveal interconnectedness of the web as expressed linguistically in what is being said/discussed rather than in terms of linked hyperlinks (as, for example, Google does).

What it means to you now: the Evri beta has been launched (at this point you will have to sign up for an invite). Here are some of the things you can do on it right now:
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As you will no doubt have noticed, my site has a new AJAX navigation system. The purpose behind implementing this: to enable users of my site to view more stuff that they may be interested in.

Please let me know what you think. There are still some tweaks and improvements that need to be implemented (e.g. wasted space in the “featured article” section, as well as a few others). Here’s a list of new functions:

• Featured articles: the left side of the navigation will randomly show one of four featured articles that I have. You can scroll through these using the litte “< >” arrows.
• Tabbed pages: under the Freewaregenius logo. Something that I wanted for a long time.
• Tabbed navigation: bulleted lists of postings, “recent posts”, “popular posts”, “most commented”, etc.
• Category list in the navigation: one that is hierarchical. Note: I will be revamping the category list and adding a “Freewaregenius Pick” category sometime in the future.
• Tags: I don’t have my posts tagged yet, but when I do there will be a tagcloud displayed in the “Tags” tab in the Ajax navigation.
• A subscribe by email formbox: for those of you who want to be notified by email whenever there’s a new post.
• A related posts section at the bottom of a posting: which at the moment is blank because apparently these relationships are bassed on tags, which I do not have at the moment.
• Social bookmarks at the bottom of the page: and a general one at the top near the logo.

Does anyone know of a way to tag and/or categorize postings in Wordpress en-masse without my having to go in and do it for each posting individually? Please let me know.

I do have an opinion on this design, but for now I will withhold it so as not to influence any feedback. Please write with your comments and suggestions.
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Description: Moby Gratis is an archive of instrumental music clips created by the alternative rock/electronic music maestro Moby. These are available to anyone to download and legally use in their film projects, provided that these are independent, student, non-commercial, or non-profit films.

One day I will make a film, and it will be fantastic (you’ll see!). When that day comes and I am faced with the issue of finding music to use for my scenes I will go to Mobygratis and check out the growing collection of instrumental/electronic/soundtrack music that might fit the mood. If you are working on your own project you should check it out.

You will have to create an account first, afterwhich you can log in and check out multiple pages of links to music. All of the music is instrumental; you will not find tracks from his albums (or at least I didn’t see any). You can preview the clips on the page through a flash player, and request a license on-the-spot if you want to use it. How cool is that?

See video below of Moby talking about Moby Gratis:
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Description: Over the past few months there seems to have been an explosion of games released as freeware. This posting will present a sort of meta-index of freeware games-lists that I have found on the net.

At first when this posting was conceived I was going to put together a list of my favorite freeware games; however, I was thinking why create another list when there are so many out there? Here’s a collection of my favorite freeware games lists:

1. Freewaregenius’ reviewed freeware games category (scroll down, multiple pages).
2. 1UP.com’s 101 Free games 2008
3. 1UP.com’s 101 Free games 2007
4. 1UP.com’s 101 Free games 2006
5. Gamespot: Adrian’s guide to 2007 freeware games
6. Wikipedia’s list of freeware games.
7. Wikipedia’s list of commercial games released as freeware
8. Wikipedia’s list of open source games
9. Wikipedia’s list of free first person shooters
10. Open source games at the Open Directory Project
11. IndieGames.com: best freeware games 2007 and 2006 . Categories include shoot em ups, platformers, arcade games, etc.
12. TIGsource: best freeware games of 2007
13. Indygamer has their own best of lists 2007; whaddyaknowit.
14. GameTap free games: you have to download and install the “GameTap Player”, and you will have to watch an ad before you play, but it’s worth it for some great games. The fantastic Psychonauts is available for free (although it’s a 1.5 gig download).
15. Caiman Games: top 60 ranked freeware games
16. The Random Gnome’s Lair: Our freshly hand-picked free games selection.
17. Another Random Gnome’s: Oh no! More hand-picked free games.
18. Also Gnome’s Lair: 100 excellent free games in bloom
19. Finally Gnome’s: bouquet of hand picked games with dirty commercial pasts
20. Home of the underdogs’: list of freeware [games] recommendations.
21. Ghacks also has an ultimate free games list.
22. Über 100 kostenlose Games!
23. Cnet’s: 10 most addictive flash games ever made.
24. Butterblog: neverending list of best free games
25. MarcoFolio: best freeware first person shooters
26. Last one — I’m going to bed.
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Description: Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder is a web service that can give you a list of free wireless internet locations for any address of your choosing and present these locations visually on a map of the area.

If, say, you’re going to a conference, going to visit relatives, or for whatever reason will be in an unfamiliar part of town and wondering about the available options for wireless internet check out this neat service. Free Wi-Fi Hotspot Finder allows you to enter an address (e.g. a zip code) and gives you a list of Wi-Fi hotpots in that area. It will also place these venues on a Google map mashup.

Of course, this will only help you if you’re planning ahead, unless you have an internet-enabled mobile phone in which case you can log-on and get this information on the spot when you need it. I tried this with mine and although the Google maps service does not show inside the browser on my iPhone I was still able to get a list of Wi-Fi places.

I tested this service on the two locations which I know the most: my neighborhood where I live, and the downtown area where I work, and I can report that it was able to identify more than 95% of places (in both cases it missed only one place that I knew of, but revealed a number of others that I had not known about previously).
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Description: Panoye is a community-driven photo sharing site with a twist: all uploaded images are panoramic, 360° views, and all of them are geo-tagged to show you exactly where the photos were taken on a map of the earth.

I must admit to a certain fondness for panoramic photos and 360° views, which is why I found this site so interesting. Aside from the (decidedly brilliant) concept, and the fact that you need to scroll through the image and/or click into it and drag it around to view it, Panoye feels and behaves much like other photo sharing sites such as Flickr: users can rate and leave comments on images or leave tags that point to interesting features or other information within the images.

Images that you like are easily downloadable (click "show image" and the right-click save background as). You can also subscribe to the site’s RSS feed to be instantly informed of new image uploads and/or subscribe to your favorite Photographers’ RSS feeds and be notified when new images by them become available.

Whats even cooler is that for any image that’s uploaded on Panoye (whether you uploaded it yourself or not) you can obtain a code that enables you to embed it on your site. Check out the following Panorama from Venice, Italy.
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