Posted by Jason on June 13, 2011 in Social Media, Video, Video Sharing, Video Streaming | Tagged Bookmarking, Chrome |

Streaming websites are easy enough to get to, they’re just websites. Whether you type in the address, click a bookmark/favorite, or search for your usual sites, it’s not like they’re trying to hide. One way of making it even easier though, is to use a portal site that links to the various sites that offer streaming videos – whether they are TV networks or collections like Hulu.
Eclipse.TV is a web app for Google Chrome. Though it may work in other browsers, my experience has been best in Google Chrome as some things become misaligned in other browsers. It is currently in the Alpha stage and may gain more features than it currently boasts. As of publishing, it provides easy shortcuts to streaming sites by category or a customizable list of bookmarks on the Launchpad. The design is visual and big enough to look well on a TV from an HTPC or computer connected to a large monitor. Another feature of the portal is that it lists resources that you may not already be familiar with – one of the most needed tools in cordcutting.
[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com]. Continue reading ..
Posted by Jason on June 8, 2011 in HD Utils, System, Utilities |
I loaned my wife my USB drive that had YUMI, the successor/rename of the MultiBoot USB tool, on it with CloneZilla loaded in order to do some re-imaging. She created her image and got 3 out of 4 computers up and running again. On the fourth computer, suddenly it wouldn’t boot from the USB drive and when sticking it into a Windows PC, you would get this error message: You need to format the disk in drive E: before you can use it.
Well that’s no good and it would mean she had lost the image she had created – backing it up was planned for after getting all the computers up and running. She wisely didn’t format it and brought it back to me to see if I could save her hours of work and get that image back.
[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com]. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on June 6, 2011 in File Management, PDF, Productivity & Applications, Utilities |


Have you ever encountered files on your computer that you couldn’t open, that you were curious to explore? Or maybe you downloaded a file that you thought would play or open on your computer only to find that it would not open within the program that you thought it would. Or, more likely, a colleague sent you a file that was created using a newer version of the software you have installed on your machine, etc.
In all of these cases, Free Opener might offer a solution. This free program is designed to open just about any kind of file you might find on your computer or that you are likely to encounter on the internet. And although it will not open everything under the sun, it supports more than 70+ file formats including all sorts of media files, Office files, PDFs, etc.
But note: Free Opener is able to achieve this by installing a host of software on your machine, including system wide media decoders (K-Lite Codec Pack), Adobe Flash ActiveX Object, and MS .NET Framework. Continue reading ..
Posted by Priit on June 1, 2011 in Best of, Featured, File Management, Productivity & Applications, Utilities |

File management in Windows (browsing, viewing, copying, deleting files etc) is an area where Windows Explorer is not sufficient for many people. Explorer lacks several functions such as a tabbed interface and multiple panes for organizing files easily, quick file viewing, sorting folders by folder size, enhanced archive management, multiple file renaming, to name a few. One of the major shortcomings is Explorer’s tendency to stop ongoing file operations if one of the files is locked or not available because of security settings, which makes it unclear which files where copied and which were not.
There are several freeware file managers that address this gap in Windows’ file management functionality. We looked at 17 of these and found 10 that had many of the advanced features we were looking for. This post will compare the following program across several criteria: CubicExplorer, FreeCommander, Master Commander, Nexus File, Nomad.NET, Q-Dir, SE-Explorer, UltraExplorer, Unreal Commander and Xplorer2 Lite.
[Editor’s note: this post was written by Freewaregenius contributor Priit L.] Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on May 31, 2011 in News, Shareware Turned Freeware, Software Updates |

Another installment of this series (see Feb, Mar, and April 2011). Not a bad collection this time around, although (a) some of these didn’t actually turn freeware but rather have become more “freely accessible” (#1 and #2), and (b) I am not sure if some of these switches took place in May; will not worry too much about it though. The programs as follows:
Comodo Internet Security PRO 2011, Trillian, Staff FTP, File Governor, Handle Tracer, and ContaCam. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on May 28, 2011 in System, Utilities | Tagged Windows 7, Windows Enhancements |

Do you ever wish there was a simple shortcut on the desktop to “safely remove hardware” rather than having to go hunt for it in the system tray menu? Or maybe you would like to toggle the screensaver from a shortcut on the desktop or you could use quick, one-click access to the device manager, etc.
Handy Shortcuts is a little free program that can place a number of Windows 7 functions and services as shortcuts on your desktop (a total of 20 different shortcuts in the version I tested, displayed in the screenshot above). Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on May 26, 2011 in File Management, Freewaregenius Picks, System, Utilities | Tagged Windows Enhancements |

Imagine this: you have a video file on the desktop that you’d like to move to your video folder on D:\; you drag and drop it over an icon hovering on your desktop and *poof* , the file is moved. You then would like to extract a zip archive from your download folder onto your desktop; so you open that folder, drag the zip file onto the same hovering icon and *poof* it appears, unzipped, on your desktop.
This is the kind of flexibility that DropIt (“a little hovering icon on your desktop”) can provide, and it can do this based on rules that the user defines him or herself. For example, you can tell DropIt “if the file contains the word “projectA” in it, then move it to “D:\ProjectA\”; if the file is a JPG, PNG, GIF, or BMP then move it to “My Pictures”, and so on. Continue reading ..