Posted by Samer on November 15, 2010 in Freewaregenius Picks, Launchers, Productivity & Applications, Utilities |
Find and Run Robot (FARR) a free “search box” style launcher similar to previously mentioned Launchy. These kinds of programs scan certain locations on your hard drive, including your start menu, and provide a floating search box that pops-up on demand to display matching results for programs and files as you type into them.
But FARR is not just a launcher. With its open architecture, FARR is extensible through plugins that allow it to perform all sorts of tasks and to function as an all-in-one interface for many other apps. You can use it, for example, as a front-end to desktop search app “Everything” (a favorite of mine), to perform on-the-fly internet searches, to manage your “Remember the Milk” account from the desktop, or even to perform spelling and thesaurus lookups on-the-fly from within any program, just to name a few of the functions you can add to it.
In fact, FARR has slowly emerged with a distinct, hard to duplicate advantage over similar programs (like Launchy), and that is simply the community of coders that use it and develop plugins for it, that enable it to perform the kind of tasks mentioned above and a whole lot more. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 11, 2010 in Audio Conversion, DVD Utils, Video, Video Utils |
I recently wrote about Freemake Video Converter, a free, very stylish-looking video conversion program that is both powerful and easy to use (see my original review for more information on this program). Since then, the program has been updated with new features, many of which I had requested in the ’wish list’ of my original review. Specifically, the following features have been added:
- MKV, SWF, MPEG as output formats
The ability for users to determine the desired output file size (and have the program calculate the video bit rate accordingly); see thumbnail to the right.- An advanced preset editor that lets you add, modify, and save your own presets.
- The ability to create DVDs from media files and burn to dual layer DVD’s (which wasn’t supported in the original version I reviewed). Freemake claims to be able to burn up to 20 hours of video to a standard DVD and 40 hours to dual layer DVD’s. All of this with snazzy menus to boot!
- Subtitle support is in the works, although not yet implemented in the latest version I tested. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 9, 2010 in Graphics, Productivity & Applications, System, Utilities | Tagged Desktop Enhancements |
HTC Home is a free widget that can display the time and 5-day weather forecast on the desktop. The stylish-looking widget emulates the animated clock and weather conditions displayed on HTC phones.
The widget features optional animations, such as raindrops coming down over the the widget itself and other parts of your monitor, as well as sounds such as drips, etc. Other display options include resizing, changing the placement at will, pinning to the desktop and an “always on top option”. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 8, 2010 in Games | Tagged Games |
If you ever wonder whether video games will eventually become an art form in their own right then you have to check out this free game. ’Today I die’ is a downloadable flash game that has been described as an "interactive poem", a poetic game, and a playable piece of artwork, just to mention a few.
Just like in art, the ’rules’ are not spelled out, and there is no explicit objective, which is NOT to say that nothing happens in the game. There is a structure and there is a narrative/storyline. However, you do get the sense that there are different routes that you can take that can lead to different end results. In other words, that there are multiple ways of playing the game, all of which are equally valid.
The gameplay dynamics involves moving your little sprite around the tiny 8-bit environment, interacting with objects and creatures, as well as the words on the top of the screen and other words that occasionally appear below. In this game, you are expected to experiment try different things in order to come to grips with the game dynamics. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 8, 2010 in System, Utilities |
ERUNT Gui is a free app that can backup and restore the Windows registry. It is a front-end for the well-known registry backup and restoration app ’ERUNT’ but serves to take the command line out of registry backups and replace it with a simple button (see screenshot). It can also be used to setup automatic registry backups on each Windows restart.
The main reason you might want to backup your registry, of course, is as a safeguard against events that might mess up your registry (and, by extension, mess up your PC in general). These could be unanticipated events, such as a malware attack, or otherwise you could backup your registry ahead of testing a program or programs that you are unsure of or that you anticipate problems with, etc. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on November 6, 2010 in Audio, News |
I previously wrote about Moby Gratis, a repository of downloadable music created by pop star Moby that’s available for filmmakers to use in independent, student, and non-profit films or videos.
This week, the service seems to have been expanded, with the following recently added (according to their email statement): "the whole Wait for Me ambient album and a selection of the more leftfield remixes from the singles and remix album Wait for Me, remixes!"
Check out Moby Gratis! Continue reading ..
Posted by Guest author on November 4, 2010 in Compression / ZIP, Utilities |
Haozip is a powerful free archive manager. It can compress and extract archives in 7z, ZIP and TAR formats and can extract RAR, ISO, UDF, ISZ, ACE, UUE, CAB, Bzip2, ARJ, JAR, LZH, RPM, Z, LZMA, NSIS, CHM, DMG, HFS, WIM, DEB, MSI, CPIO, XAR and other compression formats.
Haozip is a full-featured archiving tool supporting drag and drop operations, Windows context menu integration, corrupted archive repair and creating self extracting archives. Haozip also provides some handy tools, such as a built-in image viewer which enables you to preview the image files in the compressed files without extracting them and an intenal MD5 calculator.
Haozip offers an easy-to-use interface similar to the popular shareware Winrar. It also supports skins, so you can customize how it looks.
[Editor’s note: this review was guest written by reader Terry Chen]. Continue reading ..
Find and Run Robot (FARR) a free “search box” style launcher similar to previously mentioned Launchy. These kinds of programs scan certain locations on your hard drive, including your start menu, and provide a floating search box that pops-up on demand to display matching results for programs and files as you type into them.
