Posted by Samer on September 29, 2010 in File Management, System, Utilities |
Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you have multiple files that you need to move into their own folders? I frequently encounter this situation, for example, when downloading media files that I then move to their own folders.
With FileToFolder, however, I no longer have to do this manually. This free app does one simple thing: it processes files in batch to create a folder for each and move each file into it’s own folder. The folder will have the same name as the original file. Pretty straightforward and simple, yet potentially very useful. FileToFolder can be used from it’s main GUI interface or optionally via the Windows explorer context menu. See image below for an illustration of how it works.
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Posted by Samer on September 28, 2010 in System, Utilities | Tagged Desktop Enhancements, Windows 7 |
Windows 7 Taskbar Items Pinner is a free software that allows you to pin just about anything (individual folders, files, or URLs) to the Windows 7 taskbar.
Now you may be wondering why you need this, since you can already pin items to the Windows 7 taskbar simply by dragging them over; however, the truth is that Windows 7 only allows for pinning applications on the taskbar directly, not individual folders or files. Once pinned, Windows 7 allows you to access files or folders from their application context menu ’jumplist’ only; this program, in contrast, will let you pin and access any item straight on the taskbar (see image below for an illustration).
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Posted by Samer on September 22, 2010 in Graphics, Wallpaper | Tagged Wallpaper |
You may have seen my November 2009 post citing the National Geographic site as one of the best places to download wallpaper images on the internet. This post is a bit of a follow up to that one, in that the free tool discussed here is designed to automatically download entire collections of National Geographic wallpaper images to your hard drive all at once. (It seems Christmas this year is coming early!).
This is convenient in many respects, as there are in fact two National Geographic domains that offer images for download, and these are displayed via a flash image viewer with the download link placed somewhere underneath, making mass-downloading impossible. With NatGeo Wallpaper Downloader, however, mass-downloading literally becomes a two-click affair; check the library or category you want to download, select the image size to download from te dropdown, and then watch your download folder populate with amazing wallpaper. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on September 21, 2010 in HD Utils, System, Utilities |
System Ninja is a free hard drive cleaning app that can remove unnecessary junk files from your hard drive. It is different from some other hard drive cleaning apps, such as CCleaner, in that it pro-actively sets out to find junk files wherever they may reside, rather than looking in prescribed locations. As a consequence it can find many files that CCleaner will simply miss.
It is fairly well known that the more you use your computer, the more unnecessary, temporary, and junk files accumulate on your hard drive. This can be a problem in situations where you do not have a lot of hard drive space, and can significantly slow down operations such as backing up your system or indexing your hard drive for desktop search, to name but two.
Of course, there are many hard-drive cleaning programs out there, but these are of two kinds. The first type, epitomized by the very well known free app CCleaner, “knows” where to go to look for junk files, or at least has to be told. This results in a quick, relatively safe cleanup, but will invariably leave a lot of junk files behind, simply because they did not reside in the locations where it expected them.
System Ninja, in contrast, will look everywhere for junk files and will identify them intelligently. This takes a little bit more time but will find many files that the first type of program will not. Continue reading ..
Posted by Jason on September 20, 2010 in Anti-malware, Antivirus, System, Utilities |
WinMHR is a free security tool that provides a similar function as the VirusTotal website but with some additional features, and more to come. WinMHR is not a replacement for antivirus but it works great in conjunction with one (I’d recommend Avast! for a free antivirus.). The name stands for Windows Malware Hash Registry, which largely describes its functionality. WinMHR will calculate a hash for a file and then check against its database to see if it has identified that file to be related to malware.
The software comes in the form of an 8MB installer and takes up 26MB of RAM while running. WinMHR works on Windows XP SP3, Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. It is completely free with no ads, reminders, or paid versions. You can set it to run when Windows starts or only be on-demand. The advantage of WinMHR is that your files remain private. The hashing is done locally and only the hash is sent across the wire to the Team Cymru servers.
[Editor’s note: this review was written by Freewaregenius contributor Jason H. Check out his tech blog: 404techsupport.com].
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Posted by Samer on September 14, 2010 in Freewaregenius Picks, Productivity & Applications |
CleanHaven is a free text cleanup and manipulation app for Windows, Mac, and Linux. This is not a simple program that merely converts text-case and removes unprintable characters (similar to the many “email cleaning” apps that are out there); but is a sophisticated, well designed ” swiss army knife” of a tool for text manipulation functions.
The functions on offer span a wide range, from simple case conversion and character removal (such as excess carriage returns or non-ASCII characters), to combining lines separated by carriage returns into paragraphs, deduping lists lists (as in the screenshot above), filtering correctly and incorrectly spelled words in a text, general search and replace, removal of trailing spaces, tabs or punctuation, and a table view where you can manipulate your text in a spreadsheet style grid, to name just a few. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on September 9, 2010 in File Management, System, Uninstall, Utilities, Virtualization |
Software virtualization, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is a process whereby a specific program is run in a “virtual layer”, where the interaction with the operating system and the host environment is temporary and is automatically undone once the virtual program is terminated (more commonly referred to as “sandboxed”), until the next time you run the virtualized app. Most commonly, software virtualization is done for security reasons, for testing purposes, or for the purpose of making a program portable.
Cameyo is a free software virtualization program that is one of only two freeware apps of its kind, the other being the afore-mentioned Altiris SVS, which, however, only works on 32 bit Windows. Cameyo, in contrast, runs on both 32 bit and 64 bit operating systems. Although still in its early stages, Cameyo is under active development, unlike SVS which has been put on hold ever since it was acquired by Semantic a couple of years ago.
One disadvantage, though, is that unlike SVS, the initial installation of a program is not virtual, at least in the version I tested. I.e., you cannot simply undo an installed program once you virtualize it; rather, you will need to either uninstall the program normally or otherwise virtualize the program within a virtual machine in the first place. Continue reading ..
Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you have multiple files that you need to move into their own folders? I frequently encounter this situation, for example, when downloading media files that I then move to their own folders.
