Posted by Samer on June 22, 2010 in Audio | Tagged Iphone, iPhone / iPad |
If you use iTunes but prefer to manage your audio tags using another program, SYNCiTunes is a small, free app that can keep the iTunes library up to date and in-sync with all external changes.
Some of the things SYNCiTunes does: add new tracks that exist in the sync folder to the iTunes library, update audio tags and artwork in the iTunes library that may have changed externally, and remove songs from the iTunes library that no longer exist. It also optionally performs a few esoteric functions, such as resetting custom volume settings that iTunes might introduce to some songs, remove “blank” albums in iTunes that may cause tracks to be invisible in the artist’s song list, to name a couple.
SYNCiTunes is a tiny, portable app that is run on-demand if and when you need it. All the interventions it offers are optional, so you can pick and choose exactly what you want it to do. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on June 18, 2010 in Productivity & Applications |
TriX is a free productivity tool that packs a host of useful tools in a single, hotkey-enabled app.
Generally speaking, the user would select some text then perform an action such as case transformation (sentence case, uppercase, lowercase, format stripping, etc), text-to-speech, instant web search via Google, YouTube, or any of a number of search engines, instant translation via Google translate, unit conversion or calculation, etc. There are also other kinds of functions such as mute/raise/lower volume, color picker, and a host of others.
Commands are executed via keyboard shortcuts or, for those who are not hotkey-inclined, via the TriX popup menu pictured in the screenshots above. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on June 16, 2010 in Internet, Internet Utils | Tagged Bookmarking, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer |
If you use a lot of bookmarklets, you might want to check out “Bookmarklet Combiner“, a free web service that will consolidate as many bookmarklets as you like into one, and then either display them in a popup window or alternately run the list of bookmarklets in batch.
What can you do with a single, consolidated bookmarklet that you cannot do by simply placing your bookmarklets in a folder? For one thing, you can easily share or publish collections of bookmarklets. Moreover, the popup window of bookmarklets (see top right screenshot) can be set to be displayed on various parts of the screen. It is also a simply unique way to go about organizing (and using) your bookmarklets.
If you are interested in some cool, value added bookmarklets: check out my list of “Twelve must have bookmarklets“. A combined version of all of these can be found here (drag and drop to your browser toolbar). See screenshot to the right for a preview. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on June 14, 2010 in Audio |
Imagine the situation: you step into a store for a few seconds, and they happen to be playing that extremely catchy song from the 80’s that you used to love, and now its in your head and won’t go away, and you feel that you have to look it up and listen to it again. So what do you do?
Many people use YouTube to look up songs on-the-fly. And so does this strangely named free app. Quisple, in a nutshell, is a searchbox that floats on your desktop that can look up and play any song that you seek, provided that it can find it on YouTube (it will play the audio part only).
The other thing that it will do is keep a history of searches, as a kind of playlist, and optionally let you share it with other users of Quisple. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on June 13, 2010 in Internet, Internet Utils | Tagged Bookmarking, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer |
“Bookmarklet” was once a very exciting word in the world of the internet. The little Javascript apps packaged in a bookmark and placed on your browser’s toolbar are able to provide one-click, value-added functionality that can greatly enhance your browsing.
These days most people (myself included) prefer to install browser plugin or extensions that can potentially add more complex functionality than a bookmarklet and provide much more integration with your browser experience. But the fact remains: a short snippet of code in a bookmarklet is a much more elegant and portable solution than an extension or plugin that needs to be installed and may be constantly taking up memory. An added bonus: bookmarklets will almost always work on any browser.
I recently switched to Chrome after Google’s browser added support for extensions in earnest (and in fact wrote an article about the must-have extensions for Google Chrome). I did, however, find myself transferring over to Chrome some indispensable bookmarklets that I was using on my previous browser; hence the idea for this posting was born.
This posting will present my favorite 12 useful bookmarklets that I use: Email This from Clickability, ClipNabber, Readability, PrintWhatYouLike, PageZipper, BitLet bookmarklet, FirebugLite, View Passwords, BugMeNot, Bit.ly, Map This, and Design. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on June 8, 2010 in Graphics, Internet, Internet Utils |
Are you looking for a good freeware image viewer? If so, you should look into this one. Zoner Photo Studio Free is a brilliant free image viewing and management app that combines a wealth of features and functions with a stylish, attractive user interface. The program is laid out in three different sections: a photo viewer, photo manager, and a photo editor. Users can navigate to each section via the tabs in the top right of the screen.
And while the main draw of this program may be the very attractive interface, it also provides a slew of sophisticated functions, most notably: a wide range of filters, color enhancement, publishing to Flickr or Facebook, tagging (and geotagging), intelligent image filtering and search (by tags, filename and path, exif info), support for a every imaginable image type, as well as a few unusual functions such as panorama image stitching and “3D image creation”.
However, this program is not perfect by any means, Below is a list of PROs and CONs. Continue reading ..
Posted by Samer on June 5, 2010 in Boost performance, Freewaregenius Picks, System, Utilities |
Is your system too overloaded with apps? Does it take way too much time to boot up? Would you like a simple, uncomplicated software that can help you optimize the programs that load on Windows startup and decrease the time it takes your system to boot up?
If so, you should check out Soluto. This program takes the concept of optimizing your system’s startup program to a new level. From a purely technical perspective, Soluto doesn’t do anything that is not been seen before: it either disables programs that start with Windows or otherwise delays them so that they load up at some point after the boot process is finished (things that freeware apps such as SysInternals Autoruns, Starter, and Startup Delayer have had on offer for quite some time). The difference is that Soluto succeeds in making this optimization process accessible to everyone regardless of their technical proficiency.
Soluto’s genius is that it is people-focused rather than PC-focused. It measures the time that it takes your PC to boot up, separates the apps that can be removed or delayed from those that absolutely have to be there, shows you exactly how much time each program is adding to total startup time, and gives detailed information on what the program is, what happens if it is removed from startup, as well as a recommended course of action. Last but not least, Soluto has a “social” aspect where it tries to employ the collective wisdom of its user base to both describe unknown apps as well as suggest solutions and contribute questions. Continue reading ..
If you use iTunes but prefer to manage your audio tags using another program, SYNCiTunes is a small, free app that can keep the iTunes library up to date and in-sync with all external changes.
