Happy new year! (if 2009 already came where you live)

Considering it's the last day of the year i felt it was appropiate to wish a happy new year to all my faithful readers that come into my little corner of the web. Hopefully 2009 will be a better year than 2008 and with that said i am gonna party. See ya! party hard!

Easily access U.S. only content with Hotspot Shield

Overview:

Hotspot Shield creates a virtual private network (VPN) between your laptop or iPhone and our Internet gateway. This impenetrable tunnel prevents snoopers and hackers from viewing your email, instant messages, credit card information or anything else you send over the network. Hotspot Shield security application is free to download, employs the latest VPN technology, and is easy to install and use.


Review:

The United States is awesome,It's so awesome they prevent other people from doing stuff if you are not from there, i mean who cares about other countries right? If you are a foreigner you are blocked from several U.S. only services like TV streaming, online purchases and surveys among many other things. With this in mind Hotspot Shield offers a simple way of browsing the web like if you were in the land of MacDonalds. It works by creating a VPN (virtual private network) between you and the internet. All you have to do is to run Hotspot Shield and you will get a new U.S. IP , the only problem is that sometimes Hotspot Shield will redirect you a page full of ads and even show them on the pages that you are browsing. It's annoying but in my opinion is a small price to pay getting to access to regional locked content. Hotspot Shield is ridiculously easy to use and doesn't have any configuration to speak of, you can only connect and disconnect from the network and that's pretty much it making a pretty good solution for people not familiar with VPN or anything like that, the program just works. Available for Windows 2000/XP/Vista and Mac OSX.


Get it at http://hotspotshield.com/

AnyToISO Converter can convert most commercial image formats into an ISO

Overview:

Converts various CD/DVD-ROM images to ISO format.


Features:

# Converts BIN, MDF, PDI, CDI, NRG, B5I, IMG CD/DVD-ROM images to ISO
# Fast and Easy ™ technology
# Totally free


Review:

Burning CD/DVD images that have a propietary format like MDF (Alcohol 100%) or NRG (Nero image) is a pretty annoying task unless you have the commercial software that those image formats belong to, however with AnyToISO Converter the annoying becomes easy. Like the name says you can select any image file and convert it into an ISO which is a format that is supported by most burning programs out there like for example CDBurnerXP. It's that easy! the only thing that is missing in my opinion is batch support for converting several images in a row but still it's a pretty good program oh and i mention is fully portable? Available for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://mac.majorgeeks.com/download6097.html

Download mirror:

Feel like doing a little overclocking? then try RivaTuner

Overview:

RivaTuner is a complete powerful tweaking environment, providing you everything you may need to tune NVIDIA GPU based display adapters. The widest driver-level Direct3D / OpenGL and system tuning options, flexible profiling system allowing to make custom settings on per-application basis, both driver-level and low-level hardware access modes, unique diagnostic and realtime hardware monitoring features and exclusive power user oriented tools like built-in registry editor and patch script engine make RivaTuner's feature set absolutely unmatched.
RivaTuner supports all NVIDIA display adapters starting from Riva TNT family up to the latest GeForce 7 series and widest range of NVIDIA drivers starting from the oldest Detonator 2.08 up to the newest ForceWare drivers family.


Review:

RivaTuner is a small aplication for overclocking and tweaking your video card settings. It works with all Nvidia cards and some ATI ones. RivaTuner can work in either low level mode (changes are applied directly into the card) or at the driver level (changes are applied using the Windows registry). While i found RivaTuner pretty easy to use it does require some knowledge to be used otherwise you could end up with a dead card so go read some tutorials before trying some overcloking or other type of tweaking. In conclusion if you are new to overclocking then RivaTuner is a good program to get started. Available for all Windows versions.


Get it at http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner

Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas everyone! i though i'd spread some holyday cheer in the form of a salute and a postcard i made in paint. As you can see i work inside a yellow box located somewhere snowy. Also it's hard posting freeware with only a hand that has three fingers, i lost my right hand in a boating "accident" involving chiguaguas, evil chiguaguas... from outer space. I won't bother anyone with the bloody and awesome details except to say that afterwards i enjoyed some nice hot dogs if you know what i mean and i think you do because only smart and beautiful people come to elite freeware.
So in conclusion i would like to say that i hope everyone gets some happiness these holydays, cheers!

Optical Info is an easy way of knowing what a CD/DVD drive can read and write

Overview:

The purpose of this utility is to detect the optical drive's (CD / DVD drives) Read/Write capabilities. When looking at the front of a computer which is not your own it is often difficult to tell whether the optical drive installed is either a CD ROM, CD Writer, CD Rewriter, DVD ROM, CD Rewriter + DVD Combo, DVD/CD Rewriter etc.


Review:

Optical Info is a simple and portable tool for showing what type of disc a CD/DVD drive can read and write. Just launch it and Optical Info will display useful information about your optical drive like vendor name, product ID, revision number and what type of CD/DVD can read and write. Optionally you can close/open your disc tray and get the type of the disc that you have inserted (if it's CD-R, DVR-RW,Etc).
In conclusion Optical Info is a pretty good program that is more suited for persons that go from PC to PC and need to know what type of CD/DVD drive a computer has. Available for Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://www.alexnolan.net/software/opticalinfo.htm

Opera@USB makes the super fast Opera browser portable

Overview:

Opera@USB has the same features as a normal desktop version, surf the web, write emails, use IRC while having your contacts, bookmarks and settings with you - anytime and everywhere.


Features:

- there are no unwanted effects on IE or other browsers
- existing Opera versions are not affected
- make no entries to the registry
- works with every Windows PC (company,Internetcafe, friends,..)
- leave no data on the host computer


Review:

Opera@USB attemps to make the Opera browser fully portable with pretty good results in my opinion. All of Opera features along with it's trademark speed are packed into a zip file which can be placed into a pendrive and launched normally. Opera@USB supports a wide variety of languages so if your an international person the chances that your language is supported are very high. The only drawback with this program is that it only works with Windows, that sucks when you think the original Opera browser works with Windows, Linux and MacOSX.
In conclusion Opera@USB is a pretty good way of running Opera from your pendrive oh and if you are looking for a more anonymising alternative then try OperaTor. Available for all Windows versions.


Get it at http://www.opera-usb.com/

Daphne can kill processes, uninstall programs, set up kill lists and more

Overview:

Daphne is a small (system tray) application for killing, controlling and debugging Windows' processes.


Review:

Daphne is a small portable program which can do all sort of tasks related to processes and some non related. Using Daphne's process list you can kill processes, change their priority, transparency, hide them, disable them and even look them up in an online database (which is pretty useful). Also you can kill a process by their window name, view a process tree and target a window to identify it's process. Of special note are the kill menu and traps. The kill menu allows you to add a list of processes that will be terminated when you run the list (Unfortunately i couldn't made it work with more than one process) The traps can be used to set a specific action when a process is created, for example you could made a trap for firefox that would inmediately hide it when launched. Besides messing with processes Daphne can uninstall programs, schedule a system shuthdown and create up to 3 other desktops. This last feature is experimental so use with caution, i didn't have any problems the little time i used it.
In conclusion Daphne is neat little program for handling processes and doing some cool extra stuff. Available for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://www.drk.com.ar/daphne.php

Like analog clocks? want one on your desktop? then Alwact Clock is for you

Overview:

Alwact Clock is a free analog desktop clock featuring skins, transparency and zoom. It is possible to set the refresh delay ranging from a few milliseconds(continuous second hand rotation) to a minute. You can also make your own skins using any image edition software supporting PNG.


Review:

Alwact Clock is an interesting little program that adds a simple analog clock into your desktop. It has several features like an alarm clock that can set with an accompanying MP3, transparency, a click trough mode and support for user made skins.While Alwact Clock works pretty well it's lack of a digital clock mode may turn some people off that are accustomed to digital watches (like me). Available for Windows 2000/2003/XP/vista.


Get it at http://alwact.atspace.com/ (get the 1.3 pre-release version if you want features like the alarm clock and click trough mode)

The Open Command Prompt Shell Extension is a simple way of opening a new command promt from the context menu

Overview:

The Open Command Prompt Shell Extension adds an "Open Command Prompt" menu item to the context menus (right-click menus) in Windows Explorer so that you can open a command prompt in the selected directory (or directories) or in the current directory that you are viewing.


Review:

If you use the Windows command prompt frequently then you might have found the lack of a context entry allowing you to open a command prompt baffling. Thankfully the Open Command Prompt Shell Extension is a fine solution. It will add context entry allowing you to launch the command promt in any folder. This is an easy and simple solution to an annoying problem and apparently it has several advantages over other similar programs. Available for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://www.ktechcomputing.com/cmdopen/

1by1 is the player for people that just want to play music located in folders

Overview:

1by1 is a small, fast and handy audio player which is not only small: it provides a smart and versatile environment to handle your file collection and listen to your tracks - with no need for playlists or databases.

Features:

# Directory Player: directly plays your folder contents
# Full Resume play: remembers last track and position
# Supported decoders: ACM (mp3), mpglib (mp2, mp3)
# Winamp input plugin support (ogg, wav, cd..)
# Gapless play · simple crossfading · Audio enhancer
# Folder tree file navigation · Directory finder: plays a whole drive
# File utils: copy, move, rename while play, delete, date change
# Cue sheet support · Playlist support · Favorites · Big title display
# Very small size · Low resource usage · portable
# Folder compare utility


Review:
1by1 is a small, portable and simple music player that focuses on playing music from folders. It can't browse using tags so you will have to do with filenames only. 1by1 supports playlists, favorites , gapless playback and a has an audio enhancer that works with 16 bit output. By default 1by1 only support MP2 and MP3 files however you can install Winamp plugins in order to make 1by1 play OGG, WAV, Etc. files. Even tough 1by1 doesn't have tag browsing it has something called "big display" which is a panel that can show several things like for example: A VU meter, a song IDV3 tag, the current time and album art. It actually looks pretty nice as you can see in the screenshot i took and you can change its' color and font.
Anyway 1by1 is a simple player for playing tracks from folders, just keep in mind that if you want to use it from a pendrive you must extract the installer contents using 7-zip or other file archiver. Available for all versions of Windows.


Get it at http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1.html

Benchmark your applications with AppTimer

Overview:

AppTimer will run an executable a number of times and time how long it takes for the application to reach a state where user input is being accepted before exiting the application.

After each run of the application AppTimer will attempt to close the application in an automated fashion while logging the time measurements to a log file.

It's main use is in benchmarking an application's startup time.


Review:

Have you ever wondered how much time a program takes to launch? if the answer if yes then you may be interested in AppTimer. With this lightweight and portable program you can launch applications to time their startup time and put the results into a text file. You can choose how many program executions and delay between launches you would like. The window detection method and the window close method are important because is the way Apptimer detects a windows and closes it respectively, i would pay special attention to the window close method since some programs don't like to be closed a certain way which is something that i experienced.
AppTimer worked pretty well and should suffice people that need an app like it. Available for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://www.passmark.com/products/apptimer.htm

Convert flash videos into another formats with Free Flash Flv Video Converter

Overview:

Free Flash Flv Video Converter is a powerful tool to convert flv files to other video and audio formats, such as FLV to AVI, FLV to MPEG, FLV to WMV, FLV to MP3, FLV to MP4 and FLV to 3GP.


Review:

Free Flash Flv Video Converter is a program that does only thing and that is to convert flash files into another formats. Free Flash Flv Video Converter supports a lot of formats and has predefined profiles for converting files into videos playable in Ipods, Iphone, PSP, Etc. Before converting a flash file you can trim a video's time in order to get just the part that you want, change the video bitrate and change the frame size if you have a special screen size on your portable device. While using Free Flash Flv Video Converter was easy and it got the job done it has a very annoying flaw. When Free Flash Flv Video Converter starts it will always ask you if you want to check for updates and if you say "yes" it will open the minidvdsoft mainpage, the problem is that even if you click "no" the program will open your browser with the URL. It doesn't happen all the time but is very annoying nonetheless.
In conclusion if you can get past the annoying flaw that i just mentioned then Free Flash Flv Video Converter is a decent but not great choice when trying to convert flash files. Available for all versions of Windows.


Get it at http://www.minidvdsoft.com/flvtovideo/

Pack and unpack Mp3 files with MakeitOne MP3 Album Maker

Overview:

The MakeitOne MP3 Album Maker allows you to pack/join your MP3 files in a single file - whilst still allowing full playability, tag editing and unpacking.


Review:

MakeitOne MP3 Album Maker is a simple utility that can join several MP3's into a single standalone file. All you have to do is to select a bunch of Mp3 songs and click "Go" to unite them. You also can edit the artist and album tag fields, add a cover and insert prefixes and suffixes to the filename. One pretty cool feature of MakeitOne MP3 Album Maker is the ability to unpack joined files back to their original state so you can have all of your MP3 restored into single files with their proper tags.
MakeitOne MP3 Album Maker is simple and works well, perfect for someone that needs to join some tunes together. Available for Windows 98/2000/XP (.Net framework required).


Get it at http://www.makeitone.net/audio/mp3albummaker.htm

Gsplit is the mother of all file splitting utilities

Overview:

This application is a free reliable file splitter that lets you split your large files (like Self-Extracting archives, Zip archives, disk images, multimedia, music, video, backup, image, archive, log, large text, document files...) into a set of smaller files called pieces.


Review:

Gsplit is a file splitter program with some very interesting features that put it above most other free splitters. For starters Gsplit can use two type of pieces when splitting files: Spanned pieces and Blocked pieces. Spanned pieces are used to split files directly into several disks like for example floppies. All you have to do is to to insert a new disk when prompted and Gsplit will automatically calculate the pieces size until it completes the splitting process. Blocked pieces are just your standard fixed size pieces. By default Gsplit creates a small executable (SFU) when you split files, this is used to unite all the created pieces otherwise you will have to use a small tool called "GUnite" to merge the pieces back to their original state. This SFU (self-uniting functionality) can be configured to display custom messages, set a default folder for extracting files and even set to work in silent mode among other things. You can store info into created pieces like dates and perform checks to see if a piece is corrupted and promptly replace it with a new good piece. Finally Gsplit is fully portable you can carry it with you all the time.
Gsplit is easy to use and is simple enough for the average user however it's large quantity of power features makes perfect for people that are just constantly sharing files on the web and need an advanced splitter. Available for all versions of Windows.


Get it at http://www.gdgsoft.com/gsplit/

Diagram Designer is a powerful tool for creating flowcharts and other types of diagrams

Overview:

Simple vector graphics editor for creating flowcharts, UML class diagrams, illustrations and slide shows.


Features:

• Customizable template object palette.
• Spellchecker (see below about dictionaries).
• Import/export WMF, EMF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, MNG, ICO, GIF and PCX images.
• Slide show viewer.
• Simple graph plotter to plot mathematical expressions.
• Advanced "pocket" calculator with equation solver.
• MeeSoft Image Analyzer integration for bitmap image editing and extended file format support.
• Uses compressed file format for minimizing drawing file size.

Review:

Diagram Designer is an amazing open source program for creating diagrams. You can easily create flowcharts, UML class diagrams, illustrations and slide shows using a simple drag and drop interface. You can customize your diagrams with all sorts of colors and text formatting codes which makes Diagram Designer very powerful. You can optionally download dictionaries for spellchecking , use a simple calculator for advanced operations and export files into several types of image files, Oh and did i mention Diagram Designer is fully portable? In conclusion Diagram Designer should be the program that you use whenever you are making some diagrams. Available for Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://logicnet.dk/DiagramDesigner/

Draw diagrams of networks with Network Notepad

Overview:

Network Notepad is a Freeware program for creating interactive network diagrams.


Features:

# Runs on Microsoft Windows 9x, NT, 2K, XP, Vista
# Point-and-Click Telnet/ Browse/ User-definable Network Management.
# Simple Drag and Drop interface.
# Open, Text Based File Format.
# Printing.
# Linked Diagrams.
# Flow Charts.


Review:

If for whatever reason you need to draw a network then Network Notepad is a compelling choice. Using a simple drag and drop interface you can create detailed network diagrams complete with IP, hostname and more. Network Notepad also lets you quickly use Windows functions with IPs like ping, telnet, explore with internet explorer and finally copy the IP to the clipboard. Network Notepad is simple and lightweight and just works. Available for Windows 9x/NT/2K/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://www.networknotepad.com/

Nitrome is an awesome colection of free games that can be played right in your browser

Since i don't really have anything else to post today i though i would try to promote nitrome.com. This website contains a bunch of free games that can be played right in your browser, you only need flash in order to enjoy them. Most of the games are simple with only a single gameplay hook but they are really fun and you can waste significant time on them instead of working on your office job. My personal favorite among all nitrome games definitive has to be Scribble with it's simplistic gameplay that consist of drawing lines with your mouse in order to get ink blots through enemy infested levels. Doghouse is pretty good too. Anyway if you want to waste precious hours of your life playing fun games instead of being a productive member of society then nitrome is just what you need.


http://www.nitrome.com/

Launch your apps and do some note taking with 8start Launcher

Overview:

8start Launcher is a free portable application launcher.


Features:

- Organize shortcuts into groups and categories

- Accessed by system tray, hotkey and middle mouse

- Create and manage buttons fast and easy. Shortcuts, url favorites, files, folder, and application link can be defined easily

- Launch applications and files fast and intuitive

- Keeps the desktop clean, no more shortcuts block the view of your wallpaper

- Portable with relative path defined supported, can be run in flash drive or install in harddisk.

- Show program name / description when mouse over the icon

- Quick access to the drive content by click the drive letter

- Changable skin with transpancy png format supported, 30+ beautiful skins available for download

- Able to use picture files .jpg, .png, .ico, .bmp, .gif as button icon

- Individual customizable button style. Link to the application, favorite documents, music files, folders.... intuitively by apply the most suitable style

- Auto download website favicon to local for url type button. Url icon still available if the internet cached have been deleted.

- Launcher auto shrink to fit number of icons

- Whole new concept of launching your applications and files


Review:

I'm kinda torn about 8start Launcher on one hand is a pretty awesome application launcher but on the other i experienced several little annoyances that turned me off. But let's get to the bad parts later. 8start Launcher works by using three concepts: buttons, groups and categories. Buttons are like shortcuts from everything to apps, files,URLs and folders. Groups are a bunch of buttons placed together. Finally categories are like tabs and can contain several groups. With these concepts you can create many types of layouts and along with the icon customization options available make 8start Launcher a very versatile tool in the looks department. Besides launching stuff you can make some notes but i found the interface for that rather clumsy so i didn't use it that much. Also 8start is portable so you can run it from your pendrive.
Now for the bad part there were a couple of things about 8start Launcher that i didn't like. For starters it takes between 10 to 15 minutes to understand how 8start works. I specifically refer to how to place apps, files and folder into 8start. It was very frustating at first but i got the hang of it eventually. Also 8start Launcher has a problem when being called with the mouse. If you have 8start opened in the desktop and put a Window on top of it you can't call it with the mouse, actually you can call it it's just that 8start will appear on the back of the window instead of the front. The only way to "fix" this is first hide 8start with the hide button and then call it again but that only works one time and then you are back where you started, thankfully the hot-key support works just fine.
If you can get pass the annoyances that i just listed then give 8start Launcher a chance, i found it to be an interesting program but it needs some work in my opinion. Available for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://www.8start.com/

Upload stuff to online FTP servers and some file sharing sites with RightLoad

Overview:

Rightload is a small program that allows you to quickly upload files directly from a Windows folder to your server. Instead of using complicated software just to upload a few pictures, you just right-click on the files, select the server and target folder and Rightload will do the rest for you.


Features:

• Automatic thumbnail creation
• Creating a list of uploaded files in BB-Code or HTML to paste into forums or websites
• Support for HTTP upload sites like ImageShack

Review:

RightLoad is a small program that adds a new context menu entry in where you can upload files to several online FTP servers. You can import several pre-defined HTTP upload servers for popular file sharing and image sites like rapidshare,imageshack,tinypic,Etc. Of course you can create your own custom ones if you like. After uploading files RightLoad will create a list with links to these files with optional forum tags which is very handy. Finally RightLoad can create thumbnails when you upload images.
RightLoad is very simple and works well, so if you are a serial uploader then you might wanna give it a look. Available for Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista.


Get it at http://rightload.org/