Author Archive
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
FoxLingo is an add-on for Firefox that describes itself as ” The ultimate Language tool”. It claims to simplify the process of translating online information from a foreign language into the one you understand. It has a massive choice of languages to translate between and you can choose which ones are most useful to you and add them in the toolbar.
It supports translation between 45 languages and accomplishes this with the help of 35 online translation services. It also has over 100 links to various language learning websites.
As well as translating text entered into the search box, you can search foreign pages using terms written in your own language, translate full webpages and even translate webpages automatically by detecting their country domain extension.
As with all online translators, the results will sometimes be not exactly perfect, but you’ll still get the general idea.
Further information and download it for Firefox here.
(Note: You might wanna check out potential privacy issues raised! See reviews at download link page.)
Posted in FireFox, Main | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
It’s all too common these days for good software to become “bloatware” after a few versions. What was once a good program can easily become bloated with countless features that you can barely understand, let alone ever have a use for.
So it’s refreshing to find this little program that does one useful thing and does it simply and good. It’s called Soprano and it plays audio files (mp3, ogg, wma, wav) it also supports streaming. It requires no installation, so is therefore portable naturally. It has its own compact playlist in a resizable window and supports dragging and dropping of songs or folders. It can be hotkey driven by editing the included hotkeys.txt file to your own liking.
In short, it plays music files and is easy to use, uses minimal resources and it’s free. A great music player for those who like to keep things simple yet functional! All weighing in at only 340kb as of this writing! So good things DO come in small packages.
You’ll find more details and can download it at the homepage here.
Posted in Audio, Main, Music | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
Nowadays its pretty easy to make simple videos to upload online to websites like YouTube, etc. A lot of people simply use Windows Media Maker as it does the basics well and is already included with Windows. VideoSpin is a similar free program that does the same sort of things as Windows Media Maker, but a few extra things too.
In use, it’s very similar indeed, you simply drag and drop your video clips or music to the timeline where you can arrange, cut, crop etc and you can also add transition effects. So far this is sounding very much like Windows Media Maker right? Thats very true, but in my opinion it has a much more attractive and user friendly interface/layout and unlike Windows Movie Maker, VideoSpin has a fairly good title editor. It also includes an option of uploading finished videos straight to YouTube.
To sum it up , it’s worth checking out if you want a change from Windows Media Maker, it’s like a much improved version with better text titling and a more user friendly interface. Check more info and download it here.
Posted in Main, Video, Web 2.0, Web services | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 11th, 2008
Have you ever wanted to make your own comic strip, but the problem is that you can’t draw to save your life? Check out Pixton. It’s basically a user-defined comic creator, no artistic ability required.
It allows you to make your own comic by positioning body parts, choosing facial expressions, skin color, hair etc. You also get the option of “remixing” other peoples comics or letting people remix yours (the original remains unchanged, it just makes a copy that can be changed around). The interface takes a little getting used to, but after a couple of minutes you’ll soon have your first basic comic-strip.
Admittedly, it may be basic, as it’s currently only stick figure characters, but its cool how you can reposition their body in every way and create your own facial expressions to match your speech bubbles. This flexibility in expressing your characters can lead to a surprisingly cool comic-strip. You’ll still need to supply a good imagination though!
Try it out for yourself at the Pixton site here, it all works online, no downloading required!
Posted in Main | No Comments »
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
There’s a lot of online storage services in the last few years, some better than others. But ADrive has to be the one with the largest amount of storage space yet (tell me if I’m wrong) with a massive 50GB of space. No, it wasnt a typing error, thats right 50GB of online storage space for free.
Its currently in beta and is totally free to sign up to and use. You simply sign up with your email address for a free account and then you can start using it immediately. It even allow you to do complete folder uploads, as well as drag and drop support. You also can optionally share files. What’s more, the maximum file upload size is a whopping 2gb.
I’d recommend trying out this site to anyone who has a lot of data they’d like to back up remotely, as the site is very well designed and very usable, the user upload interface is very easy to use too. This storage service is surely raising the bar in online storage with the huge amount of storage offered alone. Another good thing is they seem to take data storage very seriously and professionally as you can see by reading this link http://adrive.com/technology
More info and try it out for yourself by visiting the homepage here.
Posted in Main, Web services | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, February 6th, 2008
CanYouRunIt is an online tool that gamers are sure to find useful.
If you’ve ever bought a game and excitedly brought it home only to find out that your computer is unable to run it, then this is a site worth adding to your bookmarks. It has an ever-growing list of computer games, mostly current popular titles. You simply select the one you’re interested in buying/installing, – you can safely accept any prompts that pop up, as it needs to scan your system. This takes about a minute or so.
It gives a detailed rundown on several areas such as graphics card, free memory and processor requirements for the game in question. The report is detailed yet simple enough for just about anyone to understand. It compares the games minimum system requirements to your systems capabilities, letting you know clearly if you’re able to run that game. This is a cool tool for example, for parents who’d like to make sure their computer can run the game their little one has been begging them for,(also suitable for the big kid in all of us who needs a break from work at times!)
Further info and start using it right away by going to the homepage here.
Posted in Games, Main | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 4th, 2008
Quickbot is an online bot that can be a useful addition to your MSN Messenger contact list. You simply add Quickbot to your MSN buddy list and then it can help you out in several ways. You do this by simply adding “bot@techie.com” to your buddy list.
The functions it has are controlled by typing commands (listed on the homepage below or just type “help” to it in MSN Messenger). It can provide translations for most of the European languages and Chinese. You can also do a bunch of other things ranging from doing calculations, telling the weather, news headlines, reversing text, random quotations,and generating insults, among others.
It’s an interesting tool as there’s nothing to install or download and it therefore takes up no space on your computer. It also replies to non command specific messages with humorous (if somewhat limited) artificial intelligence, which is a fun touch.
For full list of features check out the homepage here.
Posted in IM, Main | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 28th, 2008
WebmailSafety from Gwebs is free encryption for webmail. It ensures that emails sent across the internet are unreadable except by the sender and receiver. It does this by using RSA2048 & AES-256 Public Key encryption, ensuring very strong security.
In order for it to work, the person you send to must also be using it. The site says it will soon be compatible with all other PGP software though and they’re also working on a Web Client for receiving secure email, but currently you must invite your friends in order for them to send or receive secure email with you. Also, note that it currently only works with Internet Explorer, but they say FireFox support will soon be on the way.
It currently supports Gmail, Hotmail, MSN mail, Live mail, Yahoo mail and AOL mail.
This is very interesting software for those of you interested in security and privacy online (or maybe just a little paranoid?)
To download it and try it out for yourself, (along with the over 210 thousand others and counting) go to the website here for further details.
Posted in E-mail, Main, Security | No Comments »
Monday, January 21st, 2008
Do you find yourself working with a lot of files, regularly copying or moving them around? Maybe you just like to have a neat computer with everything neatly filed in the right place.
I know that’s what I like, but unfortunately it tends to be easier said than done. It can be very time consuming, so instead, you find yourself with files and folders all over the place, total disorganization! If only there was an easier, almost instant, way to do it! Thats where FileTargets proves very useful.
Its a freeware right-click context menu add-on that couldn’t be much simpler to use and saves you a ton of time in moving or copying files. It adds a sub-menu with all your favorite folder names to the context-menu of all files and folders in your system so you can copy or move chosen files to pre-defined, most used folders with just a mouse click.
Now i have bad news and good news, the bad news is it’s discontinued software (why they did that i can’t understand, its an invaluable,little add-on, i wish things like this came as standard with windows) the good news is it’s still available on the homepage. Neat freaks and the highly organized will really appreciate Filetargets!
Click here to download it from the homepage.
Posted in Main | No Comments »
Monday, January 21st, 2008
Threatfire is a behavior based malware detector.It guards against malware such as trojans, spyware, rootkits, keyloggers, and buffer overflows, based on behavior patterns consistent with these threats. This means that it doesn’t just rely on a signature database to compare the files on your computer against, although it has one too.
This is always a limitation in signature based scanners (most virus and malware scanners) as they can only find known threats and can be useless against unknown or new threats (so-called ” zero-day” threats). Instead, Threatfire analyzes the activity of everything on your system for any suspicious behavior, which it then warns you about for you to take further action on.
According to test results published at the Threatfire website, it can increase the safety of your computer a great deal compared to just using an antivirus program.
It doesn’t seem to use up much resources and is very easy to use, as no complicated configuration is required. It’s available in a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the on-demand scanner in the free version is partially disabled,so it’ll scan for rootkits only.
The realtime protection is fully functional though, meaning you’re still fully protected against all known threats in the database as well as unknown threats that it may detect.
This is a neat program and good as an extra layer of protection and peace of mind. Click here for more details and download
Posted in Design, Information Management, Internet, Main, Security, Shareware, Shell and Desktop, Utilities, Windows | 1 Comment »
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