Teracopy

April 25th, 2010

Copying alot of files at once can be a pain and take a long time to do with the Windows built in file copy function. The worst part is that if there is a problem with one of the files the whole copy stops and you have to restart it.

Enter Teracopy:

Teracopy not only speeds up the copying of files on your Windows machine but it also has options to ignore problems when they arise.

You can find Teracopy here: http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php

Itunes Library Updater

March 19th, 2010

Have you had to clean up your music collection lately?

If you have, you have probably noticed that Itunes does a horrible job of updating your library. By horrible, I mean that it doesn’t do it at all. You have to re add the music folder to your library and then it takes forever to update.

Enter Itunes Library Updater.

This program will fix up your library with lightning fast speed and it does a great job of removing orphaned entries as well as adding new ones.

You can find at http://goo.gl/1ACh

Recently we had a case where we could not retrieve our customers music from their back up.  With the feeling that all hope was lost, she pointed out that all of her songs were on her Ipod and she was wondering if we can just take them off of there. Having done this in the past, I knew that it was possible but in the past it was really hard to do and I wanted a program that could make this a little less painful.

The program that we found and have come to love is called Iphone Explorer.

With Iphone Explorer we were able to find the music folder and transfer it back to the computer. One thing to understand is that the files have no meaningful name and neither do the folders. But if you import them into Itunes and make sure that you have enabled the option to let Itunes manage your library, they will all get their names and folders back. This is also only one use case, you can use this to store files on your ipod/iphone that you could not before as well.

You can find Iphone Explorer at http://www.iphone-explorer.com/

Avg Removal Tool

March 8th, 2010

Antivirus programs can be as hard to remove and actual viruses. That is why a few of our 100 programs and websites are antivirus removal tools.

AVG is a popular free antivirus but when you need to upgrade to a better antivirus you want to be sure that AVG is completely removed.

The best thing to do is to run the AVG Removal Tool, this program will make sure all traces of AVG are gone from your system. You can then install your next antivirus without any worry of AVG interfering.

You can find the AVG Removal Tool at http://www.avg.com/download-tools

Audible.com

March 8th, 2010

If you love books, then you will love Audible.com.

Audible offers audio books that you can put on your mp3 player. It is a life saver if you have long commutes or go to the gym. I find myself getting sick of music and I need to listen to something that makes me think and a good audio book will do that for me.

You can buy audible books separately as you want them or you can get a 1 book or 2 book a month subscription.

You can find audible at http://audible.com

Audacity

March 7th, 2010

Audacity is a great free audio editing program.

From their website (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/)

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

* Record live audio.
* Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
* Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
* Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
* Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
* And more! See the complete list of features.

You can get Audacity here http://bit.ly/audacity1

Adblock Plus

March 7th, 2010

Adblock plus is a firefox addon that allows you to block ads.

If you have ever been annoyed with ads on pages, install this and many them will just disappear.

Keep in mind that if you block the ads, the content that you are consuming is not getting paid for by advertisers and you should turn it off on your favorite websites.

You will see a stop sign like button at the top of your firefox window that allows you to turn ads on or off on a site by site basis. All ads are turned off by default.

You can get Adblock Plus here: http://bit.ly/adblock2

7-Zip

March 7th, 2010

Have you ever downloaded a compressed file and you did not have the program to decompress it?

7-Zip aims to take care of that problem for you.

From the 7-Zip website:(http://www.7-zip.org/)

  • High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
  • Supported formats:
    • Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
    • Unpacking only: ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, DEB, DMG, HFS, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MSI, NSIS, RAR, RPM, UDF, WIM, XAR and Z.
  • For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
  • Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
  • Self-extracting capability for 7z format
  • Integration with Windows Shell
  • Powerful File Manager
  • Powerful command line version
  • Plugin for FAR Manager
  • Localizations for 74 languages

7-Zip can decompress a multitude of zipped(compressed) file formats, it also has a pretty good compression engine for the times when you need to compress a file or a folder.

You can find 7-Zip at http://www.7-zip.org/

Cd Burner XP

March 7th, 2010

Cd Burner Xp is a great lightweight cd authoring program. This program can do most if not all of the functions of Nero and other commercial Cd Burning programs. It installs in under a minute and can make audio and data cds as well as burn images and copy discs.

Here is a list of features from their website (http://cdburnerxp.se/en/features)

Create Data-CDs/DVDs
* burn any Data on CD-R/CD-RW/DVD+R/DVD-R/DVD+RW/DVD-RW/DVD-RAM/BD/HD-DVD, including double layer mediums
* burn mp3-CDs to store many audio files on one single disc
* create bootable discs
* verify written Data automatically after burning process
* use either the internal browser to add your files or the intuitive Drop-Box to drag and drop files directly from any Windows Explorer window
* save your compilations for creation of backups
* burn on-the-fly and with buffer-underrun protections
* import previous (ISO 9660) sessions and edit existing file structure on CD/DVD
* quick- and full-erase disc
* copy data discs (possible copy-protection is not bypassed)
* retrieve recorder and disc information

Create Audio-CDs

* create Audio-CDs from mp3, wav, ogg, flac and wma files
* add single or multiple tracks from existing audio-CDs directly to your new compilation without ripping tracks before (add cda-files)
* play audio-files with integrated audio player
* gapless audio-CDs supported (disc-at-once-mode)
* import M3U or WPL playlists
* support for ReplayGain
* import CUE sheets
* create mixed-mode discs

ISO features

* burn ISO files to CD
* create your own ISO files
* convert bin- and nrg-files to ISO
* save CDs/DVDs as ISO file to disc

Other features

* simple cover printing feature for data- and audio-discs
* LightScribe integration
* Command line version
* supports most IDE, USB, Firewire and SCSI drives
* integrated option to enable access to drive for restricted users
* multi-language interface
* online update

If you are in need of a full featured cd buring program you can get Cd Burner XP here http://cdburnerxp.se