The report said that “the last week of 2011 was the largest week for device activations and app downloads in iOS and Android history.”

This shouldn’t come as any major surprise to people though as many people would have received new tablets and smartphones for Christmas, but also that app stores had a great many cheap deals on over the holiday period.  Even so, these numbers are huge and very clearly indicate that our hunger for smartphones and tablets isn’t going away any time soon.

When you factor in the number of people who would have picked up cheap Blackberry Playbook tablets over the holiday period we can expect activations to be much higher.

Flurry, which gets its data directly from Apple and Google said…

Looking forward to 2012, Flurry expects breaking the one-billion-download-barrier per week will become more common-place.   While iOS and Android growth continues to amaze, the market is still by all measures relatively nascent.

It’s very likely that they are correct and that 1 billion app downloads a week worldwide will not just quickly become the norm, but that the number by the end of 2012 will in fact be considerably higher.

Factor in the launch of ARM-powered Windows 8 tablets, now probably scheduled for early 2013, and that number will rise exponentially as people try out Metro apps for the new operating system.  It is a reasonable predication though that by the time this happens the weekly app download figures for iOS and Android will have exceeded 2 billion a week.

If it is an important file you may want to tweak your Dropbox settings to see if it changes the download speed to the better. Dropbox is by default set to unlimited download rates. If you are experiencing download rates in the 5KB/sec to 20KB/s range and have a Internet connection capable of handling a multiple of that, then you may want to try the following configuration change to see if it changes your Dropbox download speed.

Open the Dropbox configuration. You do that with a right-click on the Dropbox icon in the system tray and the selection of Preferences from the context menu.

Switch to the Bandwidth tab there. Dropbox lists the settings for the download and upload rate in the menu. The download rate is by default set to “Don’t limit”, the upload rate to “Limit automatically”.

The trick here now, as reported by the Italian blog Computer Acquisti is to configure a custom download rate instead.

The author of the original article suggests to enter a rate that’s between 50% to 75% of the Internet connection’s bandwidth. Users with a high download rate, say 20 Mbit or more can alternatively add fix values, e.g. 1000 kB/s

Users who report less than optimal upload speeds may do the same for the Dropbox upload rate to speed up uploads to Dropbox this way.

You can also try and switch the proxy settings from Auto-detect to No proxy (if you do not use one) under Proxies.

Please note that Dropbox won’t necessarily use all of the bandwidth assigned to the download tasks. Users may see an increase over the initial lower download rate however. You may also want to consider throttling your upload speed rate in the case that it gets maxed out constantly when transferring files to the Dropbox server. This may have an influence on the download rate.

Dropbox recommends doing a speed test to an east coast server in the US to simulate download and upload speed to their servers.

Are you using Dropbox? If so, what is your downloading and uploading experience?

You can resolve that issue either by selecting to open the containing folder to delete the file from there manually, or install the Deletebutton extension for the Firefox web browser.

Unlike previous download manager enhancements like Download Manager Tweak or the Firefox Download Manager extension, Deletebutton only adds a delete button to the download window of the Internet browser.

All you need to do now to delete files is to select one or multiple files in the downloads window and click the Delete file button afterwards. And just like any good file deletion tool it displays a confirmation prompt before the selected files get deleted on the system.

It feels a bit strange that the Recycle Bin on Windows is bypassed by the extension. Files that you delete this way are automatically removed from the system without option for restoring them later from the recycle bin.

It is not clear if this is a bug or a feature of the extension. Firefox users who want deleted files to be listed in the recycle bin should install one of the add-ons mentioned above instead which offer that functionality. Some users on the other hand might like that particular feature.

Firefox users who just want the ability to delete files permanently from the download window can install Downloadbutton from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

I also try to use download portals if the developer site does not offer direct downloads, for instance by forcing users to register or fill out a web form before downloads become available.

Today I wanted to download Dr.Web CureIt and the first site that came up in Google Search was Cnet’s Download.com.

I never had problems with downloads on Cnet before, but this one got me puzzled at first. Instead of allowing me to download the setup file directly, a 400 Kilobyte web installer was downloaded.

I first thought that the developers of CureIt had provided the installer, turned out I was wrong. Cnet, at least for this download and probably for all downloads on the site, is not offering direct links to those setup files anymore. Instead, a web downloader, called CNET Download.com installer, is provided.

This in itself is problematic as it means that users need to run the download.com installer first to download the setup file of the software that they initially wanted to download. That’s additional work for the user.

The real problem here however is that the web installer is pushing the Babylon toolbar. Users who do not pay attention to the download process will install the Babylon Toolbar, make Babylon their default search engine and homepage of their browsers.

Cnet is without doubt generating lots of revenue from the web installer, considering that the toolbar installation options are enabled by default, and that most users click Next Next Next when it comes to installation processes.

The CNET Download.com Installer is clearly adware. It might make sense to use a different download portal in the future, especially if you do not want to download the 400 Kilobyte web installer every time you download a file from the download site. Good alternatives are Softpedia and Major Geeks.

Have you encountered the CNET Download.com Installer? What’s your opinion?

There is however one thing that makes me hunt for the software on download sites, and not on the developer website. Some developers like to display surveys or registration forms to users who want to download their applications. While it is their right to do that, I personally dislike this. If I like the software a lot, I’d come back anyway and register an account to keep tabs on the development and closer contact to the developers. Forcing users to fill out forms leads in my opinion to a higher drop rate which in turn means less users that download and install the software.

Whenever I come to a site where I’m forced to fill out a form I’m immediately appalled, and tend to search for the program on portals like Softpedia or Betanews. It is not always possible to find those programs on those sites, but if I do, I download them from there instead.

One example: I recently tried to download the excellent free to use virus scanner Dr. Web CureIt from the developer site. Before I could do so, I was asked to enter my name and email. Thinking this was all, I complied, only to be greeted by a survey on the next page. Even worse, I failed to enter the captcha on that page correctly and was taken back to the start form as a consequence.

Fed up with it, I decided to search on Bing for the download and found it on Softpedia. I downloaded the program there without having to fill out a form or give away my email address. I tend to use temporary email addresses for this anyway whenever possible.

What I would have liked to see on the Dr. Web page is an option to directly download the software, and an optional registration, not the other way round.

Where do you download your software? What’s your experience? Let me know in the comments.

It’s main features include…

Convert PDF to Word
Convert PDF to Word with all text and Graphical data.
Convert PDF to RTF
Convert PDF to Rich Text Files. You can edit all text and graphic by Windows Wordpad.
Convert PDF to TXT
Convert PDF to plain text files. You can edit text by Notepad.
Convert PDF to Images
Convert PDF to BMP, JPG, GIF or TIF files.
Convert PDF to HTML
Convert PDF to HTML files and automatically generate the Index file.
Convert PDF to SWF
Convert PDF to Shockwave Flash Animation files which can be published on websites.
Page Selection
Convert all the pages, or partial pages of PDF file.
Easy to use software
Add a PDF File -> Select the Output File Format -> Click on Start Converting button, then just have a cup of coffee :)

This software is normally $29.95 but is completely free until February 5th 2011.  You can download your copy here where you will also find a product code.  The best thing about all this is that it’s just a simple download and there’s no need to register with the website and give away all your marketing details.

So for free software, this utility to make your PDF files editable again is an absolute must have!  You can download your free copy here.

The top three websites were RapidShare.com, Megavideo.com and Megaupload.com which between them generated more than 21 billion visits.

The study was commissioned by the US Chamber of Commerce to identify trends and rogue websites.  Mark Mulligan of research firm Forrester was cautious though, saying that the number of visits did not  necessarily equate to the number of downloads.

RapidShare has come under fire from the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) which blames the site of carrying huge volumes of pirates content.  The website is based in Switzerland though which has made it difficult for US companies to deal with.

The number of hits are very high indeed, but these figures must not be used in an alarmist way, which is what organisations such as the RIAA are bound to do.  If you look at the hits for most websites, the majority of those are for the front page only and people do not search any deeper.  This, I would imagine, will also be the case for  file sharing websites.  There will also be indexing taking place that could count as visits.

Thus the actual problem of file-sharing won’t be anywhere near as bad as these figures suggest.  We can expect the music and movie industries to attempt to pass the full 53 billion figure off as a “good estimate” of how many files are shared every year.  We can thus expect more fallout from this research in the coming months.

The free application can download the first bytes of a selected file from the Internet so that the local user can preview the file without downloading all of it.

That’s obviously only going to work if the file can be previewed if it is not fully on the computer. That works for videos very well, but not at all for archives or files that require all data to be present before they can be displayed or loaded.

Lets get back to the 100 Megabyte video that someone posted that you want to take a sneak peak at. With Partial Download you would use the command

"partial download" target url

to do that. To download the video example.avi from Ghacks’ root directory you would use the command “partial download” http://www.ghacks.net/example.avi

Partial Download downloads 1.5 Megabytes of the selected file by default. This value can be changed to another size by adding the new size in bytes at the end of the command, for instance 150000 for 150 Kilobytes.

Users do need a program that can play or display incomplete files on the system. Many video players can play incomplete videos, VLC or MPlayer variants can do that for instance.

Partial Download is a handy portable tool for users who want to download part of a file to preview it on their computer. The program could do with a gui or browser and email client integration to make that process more comfortable.

The software has been released as part of Donation Coder’s Nany 2011 challenge. Download and additional information are provided at the project website at Google Sites.

Windows users can select programs from a huge available selection. They can install all-in-one solutions, often called security suites that combine antivirus, firewall and other security programs.

Most security suites are commercial applications. Users who do not want to pay money for security software, can install free alternatives. This usually means that the user needs to install multiple programs to protect the PC from all kinds of threats.

security software downloader

SSDownloader, which stands for Security Software Downloader, can aid the user in downloading security applications to the local computer system. The program displays a list of applications on startup which can be checked.

The checked applications can then be downloaded to the system, from where they can be directly installed or distributed further.

The program separates applications in the five categories free anti-virus software, firewalls, security suites and anti-virus (trials, malware scanners and other tools.

Most applications are free to install and use. Those that are not, are offered and indicated as trial versions.

The available selection lists many of the most popular security applications, from AVG and Avast antivirus, Comodo and ZoneAlarm Firewalls,trial versions of Bitdefender, Norton or Kaspersky, to malware scanners from Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware.

The choice is excellent and completed by the other tools section which lists applications such as Win Patrol, CCleaner, Autoruns, Unlocker or Process Explorer.

ssdownloader

A question mark is available next to each software entry, which provides information about the program’s license, the recommended user experience level and a detailed explanation of its functionality.

The download options offer two options which are both set to auto detection by default. The first determines if 32-bit or 64-bit editions of the program will be downloaded, the second if versions for XP or Windows 7 / Vista will be downloaded. Finally, the download directory can be changed in the options.

SSDownloader is a portable software program for Windows, that has its uses. It is on the other hand possible to download the programs separately instead, which may be preferred by some users, especially those who already know which programs they want to install and use on the computer.

The Open Source tool is available for download at the Sourceforge project website. The application itself is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the windows operating system.

Download managers have a solution for both problems. They can queue up as many files as the user wants and offer resume capabilities if the web server does the same.

Firefox users have Flashgot, a great add-on that integrates download managers into the web browser. Windows Chrome users now have a comparable solution by the name of oGet which adds support for about thirty different download managers.

Among the download managers supported are popular programs like BitComet, LeechGet, FlashGet, GetRight, Free Download Manager, Orbit Downloader or Mass Downloader. Users who do not find their download manager among the supported programs can add it as a custom downloader.

Once the extension has been installed it displays the options menu. Here it is possible to select a default download manager from the available supported download managers, or configure custom manager. The extension recognizes installed download managers immediately, all others are not available for selection.

All downloads can from that moment on be redirected to the configured download manager. This is done by either pressing Ctrl-Alt and left-clicking on a file download link, or by shift-right-clicking if the option has been enabled in the extension’s options. The Shift Right-click option offers to download only the file the mouse hovers over, or all download links on a page, which is very comfortable.

Specific file types can furthermore be redirected to the download manager directly by configuring the integration mode settings in the options. This sends the downloads of those file-types with a left-click to the download manager.

chrome download manager

The download manager integration works as expected after the initial configuration. Bad news is, that the extension is currently only supporting Microsoft Windows installations of Chrome. The download manager integrater is available for direct installation in the Chrome Extensions Gallery. (via Tech Trickz)

While most users are perfectly happy to watch the video clips online some prefer to download them to the computer. This has a few advantages like being able to watch them multiple times without using additional bandwidth or the ability to convert the videos into formats that can be burned to DVD or copied on mobile devices.

The number of video clip downloaders is nearly uncountable. There are dozens of browser plugins for various websites, the download managers and specific applications created for the purpose. They all cater to different audiences. Some users prefer to have the functionality build into their web browser, others prefer standalone applications that provide advanced features like downloading videos even if the browser is not active.

One popular application to download video clips from currently more than 70 video portals is xVideoServiceThief, a standalone application that uses a dropbox to catch the videos that it should download.

It’s easy to use the video clip downloader. The dropbox can be activated from withing the program interface and stays on top all the time. All that needs to be done is to move the video clip, either the url from the address bar or the link on the page, into the dropbox area. The download starts instantly

Video clips can also be added by pasting urls directly by clicking on the Add Video button in the program’s interface.

The downloads are automatically stored on the computer’s hard drive and by default converted into avi format. It is possible to pick another format like 3gp or mp3 instead or keep the downloaded files in their original format.

XVideoServiceThief is definitely not the only application that is providing that functionality but the program works without difficulties. It’s also worth mentioning that it is Open Source, available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh and comes as a portable version and installation in the Windows version.

There are some resources however, so I’ve put together this list of the best sites to find free (and commercial) applications and more:

Mosh

Nokia’s portal for free apps, games, audio and images. Accessible from your phone and computer. It has a pretty rubbish selection of applications, but if you’re looking for some semi-decent free games then Mosh has quite a few.

Symbian Freak

Symbian Freak provides news and downloads for Symbian phones. It actually has one of the best selections of freeware, some of the applications are even useful! If I had to recommend one resource is would be this.

Symbian Freeware

If you filter through all the crap you might find some decent downloads in here.

Nokia Beta Labs

Actually fair bit going on in here; a number of apps which are coming out of development are worth taking a look at.

Nokia Download!
Download! is another Nokia Portal for free and paid applications. There are few apps here, not a huge amount, hopefully Nokia has some plans to improve this aspect of their products.

My Symbian

Forums and download directory, fair bit here if you browse through.

Dot Sis

Hang out on these forums and you’re likely to find a whole lot of games and apps. If you can be bothered registering =P

Carbide

Carbide.ui is software to create user interfaces for your Symbian device. Easy to use, great for making custom themes.

The software programs are divided into four different categories named applications, definitions, recommended and utilities which all contain several programs and checkboxes in front of them. There is also a quick link to four software packages which activate several of the listed applications.

The good thing about this downloader is that it contains several of the most popular applications like Unlocker, Autoruns, Firefox, Comodo Firewall, JavaRa and CCleaner and that it will automatically check if those versions are compatible with the operating system.

The not so good thing is that it does not check if the application is already installed on the system in the latest version. There are also no descriptions of the applications available in the program itself. That’s pretty rough for inexperienced users.

I guess its great for a new system to download several of the recommended applications at once but nothing that could not be done with a web browser or download manager either. Good idea but needs the system scan option in my opinion.

The concept however is harder to explain to users who work with a computer but are not tech-savvy. Instead of telling them to install a Bittorrent client to load the torrent file to be able to download it it would be far easier and comfortable to present an executable file to them which would handle that on its own.

Torrent2exe (via Download Squad) is a web application that can turn any torrent file into an executable. The torrent can be selected from an url or from the computer of the user creating the executable.

The second option determines if the full client will be included in the executable or only part of it which would mean that the rest would be automatically downloaded from the web once the user starts the exe on his computer. The partial download does not make much sense in my opinion because the size of the full client is only about 500 Kilobytes. The size of the partial client was about a tenth of that figure.

After the download completes the program reminds the user to continue seeding. The default value is the size of the torrent that was downloaded but another size or time can be selected instead.

Torrent2exe is an excellent application especially for companies who would like to distribute large files without having to offer the downloads directly or having to explain and troubleshoot downloading via Bittorrent clients.

MassMirror: I was quite impressed with this service until I got to the end. Uploading a file was a nice experience. I got a progress bar which told me how much of my file was uploaded, the time left, and the upload speed I was getting. MassMirror has more file-hosting sites covered as well. A file will be hosted on Rapidshare, Picshome, 4filehosting, Megaupload, Fileinsanity, Fastuploading, and Zshare. File size limits are bigger too with the site allowing you to upload files up to 1 GB big. The bad part: When I tried to upload a file, it got stuck at the part where the file is sent to the other sites. I don’t know if the site was down or something but my file just wouldn’t get past the final stage.

Fileducky: Fileducky uploads your file to Badongo, Rapidshare, Sendspace, and Zshare as long as it is under the 100 MB size limit. The upload speed was fine and the progress bar at least had a percentage element but nothing else.

Sharebee: Like Fileducky, Sharebee supports 4 sites namely Rapidshare, Megaupload, Zshare, and Badongo. It too has a 100 MB file size limit but has a better progress bar than Fileducky. When you upload a file on Sharebee, you can see the upload speed, amount of file uploaded, and time left.

The verdict. Sharebee was the easiest to use, followed by Fileducky. If MassMirror can get their act together, they’d definitely be at the top of my list. What about you? Which service would you use and why? Or do you prefer to use just one file-hosting site? Let me know in the comments.

To counter this problem, I scour a whole host of online TV sites to catch up. My personal favorite used to be TVLinks but that site got shut down some time in October. Ever since then, I’ve turned to Alluc, which is short for ‘all you see’. This is one of the better show aggregators out there. It has extensive links to movies, TV shows, anime, music videos, documentaries, and sports videos.

Like other sites, Alluc itself does not host any of the files. They simply link to files present on video sharing sites like Youtube, Stage6, Veoh, etc. The home page has the most popular links in each category. If you are looking for something specific, simply click on the desired category and then browse through to see if it’s available. Most of the time, you will definitely find what you are looking for.

The only downside to this site is that they do not have any control over the quality of the videos, since they accept links from all over. Most of the files are in ‘flv’ format, which is not exactly DVD quality. Do not despair since new links are constantly being added. If you come back the next day, you will often find the same file in ‘divx’ format. At the same time broken links are removed so you are not likely to get dead links very often.

Alluc ranks high on my list largely because they have a lot of links. While popular shows are available easily, this site even has files pertaining to older TV shows as well as obscure ones, which got cancelled halfway.

There are lots of online TV sites out there. I’ll be checking them out in the coming weeks and will post reviews of good ones over here. Suggestions are always welcome.

The answer is the Firefox extension DownloadHelper. This was one of the first extensions I added when I installed Firefox. DownloadHelper monitors all the websites you visit and automatically detects any image, music, and video files on that page. If any of these files are there, the icon placed in your toolbar starts hovering. Clicking on the arrow next to it gives a small drop-down menu which displays the names of the files. If you click on any of them, the file automatically starts downloading to your computer.

What I like most about this extension is that it’s easy to use and extremely effective. Plus, if you hit ‘Ctrl + click’, you can add the link to your preferred download manager and download it from there. Another plus is that if you have plenty of tabs open, it will display all the links only from the current tab you are viewing. All in all, this extension is extremely handy to have around for those clips you just cannot save to your hard drive.

Afterwards you would import that new list in a download manager and download all images from there. Sounds easier ? It is, indeed. This is of course not only useful for file downloads but also for any other type of information found in files. Password lists come to my mind, proxy lists, any kind of list actually.

Win Text File Patch has a size of only 84K which is amazing if you consider what this application is doing. To work with the software you need to edit a few entries. You specify the source directory, the file types that you want scanned, a destination directory and file and of course the software should scan the files for.

The text part requires some knowledge of how the information are presented in the files. If you were looking for images for instance you would have to know that they begin with the html tag . It begins to get problematic if the website in question did use relative links and not absolute ones because of the missing url.

Win Text File Patch offers a way to replace the information that has been found which is exactly what we would need here. This can be a very useful software for several users.

Read More:

Win Text File Patch

What makes this rather unique is the approach of the band. Instead of asking for a certain price for the album they let the fans decide what they would like to pay for it. Yes, that is right, you can pay $0 or $100 or even more if you like. Everyone may download the In Rainbows album afterwards.

Even if you select to pay $0 for the album – or better a digital download of it – you have to pay a fee for the credit card transaction. This is however a very interesting experiment which will most likely be a success for Radiohead.

A discbox will also be released which is essentially a double vinyl/double CD release. Everyone purchasing the discbox may also download the music from the website. The discbox will be priced at £40 including shipping and handling.

Read More:

In Rainbows

The minimum resolution can be changed to whatever values you deem appropriate.  Whenever you visit a page with images you can use the right-click option to batch download (all) images on that website to a location on your hard drive that you can specify afterwards. The Batch Downloader offers more than that though. You can specify a base url and use wildcards to download all images that are connected to the base url.

Some websites use formats that are not immediately recognized by batch downloader. This is mostly the case when a scripting language such as php is used to display images. You need to create a gallery using the batch downloader extension first and download the pictures using the normal batch download images option from the right-click menu afterwards.