While that looks like a good security feature it also means that the feature will block other unauthorized operating systems from being started on the system.

The main problem that the Free Sofware Foundation (FSF) sees is that Microsoft is giving the manufacturers the power to decide how to implement the feature. This means in particular that hardware vendors could implement the feature in a way that the user could not install any other operating system on the PC.

Matthew Garrett points out that Windows 8 certification requires that hardware ship with UEFI boot enabled, that it does not require users to be able to disable the feature (which can be done) and that it does not require that the PCs ship with any keys other than that of Windows. According to Matthew, some hardware vendors have already confirmed their intention that they wont give the user the option to disable UEFI secure boot.

This means that the user may no longer be in control of the computer. The hardware manufacturers and Microsoft are.

What does this mean for the end user? Microsoft claim that the customer is in control of their PC. That’s true, if by “customer” they mean “hardware manufacturer”. The end user is not guaranteed the ability to install extra signing keys in order to securely boot the operating system of their choice. The end user is not guaranteed the ability to disable this functionality. The end user is not guaranteed that their system will include the signing keys that would be required for them to swap their graphics card for one from another vendor, or replace their network card and still be able to netboot, or install a newer SATA controller and have it recognise their hard drive in the firmware. The end user is no longer in control of their PC.

Even worse, it could furthermore mean that hardware that would otherwise be compatible with the PC won’t function because of missing signing keys. This could mean that users will be unable to swap graphics cards, network cards or other peripherals.

One could now say that users have to just buy from the right vendor to avoid this if they want to install other operating systems on their PC. The issue here is that this would require extensive research on part of the user. They first would need to be aware of the limitations of Secure Boot, and then need to research how particular PC vendors have implemented the feature in their PCs. This is far from practicable.

The only sure way out is to build your own PCs or convince Microsoft and hardware vendors to give users control over the feature. The FSF is asking users to sign a statement to “urge all computer makers implementing UEFI’s so-called “Secure Boot” to do it in a way that allows free software operating systems to be installed”.

Game resolutions can differ a lot. I recently recorded the first few levels of the Tower Defense game iBomber Defense which I purchased on Steam. The game has a maximum resolution of 1600×1200. The problem was that my desktop resolution is set to 1920×200. This meant ugly black bars on the left and right side of the video.

I first tried to remove the black bars using VirtualDub, the program that I normally use for video editing. This somehow did not work for me, even though I used the correct filter and selected the Cropping option there.

An alternative is Avidemux. The free open source software offers a similar functionality as VirtualDub. You can load one or multiple source videos into the program, convert them into a different format and apply filters to the resulting video. Among the available filters is the Crop tool which can be used to remove left, right, top or bottom space. This can be used to remove black borders from a video for instance.

Cropping Video

Download the free Avidemux software from the project website over at Sourceforge. The program is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

Install the software and load your video files via the file menu into the application. You load the first file via File > Open, and additional files via File > Append. You then have to replace the Copy action under Video with another codec. I have selected MPEG-4 ASP (Xvid) for instance.

Click on the Filters button afterwards and selected Transform > Crop from the selection.

Click on the Configure button afterwards. This opens a preview image of the video. Enter pixels in the left, right, top or bottom fields to crop the video. The values are immediately shown on the preview image so that it is easy to fine tune them. You can also try the auto crop button which picked up the black bars in my test video nicely.

Click on the OK button to accept the changes. You can then click on Preview in the previous configuration screen to see how the cropped video will look like. If you are satisfied close the window.

All you need to do know is to save the video via File > Save > Save Video or with the Ctrl-S shortcut. The process may take some time depending on the performance of your computer and the length of the video.

And that’s all there is to it. This is without doubt one of the easiest way to crop a video.

NetBalancer is an Internet traffic monitoring and controlling software that is available as a free and professional version. The professional version is available for free today only at the Giveaway of the Day website; Hence the review.

The NetBalancer website describes the differences between the free and professional version of the traffic shaping and monitoring software this way:

*The Free version is limited to a maximum of 5 process priorities/limits and 5 rules at a time, has no separate network adapters management and no support for Network Grouping

NetBalancer’s core features include:

• Set custom upload and download speeds for individual system processes.
• Set download and upload priorities
• Manage both limits and priorities for individual network adapters
• Group local network computers and balance their traffic
• Global traffic limits
• Display all connections and traffic for all system processes

Installation of the software should not pose a problem. Users who install the Giveaway of the Day version should however take note of the optional Software Informer installation at the end which is not needed for NetBalancer’s functionality.

When you start the program for the first time you will see a list of all processes that are currently running on the system along with their process id, incoming and outgoing traffic, cpu, path and traffic history.

Each process can be selected to see additional information about it and all of its existing connections.

A right-click on any process in the listing displays a context menu with options to modify that processes’ upload and download priority. Depending on that priority, the process gets more or less of the network capacities in high load situations.

Say you want to make sure that you can play your favorite online game just fine while at the same time downloading files via Bittorrent or ftp. You could set the priority of the game process to high to make sure that it gets enough capacities to keep the game playable even if another process is requesting most of the available bandwidth.

Rules are a powerful way of prioritizing traffic further. They can be used to change priorities or download and upload limits for a process permanently or for specific days or times.

You could use rules to reduce the priority of P2P traffic during Workdays and hours for instance.

The program options can be used to customize the program further, for instance by configuring at which percentage the network balancing kicks in, by giving automatic high priority to focused applications or by editing the level severity which sets the speed differences between applications with different network priorities.

The free version of the traffic shaping software NetBalancer is available from the developer website as well.

Balabolka is a free text-to-speed software for the Windows operating system. The program makes use of all computer voices that are installed on the PC which means that it is possible to install additional free or commercial speech packages to improve performance or add support for different languages.

The interface looks very much like a standard notepad interface with the exception of a “speech” pane near the top. Users can select A Microsoft Speech API (the choice was SAPI 4 or 5 on Windows 7 Pro) and a voice package from a pulldown menu. It is furthermore possible to change various settings that affect the voice and speech, for instance the reading speed, pitch or volume.

Balabolka supports many different file formats from plain txt to HTML, pdf, docx, epub and fb2 to archive formats such as zip and rar.

Options to read aloud, stop and pause are available in the interface and also via keyboard shortcuts. One interesting option is the ability to save audio files which basically means that users can turn supported text documents into audio files such as mp3 or wav. That’s interesting for users who need to read / listen to something but prefer to do so while on the move.

Outputs can get rather big depending on the size of the text file. Balabolka can split audio files into multiple parts.

The developer links to several free and commercial voice files that can be downloaded to add various languages the application. It is recommended to download at least one or two as they tend to make a huge difference to the standard voice included in the operating system.

Balabolka without doubt is one of the top free text to speech programs for the Windows operating system. The application is compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system from Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

It’s mouser from DonationCoder.com speaking to you here. Martin has graciously invited me to make a guest post on ghacks about the latest event on the DonationCoder site, and I’m thrilled to be able to speak directly to the vast ghacks empire :)

Today we posted the results of our annual freeware celebration called NANY 2011 (that stands for “New Apps for the New Year”).

It’s an event where we invite all the coders who hang out on the DonationCoder.com forum and website to try to release a new freeware application at the beginning of the new year. Some of the coders even discovered us from ghacks(!). Over 34 new applications and web services have now been released, and we’ve posted a video screencast of each one.

Some of the entries include:

• JottiQ – Batch queuing utility for Jotti.org’s multi-engine malware scan website.
• AskApic – Web community service for posting images and asking questions about them.
• Webcam Video Diary – For recording and annotating videos/snapshots throughout the day.
• Quick Cliq – Windows productivity tool with multiple clipboards, hotkeys and gestures.
• Cautomaton – Commandline invocation of Windows right-click shell context menus items on files.
• UserQuotes – Web service for collaborative management of quotes/reviews about your products.
• SnapDb – Portable minimalist flat-file database application that can be distributed with data.

But there are many more. The page for all the even is here:

I hope you will stop by and check out the videos and new applications — and maybe see if one of them is useful to you. If you have a feature request, post it on our forum. And if you are a coder, think about joining us in next year’s NANY event!

Thank you!
-jesse (mouser from donationcoder.com)

Some coders have already released teasers of their applications for Donationcoder users to test. Among them several interesting applications that we will surely cover here at Ghacks.

Want some examples? How about the Backup Verification Tool by Wraith808 which performs various checks on data backups. It is for instance possible to verify for file existence, checksums or if a file has been modified in the last time.

Another application to watch is Bard by Donationcoder member Justice. Bard, or Best Audio Resource Discriminater (what’s with the passion for acronyms over there?). The program can be used to organize audio files into folders.

Interested users can take a closer look at the official announcement of NANY 2011 at the Donationcoder forum or check out the newsletter for a list of apps that are currently in development.

Free Home Inventory Software is a freeware that has been designed for that purpose. It allows the user to track, organize and catalogue items. While it has been primarily been designed for home usage, it can as easily be used as a inventory management software for small businesses and organizations.

Keeping track of your home inventory can be an important step in organizing and protecting yourself. Knowing what your assets are, having record of them, and some detailed descriptions can help you in recovering them as well as getting compensated for them by your insurance in certain cases.

Home Inventory Software

The inventory software uses manager files that store the inventory lists. It is possible to create and maintain multiple manager files. Each manager file consists of one or multiple inventory lists. The example manager file that ships with the application contains inventory lists for Electronics, Furniture, Jewelry and a test category. These are just examples and it is up to the user to create those inventory groups.

Groups are automatically created when items are added. The program compares the selected category with the existing groups and will add the category to the inventory listing if it does not exist.

Custom fields are used to add item information to the inventory. The program is quite flexible in this regard, offering the user options to customize all fields. Among the default fields are the category, room, model and serial number, value and store, if it is insured, the quantity, heir, warranty and buy date. Custom fields and naming changes become available immediately in the application.

New items are added via the right sidebar. All descriptive fields are displayed in the sidebar and it is up to the user to fill them out accordingly. Most fields are optional, it is for instance enough to enter a name and category for the item to add it to the inventory list. A photo can be added for each item which may be helpful to identify items and for insurance claims. Data of a selected inventory item can be changed on the fly by editing the sidebar items. There is also an option to open a details form, which acts independently from the other form fields. This acts more or less like a personal description for that specific item.

The inventory listing itself can be sorted by category (e.g. DVDs, electronics, valuables) or room. Reports can be generated sorted by a one of the available fields.

Home Inventory Software supports printing of reports and labels (ranging from address labels to file folder labels and note cards), and the exporting of information to csv files

The inventory software has a few quirks that need to be mentioned. Probably the biggest one is the interface and program window. The program window has a fixed minimum size with no option to reduce the size beyond that limit (it seems to have taken roughly two thirds of the 1920×1280 display on the test system). The interface elements do not change their size when the window gets resized. Even worse is the fact that there is no scroll bar available to access items that are not displayed when the program window size is reduced.

The program could use an interface update to remove those restrictions. It would also be nice if the developer would add an option to load multiple photos of an item in the software, and integrate bar code / online shops to make the importing of items in the inventory software easier.

Home Inventory Software is nevertheless a sophisticated inventory software for the Windows operating system. The program worked fine on our Windows 7 64-bit operating system, and should be compatible with other Microsoft OS’ as well. A download is available at the developer website.

The developers have contacted me again today, letting me know that they rebuild the software from scratch, resolved two of the three issues found in the January version and are running a giveaway until October 28.

That’s reason enough to take a new look at the DVD ripping application. Not a lot has changed if you compare the new application interface with the old one. The new interface looks modern and more professional than the old one.

Ripping DVDs is still a three stepped process. It begins by loading a DVD from disc or folder (discs inserted into a drive will be recognized automatically), selecting an output format and clicking the start button to start the ripping.

Among the available output formats are DVD to DVD copy for 1:1 copies of the DVD, to formats like avi, mp4 or mov, and to devices such as the iPad, iPhone or Zune. DVD copy and conversion into an iPad compatible format are two of the new options in this version of the software.

Selecting one of the available options lists various quality and ripping settings. If avi is selected, it is for instance possible to change the audio and video quality settings, and select the number of cpu cores for the conversion.

Profiles are available if a device is selected. Profiles can be used to pick a quality setting with two clicks. That’s very comfortable. Profiles are unfortunately still not available for formats.

Processed videos are now named based on patterns defined in the program’s options. This is great as it makes the identification easier, especially if multiple videos are processed in short succession.

What else is new?

• Rebuilt WinX DVD Ripper Platinum with brand-new frame work based on user feedback to maximally conform to common usage.
• Output MP4 video with AAC 2 Channels, AAC 4 Channels and AAC 6 Channels supported.
• Support AVI container, keeping original DVD AC3/DTS 6 Channels audio track.
• Output WMV and MPEG video with original DVD AC3/DTS 6 Channels audio track.
• Improved WMV encoder to fit the requirement of Windows Media Center. Backup DVD to WMV with AC3/DTS audio and stream to PS3 & Xbox 360.
• Significantly increase H.264 encoder speed. Better support for Multi-core CPU.
• Optimized the support for iPhone 4, iPad, iPod 4 and other iOS 4 video players.
• New software UI.

WinX DVD Ripper Platinum is an excellent DVD ripping software for the Windows operating system. To grab a free license code users need to visit the giveaway page on the developer homepage to download the application and grab the license code. License codes are offered for the Windows and Mac version of the software, but only the Windows version is linked from the giveaway page. WinX DVD Ripper for Mac can be downloaded here instead. Please note that I have not tried this version and license code.

Windows Mail Saver has been designed as a backup and restoration utility for Windows Mail. The free software program can backup and restore various components and information including email messages with attachments, the Windows address book, mail and news accounts that are configured in the mail client, custom signatures, settings, favorites and RSS feeds.

Windows Mail Saver refuses to install on operating systems newer than Windows Vista. This can be circumvented by running it in Vista compatibility mode.

The backup and restore options are displayed in the left sidebar of the program after installation. It is possible to add or remove components that should be included in the backup. Additional options include the selection of the compression level and password protection to protect the backup from unauthorized access.

The restore option requires a previously backed up file and offers the option to select or deselect the data that should be restored.

Windows Mail Saver has a rather annoying animated header banner that is displayed all the time during program usage. It should not be that much of a problem as it does not take longer than a few minutes to initiate the backup process but it is annoying nevertheless.

The Windows Mail backup software can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Users can either create their own stick by storing portable applications on it or use one of the available packages or suites that contain many of the most popular applications. These suites often come with their own program launcher to make that process more comfortable as well.

WinPenPack are collections of free software packages that can be stored on removable devices. The compilations cater to different needs from school or web related collections to games and a complete collection that fits on a 2 Gigabyte stick.

The programs included in each package vary but usually include some of the most popular portable programs like Open Office, Sumatra PDF reader, the RSS reader RSSOwl, Firefox and Thunderbird, winSCP or Eraser.

Each software pack is provided as a zip file and executable. A listing of all available programs is also linked from each page to provide users with essential information before they start downloading a package.

The program launcher displays all available programs in a category listing by default. Programs can be directly launched from there. The launcher offers a search as well in case a program cannot be located this way (which is unlikely).

The files can simply be moved to the USB stick and the launcher started from the root directory whenever it is needed. The programs can also be launched directly from their directories whenever needed. All different editions of WinPenPack can be downloaded from the project website.

There are whole communities for open source software. These are legally created programs that have been designed by programmers who are tired of the strangle hold certain industry giants have on the market. They are called “open source” because the source code is transparent and can be redesigned by anyone who wants to improve or alter the program. However, if you aren’t a programmer, this isn’t necessary. The programs are constantly being improved. Linux is one such site and program. Linux is a computing platform that replaces Windows. Many consider it to be easier to use than Windows, less cumbersome and of course, it is free.

There are also websites that provide feedback and links to various types of free software. One such site is PC-WORLD. If you navigate to their site and click on “downloads” they have categories like; utilities, anti-virus and security, office, etc. If you click on one of these links you will get a whole list of screened software. Some of the software is for sale, some is “shareware” and some is free. Most of the free programs are just as good as the programs for sale. You should stay away from “shareware” as most of it requires you to sign up for a website or allow tracking cookies to be placed on your computer. Compromising your security isn’t necessary. The free software is usually well written, user friendly and often takes far less of your computers thinking power to operate. For example, there is a search utility called “Agent Ransack”. It is completely free, is tiny compared to Microsoft’s search feature yet does a MUCH better job at quickly searching your computer.

Of course there are the free software programs that are becoming quite famous and are readily available. Internet browsers are the most common because they can easily pay for their development by selling advertising. Mozilla’s Firefox is a very popular free browser. Google Chrome is another. There is a full office suite called Open Office that is becoming more common that replaces Microsoft Office while still being compatible. Open Office provides word processing, a spreadsheet program compatible with Excel, basically everything offered by Microsoft office but it is completely free.

What you get from commercial software is a look. Commercially sold software is almost always bloated and saps computing power because it has a very sharp color scheme and looks really slick. If you aren’t hung up on looks, free software performs as well or often better. And with the more popular free software like Firefox, their graphics are becoming higher and higher quality. One word of caution: When searching for free software, go directly to the download site. Don’t download from the many “free software” sites that offer pages of links. You often have to compromise your privacy or security to use these sites. Find the name of the software then go directly to their site to download directly from the developers. And no matter what, always scan you new software with an anti-virus program before opening and installing it.

When you subscribe to a mailing list, you generally have the option of receiving every individual message or receiving a daily digest. However, if you need to read a few, this can still clog up your inbox.

Whilst you could read web-based archives, my favourite option is reading them though Gmane – an NNTP/mailing list gateway.

Gmane allows you to read newsgroups through a USENET newsreader (basic newsgroup facility is built into software like Thunderbird . I find this a more manageable way to read mailing lists, because the client threads them for me.

Gmane works both ways: it allows you to post to newsgroups through USENET too. All it does is the first time you try to post to a mailing list, it sends you a verification email to confirm it is indeed you.

Gmane also allows you to read newsgroups through RSS, so you could use a feed reader (online or desktop)!

There are currently over 10,000 mailing lists accessible through Gmane, ranging from the Wikipedia mailing lists to a blackjack group! To find groups, browse their website or browse their newsserver.

The following software programs are available as special editions:

• Paragon Total Defrag 2009 Special Edition
• Paragon Rescue Kit 9.0 Express
• Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 Special Edition
• Paragon Drive Copy 9 Special Edition
• Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Personal
• Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.5 Special Edition

Just follow the links. They lead to registration websites that ask the visitor to enter a few basic information including the name, email and country. Paragon will send an email to the email account containing the product key and serial number needed to activate the software program on a local computer system. The very same email contains a link to the user profile page at the Paragon website from where the software program can be downloaded.

Update:

Download links for programs that are not listed under My Downloads in the Paragon profile.

Drive Backup 9.0
Partition Manager 9.0
Drive Copy 9
Hard Disk Manager 8.5

BTF Sniffer is at its core a software to display usage traces left by a user on a computer system. Unlike other tools of its kind it displays the traces that it found in its interface. The interface itself is divided into two panes: The left pane displays various types of traces, for instance Microsoft Windows, Internet and Communication or Security and Control. The right pane will display all traces of the specified category. It is important to note that traces will only be displayed for subcategories (that is always the last entry in the tree structure).

What makes BTF Sniffer special are the manipulation options. Single entries can be executed, copied, sorted, exported or deleted by right-clicking an entry. It can currently discover more than 1270 traces left by 370 software programs. Besides the obvious Microsoft Windows traces it can for example detect traces from Sysinternal software, ftp applications, web browsers and document viewers.

The software is portable which means it can be downloaded and run after unpacking it to the computer system. The major problem that English users could run into are the category descriptions but it is usually possible to identify what a category does by looking at the traces in the right pane.

Two functions need explaining. A click on Bearbeiten (Edit) in the top menu will reveal options to clear all categories (Alle Listen löschen) or only selected categories (Ausgewählte Listen Löschen). Reports can be created by clicking on Datei (File) in the top menu and selecting Vollständigen Report erstellen (Export all items in a text document) or Report erstellen (Auswahl) which means to export only the selected items.

Single traces can be manipulated and exported with a right-click. There are additional features but they are not necessary to run the program. If you have any questions about usage let us know and we provide the answers.

We have already covered two of the applications and would like to recommend a few more that might be interesting to try out. Comparer is a file comparison tool that can compare (among other things) all file properties. File Replicator is another interesting program. It can search for a certain file in a selected folder and replace that file with another one. Think of updating files that reside in multiple locations on the computer’s hard drive.

I do not want to spoil the fun of exploring all those new programs. What you find there is a wide variety of software programs from Notepad++ plugins to cryptographic applications and a dog breeding records keeper. It is definitely worth a visit; And who knows, maybe you find the program there that you have been searching for all of your life.

Many well known and respected companies have already agreed to provide us with free software products that we could hand out to lucky readers. I do not want to spoil the fun just yet and announce which products we are going to offer but you can be sure that they have been selected because they are excellent.

A new post with additional details will be posted on December 1 when the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway officially starts. It will include all rules and information needed to grab a few nice software packages. Stay tuned. We are counting on you to spread the word of the giveaway.

We are still in the talks with several software developers and would like to use this article to listen to you. Do you have a software company in mind that would make a good fit for the Ghacks Christmas Giveway? We cannot guarantee anything but we might contact the company to see if they would donate a few software packages. Let us know in the comments.

All posts related to the Giveaway will be tagged as “ghacks christmas giveaway” which should make it easy for anyone to stay up to date with the latest posts.