Frostwire takes that concept and makes it available as a Bittorrent client. While you can use the p2p software like any other Bittorrent client, it is the built-in search that many users will find most useful. The program supports eight different torrent indexers, including The Pirate Bay, Mininova, Isohunt or BTJunkie.

All you need to do is to enter a search term and hit the enter key to search all or only selected torrent indexing sites. Filters allow you to limit the search results, for instance to only display audio or document results, or files with a specific minimum file size.

Results are displayed with their name, number of seeders, total file size, source, creation date and file extension with options to sort by all values. This can be helpful to sort from largest to lowest file size or seeder count for instance.

Once you have selected files you have options to download them all at once to your computer with a click on the download button or by double-clicking individual files. All downloads are added to the transfer display that is displayed beneath the search results. Controls at the bottom of the page are available to pause, resume or cancel file downloads, or to play media type directly in the interface.

All downloads are automatically available in the Library tab. Files are sorted into categories such as programs, images or audio with options to create audio playlists right in the program. A search is also provided to find files faster, which appears to be necessary as it is not possible to display files by download. The explore option, available in the bottom bar and on right-click, lets you open the folder containing the selected file in Windows Explorer.

Frostwire can transfer files to connected phones or tablets, the interface does not seem overly intuitive though. There is also a chat available for users who’d like to chat with the FrostWire community.

The options hold several interesting preferences. Users of Apple’s iTunes software can configure Frostwire to automatically import downloaded songs into iTunes. It is furthermore possible to add or remove folders that are included in the library, to configure keywords that should not be displayed in the search results (with an extra option to ignore adult contents), and to change Bittorrent related preferences like the port that is used for all connections.

Users who would like an all-in-one program should take a closer look at Frostwire. Combination of search and downloading makes it much more usable than comparable clients. Features offered by other Bittorrent clients like uTorrent are on the other hand not available. This includes the ability to play media while it is still downloading or a web client to manage downloads remotely.

The program will install the Ask Toolbar and another program during installation if you do not pay attention to the process.

Frostwire is available for Windows, Macintosh, Linux and Android 2.1+ operating systems.

System Stability Tester is a free open source software for Windows, Linux and Mac systems that can stress test and benchmark a computer system. It does so by calculating up to 128 million digits of Pi which is extremely taxing for the processor.

When you first start the program you have the choice to run a benchmark or system stress test. A benchmark can be used to compare the results of a system to another system, the stress test to verify that there are no calculation errors.

You can also select the amount of Pi digits you want to compute, the turns, and the number of threads the computer should use for that task.

The stress testing application supports two pi computation algorithms: The Quadratic Convergence of Borwein and Gauss-Legendre with Borwein being selected by default.

Please note that you can only run a stress test if at least two threads are selected. The program then starts the calculation which can slow down the PC considerable during operation. Statistics are updated regularly that display the amount of calculated Pi digits, the state, and time it took to calculate them.

An overview at the top highlights the total amount of errors of the calculation as well as the processing time until the first error was detected.

You can optionally save a log file or a Pi file. The first saves basic information about the run, the second all Pi digits.

One of the core advantages of System Stability Tester is that it is available for Mac, Linux and Windows systems, which means that it can be used to compare the performance of computers running different operating systems.

Interested users can download System Stability Tester from the developer website over at Sourcerforge.

Celtx is available as a free version for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. There is also Celtx Plus, a commercial desktop version and an online studio version to manage team projects. Most users should start with the free version though to see if they can work with Celtx to create their novels, comic books, films, audio plays, storyboards or other types of media. The software is very versatile in this regard.

I’d suggest to load one of the demo projects on first start to get a feel for the program. A demonstration is available for each type of media supported by Celtx. The program layout adapts to the selected production type. If you have selected Novel for instance, you are presented with an interface divided into the project library, the novel’s chapters and the core text editor part. Other modules can be displayed, like index cards, the title page or the master catalog offering information about characters, items of importance or scene details.

One of the program’s strengths is the ability to add detailed information to the catalog. Character information for instance include a name and description, media, physical description, character traits, functions, motivation and backgrounds.

Even better, information added to the catalog are automatically linked in the play, novel or script. Additional options include adding notes to any part of the media, external links to websites that offer information or are important for research, options to add a synopsis or history to the project library and a lot more.

The text editor is decent enough. While it does not offer the full functionality of an Office suite like Microsoft Word or Open Office, it offers enough text editing and formatting options to the aspiring content creator.

It feels a bit strange that all guides posted on the site are for purchase only. A good starting point for new users are the Celtx Wiki and user forum.

Some buttons in the program interface, like Toolbox or My Studio, lead to the add-ons page on the website. Add-ons need to be purchased before the functionality becomes available.

Celtx is a sophisticated pre-production system. More than 1.5 million users use it worldwide to create media according to the project’s homepage. The program can be downloaded for all supported operating systems from the developer website.

DeVeDe displays a disc type selection wizard on start up. Most users will use the program to transfer video to DVD, but it can also be used to create Video CDs, Super Video CDS, China Video Discs and Divx and MPEG-4 media files compliant with players that support the DivX format.

Once you have made your initial selection you are taken to the disc structure menu. You add video files to the disc here. The add video window offers many configuration options, from selecting audio tracks to adding subtitles and previewing the selection.

The program displays the total disc space requirement which can be used as an indicator of how much free disc space is left on the selected output disc format. It can happen that the file size of all videos that you want to burn on the disc is larger than the available disc space. You can either click on the adjust disc usage button to adjust disc usage automatically or switch to another disc type to increase the available space. The program will convert the video files automatically if the first option is selected.

The program displays information about the selected video source and output. This includes the original and final size, the play time, video rate, audio rate and frames per second.

It is furthermore possible to edit and preview the menu here. Editing options include changing fonts, selecting menu background images and menu music, changing a title’s position and if the disc should display the menu on startup or play the first title right away.

A click on Forward in the main configuration window runs the conversion. Devede creates an ISO image by default, the output format can be switched to a Video_TS structure or a conversion of the films to compliant MPEG files.

The DVD authoring tool is a suitable program both for inexperienced and tech savvy users. Inexperienced users can create video DVDs with just a few clicks. Experienced users will like all the advanced options that the program offers.

Windows users can download DeVeDe from the Windows project site. the program is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. The program manual, support forum and source code can also be accessed there. Linux users find the latest version of DeVeDe for their operating system here.

TeamViewer 7 is now available for Windows, Mac and mobile operating systems such as Android or Apple’s iOS. The Linux download page lists version 6 as the latest.

The developers have added a lot of new features to the remote access software. It is a long list divided into the two core areas Remote Control and Meeting.

Remote Control

All users benefit from performance optimizations. Especially direct connections, file transfers and working with TeamViewer Manager have seen performance improvements. The new media features, e.g. screenshot creation during remote control sessions or the AVI converter make life easier in specific situations. The option to display multi-remote screens on a 1:1 scale may be interesting as well to some TeamViewer users.

• Drag & Drop Even Faster – Simply drag each desired file from and into the remote control window and drop it exactly where you want it.
• Enhanced Multi-Monitor Support – Do you and your clients both work with two or more screens? Then simply display multiple remote screens on a 1:1 scale on your own monitors – simultaneously and without toggling.
• Save Connection Settings per Computer – You can now store individual connection settings for each computer in your computers & contacts list. Thereby, saving you valuable time for all further connections to the same computers.
• Integrated Screenshot Feature – Create a screenshot at any moment during a remote control session. Thus, snapshots of the remote screen are acquired at lightning speed.
• AVI Converter – Convert your recorded sessions into AVI format and then edit your videos at will.
• Movable TeamViewer Panel – Position your TeamViewer Panel wherever you like on your local monitors so that you can see every important screen area at any time.
• Performance Improvement – Especially direct connections and file transfer are now even faster due to optimization of data packets and display settings.
• Optimized performance with TeamViewer Manager – Huge speed increases, especially for large databases. Through optimized database requests, TeamViewer Manager is now up to 4x faster.

Meetings and Presentations

Please note that TeamViewer 7′s meeting feature is only compatible with other TeamViewer clients, it is not backwards compatible.

Several useful new features have been integrated, from recording presentations and converting them directly to avi video files over participants who join the meeting on mobile devices to options to start meetings before participants are added which is ideal for testing and preparing.

• Instant Meeting – With just one click, you can start your meeting even before adding any participants – ideal for preparation and testing. Invite your colleagues, business partners or clients on the fly.
• Schedule Meetings – Schedule your meetings and send invitations directly from your email client. Use the new “My Meetings” functionality in your TeamViewer account to maintain the perfect overview of all your planned meetings. Transfer your appointments automatically to your Outlook calendar.
• Up To 25 Participants – Invite up to 25 participants to your meeting. From marketing presentations with potential new clients in a personal 1:1 scale, to large international meetings, anything is possible.
• Mobile Participation On The Road – With the new TeamViewer Apps for iPhone, iPad (coming soon) and Android, participation in meetings is possible at any time from the road. That way, you and your colleagues will never again miss important discussions.
• Presenter – Organizer – Participant – Assign different rights to your participants during a meeting. Name one participant the organizer. This person will have expanded rights in order to support you during the meeting. Alternatively you can give another participant the presenter role so that this person can share their screen.
• Communication Tools – Now all participants can see and hear each other. During a meeting, they are connected via Voice over IP and Webcam. Additional tools, such as chat, whiteboard or telephone conferences, support the acoustic and visual exchange of ideas. Choose from a variety of communication tools for lively meetings and presentations.
• File Box – Would you like to make files available for download during a meeting? Simply copy the desired documents into the shared file box via Drag & Drop and easily and quickly exchange them at will.
• Record Presentations – Record your screen presentations and convert your video into the AVI format. This way, you can edit your videos at will.
• Movable TeamViewer Panel – When presenting your entire screen, just drag your TeamViewer Panel to each desired position – even, for example, to a second monitor, to have a complete view of all the important screen areas.

Are you using TeamViewer? If so, which new feature do you like the most? (via)

DragonDisk is a free Amazon S3 file management client for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The program can be used to backup, share and organize files in an interface that looks similar to that of many ftp clients.

The first thing that you need to do after installing the software is to add at least one S3 account to the account list. Click on File > Accounts to open the account management window. A click on New opens another window where you need to enter account related information. This includes the account name, access key, secret key, if SSL is enabled and several other options under the advanced tab.

Once you have configured the account you can log in using the Root pulldown menu on the left or right side of the software. The account name should be listed there along with all local storage devices.

You can load a second Amazon S3 account or display the contents of a local hard drive in the second part of the interface.

All files and folders are displayed by default. You can use filters to limit names or extensions in the file listing.

Once connected, you can copy files to or from the Amazon S3 storage, edit files, change permissions or metadata.

Another interesting option is the ability to create sync jobs that can be run regularly. You could use it to make a local backup copy of your Amazon storage or specific files stored there.

DragonDisk supports versioning, external buckets, reduced redundancy storage as well as various compression and encryption algorithms.

Interested users can download the free application from the official program website.

SuprSetr basically improves the photo set capabilities of Flickr, and here in particular the organizational process of Flickr set management. When you run the program for the first time after installation (under Windows) you are asked to authorize the application on Flickr to enable access to a user’s photos on the photo hosting site.

The program opens an authorization url in the default browser. This is a specific Flickr page where the user can accept or deny the authorization. Once authorized a list of all existing photosets are retrieved from Flickr. All sets are set to unmanaged at the beginning, which means that SuprSetr has no additional information about the sets that have been retrieved from Flickr.

The main window of the program displays a list of the photo sets. All managed sets are listed first, followed by unmanaged sets in alphabetic order. It is optionally possible to hide all unmanaged sets from the View menu.

The toolbar at the top offers buttons to add, edit, delete and refresh the sets, and to use the filter text box at the top which filters sets by their title. Sets can be viewed on Flickr with a right-click and the selection of Open Set in Browser from the context menu.

To manage sets, double-click one. This takes you to the Set Editor window. The first step is to check the Manage this set with SuprSetr box, the second to define the parameters that become available afterwards. Parameters include tags, date taken and uploaded and sorting.

Once you define the parameters of the set, SuprSetr will know how to search your Flickr stream for photos that match the parameters, and can then update the content of the photoset based on the search results. SuprSetr will add and remove photos from the set to make it match the results of the search. However, SuprSetr will NEVER delete photos from your photostream.

SuprSetr comes with additional tools and options. This includes Twitter integration to tweet whenever new photos are added to specific sets or all sets. Messages can be customized with placeholders:

• %t – This will be replaced with the photoset title
• %u – This will be replaced with the photoset URL. The URL will be shortened with bit.ly
• %c – This will be replaced with the number of photos that were added to the photoset
• %C – This will be replaced with the total number of photos in the photoset

The Tools menu leads to some nice to have tools like FavrTagr which analyzes all photos on Flickr based on the number of favs that they have received. For every ten favorites a new tag will be added in the form fav10, fav20, fav30 and so on. It is possible to create a new set based on these tags.

A second tool that is available is the Set Ordering Tool which can be used to reorder the list of photosets on Flickr.

Flickr users who work with photo sets and need better manageability of their sets can download SuprSetr from the project website.

The file manager offers a top down look on all the files on the computer system with options to zoom in and out to view the files directly the file manager.

A basic example. Say you have a few text documents or images sitting in a folder. If you zoom in closely enough, you can read the texts or view the images without opening the files at all.

This viewing mode does not work for all file types on the system, but the most basic file types are all supported. This includes the majority of media files, plain text documents and even some games or applications.

The program interface needs some getting used to time, as it looks quite messy on first glance. It basically consists of a header with direct links to folders, the configuration and file management tools, and the main area that can be used to zoom in and out of folders and drives.

It is a good idea to run the application full screen as it might otherwise be difficulty to read the button texts in the program header.

The mouse wheel is used to zoom in and out of the file and folder structure. It feels a bit strange in the beginning that it is not possible to use the mouse to move the selection around, as it happens quite often that a file is not displayed centered on screen. The user guide has an answer for that. The developers have mapped the scrolling to the middle mouse button. Hold down the middle mouse button to move around.

A double-click on a file opens it in the default viewer on the system, which is handy for all unsupported files or if you need to edit the selected file.

New users should consider reading the install and start guide as well as the general user guide on the developer website at Sourceforge to get a deeper understanding of the program. Especially the core keyboard and mouse functions are explained in the guides.

The file manager can be downloaded from the project website over at Sourceforge. The program is compatible with all recent versions of Windows and various Linux distributions.

While leveling the audio of podcasts, interviews and panel discussions is the core purpose of the free application, it can be used to level and normalize any kind of supported audio format. The supported audio formats are without doubt the greatest restriction or usability issue. Only wav audio and aiff audio formats are supported by the program.

Usage on the other hand could not be simpler. The Levelator comes without options or settings. All you need to do to level an audio file is to drag and drop it into the program interface.

The program displays a progress bar while doing its magic. The modified audio file is then in the end saved in the same directory as the original file.

The developers reveal a bit about the background process on the program website:

here are some hardware devices such as various AGC (automatic-gain control) components that can do moderate leveling, but since they have to operate in real time (i.e., without look-ahead), they can’t do much. And they aren’t cheap, let alone free. Even a skilled human can only react to changes unless s/he is lucky enough to be present during a recording session and can use visual cues to anticipate coming variations. Software can do better by performing multiple passes over the audio, generating a loudness map of where the volume changes. (It’s not actually that simple, but the metaphor is helpful.)

Bruce, with help from his son, Malcolm, had proven that he knew how to tackle these problems in ways that no one else anywhere in the audio/software industry has done to date. So we asked him, “Bruce, do you you think you can write a leveler that corrects for medium-term variations in loudness instead of the short-term and long-term variatons processed by compressor/limiters and normalizers, respectively?” Bruce and Malcolm took on the challenge, and eight months later we began testing The Levelator.

The big limitation of the program is the short list of supported audio formats. Many podcasts are not offered as wav files but mp3, which means that you will have to convert the mp3 files first to wav before you can use the program to level the audio. That may be fine if it is one or two audio files that you need to correct, but not so much if we are talking about dozens or even hundreds of files.

The Levelator is offered for Windows, OS X and Linux based operating systems. Interested users can download the free program from the project website.

The feed reader has just been updated to RSSOwl 2.1 which adds several very interesting features to the program. Probably the biggest feature in the new release is google reader synchronization which means news states, labels and stars are now shared between Google Reader and RSSOwl.

The synchronization can be activated via File > Import > Synchronize with Google Reader. One of the things that users need to know is that there is no automatic synchronization of feeds between Google Reader and RSSOwl, for that you need to use the Import feature. Whenever you add a new feed to one of the readers, you need to use it again to synchronize the feeds. The news items on the other hand are automatically synced after the initial setup.

The developers have improved stability, scalability and performance of the RSS reader significantly. Among the improvements are crash fixes, support for large profile databases beyond 2 Gigabyte, a new wizard to automatically repair broken search indexes and a reduced memory footprint.

Layouts have been improved. The developers have redesigned the newspaper layout, headlines layout and list layout. Layouts can be changed via the View > Layouts menu.

There have also been other user interface changes, for instance integration of the archiving feature in all layouts to quickly move news items to the archive bin for safe keeping, support for instapaper and readability or a per feed configuration of the layout.

Existing RSSOwl users will receive update notifications when they start the feed reader. New users can download the latest version from the official program homepage. There they can also read up on all the changes of the new release in the changelog.

You can then load photos either by dragging and dropping them into the program interface, or by using the photo loader menu to do so. Photos are scanned and displayed in a strip in the lower half of the screen. The active photo is shown in the upper half. Here it is possible to select the visible space if the photo is larger than the maximum video resolution.

Additional tools are displayed between the two interface sections. Users can change a photo’s rotation here for instance, add Sepia or black and white effects, change the duration and transition period or add subtitles to the photo. It is furthermore possible to change the order of photos via drag and drop. Everything can be configured in short time.

Motion is configured in the upper half, between the two thumbnail photos. It basically moves the visible part of the photo for the selected duration. This effect can be disabled if it is not needed.

The number of images and the video duration are displayed in the footer of the program window. That’s handy to sync the video duration to the selected audio file.

A click on the Render Filmstrip button opens the rendering options. Users can select a quality profile, for instance medium, full HD or VCD, Pal or NTSC, and an output format. Available are MPEG4, Flash Video or MPEG1/2 among others.

The rendering process can take a while, depending on the selected number of photos, the output format and the processing power of the computer system the software is running on. The video will be saved to the project folder automatically.

The program lacks a preview feature, which is probably the biggest issue that I had with it. If you want to test how the selected photos and music look like on video, you have to render it to do that. That’s especially problematic if you have selected to process many photos, as the processing can take quite some time then.

PhotoFilmStrip is nevertheless an easy to use program for Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. Interested users find additional information and download links at the developer website.

The HTML format offers an alternative. While it is often not that pretty to look at it provides better controls to read and work with the text of a document. Tools like Calibre can convert pdf documents into various formats. Their disadvantage is that they often do not get it completely right, so that header, footer and other textual information are added that are not really needed to read the text.

Enter PDF Masher. The Open Source software turns pdf documents into HTML pages. Instead of relying on guesswork or an algorithm to extract text from the pdf document, it asks the user to identify and select the text that should be available in the next document.

You can load a pdf document via the Open File button at the top of the interface. PDF Masher scans the document and displays all the text that it found in a table like structure.

Displayed in the sortable table are the font size, x and y position, text length and the text itself among other data. This makes identification of text that you want included in the resulting document relatively easy. A click on a row display that row’s text in the lower half of the screen. Here it is possible to add, edit or delete text directly. That’s helpful if the automatic text detection created some mistakes that need to be corrected.

It is furthermore possible to ignore single or multiple text ids automatically so that they do not turn up in the new document.

Lines can also be set as footnotes and titles. Footnotes are for instance automatically added to the last page of the document, so that they do not appear in the document.

The developer has created a small video that demonstrates the programs functionality.

PDF Masher is a handy program for users who want better control and readability on their mobile devices. The manual conversion options may take longer than automatic conversions, but they ensure that the accessibility of the document is improved.

Users who want to convert multiple documents at once need to look at other programs for the job. If it is just one document, then PDF Masher is one the best options, provided that you are fine with the resulting HTML format.

PDF Masher is available for Mac OXS, Linux and windows operating systems. It can be downloaded from the developer website.

Since then, Workrave has issued a series of updates that make the program even more useful at combating RSI. Anyone who spends more than an hour or two on their computer each day should take a careful look at what the program now has to offer to prevent headaches and hand injury further down the line.

To get started, follow this link to the program’s download page and start the 11 MB transfer. The installation is simple and fast, and you should be able to have the program on your computer in no time at all. Once installed the program puts an icon of a jumping sheep on your taskbar which you can right click to make changes. To get everything fine-tuned just the way you would like, begin by right clicking on the icon and selecting Preferences.

The default screen provides an interface through which you can program what kinds of breaks you would like and how often you wish for them to appear. For example, by clicking on the micro-break tab you can choose an amount of time between breaks, how long those breaks should be, and how long the default postpone time, or “snooze,” should be. You can do the same for different longer rest breaks that are just long enough to encourage you to get up and get a new mug of coffee or walk around the room. Finally, you can set a daily limit for computer usage, although you will likely find this setting to be more harm than help.

Next, fine tune your settings through the User interface button on the left of the preferences tab. Here you can change things like the volume of break notices, whether the program starts automatically with Windows or even whether or not you want to be able to see the remaining duration of the break once it has begun.

Best of all, if you have to transfer into crisis mode and begin working without breaks for a bit, you can suspend the programs features and continue with your work unhindered by the occasional break interruptions. If you find yourself using this feature too often you may not want to bother with the program at all, but most people will find it handy to silence the notices only occasionally.

Products that are aimed at stopping RSI have come a long way since symptoms of the malady became noticeable with daily computer use. While simple, the latest version of Workrave helps people stay safe from the most common health problems created by contemporary work environments. It can be very easy to ignore the headaches and hurts that we experience on a daily basis. By moving around once every so often, however, we can greatly reduce RSI’s effects.

A big advantage of flash cards is that they can be easily created. You can use most types of paper for instance for that. Users who like more control over their flash cards can use a software like Cabra instead to create the cards. This can be helpful to print multiple sets of cards, or to use machine typed cards.

Cabra is a multi-platform application to create flash cards. The application requires a recent version of the Java Runtime Environment on the system, but has no other dependencies besides that.

You can import existing projects into the application or create a new project. New flash cards are created with a click on the create a flashcard button.

Creation is simple and straightforward. Just enter a question, word or phrase under question, and an answer, word or phrase under answer. You can optionally add a picture or photo to the card which is automatically displayed on the question side of the card. Only plain text can be added to a card, with copy and paste being supported. This is handy if you have the questions and answers in text form and want to turn them into flash cards.

A click on study in the main interface offers to test the created cards. This can be used as a way to test the cards, or as a learning tool.

The card manager lists all existing flash cards of a project that has been loaded, the notes tab offers to add notes which anyone who loads the project can access and change.

Projects can be exported which saves them to the local system, or printed which will print the flash cards on a connected printer.

Cabra offers different themes that users can make use of if they like. It is easy to create new flash card sets with Cabra. Interested users can download the latest version of the open source application from the developer website. A handful of sample projects are available for download on the web page as well.

Scambled Egg is an Open Source cryptography program for Windows and Linux that offers an easy way to decrypt and encrypt messages.

When you start the program for the first time after installation you will notice that the interface is divided into two panes; The Encrypt Mode on the left and the Decrypt Mode on the right.

The left pane displays the original message, the right the encrypted message. To encrypt text paste textual information into the left pane or add it manually. The editor supports rich text, it will for instance retain different font sizes or types.

Various encryption algorithms and codecs are selectable at the top. You can keep the default selection which uses AES and Base64 Codec, or change it to other algorithms like Blowfish or DES3. It is furthermore possible and suggested to add a password which is then needed to decrypt the message.

The decrypt mode pane displays the encrypted information. You can copy and paste the information directly into text documents, emails or message boards on the Internet, or use the Export button at the bottom to add obfuscation to the protection.

Obfuscation? When you select Export, you get the option to save the encrypted message as a png image. An attacker would have to identify the right image before attempting to decrypt the message.

The image is an actual image, which means that you can post it on the Internet or send it as an image attachment via email.

Received messages can be decrypted in the application. If the message is inside an image, you need to import that image. If it is a message, you need to paste that message into the application, select the correct algorithms and the password.

If that’s all correct you get to see the message on the left pane. You need to make sure to add the password to the Decrypt Mode pane before you import encrypted images or messages. You’d otherwise get an error, and adding the password afterwards has no effect on the process anymore.

The developer has posted two example images on the project website. One is a 28 Kilobyte png image that contains the excellent Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery.

The encryption software Scambled Egg is available for download at Google Code.

When you research zip password recovery topics on the Internet you get loads of commercial products, but barely any free products that are updated regularly. There may be some deeply hidden on the web but those that you find on the first pages of the search results are usually commercial programs.

Two programs that I found are FCrackZip which was last updated in 2008, and RarCrack which was last updated in 2011. FCrackZip is offered for multiple operating systems including Windows, RarCrack only for Linux.

The second program has the advantage that it can not only recovery zip passwords but also rar and 7z passwords.

Both programs are command line utilities that use brute forcing to try all possible character combinations until they find the correct password.

It needs to be noted that it is not reasonable to try and recover a password with more than six characters. Why? Because it could take years on a single computer system until the password is recovered. That said, if you fail to include a particular character used in the password in the recovery attempt you may not succeed with the recovery even if you let it run months or even years.

FCrackZip

Download and unpack the Windows version of the program. You find information about all command line parameters at the developer homepage.

You need to open the command line first to run the program. Use the keyboard shortcut Windows-r to bring up the run box. Enter cmd and hit the return key afterwards. I suggest you place the zip with a password in the same directory as the recovery tool for easy of use. Navigate to that folder and use a command like

fcrackzip -c a -p aaaaaa sample.zip

to start the recovery process. This command will try all lowercase six letter passwords on the zip file sample.zip. Commands are available to specify a minimum or maximum password length, include character sets like digits, special characters or custom characters or use a dictionary method to recover the password.

The Windows version does not support all commands of the Linux version. It is for instance not possible to run a benchmark.

Rarcrack

This is a Linux tool, a readme file is included with the program. The program supports multiple threads to speed up the recovery. How does it work? The basic command is

rarcrack sample.zip –threads –type

Rarcrack uses an XML file that displays the characters used in the brute force attempt. There are not any options currently to limit the length of the passwords to try, but you can modify the currently tested password to start for instance with four characters immediately.

The XML file is created after the first run, so run it to generate the file and then edit it to suit your needs.

0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
1111

Closing Words

The chance of success is slim, and it decreases with every additional character of the password up to a point where it does not make sense anymore to try and recover the password. It can however be extremely helpful if you remember part of the password, or a length range.

Wikipedia has grown over the years. The largest repository on site, the English language version of Wikipedia has broken the 13 Gigabytes barrier lately, and that’s text only. If you add images, you end up at 30+ Gigabytes of space.

Some users may not have Internet access all the time, which means that they cannot access Wikipedia during that time. Maybe you are on Safari in Africa, miles away from the nearest settlement, or on an Island in the Pacific Ocean with less than optimal Internet connections.

I have reviewed quite a few solutions to access Wikipedia without Internet connection. WikiTaxi or Okawix come to mind, or the manual option to install Wikipedia locally.

Okawix has been reviewed before at Ghacks, but that review is two years old. The developers have continuously worked on the application, which justifies another review. Wikipedia in this context refers to all official Wiki projects. This includes Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikibooks and Wikinews.

The program is available for Windows, Mac, Linux and the Android operating system. The Android version has not been available back then, and is one of the core improvements.

The offline reader ships without local Wikipedia databases, which means that you need to download at least one on first run. Databases are available as direct downloads in the program interface, and linked as torrents on the program homepage.

A language screen is displayed if you select to download a Wikipedia database from within the program interface. You need to pick one or multiple languages that you want to download first, and on the second screen one of the available Wikipedia dictionaries or encyclopedias.

The size of each download is displayed on the second page, ranging from less than 100 Megabytes to Gigabytes of data. A click on Download opens a new screen where the installation directory is selected. You can enable image integration which usually increases the size of the download significantly.

The download is then added to the install group on the left sidebar. Already installed Wikis are displayed under the local group.

Installation depends largely on the size of the selected Wiki, and the Internet connection. A progress bar is shown during installation. You can install multiple Wikis at once, but you need to go back to the selection screen after each item that you have added. An option to select multiple Wikis at once would have been handy. The program seems to look up occasionally during installation.

It is usually easier to download the Wikis as torrents. You only need to double-click the downloaded file to add it to the program database, at least that’s the case under Windows.

You can use Wikipedia as you would online once installed, with the exception of account and website related features. You can search Wikipedia for entries, navigate the pages or click on links to be taken to other pages, all without Internet connection

The search is limited to a single Wiki, which you have to select before you begin the search. That’s another aspect that could be better.

The software is generally responsive, but feels heavy at times, especially during installation of Wikis.

Okawix nevertheless makes it relatively easy to download Wikipedia to a local computer system. Interested users find downloads, torrents and documentation on the developer website.

Miro, in its core, is a video player. The developers have moved beyond that however and included lots of interesting options and features that make Miro more of a media management, downloading and viewing software.

You see, Miro supports Bittorrent, online video portals like YouTube and video conversions, something that only few video players offer at this point in time. Even better, it includes a show list to get you started right away.

As I said, Miro 4 Beta introduces new features. From improvements under the hood like a noticeable better performance when using the client, over geeky stuff like navigating the user interface with the keyboard, to something for everyone like the ability to sync devices or sharing with Miro libraries on a local network.

Especially the new synchronization and sharing options could prove to become very popular on campuses, companies and other mid-sized local networks.

Here is the full feature list of the first Miro 4 Beta:

• Share with other Miro Libraries on your local network
• Sync devices and copy media
• More ways to make playlists
• View the playback and download history
• Improved searching and organization of your music
• Easier ways to add music and video to your collection
• UI Navigation with the keyboard
• Better performance

Not everything is explained in detail in the beta version yet. The help file for instance loads the latest stable help which does not mention the new features at all.

Probably the biggest feature in Miro 4 is the ability to import music from iTunes.

Even better, it is possible to monitor the iTunes library for new music to add it automatically to Miro as well. The beta of Miro is available for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. Expect a final release of Miro 4 in the coming months. (via Caschy)

Tools to scan a library of songs for missing tracks are rare. One application that can be used for the job is Jaikoz Audio Tagger. The program is not free, but the trial version is sufficient to run through your whole music library to find out if songs are missing in it.

You first need to download and install the application which is available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux.

A remark about the trial version. It is limited in functionality, but that is not a problem, as we are not using the software to write data to individual songs. We only use the software to find missing tracks in a local music collection, and that feature does not appear to be limited. You can save the missing song information to your computer, which you can then use as a reference to download or obtain the missing songs.

The first step after installation is to load the music library into the program. This is done with a click on File > Open Folder. Just pick the root folder of your collection to add it to the software. Jaikoz scans all folders and files under that structure automatically, and information about the identified music appears in the program interface afterwards.

Select Action > Auto Correct, or press Ctrl-1 on the keyboard after this first step. This will look up all songs and albums at the online music database MusicBrainz. This look up can take quite some time, depending on the number of songs and files stored under the root folder.

Use Reports > List Missing Songs For Albums in the final step to run a scan for missing songs. All albums that have been identified in the second step will be scanned for missing songs. This is done by comparing the information from the MusicBranz music database with the existing tracks on the computer.

A report is generated and displayed in a popup window. Here you find information about the albums, artists and song titles that are missing.

The report is available as a HTML or CSV version, which can be both saved to the local directory. With those information at hand, it is now possible to obtain the missing songs to complete the music library on your computer.

Jaikoz is a handy tool for that task. Are you using a different tool or service to scan your music collection for missing songs? Let me know in the comments.

The main interface that you see after installation displays a globe and several controls on screen. you can use the mouse to rotate or zoom in and out of the globe which works on first glance similar to Google Earth or comparable programs.

You can use the mini map on top to quickly jump to a location on this world, or enter a search term under navigation to find a city or place of interest.

One of the interesting features of Marble is that it offers different map views. The default view is an atlas view which displays countries and important cities and locations. If you zoom in you will notice that it misses streets, highways and other landmarks.

You can change the default map view to nine alternatives, from Open Street Map and Satellite View over Earth at Night to a historical map or temperature and precipitation maps. There is also the possibility to change the projection from Globe to flat or mercator, or switch to a map of the moon instead.

A legend is available in the sidebar that describes some of the symbols on the map. Additional options are available to include places of interest, an accurate coastline or a coordinate grid.

A left-click on a location displays the longitude and latitude, with options to copy the information to the clipboard or to get address details, which usually reveals the next city, state and country.

A click on a city loads a data sheet with information, and a copy of that city’s article on Wikipedia.

Marble requires an active Internet connection for most of its functionality. It comes with an offline mode which basically cuts of Internet access. Already downloaded map information are still accessible, while new map information are not as they cannot be downloaded from the Internet while in offline mode.

A routing planer has been integrated that seems to tap into Google Maps. You can enter an address or search term and get routing information displayed on the screen.

Another interesting feature is the ability to load new maps or globes. A handful are offered as downloads on the developer website. These include a Hike and Bike map, Venus and Mars, additional historical maps or natural earth maps.

Maps have a small size of less than 100 Kilobytes and need to be unpacked and moved into the maps folder of the Marble installation. They become then available under Maps in the navigational sidebar of the program.

Additional features at a glance

• Map Creation Wizard – You can use the program to create your own map. The developers promise usability improvements in the next version update of the interactive globe software.
• Map Sharing – You can share maps easily now.
• Option to include photos right on the map.
• Earthquakes online service – A plugin that shows recent earthquakes on the world map.
• Map editing, options to edit and correct OnlineStreetMap tiles.
• Voice navigation, gps – Marble’s running on Nokia’s N900 smartphone, and it features voice navigation as an experimental feature.
• Supported file formats are KML and GPX
• Global online and offline routing

Marble is a very sophisticated software that combines many different features in an easy to use interface. You can download the latest version for all supported operating systems from the developer website. Versions are provided for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, Maemo and Linux.