Virtual Screen Maximizer is a small portable software program that enables you to maximize the screen estate of the active program or window on the screen. You might think of using the […]
Today is the seventh day of the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway. We already handed out 35 commercial applications and five Giganews accounts to lucky Ghacks readers who hopefully enjoy the software and services […]
If you like to listen to music in iTunes you might have noticed that iTunes does not provide keyboard shortcuts to control the playback when iTunes is running in the background. Other […]
Animated gifs have a bad reputation on the Internet which stems from the early days. There was a time back then when the Internet was new that animated gifs were considered a […]
Adobe Reader is the *worst example of software bloat I’ve ever had the bad experience of using. In fact I have not idea why I did use it for so long. Adobe […]
The following article is a guest post by Uk's finest Joe Anderson. You can pay him a visit at his own tech blog Webby's World. Boxee is XBMC-based media centre software currently […]
Flash Cookies, or Local Shared Objects, are stored on the user system by Macromedia Flash applications. They function a lot like cookies and can be used to store session information or save […]
I was looking for an application that gave me lots of freedom when configuring the actions of the buttons of my Logitech mouse. I'm not a huge fan of bloated software packages […]
A few years ago the idea of cloud computing seemed vaguely absurd to me. I infinitely preferred using desktop software to any kind of online alternative and I hated the idea of […]
I have written an article about Flash Cookies last year and it turned out that several users did not know they existed and were grateful that they were now able to take […]
Foxit Reader 2.3 supports tabs, that was the headline on many blogs that I read regularly, for instance at Cybernet News and Download Squad. My first thought was that surely no one […]
I'm not a huge fan of Apple iTunes, think it's just to slow to be a good music player and I have no intention of using the Apple store. That leaves me […]
The application iTunes Control is an add-on for Apple's iTunes software. It mainly adds two functions to iTunes, the first is a customizable on screen display of the track that is currently playing and the second are more than 20 hotkeys that make it easier to run iTunes in the background.
Do you know which audio and video codecs are installed on your operating system ? Did you know that you can easily find that out by using Windows tools ? I think it is nice to know that you can find about all installed codecs without having to use third party applications. I will recommend a third party program at the end which can be used to received additional information.
Some applications have the nasty habit of bringing their program windows into focus even though they appear most of the time unwanted and in inappropriate moments. This happens from time to time when I'm reading an article on a website or in Word. The bad thing that is happening is that the focus is lost on the document that I'm currently reading even if the new window is just a small popup informing me about an update.
Ebooks are normally supplied as txt, pdf, htm or lit documents that most mp3 players can't read by default. Most of the mp3 players however have the ability to display images as long as they are in the correct size. This is the principle that eBook to Images uses to create images from eBooks that can then be read in mp3 players.
If you experience troubles playing movies using the DIVX codec that is installed on your computer you might want to take a look at a bundle of fixes for DivX that is called All In One Fix. This is not intended for users who use ffdshow for instance to play movies, only for those who are actually using the DIVX codec.
Gili over at Connected Internet compiled a list of 15 applications that he calls the best free software for your computer. We all know that it can be quite difficulty to compile a list with the best because the best is nothing more than a personal judgment. I would agree that about half of the recommended softwares are must haves while the other half are nice to have but not really required.
It has been a while since I posted the first part of this mini series entitled 10 Freeware Recommendations. Two months are a long time considering that I write about software almost every day here at Ghacks, that is why I decided to open my treasure trove again and present you another batch of freeware recommendations for Windows that will probably make your day.
A new version of FairUse4WM hit the Internet two days ago which is able to strip the DRM - that is Digital Rights Management - right of music files that use MS DRM IBX components up to version 11.0.6000.6324. So, if you own a Zune, use the Yahoo music service, Urge or several other services you might want to give FairUse4WM a try and get rid of the DRM in the music.
I had the chance to test hundreds of freeware and open-source softwares in the last months and would like to list 20 of them that I would recommend. I'm actually using half of them on my Windows XP computer right now and I'm glad that I made the change from some respected popular programs to lesser known but better alternatives.
Nothing is more frustrating than to witness that the movie that you downloaded for hours won't play on your computer. Maybe there is only black screen, no audio, blurred pictures or out of sync audio and video. The most likely cause for this behavior is that a audio or video codec is missing on your system.
Genbeta are reporting that you can get a free version of the Divx Pro suite for a limited amount of time. All you need to do is go to Windows download or Mac download and download the divx pro software. You are asked for an email address during installation which will be used to send the Divx pro key to. You probably want to uncheck the "I would also like to receive" offers.
Flash cookies are a new way of tracing your movement and storing a lot more information about you than with normal cookies. One major disadvantage of flash cookies is that you can't locate them in your browser. They are not shown in the list of cookies that you can see when you take a look at the cookies that are currently saved in your web browser. Normal HTTP cookies can't save more than 4 Kilobyte of data while Flash cookies can save up to 100 Kilobyte. If you want to try out how they work you could do the following.
How are you normally transferring new videos to your Apple iPod Video player ? You create or download them, transcode them into a format that your iPod video understands, add them to iTunes and sync iTunes with your iPod Video again. What if there was a way to automate every single step of this procedure after creating or downloading new videos ? Yeah, I thought that you would like that. To automatically add new videos to your iPod Video you need the free iPod software Ipodifier. Just download iPodifier which has a size of about 8 megabytes and install it on your system.
Keeping up with application updates can be a very tedious task even if you have only a handful of them installed on your system. If the software has no update reminder you have to manually visit the developers homepage and see if an update is available. Most users simply do not look for updates actively and use old versions that might have security holes or miss important features that have been implemented in later versions. But there is hope..
Since I started blogging two years ago I came upon thousands of essential, ultimate and top freeware lists but only few really had a lasting impact on the internet community. Most are forgotten the next day and everyone heads on to the next list in line. It does not make sense to simply write another essential list, it does however make sense when I'm concentrating this list on freeware and Open source that I have reviewed here at ghacks. I reviewed more than 360 freeware and Open Source products which could be seen as a preselection.
Several software music players and mp3 players do not support WMA files at all. Wma, Windows Media Audio, is a format that was developed by Microsoft and initially designed to compete with the popular mp3 format. WMA however never received the popularity of the mp3 format and many users don't like WMA at all because of its DRM capabilities. Converting WMA to MP3 is one solution to get rid of WMA files and make them playable in your software and mp3 players. One way to convert wma audio files to mp3 is to use the software Free WMA to MP3 Converter.
I think we all experienced frame drops and artefacts in avi movies which is pretty annoying if it happens during the whole movie. I found a media player called HDngn which is able to interpolate new frames in realtime using Direct Show and Open GL. This is achieved by using frames more than once and algorithm that recalculate everything in realtime.
I would not say it is the perfect media player yet but it surely has some nice interesting features that no other player offers yet. The drawback is that it currently supports only a limited amount of filetypes and not enough possibilities to change the configuration of the player at all. It took a while until I was able to remove the logo of the player from the upper right corner. I had to edit the lua file which was used to init the interface.
Crap Cleaner has been released in a new version just a day ago and I decided to take another look at it. I removed all options during installation except the one that would create a start menu entry in Windows - no need for additional toolbars on my system. I especially wanted to take a look at the Issues tab which someone mentioned in the comments sometime ago.
The Issues tab in Crap Cleaner scans the registry for missing shared dlls, activex issues, unused file extensions, obsolete software and many more entries and displays them after finishing the scan. You may then click on fix all issues which prompts to backup your registry before continuing. After that the first issue is displayed with information why Crap Cleaner decided it is one.
There are several ways to watch tv online. You can download episodes from video portals, use p2p networks to download shows, use p2p clients that stream tv in real time and use websites that do the same. The demand for and resources to do so are ever growing and it becomes quite a task to keep an overview over the best possibilities.
The Zune seems really hackable, wonder if that is on purpose or just laziness. Anyways, the following registry hack makes it possible to add Divx movies to your Zune player and sync them successfully. Once that is done the Zune automatically converts them to the native format which makes it possible to view them just as any other video that you have stored on your Zune player. Copy and paste the following lines into a text editor, save it and rename the file extension to .reg afterwards.
I do not own a Zune and will probably never own one but I know a few people who do own one, this article is for them. You can enable a hard drive mode in the Zune which is similar to the hard drive mode of the iPods. All you need to do is change some registry keys in windows which enables this.
If you are using different computers to work with you might have experienced the problem that you can't listen to your mp3 collection on all of them. I have my mp3 files on my computer at home and not on my notebook for instance unless I would copy all the music to the hard drive of the notebook or find a online solution to store my mp3 files. (like mp3tunes)
I do not like Quicktime that much. I hate to use additional clients next to VLC to be able to view certain movies on websites. I also do not like the fact that you can't save movies easily if you do not use Quicktime Pro. I discovered a method that makes it possible to save movies from the Apple Trailer website to your local drive and watch them in your favorite movie player afterwards. I use VLC for this purpose but Quicktime Alternative for instance should be fine as well.
The name of this software distribution is probably a little bit out of line but the purpose is not. The goal is to reduce software costs for students but the compilation is also attractive to everyone else. The website offers a version of this distribution for Windows computers and for Macs. You may download it using the preferred method bittorrent to ease the load on the servers and reduce bandwidth costs.
Lifehacker.com recently profiled the release of PortableApps Suite 1.0, a polished, light weight application that adds new functionality to USB keys, mp3 players, and external media by transforming these storage platforms into portable, private, personalized vehicles for launching programs and storing data.
Several security software solutions like xp-antispy exist for Windows XP and Security & Privacy Complete is one of them. The open source product offers to change security and privacy related settings in Windows XP. Everything is accessible from the main window and categorized in the following way: System, Internet Explorer 6, Media Player, Security Options, Services and Mozilla Firefox.
Many portable media players and software players support album cover art which is displayed when a song is played from within the player. Most players unfortunately do not have a feature that automatically searches for and downloads album cover art for the album s that you have stored on your computer. One of the tools that can help you if you like to have album cover art displayed is Album Cover Art Downloader.
Sounds on my computer seem to be different depending on the application that is used to play the sounds. Sometimes I have almost silent video playback and loud intros when playing games. What's the matter with the differences ? Volumouse gives you immediate control of the volume on your computer making it possible to alter it without leaving the application that you are currently working with.
