Downloader Guide

Enable Custom Frame Video Thumbnails in Windows

2008-12-11T18:12:00.009+05:30

Usually the video thumbnails that are generated by Windows XP results in a black screen which is of no use because it converts the first frame to generate thumbnails. Here I will show you how to enable custom frame thumbnails to all your video files including mp4 and mkv files. I read this in Neowin Forums to get the idea.

1. Download Thumbnail_enable_custom_frame (zip file, external link).

2. Run disable_default_thumbnail_generator.bat to disable your windows thumbnails.

3. Next run MatroskaSplitter.exe to install it.

4. After that go to Start -> Haali Media Splitter -> Media Splitter Settings

5. Open Options -> Explorer integration

6. Enable Thumbnail extraction -> Yes

7. Thumbnails Offset -> 300000 (Use your desired offset in milliseconds)

8. Finally run thumbnail_enable.reg.

Thats it now you will have useful thumbnails for all your video files including your mp4 and mkv files. I haven't tested this on other versions of Windows except XP.

Create To-do list with Tasks in Gmail

2008-12-09T09:47:00.003+05:30

Today Gmail team announced in their blog post that a new labs feature 'Tasks' has been added to Gmail. So now you have a light-weight To-do list manager right in your inbox. It is possible to add a number of To-do lists and also convert your emails into tasks. Tasks appear at the bottom as a window same as the chat box.

Top Tech News This Week (Dec 1-Dec 7)

2008-12-07T09:36:00.005+05:30

This is a weekly post on every Sunday which features the most important software and tech news that matter to you.

Youtube goes HD

Last week Youtube went widescreen now it has gone HD. You can now see an option to see your videos in HD.

Songbird 1.0 Hatches

Songbird, the media player built of the mozilla's XUL platform launched version 1.0. Touted to be the firefox of media players, it comes loaded with lots of features to rival iTunes. Also like firefox addons can be used to add features.

Opera releases Version 10 Alpha

Opera released the alpha of version 10 of its web browser. It has a new Presto rendering engine and passes the Acid3 Standards test with a perfect score.

Google Reader streamlines its look

Google Reader has updated its look. Now there is less blue and more white to enhance readibility.

Windows 7 beta 1 comes on Jan 13, 2009

The next version of Windows named as Windows 7 releases its first beta on Jan 13 next year. Windows 7 has a new updated taskbar, more ribbon interface and lots of performance improvements.

3 Minimalistic Image Viewers For Windows

2008-12-05T17:45:00.009+05:30

There are lot of image viewers for windows which supports tons of formats and has loads of features. But here we look at the image viewers which are ultra light-weight, fast and minimalistic which is enough for most people. When using these image viewers just clicking on Esc closes the application.

VJPEG

VJPEG is just one .exe (168KB) and opens common image formats. When you open a image all you see is the image and it acts as a object on your screen. Then you can move, resize(zoom) around the screen. It also comes with keyboard shortcuts.

It can be downloaded here.

Picasa Image Viewer

The image viewer that comes bundled with Google Picasa 3 supports JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, BMP, TGA and RAW formats and has a javascript lightbox effect (see the screenshot below). It comes with slideshow, zoom options and shows all images in the current folder as thumbnails at the bottom.

It can be downloaded here.

imv(stb)

imv(stb) is inspired by VJPEG and is similar to it. The application comes with a 74KB image viewer and also a lighter 47KB image viewer. The images have a minimal border to see its edges unlike VJPEG. Use the arrow keys to browse all images in the folder and zoom using your mouse. It is also possible to open multiple imv(stb) windows.

It can be downloaded here.

ClickFont Installs your Windows Fonts in 2 Clicks

2008-12-02T10:07:00.003+05:30

Inorder to install a font in windows you have go to Control panel->Fonts and then go to File->Install Font and then browse to the folder which has the fonts to be installed and then select them. Would it not be easy if you can just right-click the fonts and choose "Install font"?

ClickFont is a freeware which adds a "Install Font" context menu option to all TrueType, OpenType, PostScript fonts and also to folders containing fonts. You can now install your fonts in windows with just two clicks.

Download ClickFont

World AIDS Awareness Day 2008

2008-12-01T16:21:00.003+05:30

Although Downloader Guide is a tech blog I am writing this post as part of the Bloggers Unite. Today is World AIDS Awareness Day and as we all know it is a deadly disease which claims a lot of lives. It is estimated that 2.4 million HIV+ people live in India as per 2007 figures.

On this day let us take a pledge to show solidarity with HIV-positive people and those living with AIDS. Also remember that "Prevention is better than cure"

Foobar 2000 upgrades to 0.9.6, gets portable version

2008-11-30T13:52:00.014+05:30

Foobar2000 the ultra-customizable audio player gets a new version 0.9.6 and brings in new features and improvements. It now has a new option to install in portable mode, automatic library updates by folder watching and matroska support.

It is an advanced audio player and have all features such as full unicode support, advanced tagging, gapless playback and plays MP3, MP4, AAC, CD Audio, WMA, Vorbis, FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, Musepack, Speex and other audio formats. Most important of all this is that layout is fully customizable.

It can be downloaded here.

Top Tech News This Week (Nov 23-Nov 30)

2008-11-30T07:47:00.003+05:30

Youtube Goes Widescreen

Google's video site Youtube switched its videos to widescreen (16:9) format. The announcement was made in their blog "This new, wider player is in a widescreen aspect ratio which we hope will provide you with a cleaner, more powerful viewing experience. And don't worry, your 4:3 aspect ratio videos will play just fine in this new player. "

Firefox gets another beta before 3.1

Mozilla is to add a third beta to the development schedule for Firefox 3.1. "The move will enable the company to get a better handle on remaining bugs and give several new features, including a faster JavaScript engine and a private browsing mode, more testing time" the company's browser director said yesterday.

ThePiratebay turns five years old

thepiratebay.org the world's largest bittorrent tracker turned five years old. Last week the tracker reached the milestone of 25 million peers. The site continues to be the most popular bittorrent site despite many attempts by RIAA and other organisations to block the site.

Fedora 10 Released

The Fedora Project has released version 10 of its free-to-download Linux platform, adding greater support for virtualisation, a graphical boot system, and other enhancements such as network connection sharing.

Folder Size shows size of folders in Windows Explorer

2008-11-28T07:47:00.002+05:30

How many time have you right-clicked your folders and then properties to see the size of your folders in windows. We get the feeling "If only windows had the option to show the size of the folders."

Folder Size comes to the rescue. It shows the size of the folders in the Windows Explorer and can also arrange your icons by size of your folders.

Folder Size is both open-source as well as a freeware and can be downloaded here.

20 Userstyles to Optimize the Firefox User Interface

2008-11-26T08:24:00.008+05:30

Firefox is quickly gaining ground in being the default browser of many users. Here are a list of Stylish userstyles to tweak the user appearance of Firefox, the best browser.

NOTE: For users new to Stylish, it is a firefox extension to customize the look of applications and website by using userstyles (CSS) similar to Greasemonkey.

1.Hide Back and Forward Buttons When not needed - Shows the Back button and forward only when there is a site to go back and forward respectively.

2.Smartly Show Reload and Stop Buttons - Shows the stop button only when page is loading.

3.Colorize Firefox 3 Active Tab - Shows the active tab in color.

4.Awesome Bar Background Color Based on Type - Changes the color of the items shown in awesomebar (firefox 3 address bar) with the Tags - Light Yellow, Bookmarks - Blue and History items - Light Green.

5.Bright Focus - Makes the active buttons, links and textboxes colored to indicate focus.

6.Change Text Highlighting Selector Color - Makes all highlighted (selected) text throughout Firefox to have a custom color of your choice.

7.Italicize unread tabs - Shows the title of unread tabs in italics.

8.IE7-style Menubar - Makes the menubar look like the toolbar menus (Page, Tools, Help) in Internet Explorer 7.0.

9.Show Go Button on Hover - Shows the go button in awesomebar on hover. If you want the go button to be always visible try Go button always visible

10.Auto-Hide BookMarks Toolbar - auto hides the bookmark toolbar.

11.Auto-Hide Menu bar - auto hides the menu toolbar.

12.Auto-Hide Status bar - auto hides the status bar.

13.Auto-Hide Tab bar - auto hides the tabbar.

14.Auto-Hide Search bar - auto hides the search bar until hovered over.

15.Tabs on Top (like google chrome) - Inspired by Google Chrome, moves the tabbar to the top of the menubar.

16. Keyword Additon for Add/Change Bookmark - Includes the Keyword, URL, and Description when adding (Ctrl+D), or modifying a bookmark with the Firefox 3 Star. The description will fill in automatically from webpages that include the description META tag, and you can change it to what you want.

17.Center the Add-ons (Extensions) Tab Buttons - Centers the Tab Buttons on the Firefox Add-ons (Extensions) window. Also Applies to ALL Extension's Option pages.

18.WellRounded 3 - Changes the appearance all the text boxes and menu lists with rounded edges.

19.Yellow https location bar - Turn the location bar yellow when using an encrypted connection to a web site .

20.Tabs stylish rounded - changes the appearance of the tabs with beautiful rounded corners.

Fondo changes windows wallpaper on a schedule

2008-11-24T10:15:00.005+05:30

Fondo is a free open-source program for windows which changes your desktop wallpaper automatically on a schedule you specify. This is a simple straight forward application.

Just point the directory and the time to keep a wallpaper in minutes.

Fondo is available only for windows and can be downloaded here

Picasa 3 out of beta, gets new features

2008-11-21T10:05:00.004+05:30

Picasa 3, the freeware from Google that be used to edit, organize and share your photos is officially out of beta. The version 3 brings in a lot of new features such as the ability to take screenshots, retouch images, create and edit small movies, easily sync and upload photos to Picasa web album and comes with a light-weight image viewer.

The existing features have also been enhanced with new collage and slideshow options.

It can be downloaded here.

Gmail gets shiny with official themes

2008-11-20T09:45:00.003+05:30

Today the gmail team has introduced themes for gmail which makes its UI shiny. Although there have been userstyles and greasemonkey scripts, this one comes from the official gmail team. The Themes tab is available in Settings of Gmail. So choose a theme from the available 31 themes which suits you.

10 Essential Greasemonkey Scripts for Delicious

2008-11-19T13:48:00.006+05:30

Delicious is a social bookmarking site that needs no introduction. Recently delicious turned five years old. The new delicious was launched in august and brought in a lot of changes to its UI. Here are a list of ten essential greasemonkey scripts that enhance the UI and features for the new delicious.

NOTE: Greasemonkey is a firefox extension which allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript.

1.Readability Tweaks - Bolds the bookmark titles, turns the URLs light grey and the visited links as purple.

2.Enable Autocomplete & Remember Passwords - delicious has disabled autocomplete by default. This script enables auto complete for delicious so that you can tell firefox to remember your passwords.

3.Delicious Star Rater - Add stars to your bookmarks and they become tagged with your bookmarks.

4.Sort Visible Links - Sort the bookmarks on the current page by popularity, title and the URL.

5.Dim Saved Links - Dims the bookmarks you have already saved in your delicious account.

6.Add Thumbnails - Adds a thumbnail to your bookmarks on delicious. This works only if you have full view selected.

7.Bundle Names on Hover - On the Bundles edit page, if you hover over a tag it shows the bundls it belongs to.

8.fav.icio.us3 - Adds a favicon to all the bookmarks in delicious.

9.Delicious Navigator - Adds the following keyboard shortcuts to delicious.

j - Goto next link

k - Goto prev link

n - Goto next tag

m - Goto prev tag

s - Open search dialog

esc - Reset j/k, n/m positions to top

esc(inside search box) - Close search dialog

10.Network Info - Adds number of users in your network and number of your fans into header links.

List of Freeware

2008-11-17T14:15:00.010+05:30

Here I have listed all the freeware that have featured on Downloader Guide for your reference. This page is constantly updated with each new post. Bookmark this page for your reference. Also check this page for updates.

StandaloneStack is used to create stacks on your windows desktop without the need of a dock.
Subdownloader is a open-source software to download and upload movie subtitles from Opensubtitles.org.
Picasa 3 from google is used to organize, edit and share photos.
Fondo changes your windows wallpaper on a schedule.
Folder Size shows the size of folders in Windows Explorer.
Foobar2000 is an advanced ultra customizable audio player

StandaloneStack brings Stacks to your Desktop

2008-11-16T15:41:00.005+05:30

StandaloneStack is a freeware which can be used to create stacks on your windows desktop without the need of a dock. If you have used Objectdock or Rocketdock you would have come across the stacks plugin.

It shows the content of a selected folder in stacks. Why is that you need a dock to use the stacks feature? Can stacks be on the desktop icon or a quick launch icon. Here is where StandaloneStack comes to the rescue. It puts the stacks feature into your desktop icons.

1. Download StandaloneStack (zip file) and unzip the files to a directory.

2. To create a stack, right-click on your desktop choose New->Shortcut.

3. Click on browse and go to the unzipped folder and choose StandaloneStack.exe.

4. In the shortcut location something such as "C:\Program Files\Standalone Stack\StandaloneStack.exe" will now be there.

5. Now type a name of the stack you want to create without quotes ex: "C:\Program Files\Standalone Stack\StandaloneStack.exe" cpanel

6. Choose Next and type a name such as Control Panel for your stack shortcut.

7. Click Finish and you will have a shortcut named Control Panel on the desktop.

8. Open the shortcut and the configure the stack. Choose Special Folder and then Control Panel in the next box. Choose your sort type and style of the stacks to be grid or fan.

9. You can also create stacks for normal folders. Just choose Filesystem folder instead of Special Folder and browse to the required folder.

Stacks With Grid View

10. If you want to change the properties of the stack, hold SHIFT or CTRL key and double-click on the shortcut. Move the shortcut to your quick launch if you wish.

Subdownloader - Easy Way to Download Subtitles

2008-11-14T16:35:00.004+05:30

Subdownloader is a free open-source software to upload and download subtitles from Opensubtitles.org. This software is unique because it can find subtitles for your video file using its hash.

Just point the folder which contains your movies and subdownloader will automatically search for the all video files in that folder, read its hash info and give you results for relevant subtitles in many languages.

You can also upload subtitles to Opensubtitles.org using its simple interface very quickly. The maker claims that you can upload entire tv series seasons subtitles in less than 1 minute.

Also search the opensubtitles.org without opening your browser.

The only downside is that the software does not support mp4 video files although it supports mkv. Subdownloader can be downloaded from www.subdowloader.net. It is available for windows and linux operating systems.

Tips, Tutorials and Hacks

2008-11-12T17:42:00.008+05:30

Here I have listed all the tutorials, tips and hacks by category that have featured on Downloader Guide for your reference. This page is constantly updated with each new post. Bookmark this page for your reference. Also check this page for updates.

Windows

How-To Change Thumbnails Size in Windows XP

Top Lists

2008-11-12T17:38:00.011+05:30

Here I have listed all the top lists that have featured on Downloader Guide for your reference. This page is constantly updated with each new post. Bookmark this page for your reference.

Novemeber 2008

10 Places to Download Albumart, Covers and Posters

2008-11-12T13:57:00.003+05:30

This time we look at the best sites to downoad album art, cd covers,dvd covers and posters of movies, music, games and books.

Movies ,Music, Games CD and DVD Covers

1.albumart.org - This site finds DVD and CD album art by crawling amazon.com for images. The search is quick and interface is clean. Searches movies and music.

2.AllCDCovers - Has 100,000+ titles and 280,000+ covers of movies, music, anime and games. Its a breeze to browse the site because of categorization of all the titles. The search here is also quick and even gives previews of front and the dvd. The covers are available in high resolution. The site has a API for developers to build applications.

3.Cdcovers.cc - Has the largest collection of titles in games, movies and anime. Games are catalogued into PSP, XBOX 360, Wii, etc. Movies are catalogued to Blu Ray, DVD, VCD. But the site does not have music titles.

4.FreeCovers.net - is similar to AllCDCovers in interface and has a large collection of covers for movies, tv series, music and games. But to download you need to register with the site.

Movie Posters

5.IMPAwards - The famous site for movie posters has also posters of Germany, France and Bollywood movies.

6.allcity - Has a small collection of UK and international movie posters.

7.Glamsham.com - Fair collection of Bollywood movie posters.

8.plakaty.ru - contains a large collection Russian movie posters. It also has posters of military, advertising and other posters.

Book Covers

There is no direct search sites like albumart.org for book covers. But it is possible to find covers in a indirect manner. It would be great if someone creates such a site.

9.LibraryThing - is actually a catalogue of books with detailed ISBN, Authors and Titles.By using its search you can find covers of books by author name, ISBN and titles. Although its not possible to find the covers directly you can find the book or author and then click on covers to find it.

10.Amazon.com - No need to tell about this site. Just go to books section and you can get the front cover of the books.

About

2008-11-10T11:06:00.003+05:30

About the Blog

Downloader Guide is a tech blog featuring guides, tips, hacks, tutorials on downloads, freeware and web 2.0 apps.

About the Author

I am Adhavan K, a 21-yr old electrical and electronics engineering graduate from Chennai, India. I am soon joining as a software engineer at a leading software company in India. I am passionate about technology, software and web 2.0. I use this blog to share freeware, hacks, webapps and tips i find and use in my daily life.

You can find me on delicious and digg.

To contact me mail me at adhavan87@gmail.com

You can also chat with me on google talk.

Happy Birthday Firefox!

2008-11-10T07:38:00.002+05:30

The default browser of many, Firefox turns four today. It is slowly eating up Internet Explorer's market share and Firefox's market share is supposedly to be at 20% now.

Firefox recently released version 3 which was downloaded by a record number of users. Also expected is Firefox 3.1 which brings new features such as private browsing, new Alt-tab switching for tabs and more.

Happy Birthday Firefox!

How-To Change Thumbnails Size in Windows XP

2008-11-09T17:22:00.001+05:30

Windows XP has a default size of 96 pixels for thumbnails in windows explorer. In Windows Vista it is possible to have thumbnails very large. Although it consumes more memory, Windows explorer thumbnail view is good for folders containing movies, pictures and music.

It is possible to change the size of thumbnails using Tweak UI Powertoy for Windows XP. After installing open Tweak UI choose Explorer->Thumbnails.

Change to the size upto 256 pixels. Also you can change the image quality of the thumbnails according to your needs.

Top 8 Places to Download Movie and TV Subtitles

2008-11-08T20:50:00.001+05:30

There are lots of websites where you can get subtitles for movies you download on bittorrent. Here we look at the best of these websites based on usability and content to make your subtitle search easy.

1.Opensubtitles.org - It has subtitles of 40,000+ movies in 50 languages. Advanced searching, searching for more than one language and searching for many subtitles simultaneously is possible. It can also provide search results by rss and email.

2.Subscene - A popular subtitle site has a large database of movies and tv shows in many languages. The search is basic, but you can search by release name such as "Taken.DVDRip.XviD.AC3-DEViSE".

3.TVsubtitles - Focuses mainly on tv show subtitles, has a indexed 290+ tv shows and 35000+ subtitles in various languages. It is easy to find the subtitles for your favorite shows since the site has categorized tv shows by its seasons and episodes.

4.AnySubs - Site somewhat similar to Opensubtitles but the search is basic and you can check out top 100 most downloaded subtitles.

5.podnapisi.net - Another comprehensive movies and tv shows subtitle site which has a feature of searching by release, season and episodes.

6.nowsubtitles - It is a search site for subtitles and has the simplest interface of all sites. It looks similar to nowtorrents, a torrent search site.

7.SubtitleSeeker - Search for subtitles from opensubtitles.org, subscene, podnapisi.net and other subtitle sites.

8.MoTechSubs - Another subtitle site which has a large collection of scene release movie and tv subtitles. No p2p release subs can be found here. It even gives details about the movie and tv shows associated with the subtitle.