FreewareWire

Instantbird: Mozilla based Pidgin.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:12:00 +0000

It seems like nowadays, XUL based freeware is spreading to every type of program, and instant messaging is no exception. Instantbird is a multi-protocol IM client that uses Pidgin's libpurple to deliver the messages, and Mozilla's XUL library to display the interface. In other words: Pidgin turned Firefox.

Protocols.
Of course, what would a multi-protocol client be without protocols?

AIM
Facebook
Gadu-Gadu
Google Talk
GroupWise
ICQ
IRC
MSN/WindowsLive
MyspaceIM
Netsoul
QQ
Simple
XMPP
Yahoo

Addons.
One of the nice things about Instantbird being built off XUL is that -like Firefox and Thunderbird- you have a plethora of addons you can get to further customize it to your liking. You can add Emoticons, Message Styles, Protocols, Themes, and more, just like Firefox, there's pretty much everything your heart could desire. Unfortunately, because Instantbird is so young, there are barely any addons, like in the case of Protocols, only one (and it's in development). So the addons are definitely a good feature, but they need some time to grow.

Baby Steps.
To be honest, Instantbird kind of has a ways to go. You are unable to set the sound scheme (other than diving into a JAR file and manually replacing the WAV files), you can set a custom "Away" message, but you cannot have things like "Do Not Disturb" or Invisibility, and downloading Instantbird from the website presents only a ZIP file, which would be great if Instantbird was portable, but it's not. Things like a custom sound scheme (possibly even as an addon), custom Away messages (which Pidgin has mastered), or an Installer or Portable version of Instantbird are just several examples of the next steps that Instantbird needs to take. Don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean it's not a wonderful app. I downloaded it and it sits right along Pidgin and Miranda in my start menu. I can start it up, and have all of the basic functionality that I need from any of the other multi-protocol clients.

The good, and the future.
The things that I do admire about Instantbird is that it is open source and cross platform. In a way, Instantbird is much like Songbird: it's a non-Mozilla app built off XUL that has practically unlimited potential. The wonderful thing about Songbird is that with most media players, you think "Gee, I wish it had [this feature] or [that feature]," but Songbird fills that with the customization from addons. And that's what Instantbird could do. Imagine an Instant Messaging client with all the power of Pidgin, enhanced with hundreds of addons! An addon for webcam chat, an addon for browser integration, an addon for buddy pounces....the possibilities are endless! The only thing standing in Instantbird's path to being a truly magnificent piece of freeware (available on all three primary operating systems) is time. I personally can't wait to see what Instantbird will bring to the table when it's more mature. It's already a good client now. In a few years, it could be amazing.

Visit Instantbird website for download

Data Crow: Media cataloger that's simply caw-esome

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:58:00 +0000

Almost everyone owns media. Books, DVDs, CDs, Software, it's all around us. Sometimes it can get a bit messy of what you have or don't have, and you might be looking for a way to organize it, and Data Crow can do just that.

Data Crow is a multi-featured media cataloger, designed to make it extremely easy to keep track of you various types of media. Right off the bat, it handles CDs, Movies, Books and even Software. It's pretty straightforward and easy to use, but also has the ability to be extremely customizable to an experienced user.

Almost every single area of Data Crow is extremely well organized. It has everything divided up into "Modules" that can be enabled and disabled, so you can choose your own list of items you want to keep track of (example, "CDs", "Movies", "Books", etc). Under each module, there is also sub-Modules, like "Actors" or "Directors" for the "Movies" module, or "Artist" for the "CDs" module. Furthermore, under a module, you have a list of the items, like for example, I have "Extreme Days....I-Robot....Monty Python....." under my Movies, but you can also choose different ways to sort, like by "Actors", "Year", "Director", or just even by "Title".

The thing that (A) most impressed me, and (B) drew me to Data Crow is the ability to import an item. There's a TON of information for media items. Instead of entering in a DVD's title, director, actors, front cover, play length and other stuff that you might want, you can also just import all that data with a few clicks. The "Item Wizard" lets you search various online databases for the item that you have right in front of you. You can use the ISBN for things like books, and the UPC (barcode) for CDs, Movies, Software, etc. It's extremely accurate (from when I've used it). It uses well known sites like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IMDB, SourceForge.net and gets almost every field available (depending on what site you choose). If the websites miss something or get it wrong, you can always manually edit a field.

The only other features I can think of to mention are Report and Filter. Data Crow can generate amazing reports in either PDF or HTML of an entire Module (ie, CDs, Movies). Very nice, if you need a detailed list of every CD/Book/DVD you own. It also has Filtering, which will bring up only the Movies/CDs/Books that match your filter, whether it be Actor, Author, Director, Title, etc.

The only thing that I was disappointed in was the ability to create your own module. Sounds great, right? Yeah, I thought the same thing too. I wanted to make a module dedicated to Steam games, but I found the process extremely difficult, and in the end, it just did not work out at all like I hoped. That being said, please don't let that taint your vision of Data Crow. I actually did create a good module, it just sorted the fields alphabetically, which put "Title" halfway down the list other than on top.

Otherwise, it really is a wonderful program. It's written in JAVA, meaning that it is cross platform. To be honest, Data Crow is the first program that's written in Java that I actually enjoy profusely. Other programs do their job well, but they still have that Java-y feel to them, and they're often slow. Not Data Crow. It can actually be skinned to where it hardly feels like Java, and it's extremely fast.
On top of that, Data Crow is portable, and open source. What more could you ask?

Visit Data Crow website for Download

Listmas: Just in time for next Christmas!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:53:00 +0000

This last Christmas, I was searching for a freeware to create an extremely easy Christmas List, but I couldn't find any*. So I decided to write one. Listmas is a one-of-a-kind Christmas/year-round gift-planning freeware.

First off, let me say that Listmas saves everything to a file as you are typing it, so you'll never lose any data. That means that when you fire up Listmas for the first time, it will ask you to either create a new list, or open an old one. If you've never use Listmas before, you click "New". Listmas v1.0.2009 saves lists in a new format, LMF (stans for ListMas File). Anyway, once you pick a new file, you see Listmas! Yay! You'll see a bunch of fields at the bottom of the window with text like "Item", "Person", or "Store" above them, but don't type in them just yet.

In order to add a new item, right click in the Listview (the empty space) and click "New". You should see a new row added to the listview that's completely blank, except for 5 grey stars. Now you can hop on those edit fields. Make sure you have that new entry in the listview selected, and then you can start editing the fields below. As you type, you'll see that whatever you're changing is being updated in the listview row as well.
Here's the fields that are available:

Item: name of the item
Price: price of the item
Person: recipient of the gift
Priority: how important it is that you get this gift
Store: where you bought it from
URL: the web address to that item, if you're buying online. Can be launched by the button to the right
Note: any other information you want to remember

One of the nice things about listmas is that nothing is required. Instead of forcing you to enter an Item name or a Price, you can leave whatever fields blank that you want.

Once you get a gift, you can mark it "Got" by either checking its "Got it!" box when you have it selected in the listview, or you can right click on a row and click "Got it". A "got" gift will turn to a different color, making it very easy to see what you have and what you don't have.

That's about it! Pretty simple, eh?

There are a few more features that I made sure to throw in which are all available in "Preferences" under Options.

Currency: if you want, you can actually have Listmas keep track of those dollar signs (or whatever currency symbol you use). In version 1.0.2009, Listmas has dollars, cents, pounds, and yen. Or if you want to keep track of it yourself, you can choose "N/A".
Grid: if it helps you stay more organize, you can add a grid to the list.
Done color: by default, "got" items are yellow, but you can change that to a variety of colors, or even white, if you don't want the color to change.
Open last used file: Listmas is designed to work that you open list files either from the simple "New/Open" dialog, or by passing them as an argument. But if you want, you can just make it remember the last list that you had open, and it will open that one.
Show columns: the thing that I really wanted to add was customization. What if someone wants to create a list for just one person, so they don't need the "Person" column? Or what if someone doesn't shop online, so "URL" is irrelevant? Well, Listmas lets you hide whatever columns you want. This doesn't mean that the field will be hidden, just the column. That means that if you hide "Note", in the list, the "Note" column will be gone, but there will still be the "Note" space below the list. The reason for this is that I thought maybe the list could just be an "at a glance" view, and then if someone wanted to view all of the information, they click on the entry in the list and see the rest below.

It really is simple, but it's also very nice. It's not perfect, but from what I can see, it's the only list program out there. It's open source written in Autohotkey, portable (mostly, but I'll fix it all the way in the future), and it's very tiny, at only 250kb in size.

I still have a few ideas, if Listmas gets enough people to try it out and tell me they liked it. Here's a few plans that I am.....well, planning.

"Shipping" column (for online buyers. I always like knowing how much I'm spending on shipping vs the price of the item.)
"Date" column (for the year-round aspect of Listmas. Maybe even a reminder, like for birthdays.)
Remembering & restoring column placement and width. (That would actually be pretty tricky, but I'd like to get there some day.)
Generating an HTML report (I've already toyed with this, and it actually is not so hard. Just exporting everything to a very nice, presentable page that the user could print if they're going shopping, that also contains data like "Total amount spent". The problem is, the reports look....bleh. I'm really bad at HTML, so it looks very ugly. Plus, I'm having trouble coming up with enough data for an interesting report. I'd need some help on this one.)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
-CodeByter: *The one list program I did find was by a site called CodeByter, and I drew alot of inspiration from it to make Listmas (like the colored rows, thought I actually didn't think I could pull that off.) It was a wonderful list program, but it had a few things that I wanted changed, so that's why I wrote Listmas. Otherwise, I owe alot to him. His website is down, for some reason, which makes me terribly sad.
-UselessDreamer: For helping to point me in the right direction for putting images in a listview....and for the stars....sorry for stealing!
-Titan: For his amazing anchor script, which is like the oxygen for my programs. My windows would never be resizable without you, Titan.
-tkoi: For his Image Button Script. My GUIs are pretty thanks to you, tkoi.
-evl: For his amazing Listview color script. Didn't believe it possible (in AHK) until you proved me wrong.
-PhilHo: For his astounding listview-column-swap script, allowing me to add the stars, and take Listmas to the next level in the future.

Visit FreewareWire Software Downloads page for Listmas v1.0.2009

Function Grapher 2: Math + Freeware = Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 20:18:00 +0000

Function Grapher 2 is a wonderful little app that graphs mathematical functions. It's extremely simple, but complex enough to be able to graph terribly difficult equations. You can plot almost any function you can type in, then plot its derivative, evaluate the function at some point, evaluate the derivative at some point, and even do integration over a period. You can also graph implicit functions, zoom in and out, and save to a file (which can then be opened with the click of a button, if you're working with a certain graph over an extended period of time). The last thing to mention is that it's very much like a workplace, in that you can have multiple graphs open and switch between them.

Function Grapher is very small, only 56kb, and runs at next to no resources. I'm somewhat convinced that it is not portable, since my system now has the FGR extension (the saved files from Function Grapher) associated with it, and I don't ever remember asking it to do that. So while it may or may not require any files outside of itself, it will leave traces in the registry.

It's a handy little app for students. The only feature I wish it had would be like Wzgrapher, where you can save the graph as an image. But otherwise, it could be a life saver in those Calculus courses.

Visit Function Grapher 2 (Madhavan's) website for download

Skeys: Specialize your Special Keys!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:10:00 +0000

A while ago, I bought a keyboard to use with my netbook, and when it came it had many function keys that I was not used to ("Special" keys, if you will), because I had not used a keyboard with special keys for several years (certainly not since learning Autohotkey.) As I tested them out, I found that some of them opened a web browser that I would rather not use, or that brought up an e-mail client instead of Gmail (which I use), or even that the volume + and - seemed to be swapped. So I decided to do a little coding and rebind it to what I wanted. That was easy enough, but then I thought, "What if I wrote a program for this?"

Skeys (pronounced like "skiis") is the result of me itching to code and getting a new piece of hardware. It's actually been in the works for quite some time, even "Stable", per se, but I haven't written about it or posted it on FreewareWire Software for several reasons which I will not name. Anyway, I think it should be ready now.

Setup.
Before you can jump in to using your special keys, you have to figure out which ones you want Skeys to use and which key is which. When I was thinking about how to do this best, I was a tad befuddled at first. Of course I could name them things like "E-mail" or "Web browser", but where's the fun in that? (Plus, I wasn't sure if every single keyboard had all those keys do the same thing.) So instead, I took a different approach for identifying the keys you want. On the "Setup Screen", there are 18 buttons that all have "Use This Key" on them. When you press one of the special keys, the button for that key will change to "!!!Use This Key!!!" letting you know that that is the button for that key.

In addition, I also threw in an "Autocheck" feature; if "autocheck" is on, when you press one of the special keys, it will automatically press down the button too, meaning that you can configure which keys you want in under 20 seconds, easily.

The last feature for setup is Nicknaming. Again, naming keys "E-mail" or "Play/pause" is so droll, so I thought "Why not let the user be able to name them?" So when you find which button is for the key you want to use, right click it, and you assign that key its "Nickname", which will make it 100 times easier to identify.

The Heart of Skeys.
Finally we've come to the heart of Skeys. I wanted to make Skeys straightforward for the less computer-savy, but functional enough to be customizable to the fullest potential. The reason that you check buttons and whatnot is because I was writing Skeys and I got to its "heart", and I thought "Why should the user be worried about 18 different keys when they maybe just want to use one?" So using the Setup screen, you can handpick which keys you want to use, and then from then point on, those are the only keys you have to worry about.

So anyway, you can select the keys that you picked in the setup from a drop down list, and every key will either have the Nickname that you gave it (aha! See? Isn't it handy already?) or it's "reference code". [Every "Special key" has a reference code that is "SC" followed by three letters/numbers.] When you pick one of the keys from the list, you can then add actions that will be performed when the key is pressed. And
My.
Goodness.
There are a ton I threw in. I wanted it to be completely feature filled, so here they are:

Open File/Program
Power Function

Logoff
Switch User
Standby
Hibernate
Hibernate/Standby [uses Standby as a backup if Hibernation is turned off]
Shutdown
Restart

Send keystrokes

Send
Paste

Volume Function

Mute
Unmute
Toggle mute
Up
Down

Popup

Center
Bottom right
Bottom left
Top right
Top left

Skeys

Show Skeys
Show Skeys setup
Disable Skeys
Disable this hotkey
Exit Skeys

Wait

Most of those are self-explanatory and don't have any configurable options, but others also do, which I will talk about now.
-OPEN FILE/PROGRAM: Choose whatever file/program you want to open/run. You can either manually type in the path to the file, or click the ellipses button and navigate there. Please note that in the "Select File" dialog, you may choose either "Programs (*.exe)" or "All Files (*.*)" from the drop down list below the filename field.
-"SEND"/"PASTE" KEYSTROKES: Under the submenu of "Send keystrokes", "Send" will "type" whatever you want. The only difference between "Send" and "Paste" is that "Paste" types whatever you have specified instantly, like pasting from the clipboard, while "Send" types one character at a time. I'll talk more about this later, because it's so massive!
-"WAIT": Simply waits, doing nothing, forever however long you specify. The time is in seconds, but is accurate to milliseconds (0.001 seconds). Don't go below that accuracy, though (ie "1.000000000001"), because that is just beyond the limitations of Autohotkey (and it's just plain ridiculous).

Sending keystrokes.
I only make this a separate section because it is so completely massive, and I am quite proud of it. You can send just about anything in terms of keystrokes, every single key on the keyboard from "A" to "Z" and from "1" to "0". But wait, there's more! You can also pick the "Other" keys, ones that aren't as straightforward.
-COMMON: Basically standard keys that have one function, and the arrow keys. Examples: Enter, Escape, Tab, Delete, Space, etc.
-F KEYS: All F keys, up to 24. Even if you don't have a keyboard that has 1-24, you can still use 13-24.
-NUMPAD: All keys and variations on the numpad. Note that, in terms of textual output, a "Numpad 7" is the same as a regular "7". The difference is only if a game uses the Num keys, or such. Also note that these options are uneffected by Numlock.
-TOGGLE: Contains the "Locks" and the "Modifiers". Although it should be obvious "Shift down" will act as though Shift has been pressed down until "Shift up" is indicated. ~~A regular "Shift" will stay down only until the immediate following character, such as "{Shift}rs" will produce "Rs" (if capslock is off.)~~ A regular "Shift" will act like the user pressed and release Shift before sending the next key. Essentially, sending something like "{Shift}rs" is the same as sending "{Shift Down}{Shift Up}rs". (Thanks to Tony for catching that for me!)
-BRACES: (or brackets....) Because braces/brackets are used for "other" keys, they also become "other" keys themselves. In order to use a brace, just put it inside braces! Example: {{}Hi there!{}} will result in {Hi There!}

The coolest part about the key sending function is that it's very well organized. There is a huge menu with sub-menus and options that you can press, but you can also just get the gist of most keys and be able to type them in yourself. For example,
Enter = {Enter}
F2 = {F2}
Numpad - = {Numpad -}
If that isn't simple, I don't know what is! But if you're ever confused about what a key should be, the menu is there.

Multi-action.
While writing Skeys, I thought "You know what would be even cooler than Skeys being able to do one of those things? It being able to do more." Every single key in Skeys has not only one command it can execute, but a list of commands. For example, you can make one key (1) mute the volume, (2) send "I love FreewareWire!", and (3) send the computer to standby, in that order. You can add (theoretically) as many commands as you want, and Skeys will execute them from top to bottom.
But please let me make myself clear: Skeys is not meant to execute a long string of commands, and therefore is not supported in doing so. Please don't complain to me if you have a list of 20 commands that aren't being executed right.

Disabling Skeys.
If you want to temporarily disable a hotkey, go to the Skeys main window (NOT the Setup), and just uncheck the "Enabled" box for that key. The effect will be immediate, and the Special key will do its original intention outside of Skeys.

If you want to disable ALL of Skeys, Double click on the tray icon, or right click the tray and click "Enabled". If Skeys is disabled, the icon will be greyed out, and all of the Skeys will do their original purpose outside of Skeys. In other words, when Skeys is disabled, Special keys will act as if Skeys is not even running.

If you want to make a special key do nothing, mark in in Setup, then just check its "Enabled" box in the main window without adding any actions. This will make Skeys take over that key from its original purpose, but then give it 0 commands to do, meaning it will do nothing.

Icing on the cake.
On top of all that, there are options that I included to make Skeys as streamlined as possible.
-Start with Windows: If you get to the point where you love Skeys so terribly that you need it all the time, there's an easy menu option for that.
-Start Disabled: If for some reason you don't want Skeys to be active when it starts, you can make it start disabled.
-Skip Setup: This is where it really starts to make the experience great. Once you get the feel of Skeys and you routinely use the same special keys, you can make Skeys skip the "Setup" screen, meaning it will go straight to the "heart" window.
-Start in tray: Maybe you are so used to Skeys that you don't even need to see the configuration screen. That's ok, check this option, and it will will skip both the Setup screen and the Heart screen and will sit quietly in your tray.

Final notes.
Just a few things that I want to say.
-PORTABLE: Skeys is portable, in that it does not need any external files and it leaves nothing on your computer. However, certain things, like launching a program with a Skey, will not work because the path is not relative.
-Open Source: Yay for freedom!
-Untested/Unstable: I've tested Skeys to an extent, but not heavily. There's already things that I know that don't work amazingly well, like the popups.
-Messy code: To be honest, I am a messy code writer and it's been a while since I actually wrote Skeys, so the code is very messy. (Hopefully a few programming courses next semester will whip me into shape.)

Acknowledgements.
Just a few people I want to thank.
Xoxide - For making a freakin sweet, glowy keyboard to write Skeys.
Titan - For his ABSO-FRIKKIN-LUTELY A-MAZING anchor script, whichout which my programs could never be resized.
Yook - For his AMAZING Balloontip script, letting you display a balloon any current control.

That's about it. I really love Skeys, possibly the most out of all the programs I've written just because of how limitless it is (and because, honestly, I'm really proud of the keystroke sending.) I hope if you decide to take a look at Skeys that you'll enjoy it. It's a fun little app that I believe has great potential.

[NOTE: Over the last two days, I've compiled and recompiled more times than I can count because I keep finding problems that I thought I had fixed a long time ago. So what that means to you is, Skeys is way less stable than I thought, so if you find an error (or errors), don't be surprised, but also let me know. PLEASE let me know. I really want to make it the most usable it can be, and I can only do that if I fix the bugs.]

Visit FreewareWire Software Downloads page for Skeys v1.1

Quitter: Who says quitters never prosper?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:14:00 +0000

Quitter is a "quiet little Twitter client". It's extremely interesting, because you can read tweets, send tweets, and pretty much have the entire functionality of Twitter.....right in your command line. Yes, it's a command line program.

READ:
-Read all: Read an aggregate of tweets from every user that you're following.
-Read groups: Read tweets only from users in a certain group. (Read on to find what a group is.)
-Read from user: You can scroll through the users you are subscribed to and pick one to read their tweets.
-Read mentioned: Read tweets where you are mentioned, ie, @Freewarewire.

DIRECT MESSAGES:
-Read: Yesh.
-Send: You can also send a direct message to any user (even one you're not following). Just be sure you type the username correctly.

ACTIONS:
-Post a tweet: Self explanatory. Type in a tweet, and it will get posted to your profile.
-Reply: You can also reply to a tweet, or reply to a direct message.
-Retweet: You also have the ability to retweet someone else's tweet, but it's a little more difficult, since you just scroll through the tweets using the arrow keys
-Open link: If a tweet contains a link, you can choose to open it your web browser. But again, it requires the arrow keys, so it can be a bit difficult to find the tweet you're looking for.

Quite a bit of functionality, for such a "quiet" program. Plus, there's even more.

Color changing.
Unfortunately, you can't change the background color (within Quitter. However, I believe Quitter follows the Windows command line protocol, so you can make a batch file, but that gets a little complicated.) But you can change the text color, and the highlight color. What's highlighting? Glad you asked...

Filtering/Highlighting.
On top of being a "normal" Twitter client, Quitter also lets you sort incoming messages. Filtering allows you to block certain messages, and Highlighting highlights certain messages. You can use the following three types for either:
-hashtags (ex: #hashtag)
-usernames (ex: @username)
-word (ex: "shareware")
If you filter any of the above, they will not be shown in Twitter. If you Highlight them, they will be changed to the "Highlight color", making them stand out.

Grouping.
On top of everything else, you can also divide who you follow into groups. The reasoning? Because you can also get tweets from one specific group.

Number of tweets.
You can also change how many tweets are displayed on the screen. The default is 20 (which currently fills my screen from top to bottom) but the max is 200 (which would be massive!)

URL shortening service.
Quitter also lets you set what service you want to use when you post a tweet.

Over-post in red.
Twitter limits it to 140 characters per tweet, and Quitter knows that. When posting a tweet, anything beyond 140 characters will be in red text. You can still tweet it, but the red will get cut off.

Download updates.
Not only can Quitter check for updates every time it starts, it can also download the update straight to the Quitter folder. It won't install it for you, but all you have to do is open the ZIP file and extract the new version of Quitter over the old one.

Really, it's great little app, even for someone who doesn't use Twitter that much (ie, me). There are a few things you should know about it though.
1. Can't read own tweets (in version 1.2).
I'm not vain, I just wish this was an option. It really would be nice. Especially if you think you misspelled something or whatnot.
2. No need to Enter.
If you've ever used command line files, you know that you type something, then press "Enter", and it submits the data to the program. In Quitter, it submits the data as soon as you press a key, meaning you don't have to press "Enter" after. It's actually very nice because it lets you browse the menus much faster, but it does take some getting used to.
3. Needs .NET framework (2.0).
Yes, it does need the Microsoft .NET framework, so that makes me consider it not portable. Don't get me wrong, it can be put on a flash drive and taken anywhere, it just might not work on all computers.

One more thing that I need to add about Quitter is that it's development has been abandoned, meaning the author has decided to move on to other programs. That doesn't mean that Quitter is not awesome or will not work, it just means that it's going to stay where it is.

If you don't mind the command line, it's a wonderful little app. It's only ~300kb in size, but it does require a hefty amount of RAM for what it does (15MB on my current machine). It is open source, and is promised to stay that way. If you like simplicity with functionality, Quitter is for you.

Visit Quitter (Disintegrator Software) website for download

Folding@home: Ask not what freeware can do for you....

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:28:00 +0000

Freeware can be really handy. Just browsing the freeware on this little site can show you that. It's just downright helpful. Checking e-mails, browsing the web, chatting with friends, writing work documents, listening to music, organizing wedding photos, you name it. Freeware helps in many areas of life. But who helps freeware?

Folding@home is a very interesting idea created by Pande Lab at Stanford University as a way to help us understand the "art" of protein folding. Proteins do what is called "folding," essentially changing form and purpose in the time span of a microsecond, and understanding how and why they do this could help us find the cures to many diseases, and help us better understand our own psychological structure. (That's just my understanding of it.)

You might think that a supercomputer is the best way to get this done, but that's actually not the case. The best way to virtually fold the maximum amount of proteins is to actually have it spread out on a ton of computers, all over the world. What better way than to do it in our households? "Folding@home" is a computer program that simulates how a protein will fold, and does so "at home" on all types of computers. It uses the host computer's processor to fold a specific protein, then sends that data back to "headquarters" (Stanford).

You may be a little skeptical, but Folding@home really does produce results. All you have to do is install it, set it up (just a little configuration), and add it to run on startup, and you'll forget it's running. I've run it on multiple computers over the years, and I've never seen a decrease in performance when it's running. You can set the priority and even make it stop if you switch to battery (for laptops) so it doesn't eat up your battery life. Overall, it doesn't require anything of the user, and helps so much. Why not start folding?

Also, as a bit of an incentive, you can also keep track of how much you've folded. You can register a username and even join a team, and you can compare your "work load" with others in your team, or even compare your team with other teams. In fact, there's actually a FreewareWire Folding@home team, in case anyone wants to join. To join a team, just type the team number, (for example, 174576 for the FreewareWire team) into the "Configuration" window of your F@h client, right below your username, and bam, you are linked in to that team. But don't feel pressure to join the FW team. There are plenty of teams out there, from a Google team to Duncan's (mobilephone2003 of Youtube) team (whom I must mention, since he's the one who first introduced me to F@h). Just pick whatever team you want, and fold away. Or don't even choose a team, if you don't want. Just start folding, somehow.

With so little cost and so much gain, why not start folding? Freeware gives a ton to us. Let's give a little back to freeware.

Visit Folding@home website for download

Advanced Diary (v1.3): Dear Journal, I love this freeware!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:32:00 +0000

A while ago, I decided I wanted to pick up journaling again for the first time in who knows how many years, since it really helps unwind at the end of the day and think about what's happened, plus there's the added bonus of looking back at the entries years later. And me, being a freeware freak, decided to find a freeware to make journaling easier (plus, my handwriting is atrocious).

I came across Advanced Diary, and I was extremely surprised at just how much it was exactly what I was looking for. Here's some of the key features that I really like, in terms of a diary.

"Wordpad"-like: I was expecting something like notepad: write down text, but not much formatting. I was wrong. Advanced Diary has it's own little "Wordpad" built in, filled with formatting like font type, font size, font color, bold, italics, underline, highlighting, alignment, "find in text", tables, hyperlinks, bullets, numberings, spellcheck, and more *GASP FOR AIR*. That's alot of features for just a diary! Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's actually more than Wordpad! It might not be as much as Microsoft Word, but it definitely has enough for a good diary.

Password protected: This is a must, in my opinion. Journals are often very personal, and you don't want people snooping around, so having a password is a necessity for a good diary program. But then, it's also an optional feature, for maybe if you are just journaling about something non-private, like your favorite sports team.

Calendar: It has a wonderful little calendar in month form, which you can browse through. What's even extra cool is that the day is bold if it has an entry, meaning you can tell at a glance what days have entries and what days don't.

"Find": This actually surprised me about how good it was. Say you remember journaling about a certain word, like "freeware", but couldn't remember what month, much less what day, you had mentioned it in. Advanced Diary has a wonderful search that will pull up every entry that has the search terms in it.

Link to other entries: This is really kewl. Say you refer to something you said last week, and you want to provide an easy way to find where you said it in your Advanced Diary journal. You can actually create a hotlink, just like to a URL, except it will take you to that Advanced Diary entry. (Keep in mind, Advanced Diary is not tabbed, so you can't multitask, but it's still a useful tool.)

Autosave: If you've ever used Google's Blogger service, you know how useful this is. You'll be typing along, your browser/internet/computer will crash, but you don't worry about typing that long post, because Blogger auto-saves the draft as you go along. Advanced Diary has the same functionality, only better. You can actually specify how often you want it to auto-save, meaning it can save every 1 minute, assuring you that no entry will ever be lost.

Images: Maybe you want to illustrate your journal with doodles or pictures. Advanced Diary can do that too. One of the nice things about it is that (I believe) it actually copies the picture data into the Advanced Diary file, not just the link to the image file. That means that if you delete the image on your hard drive, it won't dissapear out of your diary, like in some other word processors *coughOpenOfficecough*. On the downside, there aren't as many formatting features for images as there are in processors like MS Word or OpenOffice. You can't choose the wrap (how the text moves around the image) or really any other formatting, but you can adjust the alignment (just like with text) and resize.

Thesaurus: This is kind of a bonus, but you can select a word and use the built in thesaurus, which you can then use to replace the word with a synonym.

Multiple Diaries: This is an interesting feature. Suppose you want to journal, but want to keep it "separated", like maybe journal about school in one place, and then about your latest gaming venture in another, and so on and so forth. Advanced Diary actually lets you create multiple diary's in hierarchical form. For example, your diary list might look something like below:

-School

-Diet

-Private

--Friends

---Geoffrey

--Girlfriend

Overall, it's a fascinating concept. It's really a good way to further organize your entries.

Print, Backup/Restore, Import/Export: Need I explain? I shall. You can print the current entry, all entries in the current diary, or all entries from a specified date range. You can backup for safety, and then restore if something goes awry. You can import (which is actually really picky and depends on what the files are named), and you can export in RTF, TXT, or HTML (images will actually be exported along with the HTML file!). Overall, it's a great way to get entries in and out of Advanced Diary.

It really is a wonderful utility. Some might say "It's just a glorified, organized notepad, with password protection!" And I would respond ".....so?" What more could you ask of in a Diary?

There is one catch though. Unfortunately, the makers of Advanced Diary decided that it's so good, it should be worth $30. However, the last free version available (version 1.3) is available through the ever-amazing and wonderful A+ Freeware, and can be downloaded from thus. This entire blog post was about the free v1.3, so don't think you are being cheated of any features.

Visit Advanced Diary (host site A+ Freeware) for download

PDFCreator: Printing without the printer

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:41:00 +0000

Sometimes you want to print something, but you don't want to use the paper. That's why there are programs called virtual printers which allows you to print whatever you want, only saving it to a file instead of actually putting ink onto paper. PDFCreator is one such program, and (as you can tell by the name) it excels in the creation of PDFs.

If you've never heard of a program like PDFCreator before, you might find it a tad odd, but trust me, virtual printer software is DEFINITELY something you want to have on your computer. Why? Well, for starters, if you've ever wanted to save something without having to use paper (say, a receipt while online shopping), you can just print it to a PDF instead. Also, PDFCreator is great if you want to "convert" anything that can be printed into the PDF format.

When you go to print something, all you have to do is select "PDF Creator" from the list instead of your hardware printer. Then, after whatever program is printing is done, it will hand the file over to PDFCreator, and you'll be prompted for a filename. Name it, click save, and you're done. It's that easy. It also has a ton of options like the ability to integrate into the shell, or make it auto-save with the date and time as a filename.

One surprising thing about PDFCreator is that it is not limited only to PDF files. Although that is the default, it can also "print" to PNG, JPG, BMP, PSD, TIFF, and several more. Another surprising thing is that PDFCreator does not just take a "snapshot" of the thing being printed. If you use a PDF reader, you probably know that on some PDFs, you have the ability to search for text, because the text is actually in the PDF. When PDFCreator prints a file, it doesn't just "flatten" it to a picture, it includes the text. So if you print a word document, you can then search through the text in the PDF you've printed. I don't use PDFs that much, but I thought that was pretty nifty.

Virtual Printers are one type of software I can't live without. The uses are endless. You can use it for anything from just creating a PDF of a letter to your cousin to taking a section of a multipage PDF by "printing" that section with PDFCreator. The only downsides are (1) it's like installing hardware so there are drivers, (2) it's not portable, since it's like installing a real printer, and (3) it's not a lite install. PDFCreator takes at least 21mb, probably a bit more including drivers. But if you can spare the space, it's totally worth it. Plus, it's even open source.

Visit PDFCreator (pdfforge) website for download

Music Animation Machine: MAM your MIDIs!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 06:22:00 +0000

MIDI files are pretty nifty, if you think about it. Really, they are just directions that tell what to play, like sheet music for the concert pianist. You might not find that fascinating at first glance, but after seeing what MAM can do with that sheet music, you'll do a double take.

Music Animation Machien (shortened to "MAM") is a MIDI player, but it's more than that. MIDI's might be considered to be sound files, but MAM definitely makes them something more. In addition to being able to play MIDI files, it also has a visualizer, and a pretty sweet one at that. It has 12 different views you can choose, differing from the regular piano roll-esque dancing lines to views that really have music theory behind them. Either way, no matter what you choose, you can most certainly say "Pretty colors" to any of them. MAM takes a midi file and turns it into a musical screensaver.

You can change colors, show the note start lines, and choose whether the notes are colored due to pitch or by what track it is. If you choose pitch, you can set the tonic, thus changing the colors of the notes. You can also view the track by right clicking in certain views.

MAM also has a limited ability to accept MIDI input as well. For example, it has the ability for "Live play", meaning that it will create the visualization as you play on your MIDI controller. Let me be clear, though, in saying that MAM is not a MIDI editor. You can save files, but all it does is save the color preferences for later usages of MAM.

It's the niftiest MIDI player I've yet seen. The only thing that I'm kind of said about is that it doesn't have a fullscreen option. If it did, you could rig it to be your screensaver, opening a random MIDI and taking up the full screen. But alas. Anyway, one of the other things about MAM that is great is that it is very tiny, weighing in less than 1MB, and is portable.

It's really nifty. There are a ton of videos of neat works that are just played through MAM. It's fun to search around and find works you like and then toy with the color and view settings until you get a really great lightshow.

Visit Music Animation Machine website for download

FreewareWire PC & Youtube channel

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 03:00:00 +0000

So if you haven't noticed, this site is not the most dependable thing when it comes to be updated. One of the reasons for that (other than my laziness) is that I really haven't had a computer upon which I could install a ton of different freewares on. I have an EEE 901 netbook, and the family computer. Or should I say, had. I decided to finally buy my own PC, and not only that, to build it, for a number of reasons:

1. I wanted to learn how to build

2. I wanted to get customibility/upgradibility

3. I wanted it to have Windows XP or the OS of my choice. (In other words, NOT Vista.)

Hopefully, if all goes well, the first ever FreewareWire PC will increase the amount of reviews I can make (and let me play games newer than Half-life 1...) Since this is not really a personal blog, but a blog of freeware, I'm going to make this more for the FreewareWire Youtube channel. "What?" You ask, "That exists?" Yes, it does. It's never had an update, but it is there. My first "series" of videos will be documenting my PC build, then after that, it will be showing off freeware as I discover it. (It will not take the place of reviews, rather just add on.)

So there are the two huge announcements: (1) FreewareWire PC, and (2) Youtube channel. If you want to find more about either, check out my intro video, streaming live to an internet near you!

-Jon

Songbird: Sing a song of freedom!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 07:35:00 +0000

iTunes is one of the most used and well known music players, currently, but that doesn't mean that there's not free, open-sourced alternatives that are just as good, if not better. Songbird is one of those alternatives.

Usually, I don't like to "compare" freeware right off the bat, but the reason is because Songbird (at least in my mind) is a open source, better iTunes. It has alot of the same look and feel, but with better features.

First off, Songbird runs on XUL, the same thing that runs all Mozilla products (Firefox, Thunderbird, InstantBird, Miro, Spicebird, and of course, Mozilla), meaning that it really has the feel of a Mozilla product to it. Secondly, this means that it is completely cross platform, even though it is not as supported on Mac or Linux or Solaris as it is on Windows.

Addons.

So what makes Songbird so great? Good question! It really is the "Firefox of media players" in that it is extremely customizable. Just like Firefox and Thunderbird, it has addons that can be installed to further increase just how you want your media player to be. This can range from a different media view (like cover flow) to an alarm clock to displaying the Wikipedia article of the artist right there in your library. Granted, the addons are definitely not as vast as Firefox's, but they are growing every day.

Browser.

Another extremely noticeable difference from other media players is that it has its own web browser built in. That's right, it has a little Firefox(ish) browser, with addons and everything. The reasoning is that you can use that browser for searching for music, which I find very refreshing. But please, don't think this will replace your everyday browser, because it does not have all the features of a full fledged web browser, and it's not intended to.

Features.

So it has a web browser, and plugins. What else? Well, it also has the ability to add different stores, to search for concerts, and to play online streaming radio from within Songbird. It has features like an Equalizer built in, and different media views, expanding it beyond the three of iTunes. It also has "feathers" (skins) that REALLY allow you to customize how it looks. Besides the obvious "iTunes" skins (which are in abundance), you can get a practically whatever look or feel you want. The feathers do tend to run darker, but you can usually find one to fit your wants.

Ambition.

The main thing that I love about Songbird is the ambition. It has a very clear roadmap, and has stuck to it thus far (except for version 1.3, which is apparently put on hold...) The developers know that features are lacking, and are working on them.

For example, CD ripping is a new feature in 1.4 Beta. (Many believe that it should have been in 1.0, but that's a different discussion.) Currently, it only allows you to rip into OGG, FLAC, or WMA. Now Linux people might be rejoicing (even though you can only rip on Windows...), but most people I know don't use FLAC or OGG, and if you use WMA, you should be burned at the stake. (Just Kidding!) My point is, they're currently missing the very obvious MP3 option that most users desire.

Confusion.

All of that being said about ambition, I do have to admit that I'm slightly concerned about Songbird's future in terms of features. Indeed, their roadmap does look promising, but it worries me that people want it to be more than a music player. I read a comment on the Songbird blog that said "Please make songbird able to view PDF files". My point is, because it kind of "overdoes it" with the internet browser (in my opinion), people seem to want too much from Songbird. It seems like the developers are going in the right direction, but let's hope they stay the course.

iPod.

I want to talk very briefly about iPod support. You might say "Jon! I don't have an iPod! You're totally blocking out 1 of the 5 people that actually read this blog!" Well, tough.

I want to start off by saying that Songbird does have iPod support, though it might be a little touchy at times. Really, Songbird does have most of the features when it comes to iPods. There are a few that I've found that I want to change before I switch over.

1. Rip CDs to compatible format

It's great that Songbird can rip CDs, but if it's not MP3 or AAC, that doesn't help. MP3 will definitely come in the future, but it is a necessity, in my opinion.

2. "Remember position" and "Skip when shuffling"

Unfortunately, Songbird does not have support for these yet. Hopefully, it can be something as simple as an Addon, but it needs to be there for me. Why? Well, I need "Remember position" for movies or long things like maybe audiobooks or church sermons, and I need "Skip when shuffling" for things like comedy or church sermons. Again, not a necessity, per se, but it really should be there, and I don't understand what the difficulty would be in adding it.

3. Separate sections for video/audio

Right now, Songbird does not have good support for video. In the next release (1.4?) The developers do promise a ton of stuff for video support, but that is a MUST for me. "The Dark Knight" should not come on on shuffle.

4. Good podcast support for iPod

I likes me some Ask A Ninja, and I'm not going to give that up when I change media players. Again, this is a definite plan, but I'm just stating it as something that you should be aware of.

5. Smart Playlists for iPod

Songbird does have the ability to create playlists and sync those to your iPod. It also has the ability to create "Smart" playlists, but those are unsyncable.

6. Album art

Songbird does have the ability to have album art on your computer, but cannot transfer that to your iPod. To me, this is an extra feature, and really doesn't effect how I use my iPod, but some people may find it more of an issue.

So that's my little rant on iPod support. Songbird is an amazing media player, but it doesn't make sense to use Songbird to manage my media, then use iTunes to sync my iPod (especially since I'm a "play count nazi"...) So until Songbird steps its game up (which it already is), I'm stuck with iTunes.

But I personally believe that Songbird has the most potential for being an iTunes replacement. People might say "Are you saying Songbird is better than other media players?" No, I'm just saying that when it comes to transitioning from iTunes to another media player, Songbird might be the smoothest, whereas foobar2000 or MediaMonkey might be a little harder just because it feels different.

Problems.

I've had trouble sufficiently using Songbird for an extended time just because I use iTunes, but I have noticed that Songbird tends to be a bit buggy. Do note that the developers are trying hard to remove the bugs, but just don't expect it to be perfect. I've noticed that it crashes sometimes, more than I would like. The main problem I have is that it is rather resource hungry. True, iTunes is slow as a dead raccoon, but Songbird can't really offer much more sometimes. But the developers are working to fix it, as I've said, since I've seen remarkable improvements just in a few short version jumps.

Conclusion.

Overall, Songbird is a wonderful media player. It does good dealing with a large amount of music, and very well could bring iTunes to its knees. However, it still has a ways to go. It might be a bit lacking compared to other media players, but it will get there eventually, and it's already on its way. If Songbird has enough features to make you happy, then switch over and rejoice. But if it's still lacking a few things, then wait, and watch. Bright things are ahead for Songbird.

PS - I know that's not the "official" Songbird icon, but I refuse to use the "goldfish" application icon. Long live B&W!

Visit Songbird website for download

GIMP: Move over, Photoshop

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:25:00 +0000

To those of us who are not rich enough to afford Photoshop, or corrupt enough to torrent it, there is GIMP. GIMP is one of the best freeware of all time. It is so amazingly huge that it's almost impossible to explain the advantages in one blog post. But I'll try.

Please know that (1) I am not a graphics designer, and (2) I've never actually tried photoshop for a serious project. That being said, there are many people who are skilled in graphics design and photo manipulation that could write a far better review that I'm about to give, and I agree with them 100%. However, I'm still going to attempt to voice my opinion from the viewpoint of someone who just wants a freeware that can manipulate photos, not one that can compete with a $$$$$$$$$ commercial product.

So on with the show! The first thing you notice about the GIMP is that it requires GTK, which means that it has that "Linux type look" on Windows (and Linux as well). Some people aren't used to that, and it might scare them away, but it is very nice if you can deal with a little GNOME-ish appearance.

Next, the GIMP can handle a ton of different filetypes. It has its own, XCF, but it can also handle pretty much any image file you can image, from Photoshop files down to a gzip archive. It has tons of different tools, many mimicking Photoshop, and you can download things like fonts, brushes, and other little gadgets to further personalize your editing skills. It has a ton of filters which are being updated with each release, and it supports layers (obviously).

There are a few things wrong with the GIMP though. First is the startup time. It takes about a minute to start on my EEE PC, even more if you have a ton of fonts and brushes and such. Also, it's actually fairly buggy, and has crashed on me several times in the middle of work. That's not to say that it crashes every time, just several times. And any computer person knows, a program crashing before you've been able to save is never a happy thing.

The last thing I have to criticize GIMP for is the lack of user friendability. (Is that a word? Well, it is now.) Out of all of the freeware programs I've come across, the GIMP scared me the most when I first opened it. I mean, before GIMP, I used MS Paint, and jumping between those two is like going straight from crawling to running a marathon. It doesn't make it any easier that the "Help" file is not included in the download. However, there is plenty of support available on the GIMP Talk forums, and even books about GIMP (which are far more interesting than you'd think, in my experience).

Right now, it might seem like GIMP is a mediocre program since I've spent about half the time talking about it's flaws. But that's not the case. GIMP is an amazing program, but it's extremely complex. It's not as easy as just saying "Well, it has a nice blur filter," because GIMP really doesn't have one use. Heck, it doesn't have an intended use, really. GIMP is the most unbounded freeware utility you will find this side of Linux. The possibilities are endless.

Not only is GIMP 95% of everything you want in a (freeware) image editor, it's also cross platform, portable, and open source.

This is probably the worst review I've done (which is saying something), but I figured that if I put out a crappy review, someone smarter than me would offer to write their own and let me post it (giving them credit, of course). The way I see different users using GIMP is like this: if you don't know that much about GIMP, then this review might help turn you on to a great utility that you can begin to learn how to use. If you do know a ton about GIMP and think this review is oversimplified, then you're smarter than me, what are you doing here expecting profound image editing advice? I am no guru.

PS - If I get so much as one comment saying how much better Photoshop is than GIMP, my head is going to explode. Look at the title of this blog. This is "FreewareWire," not "$700CommercialSoftwareWire".

Visit GIMP website for download

Raindrop: Drop what you're doing and relax.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:42:00 +0000

The sound of a raindrop is very soothing. So it makes sense that a freeware named "Raindrop" would be soothing as well. Raindrop creates "natural ambient sounds" for relaxation, sleep, and meditation. It does this by providing several two interesting features:

Background sound: Raindrop comes with several WAV files such as an air conditioner, a summer night, and wind noise. You can set up to three of them, and adjust each of their volume's indepdently of each other. It also has some sounds that are more for meditiation, like chanting and a "voice lullaby." Let me just say that, for things such as "Electric fan", they are very realistic, and don't sound at all like it is just a looping file.

Binaural beats: I am not an expert, but here's my explanation. If your ear here's two tones that are very close to each other in frequency (with 30 hertz), sometimes, it can make a mistake when it sends the information to your brain, giving you the impression that there is a "beat." That is a binaural beat. Binaural beats are known for being very relaxing when using low frequencies.

So anyway, Raindrop allows you to set two different tone frequencies (for example, 160hz and 165hz, and it will play the two tones out of the Left and Right speakers, creating a binaural beat, which can soothe and relax you.

The nice thing about Raindrop is that it's extremely customizable. You can have several ambient sounds going, but also some binaural beats as well. Not only that, you can set the individual volume for all three ambient sounds and all three binaural beats. You can also "automize" Raindrop by adding a "starting silence", a fade in/out time, and a "Stop after ___ seconds" with the option of shutting down after it stops.

Overall, Raindrop is an adorable little program. It's nice for someone who wants background noise, without the background noise-causer (like a fan), or for someone who just wants to relax. It's written in Borland Delphi, with the source being freely available, and it is portable to boot. The program is very tiny, at only 400kb, but the WAV files do add on to that, to about 20mb total. However, if you wanted it just as a binaural beats generator, or just wanted one WAV and trashed the rest, you could shrink it down to 1mb. It uses around 1-2mb of RAM when being run, which means that it is very good at creating background ambience in the background of your PC.

Visit Raindrop (mayakron's deep) website for download

xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser: Hat Guy approved.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:21:00 +0000

If you're not familiar with the webcomic xkcd, it's an extremely witty, funny, nerdy comic strip that ~~really only makes sense to geeks~~ geeks might enjoy more, but anyone can appreciate the wonderful humor it creates. xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser does exactly what it says: it randomises a different xkcd comic as the desktop wallpaper. There's a ton of nice things about it.

Auto-cache: Instead of having to download every comic, xkcd actually downloads them for you and keeps them in a cache folder. Of course, if you, for some reason, don't want that, you can manually delete the cache folder's contents every now and again. But anyway, it only downloads the comics once, then uses the saved version.

Preview pane: Kinda nice, but also kinda useless. You can really only see a preview of the current comic, and it's very small, so the image is blurry. Still kinda nice though.

Exclude: If you come across a comic that is not so funny, you can add it to an "excluded" list, which will prevent it from being used again.

Parameters: True, it does have a user interface, but what's also nice about xWR (wow, I am a lazy abbreviator, aren't I?) is that you can pass two different parameters to make it automatically change. Passing "-random" as an argument will not bring up the GUI, and will just cycle to a new wallpaper. Passing "-silent" will make it ignore any windows that might pop up, if you're not connected to the internet for downloading a new comic.

So this means you can make shortcuts, and even add it to your startup to change the wallpaper.

There are only two limitations, and they are both planned and reasonable.

Can't change wallpaper settings: It usually works best to set the settings to "Center", and the surrounding color to either black or white. But xWR can't do that. Really not a big deal, just go into the Control Panel and change it yourself.

Doesn't automatically change: By that, I mean that with other wallpaper changers, you can set it to automatically change every __ minutes, but xWR is a one time deal. You have to click a button or run the -random parameter every time you want it to change. Really, not a problem, just don't expect it to do things like Wallpaper Master or Wallpaperer or any other wallpaper utility. It's name is xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser," and that's exactly what it does; no more, no less.

Probably the best part about xkcd WR is that it's tiny. It's only 28kb in size, but you do have to account for the image sizes, which can easily climb to several megabytes. Still, it's extremely small if you routinely clean your cache. It's also open source, written in C#.NET 2005, to those who are interested. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe it is portable. I'm just a simple man, but I don't think that it requires the .NET framework, but maybe I'm completely wrong. (It does happen. Quite often, actually.) So it might be portable, it might not.

xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser is written by a fan of the xckd comic strip, so it is available on his website.

Visit xkcd Wallpaper Randomiser (Apathy Sketchpad) website for download

MobaLiveCD: Aaaaand we're live!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 01:47:00 +0000

MobaLiveCD is a very unique way to run a virtual machine. The unique thing about it is that it's portable, at only 1.6mb in size. It actually uses Qemu, a different virtual machine engine in and of its own, but it uses it in such a way that makes it portable.

Portability.

The cool part about MobaLiveCD is that it's not only portable, it's designed to be portable. That is, it has an option to install a "Right-click association," meaning that you can right click any ISO files and it will show an option for MobaLiveCD. But the real nice thing is that you can add and remove that association with a click of the mouse. Click "Install" and it's there, click "Uninstall" and it's gone.

Functionality.

So once you pick your ISO file, you have an option of creating a virtual hard disk for it. Your live CD pops up in a window, just as it would if it were on a separate computer. That's about it! Moba makes it really easy to run your live ISOs. The window is NOT resizable, but you can go fullscreen, which is very nice to see how the live CD will look on an actual monitor, not in a window.

Limitations.

The point of MobaLiveCD is not actually to be a virtual machine that is used for an extended period of time (ie, installing Linux inside of Windows and using it often), but instead, it is meant to "test live CDs". Because it's not meant to be as complicated as other virtual machines, there are some limitations. First off, it can only handle ISO files. Secondly, it has the bare bones in terms of customization (RAM amount, USB devices, etc). Lastly, it doesn't appear to be able to boot from a virtual hard disk. You might be wondering "Then why do you have an option to create one?" I'm wondering that as well....I'm guessing it's because maybe you want to attempt to install (like from an Ubuntu Live CD) and you want to give it a test try, then you can. But otherwise, it looks like it's more of a "session-by-session" deal.

So for being a tool to "test Live CDs", it performs EXTREMELY well. Compared to other virtual machine programs, it may seem a little limited, but I prefer the term "lite". Great for if you want to just try out an ISO for a new Linux distribution, or just like to keep a VM program on hand at all times.

Visit MobaLiveCD (Mobatek) website for download

IE Lights: Meet IE Jr.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:00:00 +0000

IE Lights is a very, very stripped down version of IE6 (or is it 5? I can never remember...). Really the best part about IE Lights is its speed. Honestly, IE6 is a respectable browser when it comes to speed. (Maybe not the best, but at least good enough to not make me cringe.) IE Lights is actually faster than IE6, at least in my opinion. At least, it better be. It's extremely tiny at only 84kb!

Of course, for being so small and lite, IE Lights is indeed limited. Of course, since it is based off IE6, it is not tabbed, but that's just the beginning. It has (1) back, (2) forward, (3) address bar, and (4) status bar. That's all. No bookmarks, no history, no menu, NOTHING. Just those four things. The right click menu looks about the same as the normal IE, meaning you can do things like Add to Favorites, Print, Save Image, etc from a right click, but there is no available menu bar.

The only two things that I can find that make me go "That's odd" are (A) the tooltip text on the back/forward buttons (some strange jumbo...), and (B) the fact that it has a large obvious bug. When you start IE Lights, it opens with a blank page. If you type in a web address, then press back, it will crash, because it apparently can't re-render the empty page.

Otherwise, it's a fun web browser. It's nice because it's sooooo light compared to other browsers, and starts up almost instantly. I don't use IE much, but if I have to use it for some reason (like Windows Update), I actually prefer IE Lights to IE6 just because it's so much faster.

IE Lights is kinda portable, but kinda not. I don't think it leaves any registry entries or anything, but then, it does require IE to work, so I'm going to say that it's not portable, but feel free to e-mail me your opinion at FreewareWire@gmail.com.

Also, I have no clue where IE Lights is originally from, but I found it on Freeware Guide, so that's where I'm going to post for the download. (It's on the bottom, right above Ijini).

Visit IE Lights (host site Freeware Guide) website for download

AutoC2D: Eeeasy as pie.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:10:00 +0000

AutoC2D is a program made specifically for the ASUS Eee Netbook series. If you don't own an Eee, Some Eees (I'm not sure of every model) have two hard drives instead of one, such as a 4GB and an 8GB hard drive in the 901 (the model I have). The Windows installation comes installed on the 4GB, which is ok, but that's also where they put the Program Files folder. That means that if you end out installing programs, you can very quickly use up all 4GB, while you have a whole nother 8GB on another drive.

Well, AutoC2D does what the name implies: it Automaticaly moves Program Files from C to (2) D. Theoretically, after running AutoC2D, everything should work just as before, and you'll have alot more space on your C drive. How does it work? Well, here's the process:

(1) When running AutoC2D, make sure you have no unsaved work or aren't playing a game, because it will reboot without asking you.

(2) Once rebooting, it will automatically start into Safe Mode, which is a mode where only the bare minimum of programs will be run. It does this so it can free up every file in the Program Files folder.

(3) It will automatically start copying from C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files.

(4) It will reboot, out of safe mode.

The way AutoC2D "switches" everything over is that it not only moves the files, but it also creates a Junction. A Junction is a folder that is not really there, but points to another folder; like when you click C:\Program Files, it just takes you into D:\Program Files. It basically allows files to "exist" in two places at once, but only taking up the space of one. That's a pretty terrible definition of a Junction, so please search around for someone smarter than I, if you want to get into Junctions and whatnot.

There's a few things I've noticed about AutoC2D (since I've had to use it several times...):

Creates temporary files: After moving, I found a folder with alot of files that looked like they belong in Program Files. It's not a big deal, since you can just delete it, but I don't know if it's a "backup" folder, or maybe a "mid-move" folder. I just wish ASUS would've said something about it.

Had trouble with safe mode: I really don't know if this was just on my computer, but I had trouble with my Eee being stuck in safe mode afterwards, which was very frustrating. I did end out getting it fixed, but it made me very cross at AutoC2D. That being said, that was the first time I used it, and the other times, it worked wonderfully.

AutoC2D is fairly small, and must be installed.It is not portable because you need to download Windows Server 2003 Resource Tools, which I'd never even heard of before getting an Eee and AutoC2D.

The thing about AutoC2D is that it is basically a tool to make your life easier, and it does that by doing several steps with no human interaction. But you can't do it manually as well, if you want.

If you wanted to manually pull a "C2D", all you need to do is boot into safe mode, move C:\Program Files to D:\Program Files, and create a junction. Of course, most people might be afraid when I say "create a junction", but it's actually quite simple if you use a tool like Link Shell Extension, which practically makes it as easy as making a new folder. The plus to doing it manually is that you can select someplace other than D:\Program Files. But if you don't really care and want to just be able to run a program, walk away, and come back with all your programs moved over, then AutoC2D will definitely make your life easier.

Visit AutoC2D (ASUS) website for download

Personal Update + Update

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 20:12:00 +0000

UPDATE: I got the download links working at least. I switched to FileAve for hosting, which is going great so far. So links to Mojolauncher, Dropper, StartupSaver, and -of course- PEM should all be working.

To the people who might be actually still following this blog, life has gotten a little hectic lately, with school and all, so I apologize about not being able to keep posting reviews. (If anyone else wants to be a co-author, the position is still open.....)

Also, I know that ATM, all "FreewareWire Software" programs (programs written by me) are down, and have been down. For once, this was not my fault. Hotlink files decided to somehow randomly terminate my account with no explanation. This doesn't mean the files are gone, since they're on my computer, but this means I have to find a new file hosting service, preferably one that allows direct linking, so you don't have to wait through stuff like Rapidshare.

So FW is not "on the ball" lately, but hopefully, I'll get motivated to try to give a genuine review of at least 1 freeware a week. I've actually found a handful of new programs that are pretty nifty, that I look forward to reviewing, if I ever get the chance.

Thanks for bearing with me. The undying support of FW's 4-5 fans are what make it all worth it. ;)

-Jon

KCleaner: Clean, K?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:37:00 +0000

KCleaner is a disk cleaner from the same people that made SUMo. It is very much like CCleaner, in that it cleans unneeded files, freeing up disk space. It has many different options to clean, such as the Recycle Bin, Service Pack Uninstallers, and a ton of Caches from all types of programs (Firefox, Songbird, XnView, even TomTom).

There are two very nice features that make KCleaner its own brand of disk cleaner. The first is the option for secure deletion. KCleaner lets you choose from either regular deletion, 1 pass, or 3 pass deletion, and then deletes all junk files in that way.

The other unique feature of KCleaner is "automatic" mode. When you do this, KCleaner will automatically clean every certain number of hours, meaning that you don't ever have to worry about cleaning again (as long as you have the settings how you want them). KCleaner can also minimize to the tray, and also start with Windows, so it can keep your computer clean with little to no user interface.

But it also can be very hands-on. It shows every listed file, and you can check/uncheck individual files that you don't want to be deleted. It actually seems to pick up more than CCleaner, since it just now found 700mb that are dispensible, whereas CCleaner found 200mb (but that may have to do with the options). KCleaner is about 1.7mb in size, 2mb RAM on idle, 5mb on scanning/cleaning.

On top of all this, KCleaner is portable, just click the 7-zip/Zip icon on the KC Softwares download page. I have to say, I love CCleaner and Piriform, but KCleaner looks like it might split my heart when it comes to disk cleaning. (Forgive me, CCleaner!)

Visit KCleaner (KC Softwares) website for download

GhostZilla: A Happy Haunting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 04:53:00 +0000

GhostZilla is a web browser based on (if you can't tell by the name) Mozilla. GhostZilla is different, though, in that it is designed to be an extremely secretive web browser. GhostZilla is actually so good at what it does, it will probably redefine your view of "secretive."

Before talking about why GhostZilla is so secretive, let's first talk about it as a web browser. GhostZilla is actually quite dated, originally created as shareware in 2002, then gone freeware (woohoo!), then open source (woo-hoohoo!), then shut down (aww...). It does, however, have many features that are still around as must-haves; tabbed browsing, for example. Even though the tab bar is extremely small, there is indeed tabbed browsing support in GhostZilla, as well as bookmarks, history, password memory, form memory, customizable homepage, and proxy configuration (essentially everything that was in Mozilla 1.0.1). So if asked the question "Is GhostZilla a full-fledged web browser?", I would say "Yes".

I would like to quickly say that though GhostZilla is a "full-fledged" browser, it does take some getting used to. First, the menu bar ("File", "Edit", "Options", etc) is extremely skinny so that it does not draw the eye's attention. Likewise, the tab bar is MUCH thinner than any browser I've seen, and does not show a site's favicon by the title. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

Now for the secretive side. Rather than having it's own window, GhostZilla actually fits inside other windows, almost in a "parasitic" manner. The whole logic behind that is that if you open a window of a program that is easily recognizable, (like say, Mozilla Thunderbird), you can open GhostZilla inside the that program, giving the impression that you are not surfing the web, but doing something else (like checking your mail). Of course, GhostZilla is also secretive because it hides itself completely, even from the taskbar. When you want to use it again, touch the left side of the screen, then the right side, then the left again (a left-right-left motion). This will bring GhostZilla up inside whatever window is active. To hide GhostZilla, just move your mouse outside of GhostZilla's window, and it will become hidden again.

So that's how GhostZilla hides. But what about when you're using it? How is it really that secretive? Levels. There are 6 "Hiding Levels" that can be chosen from in GhostZilla. Here they are (almost directly copied from the GhostZilla manual):
Level 1: Looks regular, like a normal web browser.
Level 2: Web pages are shown in black and white. Big pictures are hidden, except for on mouseover.
Level 3: Same as Level 2, except big pictures are black and white.
Level 4: Same as Level 2, except pages are gray and white.
Level 5: Same as Level 4, except big pictures are black and white.
Level 6: Page is gray, pictures are gray and pale (and only shown on mouseover).

As you can see, each greater level adds something more to make the page less noticeable to the eye. The biggest eye catcher is -of course- pictures, which GhostZilla takes care of by auto-hiding them. If you use Level 6, the page is so gray, one could scarcely believe that you are checking Facebook, rather than doing your taxes (or some other boring activity). Or if you want to just use a browser that hides uber quick, use Level 1.

GhostZilla even handles ads. Pop-ups are not even allowed to exist, and on-page ads are handled by the "big picture" rules with the Levels.

So right about now, you're probably interested in this spy-browser. But then you think, "What about after GhostZilla is gone? What about footprints that lead back to me?" I mentioned history, bookmarks, etc, but does that mean that those are all left on the disk when you leave? Well, as for things like the cache (temporary internet files), they are "[stored] in Windows temporary directory", and GhostZilla "removes them all on exit". So it's kinda up to you; do you trust having files on the host computer, even temporarily? If so, then don't worry. If not, then perhaps a more paranoid browser is more your style.

But what about the "profile"? Bookmarks, history, and all that jazz? Well, GhostZilla lets you store all of that info in an encrypted archive. Because it is protected and not GhostZilla specific, no one looking at it will be able to tell that it's for GhostZilla. Of course, when GhostZilla came out, GhostZilla was meant to be run on a CD, and it was amazing that "you can choose to store the archive on a floppy!" Nowadays, you can have both GhostZilla and the profile on a USB drive. But anyway, it IS possible to save your bookmarks, preferences, and all that profile stuff, and it IS possible to use it next time. When you first start GhostZilla, it will ask if you want to load a profile, in which case you can if you have one.

Now let me take a brief moment, Freewarenites, to give a few precations. (A) GhostZilla is not untrackable. Schools and businesses and such log every web site access that is made, no matter the browser. This means that if you're planning on visiting inappropriate websites (whatever "inappropriate" means for your circumstances) and want to use GhostZilla to get away with it, you're going to be sorely disappointed when you get detention/fired/thrown in jail. And the most important part is DON'T COME CRYING TO ME IF YOU USE GHOSTZILLA AND GET YOURSELF IN TROUBLE. Fair warning. (B) GhostZilla may not be "legal". GhostZilla is no longer actively supported, and its home website is down and out. I do know that GhostZilla came under scrutiny from Mozilla (because it was trying to sell GhostZilla for $20...when it was based on open-source software...made by Mozilla). However, it came back online after it removed some of the proprietary stuff. However, it then again went offline in 2007, and has not been seen since. I don't know why it's gone. It might be a legality issue (though I doubt it). But just know that if Mozilla is still upset about GhostZilla being distributed, well, then I'm screwed. But you might wanna watch your back too.

GhostZilla is really a "full-fledged" web browser. It weighs about 26MB (which is a little lighter compared to Firefox or Chrome), and uses a good ~50MB of RAM, maybe more, depending on what you're doing. The best part of GhostZilla is that it is portable, because it makes it ten times more useful to be discreet on a computer that does not have GhostZilla installed. It's one of the most interesting web browsers you'll ever come across, and -even though I've never personally tried Mozilla (*gasp*)- I do love the feeling of having a Mozilla Coporation product under my fingers.

(As I mentioned, GhostZilla's homesite is gone. However, A+ Freeware is freakin' amazing enough to not only allow me to discover GhostZilla, but also to host the last known version, v1.0.1)
Visit GhostZilla (host site A+ Freeware) website for download

Cool PDF Reader: It's a PDF reader. It's cool.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:23:00 +0000

Cool PDF Reader is probably the smallest PDF reader in existance. Here's some of the things that make it what it is:

Uber tiny: Some might say Foxit Reader is small, but "small" is a relative term. Foxit is 6mb. Cool PDF Reader is 600kb. Wow. That's freakin tiny.

Portable: Because it's so tiny and doesn't use registry, it's easily portable.

Straightforward: I mean, it's a PDF reader. It views PDFs. You can print, zoom, rotate, jump to pages, have a slideshow, and view the properties (creation date, encryption level, etc). That's really about it.

Convert to image/Extract Text: The only thing that might not be so "standard" is the ability to save a PDF as an image (JPG, PNG, BMP, etc) and the ability to extract text and save it into a TXT file.

Obviously, because it's so small, it lacks a few things that other PDF readers might have.
Chapters list: Most readers have a chapters/page list that you can view and jump to. Cool PDF reader does not have that.
"Smooth" view: Perhaps a poor term for it, but most PDF viewers view it like a Word document: you scroll down, and the next page is right below it, and you can scroll from one page to the next. Cool PDF Reader only shows one page at a time.
Mouse/key support: Strangely enough, you can't use the mouse wheel or arrow keys to scroll around when you are zoomed in.

But really, all of those are things that are nice, but not necessary. Cool PDF Reader is definitely faster than most PDF viewers (at least of the ones I've seen); the reason why is -because Cool PDF Reader only views one page at a time, when you open a PDF with it, it only loads the first page, and then loads the rest of the pages as you change to them. That mean that although Cool PDF Reader might be faster on the start, if you're viewing a PDF with a ton of pages, it might be slower in the long run (not to mention harder to navigate, since there's no chapter list). But if you only use one-page PDFs, or rarely use PDFs at all, Cool PDF Reader may work out for you perfectly.

Visit Cool PDF Reader (Cool PDF Software) website for download

Hedgewars: Hogs at war!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:40:00 +0000

Hedgewars is a "Worms-like game" that substitutes little pink Hedgehogs for worms. If you've never heard of the Worms video game series, it is a turn-by-turn strategy game, in which you control a team of worms that tries to blow up the other team by using deadly weapons. It may sound odd, but it is freakin fun, and freakin addicting. And Hedgewars is too.

Hedgewars is very comparable to the Worms games, in that almost every feature available for Worms is in Hedgewars. You can customize what weapons are available, make teams, make rules, make maps, and (I believe) make voices. The background music is pretty amazing in that it's actually fairly catchy, and makes blowing things up more fun. You can save games and replay them later (I'm 95% sure). Those are just a few of the notable features that make it comparable to a commercial game like Worms. The difference between Worms and Hedgewars is that Worms is a commercial game, and Hedgewars is not only free, but also open source and cross platform to boot.

In terms of in-game features, Hedgewars does not fail to impress. Available in at least v0.9.11, the "Shoppa" setting is actually built in (even though you can create your own, if you want). The weapons, hedgehogs, and characters all look good, and the physics of the game are very accurate (and always improving with each new release.) There are health bars, dropping crates and health packs, animated backgrounds, wind changes (and a wind meter). There's also even an availability to play LAN games, either locally or on the internet.

There are a few things that could stand to improve. The first is hedgehog animation. Maybe it's just because worms are so much more wiggly, but the Hedgehogs seem to stay in the same position all the time. For example, when being knocked over a distance, when flying via rope, etc, the Hedgehogs often keep the same "standing" position. Not a terrible flaw, but it would help players get into the game more. And a victory dance wouldn't hurt either.

The second is sounds. I did mention both the music and voices being great, and that is true, but Hedgewars lacks voices for several weapons, such as the rope (which is really sad...I miss the Worms twange), the baseball bat, and more.

Also, Training mode is in development (with v0.9.11), meaning there is one playable level, but it would be nice to get that up and running (since it's been down since at least v0.9.7, which was actually quite a while ago.

It may seem like I'm nitpicking, or that I don't like Hedgewars, but that is not true; it really is a good game. In terms of the physics and playability, Hedgewars is amazing; it's just that the presentation (graphics, sound) needs a little fine tuning. It has some very nice features that Worms does not have, like being able to customize the appearance of your hedgehogs (like adding a wig, a hat, etc). It has innovative new weapons, some that are comparable to Worms weapons (like the "Hellish grenade" instead of the "Holy hand grenade") and some that are completely original (like a walking exploding cake). Granted, there are not as many weapons as the Worms series (like no skunk, sheep, minigun, homing pigeon, dragon ball, flame thrower, salvation army, petrol bomb, etc.) but the weapons that it does have are fantastic, and hopefully new weapons are a part of Hedgewars' future. And that future looks like a very bright one.

Visit Hedgewars website for download

WakeOnLan: Like a genie, without the bottle.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:29:00 +0000

Few people actually know that you can turn on a computer with just a small move of the finger....from rooms away. "Wake-on-LAN" is a feature that is in many computers that allows the motherboard to give a tiiiiiiiiny amount of power to the network card; that way, even when the computer is turned off, it can still receive the "magic packet", which is basically a very small amount of data that tells the computer "HEY! WAKE UP!"

WakeOnLan is a very very easy utility that allows even the most novice PC user to use the Wake-on-LAN feature. There are two steps to waking a computer with WakeOnLan:

(1) Enter MAC address

(2) Press button

And boom! Your computer will rise like a zombie! This will work for a computer that is in Standby, Hibernation, or completely turned off!*

Getting the MAC (if you don't know how):

For those of you who don't know how to get a MAC address, do the following on whatever computer you want to wake (not on the computer that you're going to run WakeOnLan on):

(1) Under the start menu, click "Run"

(2) Type "cmd" without the quotes, then press "OK"

(3) Type "ipconfig /all" without the quotes

(4) Look for the line labeled "Physical address", and write down that number.

It should look like this: XX-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX, made up of random numbers and letters. That's your MAC address! That wasn't so hard, was it?

Enabling for Standby:

Lastly, you have to enable the Wake-on-LAN feature on the computer that you want to wake. If you want to use WakeOnLan for Standby, Follow these steps:

(1) Under the start menu, click "Run"

(2) Type "devmgmnt.msc" without the quotes, and press "OK"

(3) Open "Network adapters"; double click the one that has the words "Ethernet controller" somewhere in the title.

(4) Check the "Allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" (and optionally, check the option below, as well.)

If the "Allow this device..." option is greyed out, I don't know what to tell you. I only mention this because mine is currently greyed on this computer, and I don't know why. :P

Enabling for Hibernation or turned off:

*DISCLAIMER: This will not work on all computers. Your specific computer model has to support Wake-on-LAN from the completely turned-off state. There are five power states (the first three of which I will not bore you); "S4" means Hibernation, and "S5" means completely turned off. Most computers nowadays support "Wake from S4", but fewer support "Wake from S5".

Furthermore, in order to enable Wake-on-LAN for Hibernation and turned off, you have to go into the BIOS, which is a dangerous place to be if you don't know what it is. So if you're reading this and don't know how to enter the BIOS or even what the BIOS is, I recommend getting someone who does know to help you.

DISCLAIMER II: Also, I am not liable if your screw up your computer. Fair warning.

DISCLAIMER III: I have not tried it in S5, because my computer does not support it. So I can't even say that it does work. I just assume, at this point. If you have tested S5 and know that it works, leave me a comment.

If you REALLY want to enable it for Hibernation and/or turned off, enter the BIOS by pressing one of the F# keys (it is different for each computer; it's usually labeled "Setup") before the Windows loading screen. When in the BIOS, look for a tab about "Power" or "Power management" or something of the like. In that tab should be an option for "Wake on LAN for S4" (for Hibernation) and/or "Wake on LAN for S5". If S5 is not present, that means your computer doesn't support it. If you can't find either, than I don't know what to tell you.

So that ended out being a mini-tutorial (or a full tutorial, perhaps) on WoL. But concerning WakeOnLan specifically (the program), it's incredibly easy -probably the easiest WoL program out there (even though it may not be as feature filled as other WoL programs). It even works on your wireless card [of the computer running WakeOnLan, not the computer being woken], and no more configuration is needed.

WakeOnLan is very tiny, only 32kb. It is not portable, however, in the sense that it requires Microsoft's .NET framework (which many computers have, but some don't). Otherwise, it is standalone, and only creates one teeny tiny little file that contains the last MAC address that you used. Oh, did I mention that it remembers your last MAC address? Well, it does.

It truly is an amazing feeling: to be sitting in another room, press a button, and know that a computer is whiring to life in the next room. It's very handy, if your computer goes into standby after being idle for a while; if you're in the next room and want to access some files from the network, just wake it up! It might be a tool that you can never live without, once you try.

Visit WakeOnLan (Nyxbull Software) website for download

TweetMyPC: Yo dawg, I heard you like tweets.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:18:00 +0000

In a world where Twitter is around every corner, how can you not expect for programs to pop up and use it? TweetMyPC is a program that allows you to use Twitter to control your PC. The most practical use, obviously, is being able to control you computer from anywhere in the world, right from your phone. Of course "control" is limited in use, but it is surprising what TweetMyPC can actually do, for just relying on a few words.

After you download TMPC, you log in with your twitter account (or create a new one, if you don't want to junk up your old one with commands), and then you're set. You can also set your Gmail account for certain commands, some of them are listed below. There are built-in commands for TMPC, most of which are incredibly useful. I'm not going to copy+paste them all over here, so if you want to know all of the commands, check out the Codegeeks website.

-shutdown/standby/lock - Shutdown, standby, or lockyour computer from anywhere. Useful if you remember that you left it on.
-screenshot - Tweet this, and TMPC will screenshot your PC and upload it to TwitPic.
-getprocesslist - This will make TMPC e-mail (via Gmail) a list of all running processes on your PC.
-download - Download anything. Just specify a URL after the word 'download', and TMPC will download the file to whatever directory you have set.
-getfile/getfilelist - Probably the most intriguing; "getfile" will automatically upload the file you specified as an attachment and e-mail it to yourself. If you don't know the full path, using "getfilelist" will help you get there.

As you can see, TMPC has some crazy commands, getting right down to process management, all without ever seeing your computer screen. After you Tweet one of the commands, TMPC will respond on Twitter with whatever action was run, like "TMPC -> Setting Workstation to Standby Mode". Even with just the built in commands, TMPC is an amazing program. But you can also have custom commands, making TMPC launch any program you want when it senses a certain one-word command.

As for the physical aspects of the program, TweetMyPC is only around 1mb in size, and runs fairly hefty at 17MB in RAM. It is not portable, however, because it requires Microsoft's .NET framework 3.5 to run. It is open source, however, so any who want to look at how it works can.

It's a strange program in the sense that everything that is done is available online for everyone to see, but it is ingenius nonetheless.

Visit TweetMyPC (CodePlex) website for download