1. Shutter

Shutter

Shutter is my favourite shutdown utility due to its simplicity, but also because it comes from the author of the great ReNamer that I have already covered on Geekscribes previously.

Basically, you just choose the event that triggers the action. Events can be: countdown, at a specific time,  a period of low CPU usage, a process stops, battery low, among others. After that, you just set the action to do: sleep or shutdown the computer, mute volume, lock the computer, among others. Then just click Start. I don’t like that “Start” button. In my opinion, it should have been “Schedule”. If you want the action to take place immediately, just click “Now”. Shutter also offers an extensive set of options, like showing a message before an action takes place.

Shutter also includes a Web Interface if you want to do “Now” actions, or run commands remotely. This is a really great feature for those of you with a download/torrent box. Note, this can be a security problem, so be sure to set a good username and password when configuring the web server in Options.

Shutter comes in Installer and Portable formats.

2. PowerOff

PowerOff

PowerOff takes another approach at events and actions. It puts everything on the main window. So you just select your action on the left. On the right, set options, like whether you want a warning before the action executes, or whether to force-close applications. Then set the time. Either immediate, or schedule it to execute at a specific time.

There are extensive scheduling options, like at a time, on a fixed day, or a daily schedule, on a weekly schedule, on a day of month, or after a time period elapses. One thing I’d like is the “After” option to allow me to set minutes, hours etc, instead of just seconds.

PowerOff also includes remote-control features, like Shutter. Interestingly, you can have the command execute on a remote computer, if the latter supports it. I haven’t tested that feature though.

PowerOff is portable, and comes with the source code, if ever you want to mess around with it. It’s coded in C/C++ language.

3. Amp WinOff

Amp WinOFf

Amp WinOff, as you can see from the screenshot above, offers extensive options. You can set the actions to execute at a specific time (1st frame, top-right), or use a countdown (bottom-left frame), or when according to CPU load (top-right frame). You then set which action to take. It’s called “Shutdown mode” in Amp WinOff. You can even schedule days in advance.

While the program offers a many options and is very customizable, I don’t like the terminology used. Why is there a “Use the current time + 1 minute” and then a countdown feature? Also, I doubt “Lock Computer” is a “Shutdown Mode”. Anyway, those don’t really matter once you get familiar with the program. Now, the second thing that is annoying with Amp WinOff is that the website has been down for a while now, and I can’t find a mirror that’s still alive. The shot you’re seeing above is not from the latest version.

If you can find the utility somewhere, good.

4. Directly from your OS

Linux:

Yes, you can execute a sheduled shutdown right from your OS. Let’s start with Linux first. It should work on most major distros, but I only tested on Ubuntu.

Fire up your Terminal/Konsole or whatever it’s called in your distro.

Then the command structure is as this:

shutdown [- shutdown parameters] [ time parameter] [ optional message ]

shutdown parameters: r = reboot, h = halt, c = cancel shutdown (time parameter is then not required)

Some examples:

shutdown -r now    <-- Reboot immediately
shutdown -h 19:00  <-- Shutdown (Halt) the system at 19h
shutdown -h +5 "System will shutdown"   <-- Shutdown the system in 5 mins from now, and tell users why.

Quite easy huh? Just note that while a shutdown is scheduled, new users won’t be allowed to login 5 minutes before the shutdown sequence is initiated, i.e. only 5 mins left before shutdown. This is to be considered for multi-user environments.

Windows:

The command is similar to that of Linux, but different syntax and parameter names. Just open a command prompt (type cmd in the search box in Vista/Win7, or Winkey+R, then type cmd, or directly type the commands below in the search box in Win7)

shutdown [- shutdown parameters] [-t xx in seconds] [-c reason]
shutdown parameters: r = reboot, s = shutdown, a = abort shutdown

Some examples:

shutdown -r       <-- Reboots computer immediately
shutdown -s       <-- Shutdown computer immediately
shutdown -r -t 60 <-- Restart computer in 60 seconds
shutdown -s -t 3600 -c "Computer shutting down" <-- Shutdown in one hour (3600 seconds), and tell user why

You should get a confirmation that the command has been accepted. (E.g. Keys icon in the notification area with a message).

That’s it for this post. If you know other methods for scheduling a system shutdown, or maybe to get your favorite utility listed here, drop us a comment. Thanks!

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This article comes from GeekScribes

3 Utilities to Schedule System Shutdown

Sniper: Ghost Warrior

Hello!

This is like, my second review of a game. My first was Race Driver: GRiD, which was awesome after some tweaking. For today, I’ll be reviewing a game from a little known publisher called City Interactive. It is titled with the very imagination-provoking Sniper: Ghost Warrior.

Before I proceed, I discovered something funny about this game. We all know how aiming using Analog sticks on consoles are. Workable yes, precise no. There’s usually auto-aim involved. However, a game that requires precise aiming such as Sniper: Ghost Warrior was also released on Xbox 360. Go figure out how to make precise aims with those sticks.

Anyway, I got it on PC, so let’s move on. What motivated me to try this game was that I was going to play as a sniper again. After going through the awesomeness of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2′s sniper moments, I thought that playing a sniper-simulation would be great too. And just check out that cover! Reminds you of something, eh?

Ok, enough ramblings, let’s get to the actual review.

General

The game runs on the Chrome 4 Engine, that was employed in Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. I didn’t play that one, but I got to say, the engine is good. The foliage, bushes, trees etc… were nicely detailed, even if I toned down the settings a bit. Performances are good with a recent-enough computer. A Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM and a recent-enough graphics card, such as the excellent Radeon 4850 is enough to get you playing without too much degradation in Frames Per Second (fps).

The weather is another nice touch. The water effects impressed me most, without going into a lot of technical details. I’ve got a few pictures for you to see for yourself. The visuals are absolutely stunning.

On to the gameplay part. As its name suggests, you are going to be playing as a sniper. Yay! But no. There are some level where you play as a soldier, in a classic First Person Shooter (fps) situations. Such as the oil-rig level, which will remind you of a much more famous game. It is very similar. Very similar indeed. These moments are just run-and-gun, so aim-shoot-aim-shoot, dash for cover. In recent FPS games, when you hide behind cover, your health slowly goes back to full if you have taken hits. Not in Sniper: GW. You have to use the good old first aid, so you need to be conscious about getting shot. And boy, you’ll get shot a lot!

There’s not much to be said about those moments, so let’s go back to the actual sniper moments. Sadly, this is where the game sucks most.

When we think about “military sniper” and “jungles”, we think about a guy (or lady, why not), dressed in a funny suit. It’s actually called a Ghillie Suit. So, we have that guy in Sniper: GW, dressed in his ghillie, and sneaking through the forest.

BAM! Someone shoots at me! WHAT THE HELL?! CROUCH! Is there any sniper around? I scan the environment, I can’t find anything. I stand up again, more shots! Whaaat? I check the red pointer at the top, and see that the attack seems to be coming from the front. So I stand up, switch to the scope, and slow-down time using the appropriate key. Oh there you are, behind a bush. Sneaky bastard, die!

What I just described above is one of the very common things that happen in SGW (it’s getting shorter, I know). Your enemies seem to have eagle eyes! Sometimes, I wonder who’s actually the sniper, me or the AI?

Damn AI!

When they are not aiming at me from the moon, and getting to hit me with their automatic rifles, they are plain stupid. They friendly-fire! I’ve seen a guy cross the path of another, and get mowed down by machine-gun fire! Sometimes, they just stand up and do nothing. Most of the times, they hear a gunshot, see their friends go down, and they won’t even bother to duck to cover, but instead scan the environment. Worse, they won’t even alert their friends, or sound an alarm! Pathetic AI.

They are only good at aiming me from kilometres away. Hell, a computer-controlled guy saw me, in a ghillie suit, while I was sniping from inside a bush! What’s the ghillie for, AI, if you can see me from a mile away?! And not only seeing, they are damn accurate at that! They shoot with pinpoint accuracy from long distances. Worse, sometimes a guy is running, turns and he is immediately aiming at me, and shooting. Not even locating me anything. He KNOWS I’m here. As if he’s got eyes in the back of the head. Or all around the head, for that matter!

That’s about the AI enemies. What about the AI allies? Worse! They can’t aim! They REFUSE to aim. I am sniping, they run in front of me. I shoot. They DON’T die. So much for realism. Interestingly, AI enemies’ friendly-fire are fatal.

Pathetic AI. That’s all there’s to say. Either they are TOO good. Or just plain dumb.

An Enemy Model

The Environment: Pretty but restrictive

Now let’s see the environment itself. We’ve often been shown open-worlds lately. GTA, Farcry 2, Crysis etc… have all been setting the trend of an open, reactive world. Much to my displeasure, SGW does NOT include an open-world. You are constrained to the paths and such. You can go astray a few, and you’ll hit with invisible walls. These totally kill realisms. Where we have reached nowadays, there should be open-worlds. If it looks like the player can climb on a rock, then jump a fence, it should be possible. Not that you jump on the rock, jump towards the fence, and hit an invisible wall that prevents you from going on.

The problem with those invisible walls? They block off all the spots that seem to be great sniper nests. Most are off-limits. This greatly annoys me. Sniping involves choosing your spot. It should be secluded, but offer great vantage point. It should provide cover if ever you are discovered and need to scram. It should also be high in altitude if possible. SGW does not allow this freedom of choice. Worse, sometimes it tells you to walk towards the front-door of an enemy camp. Where’s the stealth in that? Ever seen a ghillie’d up sniper walk up the front door of an enemy? Me too.

The game features a grapnel. Imagine how it could be used. You find a branch overlooking an enemy camp, with lots of leaves and stuff around. You use your grapnel, and climb the tree, sit there and start shooting. After a few shots, you change location to another vantage point that you’d have marked on your map. No. SGW does not let you do this. The grapnel is only used in some scripted situations. Sigh…

Spot 2 enemies in there!

There they are! The 2 yellow flashes!

Invincible birds!

A nice off-limit sniper-nest.

The Good Parts?

The great thing about Sniper: Ghost Warrior however, is how well the sniping system works. You got your variety of rifles on different levels, and your scope as you’d expect. You’ll also get a “stealth” bar at the bottom. The moment it fills up completely, your enemy sees you and is aware of your location. He’s going to shoot with pinpoint accuracy using his eagle eyes.

While sniping, you will have to monitor your heart-rate and wind speed, which have distinct gauges at the top. You’ll also have to keep track of the range, because the further your target, the more gravity will affect the path of the bullet. All these are taken into consideration in SGW, making it a great system. If this sounds too complex for you, don’t despair. If you aim for long enough, a red reticule will show you where the bullet will actually land. So you just aim the red reticule on an enemy’s head, and voila, headshot! Without having to care about all the difficult stuff. Bear in mind that this red reticule does not appear on higher difficulties, so those wanting a more realistic sniping experience may try the higher difficulties. Remember though, on medium the AI got eagle eyes. On higher difficulties, it’s like the AI enemies are seeing you through the Hubble telescope.

You can also “hold your breath” using the the appropriate key. This will steady the scope, and slow down time, making sniping easier. This is somewhat overkill. Steadying the cope is enough, without having to slow down time. It makes things too easy. Assuming you’ve been able to aim at the enemy without getting riddled with bullets first.

The sniping system is enjoyable. That’s the only reason I’m playing SGW. Not the story.

Why not the story?

Because SGW wants to be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The missions are exactly like CoD’s! You are pursuing a guy, so you’re following his trail all around, trying to take off his head. So you complete one mission, just to find out that the guy has escaped. However, in CoD, the process of getting to the guy is interesting. You take alternate paths from your friends. You get support. You are on your own. It makes your pulse race.

Sniper: Ghost Warrior’s story is like CoD, but without the fast-paced action. So you’re crossing a level, fighting your way in stealth, taking out guys etc… only to find that at the end, the main target is not there. The next level? Do the same thing again, with lots of patience, only to find the guy is not there. After 3 missions, you’re tired and ask yourself how people can frack up missions that much.

The run-and-gun parts are no better. I have no idea why the oil-rig mission is there. There’s no point at all. You storm in, save a guy, that has not much to do with the story. Nor are you told much in the mission briefings.

Overall, the story feels flimsy. Not on par with CoD:MW’s story in any case.

How it should have been?

So the enemies are no good. The environment is pretty but no good. The story is no good. Only the sniping system is kind of good. So is it recommended? Frankly, no. I’d not recommend that game to a friend. If you really want to give it a try, let its price fall first. Then get it.

But then, how could it have been interesting? Just imagine that scenario:

You get your briefing about a certain guy that is selling state secrets to an unfriendly nation, or something like that. You are given his general location, but do not know exactly where he is found. He is to be eliminated.

So your spotter and yourself are are left at your insertion point, with your equipment, a supply of food and drinks, a pair of binoculars, a grapnel and your ghillie suit.

You then make your way, slowly towards the enemy camp. The terrain is a deep jungle, with a river to the west, and mountains to the north, all in an open-world environment. The enemy camp is found near the mountains. Between you and the enemy is a civilian village, and enemy patrols in the jungle.

You have to find a vantage point to take aim at your target, so you move in stealth towards the enemy camp. You have to avoid both enemy patrols (you can’t kill them, missing patrols are soon noticed. If you do, you have to hide the bodies and expect heavier-armed guard patrols since they now expect an attack), and civilians (they panic and make a fuss, and you can’t kill them normally).

So you sneak by. You can’t take too long, because the target might leave the area, causing a mission fail. So you move quickly and stealthily.

While approaching the village, you hear civilians talking about the target’s habit of coming to the village at night, probably for some dirty business with local women. Now you have a choice. Do you find a vantage nearby and wait for the target, then snipe him when he’s in the village? This reduces the number of guards that’ll be on your trail after the hit. However, the target may not come to the village at all, causing a mission fail. Or you can go to the enemy camp, and take the hit there, where you’re sure the target will come sometime, or may already be stationed at. But after the kill, there will be many guards after you.

You choose to go for a vantage point near the village. So you scout around, and find a good spot and lay there, in an abandonned water tower, just outside a farm a distance from the village. The hole in the cliff looked interesting too. You mark it on your map as backup. You choose to “sleep”, while your spotter remains awake, and wakes you when the target comes. This causes time to flow by, up to the point where the target comes to the village (sometimes, he doesn’t, and mission fails). So you take aim, consider wind speed etc… as you are told by your spotter (or the red reticule, on easier difficulties). You take the shot, the target goes down.

Now you have to reach your extraction point. No holds barred. You can start shooting every non-civilian because they know they are under attack and will return fire. Keep in mind they don’t know where you are, but they know you’re around. So if you know how to sneak, you can prevent bloodshed. This increases your rating.

You escape safely. There it was, Mission 1, First Part. That was only a lieutenant, and not the actual guy. This hit will cause unrest, as it’d seem rival factions made the hit. This will somehow bring out the real target. That’s how Sniper Ghost Warrior should have been. In Multiplayer, there may be more snipers trying to take a target, and they might bring you down. The one who takes the target wins. The Farcry2 of sniper games. Open-world freedom to choose your path or how you get to your sniping nest, dynamic environments (rain damaging your cover bit by bit) and AI characters that do not shoot like monkeys. Not the CoD-imitation that it currently is.

Conclusion

As it is? Not worth it. But the series holds much potential. Only if City Interactive enhances the scenario, gameplay and AI. My note for this game is a paltry 3.5/10, for the great environments, and sniping system.

Other reviewers gave it a 5.5 or so. I’m more severe. I’m tired of being riddled with bullets from afar. I’m the sniper. I shoot from afar. Not the normal enemies!

So there ya go, the review of SGW, and how an utopian sniper game would be.

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Sniper: Ghost Warrior PC Review

I am a fervent user of the great browser known as Mozilla Firefox. Been using it since it was version 2.x something. I was so tired with IE offloading tons of viruses on me at that time that I figured that there MUST be a safer browser out there in the wild. I tried a few before settling to Mozilla, namely Maxthon and Kmeleon. I should write an article about alternative browsers someday. *note to self*

Anyway, I like Firefox a lot, or affectionately FF if you want. 3.5x is awesome. 4.x promises to be even better. However, there is one problem that’s been around Firefox since like, forever: memory consumption.

FF consumes a lot of memory when you have many tabs open. And I often have a lot of tabs opened. Specially multiple links from the same source opened in different tabs. I got that bad habit; if it can be considered a bad habit.

So, I was casually browsing someday with around 30 tabs opened when I discovered a nice addon called: BarTab. Don’t ask how they came up with that name, I got no idea. Why would anyone name a memory-recovery addon “BarTab”?

Its purpose is to unload tabs that you haven’t visited in a while, and load them again when you focus (click) on them. It’s like opening the tab again, but automatically.

This simple concept allows you to save quite some memory, specially if you like to leave tabs on, do something else, and come back to your previously opened tabs after a while. It’ll not be a major saving, but around 30-40MB of savings are inorder.

To illustrate and prove if this addon works, I conducted a small test. I opened around 20 tabs from random Google searches (I hope I didn’t catch any virus in doing that!) as well as a few media pages like DeviantArt, Youtube and Toyota Europe’s website (Nice music!). I then let BarTab do its magic while leaving the tabs untouched in the background for a minute or two. (Time delay is configurable).

The results, before and after are below:

Before

After

Not bad huh? The 20-ish tabs are still there, but unloaded. The only annoying thing about BarTab is that you have to wait a bit for pages to reload. If you have a fast connection, it shouldn’t be a problem, but for those with slower connections, you will probably find the delay slightly annoying.

That’s all for BarTab for now. If you have more tricks to reduce FF’s memory usage, comment box’s found below!

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Using BarTab to reduce Firefox Memory Consumption

Let’s get started, shall we?

Ditto

Clipboard Manager

Ditto. Also known as THE clipboard manager. Picture this situation: you’ve copied an important link on your clipboard. Then you had to cut a file to a new location. Now what happened? Lulz, you just lost your link. Now go open your browser and look again.

Heh! Not if you have Ditto installed. It’s a clipboard manager. It remembers a lot (configurable) of items that you have copied. It’s like it remembers a history of your copies, so that you can paste from the past. That didn’t make much sense, I know.

But anyway, that’s what it does. Allows you to store items, and paste them at a later time. If you copy two things, the first one is preserved, the second is stored too. So if you need to paste the first one, it’s there, stored safely in Ditto’s database. Works with files, pictures, whatever is copy-able. Did I mention that it has a TON of customizable features. Like the very interesting, but wrongly named “Friends” feature, where you can receive copies (as in copy-paste) from your friends over network. Why not name that “Network Copy”. Who knows.

You can also temporarily disable it if you don’t want to remember sensitive data via the “Disconnect from Clipboard” option by right-clicking on its icon in the tray.

Anyway. Get Ditto. You won’t regret it. And it’s really easy to use.

Ditto Clipboard Manager

JDownloader

Do I need to even mention this one? If you do any kind of downloading from filehosters like Rapidshare or Megaupload, this tool is for you.

Two words: Automatic downloading. Yep. Dump your big sets of links in there, and it will automatically download the files from the hoster. It supports an enormous number of hosts, so I won’t bother enumerating them all. But anyway, Rapidshare, Megaupload, Mediafire, zShare, EasyShare, HotFile, whatever-name-filehoster it’s probably supported.

Oh, it can do automatic captcha recognition for some hosts like Megaupload, so you don’t have to type those. As I said: dump links, press the start button, and forget it there.

Ps. I cannot be held responsible for whatever you download with it, land up exceeding your cap with your ISP or end up getting copyright letters from the RIAA or whatever organization. Whatever you download with it, you endorse full responsibility.

Hosts supported by JDownloader

Preme

That cute little utility does one thing I totally love: Keep windows on Top. Microsoft came up with Windows 7 and forgot to add that neat feature. It’s been in GNOME and KDE for like, forever. I tend to use that a lot. Think blogging + WLM window stuck above, so write articles and chat at (nearly) the same time. This is made possible with Preme, along with other things, like the AWESOME side-window feature.

This makes windows behave like docks which allow you to place windows off-screen. When you need them, touch the side (left or right) of the desktop and the windows magically appear. That’s so tough to describe. Too bad it works with only two windows at a time only… Can I have multiple docks? Pretty please?

If you download Preme, there’s in-built demos that show you how this feature works. Do check it. Works with Windows 7 only I think.

Preme's Functions

BitMeter

I blame this utility a lot. It prevents me from downloading stuff to my hearts’ contents. It simply monitors the amount of traffic you transfer over network. I use it mainly to track how much data I download from the Internet. Darn useful. When I see it go above 10GB, I usually think: “Capping incoming!!” and slow down the download frenzy. But hey, if your ISP has capping limits, you’ll really want that utility. You can set alarms so that it alerts you before you exceed your traffic quota.

How much can I say about a traffic monitor anyway? It just does its job beautifully. It includes a web server so you can check your download rate and amount from a remote machine. I don’t use this personally, but some of you might check if your machine is downloading by checking in from a friend’s place, for example.

Also, it maintains lots of stats like how much you downloaded per hour/day/month/year. Overall, it’s really informative and easy to use.

BitMeter

Battle Encoder Shirase

What a name for an utility that limits processor usage! There’s a long explanation about how the developers came up with that name on their homepage if you are interested. For now, we are not. That utility is for those of you who do a lot of processor-heavy tasks like video encoding and the like, but don’t like your computer to slow to a crawl preventing you from typing that text document on notepad without you being faster than the program.

It allows you to limit how much processor usage a program is entitled to. It’s measured in percentage. So if your encoding takes 100% usage, you can constrain it to -30% so that it does only 70% usage, leaving 30% free for you to work with.

This also helps in decreasing processor load, hence processor temperature if ever you find that you could start cooking eggs on the processor. Decrease processor usage and you basically decrease temperature.

The catch? Your encode or whatever task will take longer, but I guess you figured that out by now.

Oh, the interface is not the prettiest and most feature-packed around, but it gets its job done simply and beautifully. I have nothing more to ask of it. Works on Windows 7, despite no update for quite a while now.

Battle Encoder Shirase

Unlocker

Delete file. “File is currently in use and cannot be deleted”. Wut? Have you ever seen that message? Probably yes. But what the hell is using that darned file? Unlocker answers that question, and allows you to “free” the file currently in use by terminating the process using the file. You can then leisurely delete your file. Or whatever you wanted to do to the file. Like cut it to move it.

Sadly, Unlocker doesn’t seem to work under Windows 7. So if you are working on Windows OSes before Win7, give it a try. Else give what comes a try.

Unlocker in Right-Click Menu

LockHunter

Same thing as Unlocker. Works with Windows 7. Prettier interface. Still in beta stage. So take your precautions in case you accidentally terminate John Connor or some other process that you shouldn’t have.

LockHunter's Main Window

HW Monitor

Are you an overclocker? Yes? How come you don’t know about HWMonitor then?? For those who don’t, HW monitor tells you details about your hardware. It reports on things like Core temperature, various voltages (like VCore voltage) and various temperatures (like GPU temperature). It’s mostly used by overclockers and other people who want to know how much juice they can take out of their machine, or just wanting to know at what temperature a processor fries.

Or if you are paranoid that your blazing-new GPU might be trying to burn a hole through the Earth’s crust using sheer temperature, give HWMonitor a try.

Values may not be totally accurate to the nearest degree, but you’ll get a reasonable idea about temperature, voltage and other factors. Like Fan RPMs.

HWMonitor's Main Window

File Splitters (FFSJ, HJSplit)

Have you ever downloaded files and noticed that they end in extensions like .001 or .002? These files were split and need to be re-joined before they can be used. Traditionally, HJSplit was used mainly to split a big file so that it could be put into many floppies. I remember the time when I had to give a friend a 4MB file and had to split it into 4 floppies. Good old times.

That’s what HJSplit does. You give it a large file, and a size at which to make fragments. It’ll break your large file into the size chunks you requested. You can then send the chunks individually or do whatever you want with them. The receipient then needs to point HJSplit to the first fragment and it will rebuild the whole file if all its parts are available.

The problem with HJSplit is that it’s damn SLOW. So I recommend the Fastest File Splitter and Joiner (FFJS) utility which gets the same job done faster. It is also compatible with HJSplit, that is it can re-construct files that were split by HJSplit.

HJSplit

FFSJ

CDBurnerXP

For a long time, I was using Nero Burning ROM as CD/DVD burning software. That was until the thing became so bloated that it no longer resembles a disk burner but a whole OS about disk operations. So I moved on to something lighter and easier to use: Imgburn.

However, Imgburn doesn’t have a number of essential features that I really need. Like creating folders when creating a data disk. Hell, why this feature is absent, I don’t know. It can’t support Multi-session disks too.

I had to find something with is free, light and have those features that Imgburn misses. In comes CDBurnerXP. It’s a free disk burner that’s really easy to use due to its two-pane interface. You basically just drag and drop files from one pane to another.

It can also support the creation of Audio disks and Disk Images if needed.

CDBurnerXP

That would be all for now. Go check these utilities if you have time. I hope this post is the first of a series about useful utilities, so if you have some that you like, don’t hesitate to dump their names in the Comments section below. See ya!

P.s. All screenshots come from the developers’ pages and belong to them. They are here just for reference. I do not claim ownership of any of the images not watermarked.

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10 Very Useful Utilities You May Not Know About

Update (05.08.10): Added Audiggle (#5)

1. Tunatic

I have already talked at length on this software now. Download and install it, plug in a microphone, record a piece of your unknown track via Tunatic and it’ll probably give you the track name and artist if they are in the database. The problem with Tunatic is that development seems to have stopped, as it can be seen from this line on Tunalyzer’s page: “NB: Tunalyzer should be available for the Windows platform in early 2007.”. Tunalyzer allows you to analyze your own known songs, and have them added to the Tunatic database.

It works for most songs I tested it on, but since development seems to have stopped, I don’t have much hope for the project getting new features.

Read the post about Tunatic on Geekscribes

2. Midomi

This one is a new service I’ve just discovered, but which I don’t use as it was meant to. Basically, it’s an online service where you go, and hum/sing some track you don’t know the details of. Maybe it’s a tune stuck in your head somewhere and you’d like the name. There’s a bar near the top part. So you click on it, hum the song in your microphone and it’ll almost certainly give you the track’s details. It worked for all tracks I tested, even some lesser-known tracks which surprised me. It’s also very fast in its identification.

Read the post about Midomi on Geekscribes

3. Audiotag

This service takes a different approach from the above two. Instead of recording a tune, you need to upload the track or some part of it to the service. You can use a variety of tools to do cut an MP3 track, for example, Mp3DirectCut which is free. After uploading the piece, which should be around 10-15 seconds minimum, it’ll give you the details you want.

I have not tested the service a lot since I would need to do a lot of cutting tracks. But I tested with two tracks, and both were recognized. One was fairly known, the other less-known with almost no lyrics.

Also, there are those facts mentioned in the footer: “recognized queries: 83453; DB size: 1327721 tracks, 96479 albums; last DB update: 4 days ago; added 23636 tracks, 1833 albums“, so I believe Audiotag is a reliable service.

Audiotag is good for people who do not have microphones, but the compromise is that you must have access to the digital track itself to be able to upload it. It doesn’t work for tunes you’ve heard on the radio or stuck in your mind, but it is good to identify that nice tune you downloaded off some site named “Track-01″.

4. Picard Tagger via Musicbrainz

Picard is not an identifier per-se. It’s a tagger. You give it access to your unknown tracks locally, and it will tag them (if possible) using data from the audio fingerprint database of  Musicbrainz.

When tested, Picard was able to identify some tracks which didn’t have their tags. However, its use is slightly more complex than the 3 above services. The strength of Picard is that it can do recognition on its own without needing to record or upload things. It’s also cross-platform, providing Windows, OSX and Linux support.

You can download Picard here, and check out the docs of Musicbrainz that teaches you how to use it.

5. Audiggle

That one is relatively new to me. The website is clean and simple, so I hope the program is as nice. I immediately went and put it to test. I immediately noticed the .NET requirement. So much for portability. If you need that, Midomi’s for you. But let’s see Audiggle’s worth. Installation was a breeze. First thing, I had to set my Microphone. Problem is I have two Line-Ins for microphone, both listed as “Microphone” so I have no idea about which is which. A note about which microphone belongs to which sound-card would be nice.

Next… What? Registration? What the hell? This is an immediate turnoff for me. Why do I need to register to identify a track. Ok, maybe to track all my identified tracks. Lol. Ok let’s go through this pain. Fortunately, registration is quite fast. Okayyy. First try. Login… “Audiggle is down for maintenance.” Nothing on the website indicates this though. Alright, after 5 mins of retries, it’s still failing.

Guess it’s not ready for the lime-light yet. I’ll come back to it later. If you have more success than me, do leave a comment please!

Do you know a similar service, but which is not mentioned here? Please post it in the comments below!

P.s. There are many other recognition services not mentioned in this roundup. This is because most of them either require a mobile phone or mobile device of some kind (Shazam) or they require you to type notes on virtual keyboards (MusicPedia). These are not really intuitive to use in my opinion, so I shared only the most user-friendly and accessible-to-all services.

You might also be interested in:

• Music Identification using Midomi
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• Internet Filtering Coming To Mauritius Soon?
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This article comes from GeekScribes

Music Recognition Service Roundup

It deals with some measures ICTA (Information Communication Technology Authority) wishes to introduce or see implemented. While some are laudable, such as promotion of ICT as education tools and enhancing performance of communication systems, the last part of the article ticks off my Paranoia Alarm.

The shot of the scary paragraph, with highlighted portions can be seen below.

Well, what do I see? ICTA wants to implement Internet filtering in Mauritius.

I remember Ex-President, Mr. Cassam Uteem’s wish to see some pages of Facebook blocked due to some offensive content. There have also been past instances of Facebook being blocked in Mauritius, for example, due to the usurpation of our PM’s identity to create a profile. These cases may have warranted a blocking of the incriminating pages, but I doubt censorship was the only possible solution.

Now imagine if our local politicians or authorities have the power to block sites at a whim. Tomorrow, Mr. X doesn’t like a parody video of his speech on Youtube, and the site is blocked? No thanks!

Something strikes me as funny in this article: “the idea is not to implement censorship”. Can somebody enlighten me about the difference between “filtering” and “censorship”? I thought that content that was filtered out was censored. Am I wrong?

Giving censorship powers to a Government is too much in my opinion. The Internet should be a free-flow of information, and not to be controlled by anybody. I agree that there are some content that deserve censorship, but I believe it’s best left to its users to know what should be accessed and what should not. Such situations exist in real-life too. There are some places in cities where it is dangerous to go. However, I do not see any barriers erected to prevent people, especially children from going there. So why should this apply to the Internet?

If parents do not want their kids accessing unauthorized contents, well, they can be educated into how to implement filtration software on their machines locally. Or make the government-filtering opt-in. So people who want to see the Internet filtered can install software locally to do the job, with the use of a Government-managed database. Others can continue using the Internet as they see fit, taking their responsibilities if ever they are caught doing nasty stuff.

On a side note, we see the Internet from the social and crowd aspect nowadays. You have social networking, social bookmarking, social music discovery, social-tea-making, social-what-not. Why not social filtering? I have no idea how this would work, but hey, we do democratic voting to elect out leaders, we could do some democratic voting on what we want off the Internet too right?

I leave you to the views and your comments…

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• New ISP in Mauritius soon?
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• Music Recognition Service Roundup

This article comes from GeekScribes

Internet Filtering Coming To Mauritius Soon?

There are many applications that allow you to do this nowadays, but most are on the iPhone, such as the now-famous Shazam.

However, I don’t have an iPhone but I wanted to use such a service. Initially, I was using Tunatic, but the latter has not been updated in quite a long time now. I think it’s a dead project. I had to find an alternative. An alternative that can be used from a computer.

I came across this new service, Midomi. It functions just like Tunatic in that you just record a piece of a song using your microphone and it will give you the song’s details.

The thing about Midomi is that you are supposed to hum the song, or sing the lyrics. I can’t do any of those well. So I just stuck my microphone near my speaker playing the unknown song to test the service. Guess what, it works!

I kind of not followed the procedures because I didn’t sing or hum myself but the important thing is that it can identify songs with Tunatic’s simplicity.

What seriously amazed me is how many song Midomi is able to identify. I used it on some well known tracks from Ill Nino and  Muse and it successfully passed the test. I then tested it using some lesser-known tracks from the Drum and Bass genre (which does not have singing and is almost un-hummable). It gave me all the correct titles, where I expected it to fail like Tunatic did. Hell, it even identified a track from the Metal Gear Solid 4 OST which I got from Youtube! (Drebin 893)

Overall, Midomi is AMAZING! It even gives you the option to buy the desired track if that’s what you wish. For me, it’s the Tunatic replacement of choice.

The requirements are that you need a microphone and Flash Player. You’ll need to allow Flash to access your microphone and speakers, but this shouldn’t be a problem since it prompts you.

So if you have some song whose name you don’t know, or who performs it, head to Midomi and give it a try. It does not deceive.

You might also be interested in:

• Music Recognition Service Roundup
• Randomly fill your audio player using RandomFill
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This article comes from GeekScribes

Music Identification using Midomi