Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Remote Computer Desktop Control with TeamViewer

Teamviewer is a well-known utility that can be used for various purposes. It supports remote connections, presentation mode, file transfers and virtual private networks. The first surprising aspect of the software is that it does not need to be installed. Both clients need to run the software program to establish the connection between two computers.

Each client creates a unique ID and password and the user who wants to give access to his computer has to send that data to the other user who enters it in his computer. There is virtually no delay and the quality of the picture is really good. Even small fonts are readable.

The other options, remote support, file transfers and virtual private networks work the same way. Everything is streamlined for ease of use. Transfers and connections work behind firewalls as well which works nicely in combination with the portable version of Teamviewer.




Teamviewer is free for commercial usage. A few additional versions are available at the developers homepage that suite specific needs. A support version is available for customers which is a basic version of Teamviewer that can only be used to connect to the client’s computer.

You also find a server version and a manager version at the download page. This is an excellent solution for anyone who has to remotely connect to clients computers regularly, who wants to do presentations over the Internet or use a virtual private network. It is free only for non-commercial usage.

Video Presentation:





Developers website: http://www.teamviewer.com/


Sunday, January 25, 2009

Audacity - One of the Best Free Professional Audio Editors


Audacity is free, award-winning open source multi-platform software for recording and editing sound. It runs on Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. Audacity is universally recognized as the number one software program for creating podcasts. Hundreds of thousands of amateurs and professionals alike have created podcasts using Audacity.

Audacity supports several digital audio formats with support for 24 bit and 32 bit sample formats as well as 16 bit. Supported formats include: WAV; AIFF; OGG; MP3

Professional features

1. Envelope editing.
2. Built-in effects processing.
3. Mixing of tracks.
4. Recording overdubs while playing previously recorded tracks.

For sound analysis you may use the spectrogram mode or a spectrum analyzer window. Also Audacity has built-in effects and supports the following plug-ins (providing additional effects and processing): LADSPA Plug-ins; Nyquist Plug-ins; VST Plug-ins (Windows and Mac only), and Vamp Plug-ins (Beta 1.3.4 and later only).

Main Operations

Recording audio

Audacity can be used to record from your computer’s sound card or other audio device. Audacity can record up to 2 channels (stereo) on all systems, and 4 or more channels on some systems. Audacity records directly to disk, and it will record as long as you want. The approximate length of time remaining is displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the display. The Pause button allows you to temporarily stop recording, but it keeps Audacity ready and waiting, so that it will begin recording again instantly when you click it again.

Displaying the audio

Audacity has four main types of audio displays

1. Waveform
2. Waveform (dB) (logarithmic scale)
3. Spectrogram (shows energy in different frequencies)
4. Pitch (attempts to follow the frequency of a musical line)

You can perform the following operations with tracks:

1. Resize a track by clicking near the bottom and dragging it up or down.
2. Zoom into a track vertically (to make quiet parts larger).
3. Zoom into tracks horizontally (to see more detail about less time).
4. View the frequency response of a selection.

Playing audio

Audacity supports most soundcards and audio devices. Choose your device in the Preferences dialog, in the Audio I/O tab, then set the playback volume using the control in the toolbar. Note that the control is independent of your system’s master volume control. Use your operating system to set this volume. Audacity mixes down to mono or stereo. You can work with as many tracks as you want, but Audacity plays everything through either the left or right speaker. Audacity automatically mixes multiple tracks and resamples all tracks to match the project rate (in the lower-left corner of the window).

Editing audio

Unlimited Undo lets you to revert actions all the way back to when you first opened the project. Audacity splits tracks into small blocks internally, so large cut and paste operations are quick because they don’t require rewriting the entire track each time a change is made.

Lots of basic editing operations:

- Cut
- Copy
- Paste
- Trim (delete everything except selection)
- Delete
- Silence
- Split
- Duplicate
- Find Zero Crossings

Mixing, panning, and warping

Audacity automatically mixes when you have more than one track open. It automatically resamples as necessary.

Generating audio

Built-in generators: Silence; Tone (Sine, Square, Sawtooth); White Noise. Plug-in generators included with Audacity: Click Track (like a metronome); Pluck.

Applying effects

Audacity has many built-in effects and also supports plug-in effects in the LADSPA, VST, and Nyquist formats. Built-in effects include:

- Amplify (including automatic normalization/peak calculation up to clipping value)
- Bass Boost
- Change Pitch (without changing tempo)
- Change Speed (changes both pitch and tempo together, like speeding up or slowing down a record player)
- Change Tempo (without changing pitch)
- Compressor (dynamic range compressor)
- Echo
- Equalization
- Fade In (changing the volume: from no volume to actual volume)
- Fade Out (changing the volume: from actual volume to no volume)
- FFT Filter
- Invert
- Noise Removal
- Normalize
- Phaser
- Repeat
- Reverse
- Wahwah

Developers' website: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Project Additional Information: Audacity Wiki

Direct Download: http://audacity.googlecode.com/files/audacity-win-2.0.5.exe

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

2 Pic - Free Graphical Editor from Tomas Moor

Merge images, make them fade into each other, frame them, apply several cool effects use a distortion mirror, change colors, use gradient, make multi-layer texts, and change properties like contrast and brightness.

2 Pic is a graphical program that you can use to edit your images (like photographs and drawings). There are already several famous programs on the market that you can use for the same purpose, like PaintShop Pro, PhotoShop and Picture Publisher. Why should you use 2 Pic instead? Software developer Tomas Moor compiled the program with one major mission on his mind - make it extremely simple, user-friendly, and with no need for long learning curve. And it is absolutely free.

Programs like Photoshop have a lot of functions, but you will need a lot of time to find out what exactly are all those functions. Sometimes, you get lost in the big number of these functions. That won’t be the case with 2 Pic. The utility is specifically designed for ease of use and it has a unique design with the functions clearly arranged on tabs. That’s the biggest advantage of the program: with less time and less experience, you can do very nice things.

2 Pic’s name is because you can open simultaneously two images next to each other. Many functions of the program use both images, like merging.

Most useful functions of 2 Pic:
* Merging images with each other
* Making images fade into each other
* Spout images into each other with an aerosol
* Give images frames
* Apply cool effects to images, like: rotate, make sharper and make mosaic
* Insert texts on multiple layers
* Fit the size to, like, an A4 paper
* Insert gradient very easily

Developers’ website: http://www.moor-software.com/0.php?page=2pic.php

Download: http://www.petermoor.nl/overig/zip/2pic.zip

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Multiple computers operation with one keyboard and mouse

synergy: [noun] a mutually advantageous
conjunction of distinct elements


If you have multiple computers (with same or different Operating Systems) on your Office or Home desk, the software presented might get your full attention. It is like having dual (or multiple) monitors management, a KVM switch, and VNC remote desktop operations at the convenience of one small open source utility.


Introduction

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It’s intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screen savers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all.

Virtual Monitor Screens

With synergy, all the computers on your desktop form a single virtual screen. You use the mouse and keyboard of only one of the computers while you use all of the monitors on all of the computers. You tell synergy how many screens you have and their positions relative to one another. Synergy then detects when the mouse moves off the edge of a screen and jumps it instantly to the neighboring screen. The keyboard works normally on each screen; input goes to whichever screen has the cursor.

You can arrange screens side-by-side, above and below one another, or any combination. You can even have a screen jump to the opposite edge of itself. Synergy also understands multiple screens attached to the same computer.

Copy-and-paste Between Computers

Do you wish you could cut and paste between computers? Now you can! Just copy text, HTML, or an image as you normally would on one screen then switch to another screen and paste it. It’s as if all your computers shared a single clipboard. It even converts new lines to each computer’s native form so cut and paste between different operating systems works seamlessly. And it does it all in Unicode so any text can be copied.

Synchronized Screensavers

Do you use a screen saver? With synergy all your screen savers act in concert. When one starts they all start. When one stops they all stop. And, if you require a password to unlock the screen, you’ll only have to enter a password on one screen.

Synergy is open source and released under the GNU Public License (GPL).

System Requirements

* Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me (the Windows 95 family)
* Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP (the Windows NT family)
* Mac OS X 10.2 or higher
* Unix
* All systems must support TCP/IP networking.

Install and Use

For your convenience, I will offer you description provided by Matt Valerio on how he installed and configured the system.

In my case, I installed Synergy on both my desktop and laptop (both Windows XP) and plugged them into the same LAN. (It will also work over wireless, but is a little laggy.) I wanted to share my desktop’s keyboard and mouse, so I configured Synergy on my desktop with the “Share this computer’s keyboard and mouse” radio button clicked.

Then I needed to configure the Screens and Links, also on the desktop. This essentially lets me give names to each machine (I just called them “desktop” and “laptop” for simplicity) and also specify the “links” between them. It’s really easy. I wanted to configure Synergy so that when my mouse goes to the right of my desktop monitor, it gets teleported over to the left side of my laptop monitor. I also wanted the left side of my laptop monitor to teleport over to the right side of my desktop monitor. The second rule may seem redundant in this case, but if you don’t define it, then if you mouse from the desktop to the laptop, you have no way of getting back to the desktop! You can go crazy with the rules if you have more than one machine, creating a twisted maze of links and relationships between screens. For usability, though, it’s a good idea to keep things “topologically simple” to not fry your brain.

Once I get the desktop configured, I just click the Start button and it hides in the tray waiting for clients (e.g. my laptop) to connect.

Then on my laptop, I start Synergy and configure it to use my desktop’s keyboard and mouse. Click Start and the icons on both machines will show a yellow lightning bolt to indicate connectivity. Moving the mouse around actually jumps between screens! Sweet! You’ll also be pleasantly surprised when you discover that copy/paste works between machines as well.

Now I can have a “Dual” Monitor setup. It’s not quite the same since the screens are connected to completely different machines, but it does help considerably.

Lately I’ve been developing some distributed system software with WCF, and this setup has been very beneficial since I can easily move the mouse between two computers to test both client and server.

Developers’ website: http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/


Saturday, January 10, 2009

Pazera Free FLV to AVI Converter

Pazera Free FLV to AVI Converter is an absolutely free application that converts Flash Video files (FLV, SWF) into AVI or MPG (MPEG-1, MPEG-2).

FLV files are commonly used in the Internet by YouTube, Google Video and other video services. That files are not supported by Windows Media Player and other popular media players. To display FLV video you need to convert that file into more reliable format, such as AVI or MPG.

The program has a number of predefined settings (profiles) specially designed for novice users. While more advanced users can customize video and audio encoding parameters used by encoder: audio and video codec, audio and video bitrate, fps, sampling frequency, resolution, volume and other.

The program is 100% freeware! - both for private and commercial use. There are no limitations, watermarks, adware, spyware etc.

This application is distributed within a ZIP file and don’t need any installation. To use it, just extract archive and run flvtoavi.exe file. This program doesn’t use system registry and can be run from portable devices. All settings are written to INI file.

Main performance features:

* Conversion FLV and SWF to AVI or MPG.
* Supported video codecs: XviD, DivX 3, H.264, WMV, MPEG4-FFmpeg, S-Mpeg 4 v. 2, Motion JPEG (MJPEG), HuffYUV.
* Supported audio codecs: Lame (MP3), MP2, AC3, AAC, WMA, PCM 16-bit.
* Generating video files compatible with the MPEG-1 (VCD) / MPEG-2 (DVD) standard.
* Decoding the most important audio and video codecs used in FLV files: Flash/Sorenson, H.264, MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3), MPEG-2.5 Layer 3, ADPCM, AAC etc.

Program website: http://www.pazera-software.com/products/flv-to-avi-converter/

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Advanced SystemCare Free from Iobit

Advanced SystemCare Free (formerly Advanced WindowsCare Personal) has a one-click approach to helping protect, repair, clean, and optimize your PC.

Check the comparison table to see this computer program advantages:

This program combines every possible utility to keep track of your system’s operation and make timely amendments in its configuration to prevent possible breakdowns. Its registry fixer is one of the most flexible available on the market: you may choose from many types of problems for it to deal with or bypass, and the output it produces is detailed enough to see whether fixing a particular registry problem will not cause any further trouble. This is a great advantage since many other utilities are removing registry entries without double-checking with the computer owner, causing some of the functions to get corrupted. For example, while I was using several registry cleaning utilities available on the market, I had to reinstall my Brother Printer drivers thereafter.

The spyware removal tool even scrutinizes our browser’s cookies, and the privacy sweeper displays a fancy tree of what can possibly be wrong and is worth the owner attention.

In addition, the program includes numerous features that greatly contribute to its value. ’Disc explorer’, for instance, shows categorized lists of files that take up the space of our hard drive, allowing deleting them selectively. ’Smart RAM’ provides more memory to resource-demanding applications without affecting other important programs. ’Context menu manager’ makes it incredibly easy to remove unnecessary items from an inflated right-click menu, and ’Driver backup’ makes it possible for you to keep only one spare compact disc for all the drivers employed in the computer Operating System, and restore them all with one click afterwards if it comes to this.

Developers Website: http://www.iobit.com/advancedwindowscareper.html

Friday, January 2, 2009

Freeware Portable Photos Manager

MobaPhoto is a nice freeware for managing your digital photos. MobaPhoto allows you to resize, crop, correct red-eyes of all your pictures very easily in "batch-mode". It allows you to create automatically some beautiful photo galleries and upload them on your website without having any knowledge in website creation.

MobaPhoto key features:

* Batch photo processing
* Photo galleries compatible with every known web browser
* You can use the right-click menu for an easy and fast start
* Program without installation that you can start from an USB stick
* A clear and easy to use interface
* Light and portable application, packaged in a single executable of 1.3MB only

Developers website: http://mobaphoto-en.mobatek.net/index.php

Direct Downloading Link (portable version): http://mobaphoto-en.mobatek.net/en/MobaPhoto_v1.42_portable.zip

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