QuickAudio - Free audio editing software for Windows

QuickAudio is freeware, full-featured audio editing software which lets you edit, play and record digital audio as well as convert between various popular audio formats. It has standard audio editing features, multiple undo, audio spectrum analysis as well as support for up to 24 VST different plugins. Zoom out to edit your whole waveform at once or zoom in to edit individual samples. Cut and paste between as many files as you like.

The software was developed by Canadian Sion Software, one of the software development leaders for the music related utilities.

Formats supported include: 

• Wave
• MP3
• Ogg Vorbis
• AIFF
• CDR

Editing operations include:

• Cut, Copy and Paste
• Change sample rate, bits per sample and channels
• Insert Space
• Amplify
• Silence
• Fade In
• Fade Out
• Normalize
• Compress
• Reverb
• Filters - Lift/Attenuate Musical Presence, Vocal Presence, Bass, Midrange, Treble
• Remove Noise
• Change Duration (without changing pitch)
• Change Pitch (without changing duration)
• Add up to 24 VST plugins for your own custom editing

Website: http://www.sionsoft.com/qaudio.html

Download the installation file from the Download tab on the top of the page.

3 Freeware utilities for Kindle users

If you are representing the new crowd of Ebook gadgets’ users, you might already face the necessity to convert the text format of the found texts to the particular format that will be accepted by your device properly. While each gadget has the list of the supported formats, not all of them are convenient to use on your device. For example, Kindle is reading PDF, but if the file is not prepared properly, you might find it unacceptable.

So, if you own Kindle, you need software to convert text file formats in the formats, supported by this device, preferably to the branded Kindle format – MOBI. In this post, we will present several freeware utilities to help you.

1. Calibre

Calibre is considered by many users as the only best software for Calibre, for some it is even the only software needed. Supporting major operation systems as Windows, Mac, and Linux, this features-reach, ambitious eBook management suite includes eBook format conversion, an eBook reader for any format, and online tagging and local organizing of eBook files. It also supports direct synchronization with Android, iOS, and most all eBook reading devices, including the Kindle.

For Kindle owners, Calibre is the easiest and most reliable way to convert almost any document format into a Kindle friendly format (such as .MOBI). It is also a great tool for tagging/downloading metadata to your eBook files as well as syncing them with the Kindle. It is especially great tool for those who mostly use external, non-Amazon sources to fill the gadget library.

Calibre supports the conversion of many input formats to many output formats. It can convert every input format in the following list, to every output format.

* Input Formats: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, DJVU, EPUB, FB2, HTML, HTMLZ, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ

* Output Formats: EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, HTMLZ, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ

The conversion engine has lots of powerful features. It can rescale all font sizes, ensuring the output e-book is readable no matter what font sizes the input document uses. It can automatically detect/create book structure, like chapters and Table of Contents. It can insert the book metadata into a "Book Jacket" at the start of the book.

Website: http://calibre-ebook.com/

Direct Download Page: http://calibre-ebook.com/download

2. Hamster

This freeware Hamster software also can convert pretty much any eBook and document format into a Kindle friendly format such as .MOBI. It does not try to cover all the features, which Calibre offers, but the conversion part is done by this utility with high speed and quality.

The software is very user-friendly and can perform a job for multiple files on the go, applying drag-and-drop approach. Format selection can be done directly, or you can just chose your device type, and select the preferred output format for your operation.  

Website: http://ebook.hamstersoft.com/en/home

Direct Download Page: http://stuff.hamstersoft.com/launch/hamsterfreeebookconverter.exe

Note that once run, the installer will download installation data from the internet (approx 45 MB of data). The installer will ask if you also want to install Hamster Free Zip Archiver by default, so make sure to UNCHECK that if you do not want it.

3. Auto Kindle eBook Converter

The Auto Kindle eBook Converter is free open source utility, developed for the same purpose as the software, offered above, however, it covers much smaller list of the applicable formats, while doing that well. The input file formats supported are: PDF, Lit, and HTML files, while the output is a Kindle-friendly .MOBI format.

The software has almost no interface, it will ask you to point to the input files and will generate MOBI output files pretty fast.

Website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/autokindle/

Direct Downloading Page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/autokindle/files/latest/download?source=files

************************

Update 02-10-13:

Out of the three utilities mentioned in this post, I am using Calibre. It is the best and the only software you need for your Kindle. Software is in active development, and recently the new software version 0.9.18 was released. You can download it from the following link: http://status.calibre-ebook.com/dist/portable.

Highly recommended!

Virtual Desktops Manager from Windows Sysinternals

Computers development is moving fast in different directions. Your monitors become bigger and the screen resolution – better. At the same time, the amount of applications, shortcuts, widgets, and other useful elements you would like to keep handy, may grow faster, than the ability to place on your desktop. The common solution available is offered by multiple virtual desktops. You can define them by users, if multiple users utilize the same computer, or by functions, for example – one desktop for business, another – for leisure, or keeping in mind some other objectives.

There are multiple software programs, both freeware and commercial versions, addressing these needs, and we are going to present today the tiny 60-KB utility from Windows Sysinternals (owned by Microsoft) is a simple way to set up four virtual desktops on your system.

Desktops utility allows you to organize your applications on up to four virtual desktops. Read email on one, browse the web on the second, and do work in your productivity software on the third, without the clutter of the windows you're not using. After you configure hotkeys for switching desktops, you can create and switch desktops either by clicking on the tray icon to open a desktop preview and switching window, or by using the hotkeys.

Unlike other virtual desktop utilities that implement their desktops by showing the windows that are active on a desktop and hiding the rest, Sysinternals Desktops uses a Windows desktop object for each desktop. Application windows are bound to a desktop object when they are created, so Windows maintains the connection between windows and desktops and knows which ones to show when you switch a desktop. That making Sysinternals Desktops very lightweight and free from bugs that the other approach is prone to where their view of active windows becomes inconsistent with the visible windows.

Desktops reliance on Windows desktop objects means that it cannot provide some of the functionality of other virtual desktop utilities, however. For example, Windows doesn't provide a way to move a window from one desktop object to another, and because a separate Explorer process must run on each desktop to provide a taskbar and start menu, most tray applications are only visible on the first desktop. Further, there is no way to delete a desktop object, so Desktops does not provide a way to close a desktop, because that would result in orphaned windows and processes. The recommended way to exit Desktops is therefore to logoff.

Website: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc817881

Download: http://download.sysinternals.com/Files/Desktops.zip

Alternative program we observed earlier - Dexpot. Feel free to check it, if you like the idea, but need to explore more features-rich utility.

Jaangle Free Portable Music Player and Organizer

Jaangle (formerly Teen Spirit) is open source, free, music player and organizer software. It categorizes your mp3, ogg, wma, avi etc collection and displays it in easy to browse, user interface. It has a quality audio - video player and also an integrated tag editor.

Description

Jaangle has an intuitive and user-friendly interface for playing music, an excellent library for music managing, and very interesting download capabilities of artist photos/bios, song lyrics, etc.

You start by adding a folder which contains your music files (mp3, wma, avi, mpg etc). Jaangle scans and reads the available tag info. The artists appear in the tree like control. Each time you click on an artist all his tracks can be seen in the list pane, artist biography and image are automatically downloaded from the internet and displayed in the information pane. By double clicking a track in the list you hear the music playing. More info may appear (if available) in the info pane like lyrics or comments.

Jaangle is a Microsoft © Windows software application and it is tested in Windows XP/2003, Vista. It is certified by softpedia as 100% free of malware, including adware, spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors.

License: Open source (GPL) free software (Freeware).

Main Features

* Media Player. Jaangle is using minimal resources (memory, CPU) for playing audio files based on the excellent bass engine. It plays video files using the DirectShow filters. By default it crossfades between tracks.

* Supported Audio Formats: mp3, mp2, wma, cda, ogg, mp1, aiff, xm, it, s3m, mod, mtm, umx, mo3, mpc, flac, mid, midi, ac3, mp4, ape, m4a and more based on directshow filters installed.

* Supported Video Formats: mpg, avi, mpeg, wmv, mp4 and more based on directshow filters installed.

* Music file tag editor (mp3, mpc, wma ...). You can tag files easily by right clicking in each track and click "properties". Alternatively you can drag-drop a track over a different artist/album/genre/year in the tree control. There are more ways to mass-tag your tracks by changing Artist / Album properties or by multiple select many tracks.

* Management. You can view your collection in various ways like Artists / Album, Year / Albums and more. Sorting is also available for every item type.

* Information downloading. By default, Jaangle, automatically downloads information from various sources in web. It is able to download information from Amazon (Album covers / Album reviews), LastFm (Artist Bio / Artist photo / Album covers), and Google (Track lyrics).

* History Logging. Jaangle automatically keeps log of the music you play. Note that it logs it only if you fully listen the track. You can see the full log of all the tracks that you have played and also track / artist statistics like top 10 per year/month etc.

* Info Display. Detailed information is displayed is the bottom right panel. It shows the artist (picture / bio) or the album (cover / review). By clicking the config button (the second icon in the title bar) you can choose to display visualizations/video or a web browser.

* Advanced Searching

* Visualization. Jaangle uses the excellent WinAmp's avs for displaying visualizations. You can add more visualization by adding visualizations scripts in the avs subdirectory.

* Game. Jaangle feature some variations of a music quiz game (it is inspired from my iPod) and the interface reminds "who wants the millionaire" TV game.The general idea is to select as quickly as possible the correct track that you listen. The games feature a total available time, a bonus in a correct answer, and a penalty in a mistaken one.
* And more…

Developers Website: http://www.jaangle.com

Direct Downloading Link (portable version): http://www.jaangle.com/files/jfiles.zip