Vuze: All-In-One Video Downloader and Converter to All Portable Formats

Vuze, the popular BitTorrent client formerly known as Azureus, has received a major update which allows users to automatically convert and play downloaded videos on the iPhone, iPod, Xbox 360 and the PS3. “Now playing, on all your screens” is Vuze’s new tagline.


In other words, it starts from the BitTorrent core basis and creates a vast network for video discovery and user-created video publishing all connected through social networking.

With the latest version, Vuze adds a new split-window MyTorrents view offering support for categories and advanced downloading / seeding / queuing rules for effective and automated torrent management, a user interface that will resonate right from the start with iTunes users and which offers many customization options, seeding from read-only media, and considerable cutbacks on resource consumption.

In offering a general indication of your torrents and media playback controls, the new layout highlights user-initiated searches.

The multiplatform that Vuze client has become is wide-ranging offering lots of features and options: manages multiple downloads simultaneously from a single GUI window, detailed real-time download status and info with export to XML, advanced download and seeding management rules, extended configuration settings and torrent creation wizards, embedded tracker that allows easy and automated hosting of your files, a proxy, for both tracker and peer communications, PeerGuardian IP address filtering, web browser and console UIs, multiple languages function (27), a powerful plug-in interface, and a lot more.

Vuze currently supports Apple devices including the iPhone and the iPod. The PS3 and Xbox 360 are the two gaming consoles that integrate with Vuze as well. More devices may be added in the future but no decisions have yet been made on which ones, TorrentFreak was told. In a recent poll, most Vuze users indicated that iPhone/iPod support was most wanted.

Once device support is turned on in Vuze, users can drag and drop downloaded video onto their device of choice. Vuze will then convert the video into the appropriate format and add it to the device’s library.

For iTunes, Vuze will import the video into your iTunes library so it can be transferred to your iPhone, iPod or Apple TV. For the PS3 and Xbox 360, Vuze will stream the videos from your PC or Mac directly to your game console.

The device support is a great feature for users who want to have an easy all-in-one solution that not only downloads video, but also makes it ready to play on other devices. Although Vuze has been focusing mainly on video lately, the client can still download other content as well.

Website: http://www.vuze.com/app

System Requirement:

PC

• Windows XP or Vista
• 2 Gigahertz processor, 1 GB of RAM and DirectX 9.0 compliant video and sound
• Internet Explorer or Firefox

Mac

• Mac OS 10.4.8+ (Intel-based) Intel Core Duo 1.83-gigahertz or higher processor with 1GB of RAM
• Safari or Firefox 

Kurt Computer Recorder

Krut Computer Recorder is a free open-source screencast tool, written in Java, to record audio and video from your computer screen into .mov-files and .wav-files. It can be used to multiple educational, commercial, and sharing with friends purposes, e.g. making video tutorials or recording games. It could also be used to record streaming video and audio directly from your computer.

In addition to a movie file, the program also records separate files for audio (wav) and video (mov), to allow re-encoding to any movie format using an external encoding program.

Additional Features:

- Timer-controlled recording
- Moveable recording areas during recording
- Preview of ongoing recording
- Optional mouse pointer recording
- Record/Playback at 2 different frame rates
- Highly accurate audio-video synchronization

Running Krut on Windows

Here are some quick instructions on how to run the program on the newer versions of Windows. You need to have Java installed, but there is a good chance that you already do. To run the program, it is usually sufficient to just double click on "KRUT.jar" or "krut.bat", after you have extracted the zip-archive into a folder of your choice. If you double click "KRUT.jar", and the program doesn't start, but you get a list of programs to choose from instead, you should choose the one that says "Java (something)". If double clicking does not work at all, try right clicking and see if there are any "Open With"-alternatives. If there is an "Open With -> Java (something)" alternative, that should do it.

If there is no "Open With" alternative when you right click, try to hold down a Shift-button while you right click, and see if there is an "Open With" alternative now.

If none of this works, there is probably some problem with your Java-installation. Go to a Java download site (at the time of writing http://www.java.com/getjava), and download and reinstall your Java.

Authors

The program has been written by Jonas Östby, with contributions by Kristoffer Berggren.

Website: http://krut.sourceforge.net/

Screenshot:

AvancePaint - Advanced Freeware Paint Program

AvancePaint is a freeware complete paint program designed with a unique intuitive user interface that makes absolutely easy to learn and use. It is powerful enough to suit the most advanced user and yet simple enough to please the beginner.

You can open unlimited number of photos or pictures and unleash your artistic talents as you will discover the advanced and powerful but easy to use graphical options, embedded in the utility. A complete set of more then 20 photo-realistic filters and more then 40 textures are included.

The software is light on the resources, utilizes just 3Mb of your hard disk space, and is compatible with Windows 95/98/98SE/Me/2k/3k/NT/XP and Vista.

AvancePaint is FreeWare (Free-Edition). No registration required.

Some of the features:

*   Unique Intuitive user interface makes it easy to use.

*   Compatible with ALL Windows versions (including Windows Vista).

*   Open and edit unlimited (as memory allows) number of photo's or pictures.

*   Open and edit JPG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, WMF, ICO, DIB, PNG formats.

*   Dither and reduce color on selection.

*   Snap to Grid.

*   Detailed editing mode.

*   Draw advanced Bezier curves and Polygons.

*   Import images directly from your scanner, webcam etc.

*   Save JPG image file with user selectable compression quality.

*   Save GIF image file with user selectable transparent color.

*   Save BMP image file with color depth and dither options.

*   Export PNG images.

*   Draw rectangles, circles, elliptical filled or not, borders, rounded rectangles, arrows, 3D-borders…

*   Freehand drawing with selectable brushes.

*   Masks.

*   Brighten, darken, and contrast.

*   Sharpen, soften, blur, hue.

*   Ambient lighting.

*   Blend, paste transparent, blend reverse…

*   Size and crop any image or parts of an image.

*   30 photographical effects (expandable).

*   Create your own effects using VB or any other programming language.

*   Fill solid, Fill with gradients, Fill with several patterns, with textures etc…

*   User selectable textures (tiles).

*   Flip horizontal, vertical, rotate…

*   Colors replacement.

*   Edit areas in high detail.

*   Print preview and high quality prints.

*   Real style and visible font selections.

*   A full set of easy to select colors. Easy to use fixed colors, user defined colors, true-color pallets and more.

*   Zoom.

*   More then 40 textures and tiles which can be extended unlimited.

*   Effects Browser (more then 24 photographical effects).

*   Picture Frames generator.

*   IrFanView awareness.

*   User definable effects.

*   And much, much more…

Author’s Website: http://users.belgacom.net/rgs/avancepaint.htm

Lost Email Passwords Recovery Software

You can call the software email passwords recovery, or email passwords hacking. The difference is in the purpose of obtaining the information. If it is completely legitimate to restore your own forgotten passwords, it would be reasonable to call that recovery. If you for some reason want to learn somebody else’s password, that already smells bad, and can be considered hacking. Anyway, the coolness of the software is not based on its purposes, but on set on the information recovery availability and reliability. And it is your responsibility to use it for the right purpose.

As you might guess, since the review appears on this blog, this valuable piece of software is freeware.

All the passwords for your email accounts are stored in either an encrypted format or in plain text. Mail PassView is able to reveal the passwords and account details for the following email clients:

• Outlook Express
• Microsoft Outlook 2000 (POP3 and SMTP Accounts only)
• Microsoft Outlook 2002/2003/2007 (POP3, IMAP, HTTP and SMTP Accounts)
• Windows Mail
• IncrediMail
• Eudora
• Netscape 6.x/7.x
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Group Mail Free
• Yahoo! Mail - If the password is saved in Yahoo! Messenger application.
• Hotmail/MSN mail - If the password is saved in MSN Messenger application.
• Gmail - If the password is saved by Gmail Notifier application, Google Desktop, or by Google Talk.

For each email account, the following fields are displayed: Account Name, Application, Email, Server, Server Type (POP3/IMAP/SMTP), User Name, and the Password.

If your email program is not supported by Mail PassView, you can still recover your password by using this Password Sniffer.

Mail PassView is also available in many other languages. In order to change the language of Mail PassView, download the appropriate language zip file from the website, extract the 'mailpv_lng.ini', and put it in the same folder that you Installed Mail PassView utility, and you are good to go.

Author: Nir Sofer

Author’s Website: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mailpv.html

NOTE: Due to the character of the software functionality, some Antivirus programs produce False Alerts notifying that the Mail PassView utility as infected with Trojan/Virus. You can be sure that the software is perfectly clean and harmless for your computer.