Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier: Freeware Reviews

Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier allows you to copy files from hard disks and removable media, like DVDs and CDs, with problems such as corrupted data, bad sectors, scratches, or that just give errors when reading data. The program will attempt to recover every readable piece of a file and put them back together. Using this method, most types of files can be made usable even if some parts were not recoverable in the end.

The program can be used as a daily backup system, using its batch mode functions. A list of transfers can be saved to a file and then run from the command line to perform the same batch of transfers on a regular basis without having to use the GUI interface. The program supports command line parameters which allow the application to be run from schedulers or scripts so it can be fully integrated into daily server task.

Why you need the utility if Windows has its built-in copy-and-paste capabilities? If you ever tried to copy files from damaged CD, or move huge chunks of data from one location to another, you know the answer.

-        Latest release: 4.4 (January 14, 2010).

-        Supported OS: Windows 2K and higher.

-        Supported Languages: English, (Hungarian), Nederlands (Dutch), Deutsch (German), Franзais (French), Romana (Romanian), Espaсol (Spanish), ЗС±№ѕо (Korean), Русский (Russian), Italian (Italian), عربي (Arabic), Български (Bulgarian), polski (Polish), Tьrkзe (Turkish), Portuguкs (Portuguese), Norsk (Norwegian), Indonesia (Indonesian), Hrvatski (Croatian), Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese), svenska (Swedish), Portuguкs Brasileiro (Brazilian_Portuguese), עברית (Hebrew).

Website: http://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29

Video screen capture tool for 3D applications

Taksi is screen/video capture utility, but is different from the standard screen capturing applications. It is designed to capture live video from your 3d based games and other 3d applications. Taksi can even perform real-time compression to popular video formats such as xvid, divx, etc - or save it uncompressed. Everything is controlled by customizable keyboard short-cut, which gives you fast and simple control even though you might be in the middle of a game. To save disk space Taksi allows you to scale you video to half-size and provide filtering so the image quality is kept at maximum.

It is based on the VFW API’s and can use any of the installed video codecs to encode in real time (if your CPU can handle it).

Features:

-        Uses any VFW video record codec. Such as XVid, DivX, MSMpeg4, etc.

-        Can record video as compressed or uncompressed AVI-files.

-        Video compression occurs in background thread for use in multi processor (hyperthread) machines.

-        Very simple user interface for hooking applications to be recorded.

-        Very small footprint (~300k). Written in C++, and does NOT use MFC.

-        Can capture video frames from applications using DirectX 8 or 9, OpenGL, or GDI.

-        Has visual feedback while recording even in full screen games.

-        Runs on Windows.

-        Hooks keyboard or uses DirectInput for hotkeys to control recording.

-        Captures still frames in BMP or PNG format.

In development: Audio recording for you clips (to be implemented soon).

If you are fan of the portable applications, you can easily make Taksi portable:

-        Download the installer and extract to a folder of your choice (using the "MSI Administrative Installation" method).

-        Delete the .msi file (name varies depending on version eg. taksi-0.7.6.msi) and TaksiLogo.jpg.

-        LaunchTaksi.exe. 

Developer website: http://sourceforge.net/projects/taksi/

The software is Open Source and unconditionally free.

Free FTP Client – FileZilla – At Glance

The FTP is not dead yet! It is pretty much alive! This file transfer protocol may seem old-fashioned and ancient, but the truth is, it's often the simplest way to transfer files between PCs, or between a PC and a server. It is not only the best solution for webmasters for sites update, but every computer user might find it extremely useful in one or another situation.

It's especially useful for transferring large files, because ISPs often block email attachments over a certain size. It is also great for transferring groups of files. If you need to share a big chunk of data, the web uploading might take hours, while FTP can manage the same task much faster.

FileZilla is powerful Open Source FTP/SFTP client with multiple useful features. It includes a site manager to store all your connection details and logins as well as an Explorer style interface that shows the local and remote folders and can be customized independently. The program offers support for firewalls and proxy connections as well as SSL and Kerberos GSS security. Additional features include keep alive, auto ascii/binary transfer, download queue, manual transfers, raw FTP commands and more.

It has just about every FTP feature you need. It's a breeze to set up and edit new FTP connections. The interface is particularly easy to use, so that you can easily navigate external FTP servers and your local hard drive, and transfer files between then. You can also use multiple simultaneous connections to speed up file transfers.

Among others, the features of FileZilla include the following:

• Easy to use
• Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
• Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X and more
• IPv6 support
• Available in many languages
• Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
• Tabbed user interface
• Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
• Bookmarks
• Drag & drop support
• Configurable transfer speed limits
• Filename filters
• Directory comparison
• Network configuration wizard
• Remote file editing
• Keep-alive
• HTTP/1.1, SOCKS5 and FTP-Proxy support
• Logging to file
• Synchronized directory browsing
• Remote file search

Screens:

Based on the Operation System, you can choose the appropriate download link from the following page:

http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=client

This free software is indeed features-rich, easy to use, and very reliable. This is actually the FTP software I am using on the daily basis. Highly recommended!

63 Freeware Utilities and Plugins for Skype Users

Skype is accepted leader in the free IP telephone services in the world, allowing cutting significantly the phone bills to the domestic and international communication. While not all the features are free, there is a solid basic set that makes it a valuable addition to all the computer users. The following features are free:
1. Skype-to-Skype phone calls (through PC and smartphones).
2. Transfer calls to people on Skype.
3. Video calls.
4. Instant messaging and group IMs.
5. Conference calls.
6. Forward calls to people on Skype.

While there are already quite a lot of similar services on the Web, the Skype usefulness is based on its popularity and huge membership base, making it easy to find there your friends and relatives.

I have prepared a new Rating List at RateItAll, offering listing and reviews of the third-party free software utilities, allowing enhancing the features provided by basic Skype services. As of today, there are 63 freeware utilities and plugins are represented with website links, ratings, and brief reviews.

Review the Rating List at: http://www.rateitall.com/t-2868750-free-software-for-skype-users.aspx