Free: FairUse Wizard full version

Grab the full version of FairUse Wizard free while it last.

From their site:

Encode for your iPhone, iPod, AppleTV, Zune, Xbox 360, PS3, TiVO HD, or Computer with optimized quality!
Encode your DVDs to watch them on your prefered device with optimal quality! FairUse Full Edition included highly optimized encoding profiles for a variety of popular devices!

Encode much faster !
Encode much faster(1) with a Dual-Core, Quad-Core, SMP, and Hyper-Threading processors optimized build !

Optimize your encodings with the “quality” mode !
Get the best possible quality while only using exactly the needed space. The quality mode is best suited for the archiving of DVD quality movies !

Break the 700 MB limit !
Encode to 1400 MB (up to 10 GB) target file size for superior video and audio quality !

Select exactly what to encode !
Remove any unneeded or repeating credits, encode only your favorite movie parts, …

I haven’t used it but I have heard from friends that have that it is a pretty good program.

16.Mar.08 Software Comments (0)

Check the hash

Many download sites are now listing the file hash values so that users can verify that the file has not been altered by a 3rd party. There are a few programs out there to allow Windows users to verify the file hash but the easiest I’ve found is HashTab. HashTab is a shell extension that adds a tab to the Windows Explorer file properties window that allows you to see the hash values of a file.

By default, the only values it shows are CRC32, MD5 and SHA-1. Those three are the most commonly used hash types. You can also add the following values through the program settings:

• HAVAL
• RIPEMD-128
• RIPEMD-256
• RIPEMD-320
• SHA-512
• Tiger
• Whirlpool

According to the HashTab site, version 2.0.7 is compatible with all versions of Windows. The last version, 1.14, had separate Windows x32 and x64 installers. The older version is still available from the HashTab site.

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else. - James Thurber

21.Dec.07 Security, Software, Windows Comments (0)

DivX Pro for free (legally!)

Grab a copy of DivX Pro for free! Just go here and follow the instructions. Both the Windows and Mac version are available. You will have to pay $4.99 if you want the MPEG-2/DVD plugin for the DivX Converter.

Limited time offer so grab it while you can.

Life’s too short for chess. - Henry James Byron

14.Dec.07 Software Comments (0)

Terminals

There are over 100 servers where I work. Almost half of those are in remote locations so we use Remote Desktop pretty heavily. The problem with Remote Desktop is that you can only have one server open per window. We also use Telnet to maintain our switches. I, for one, hate having multiple windows open when working with several connections. Terminals corrects that problem.

Terminals allows you to open tabs instead of new windows for the following types of connections:

• RDP
• VNC
• VMRC
• RAS
• Telnet
• SSH
• ICA Citrix

I have been using Terminals for a couple of weeks and have been impressed. The fact that I can have four RDP sessions, telnet into a switch and an SSH connection to the Linux server open in a single window is awesome. It also has some basic networking tools (e.g. ping, trace route, DNS lookup) that can come in handy.

Another nice feature: No installation. Just unzip and execute terminals.exe. At 8 MB, it won’t take up too much space on your USB drive.

The latest release is 1.6f. Screenshots can be found here.

03.Dec.07 Software Comments (4)

Out of this world AV

No matter if it’s a utility or a game, I’m always on the look out for software that is free and reliable. Rollie Hawk pointed me to a new antivirus program that has become a staple on my home PC’s. The program is called Moon Secure AV.

Moon Secure AV, in a nutshell, is ClamAV with a user friendly GUI. The GUI isn’t pretty like more mature AV’s like AVG and Norton. Think along the lines of the nerdy girl in school versus the prom queen. It’s not the prettiest but it gets the job done. Screenshots can be found here.

Here are the things that I like about MSAV:

• Real-time scanning and automatic updates are enabled by default.
• No reboot required after installation.
• Resource usage, compared to other AV programs, is relatively low
  • Less than 30MB of memory.
  • Low CPU utilization during real-time protection. It does go up during active scans.

What didn’t I like?

• Windows XP and Vista support only. Windows 2000 support would be nice because I know quite a few businesses, as well as home users, that still use 2K Professional on their workstations.
• There isn’t a setting to exclude directories from being scanned. This is going to be implemented later according to the developers.
• Scanning is slow. The ClamAV engine isn’t known for it’s speed.

I recommend MSAV and look forward to seeing it develop, just like the nerdy girl from high school.

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. - Henry Ford

21.Nov.07 Security, Software Comments (4)