Category: Geek Software of the Week

This a truly VERY useful GSotW! You HAVE to check it out!

Rufus – Create Bootable USB Drives

“Rufus is a small utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc.

It can be especially useful for cases where:

• you need to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs (Windows, Linux, UEFI, etc.)
• you need to work on a system that doesn’t have an OS installed
• you need to flash a BIOS or other firmware from DOS
• you want to run a low-level utility

Despite its small size, Rufus provides everything you need!

Oh, and Rufus is fast. For instance it’s about twice as fast as UNetbootin, Universal USB Installer or Windows 7 USB download tool, on the creation of a Windows 7 USB installation drive from an ISO (with honorable mention to WiNToBootic for managing to keep up). It is also marginally faster on the creation of Linux bootable USB from ISOs.”

This week’s new Geek Software of the Week is “File Property Edit!” Have you ever wanted change ALL attributes on a file in Windows? Now you can! Even the hidden, highly specialized attributes!

File Property Edit – Edit file properties and attributes for Free.

“With just several clicks, you can easily change the files’ attributes, including ‘create time’, ‘modify time’, ‘last access time’, ‘read-only’, ‘hidden’, ‘system’… and modify their properties, such as document summary properties, photo’s EXIF properties, MP3 ID3 tags (V1 and V2), and AVI RIFF Info tags. With the powerful file and folder browse feature and the drag and drop support, you can add a group of files and directories. The 1-click Undo feature allows you to rollback all the changes you just made. It also supports quick preview feature, which allows you to see the picture’s thumbnail while you edit it, and the export properties feature, which allows you to export the file properties into XML file or CSV file.”

This week’s Geek Software of the Week is SO completely useful, both to you and you computer clueless friends (you know that you have them!) that you will wonder, “Where has this program been all my life?!” Just install it, run it, and you will know what programs people have had problems with (and therefore, should be deleted) and which ones are safe. Go forth and be safe, people!

Should I Remove It?

“Ever wonder how to clean out your computer? Many people do, because it’s not unusual to have your PC filled with adware, toolbars and other programs you no longer need or probably never intended to install in the first place. But like most people, what programs should you remove is the tough questions. Well, we have your answer, simply download the award winning ‘Should I Remove It?’ app and wonder no more. The app is a tiny, lightweight program designed to show you what programs you have installed on your computer and quickly determine what programs you can safely remove.

Bloatware and trialware refer to PC manufacturers’ habit of loading crippled versions of commercial software on a new computer in the hope that some will upgrade to paid editions.

Don’t have a clue what you should remove or keep? Ever open up the Windows Add/Remove Programs app and are just utterly overwhelmed? Well, don’t worry, we are here to help! Download our completely free program and within seconds we will help you purge your PC.

‘Should I Remove It?’ is 100% FREE, and does not bundle any additional software, that means no adware, spyware, malware or other types of shareware or free-ware.

• No adware, spyware, malware
• Easy to install and uninstall
• Does not run in the background”

Now, you can be sure that your drives are securely wiped of data!

Full Wipe

“What is Full Wipe?
Full Wipe is a powerful tool which can fully wipe all data from your memory cards, USB sticks, removable HDDs, HDDs or even floppy!
All data will be UN-RECOVERYABLE!

Why the need to fully wipe the data from these memory devices?
Usually removable memory cards or HDDs have many your personal or company business confidential information. Simply delete or format will not really wipe the data from the disk. Hackers can easily restore these data by some software in few clicks.

How Full Wipe works to make sure all data are fully wiped?
Normal delete or format will only mark these files to ‘deleted’ status, the real data are still in the device. Full Wipe will re-write as much empty data as possible to overwrite the real data. Even Hackers restore the data the files are useless.”

The Geek Software of the Week is truly useful and handy! Check out the features, and keep in mind that all this is completely free and Open Source!

Redo Backup and Recovery!

“Redo Backup and Recovery is so simple that anyone can use it. It is the easiest, most complete disaster recovery solution available. It allows bare-metal restore. Bare metal restore is not only the best solution for hardware failure, it is also the ultimate antivirus: Even if your hard drive melts or gets completely erased by a virus, you can have a completely-functional system back up and running in as little as 10 minutes.

All your documents and settings will be restored to the exact same state they were in when the last snapshot was taken. Redo Backup and Recovery is a live CD, so it does not matter if you use Windows or Linux. You can use the same tool to backup and restore every machine. And because it is open source released under the GPL, it is completely free for personal and commercial use.

More Features, Less Complex

Redo Backup has the most features coupled with the simplest, most user-friendly interface:

• Easy graphical user interface boots from CD in less than a minute
• No installation needed; runs from a CD-ROM or a USB stick
• Saves and restores Windows and Linux machines
• Automatically finds local network shares
• Access your files even if you can’t log in
• Recover deleted pictures, documents, and other files
• Internet access with a full-featured browser to download drivers
• Live CD download size is only about 250MB
• Over 750,000 downloads”

This is one of the most useful and cool GSotW’s I’ve found in a while! It is just mind-boggling useful! I was in need of a global find and replace text tool for multiple files, and this one fit the bill perfectly!

Plus, you can even use it to generate a command line string to do the same task repetitively.

Find And Replace Tool

Project Description

An open source tool to find and replace text in multiple files.

Features

• Single file download – fnr.exe (127kb)
• Replace text in multiple files using windows application or through command line
• Find Only to see where matches are found
• Case-sensitive searching
• Searching for files in one directory or recursing sub-directories
• Regular expressions
• Find and replace multi-line text
• Generate command line button to create command line text to put in batch file
• Command line help
• Unit tests of Find/Replace engine

Map a drive latter to any folder! Very cool FREE software!

Virtual Drive Creator

“What does Virtual Drive Creator(TM) do?”

Virtual Drive Creator lets you map any available drive letter on your computer to any folder on your drive with ease! Suppose you are working on a project where you have placed all of your files in a directory such as ‘C:\Users\Admin\My Documents\Projects\Acme Corp Acquisition\Drafts’. To access your files in Windows Explorer or any other application you need to traverse through the maze of folders to get there. Using Virtual Drive Creator, you can simply map an available drive letter (such as R) to the precise directory you are working in and you can access those files quickly and easily. The file ‘TimeLine.docx’ can then be opened in Microsoft Word simply by selecting the Open command, selecting the R drive and clicking on your document in the files list. Once you no longer need to keep the drive mapped to the folder, you simply remove the mapping using Virtual Drive Creator.

Special for CD-ROM users! This works great! Copy the contents of your CD to a folder on you hard drive, not the root. Create a virtual drive pointing to that folder. Install the CD using the virtual drive letter. And like magic you can run the CD from your hard drive. This work for about 70% of the CDs we’ve tested, it does not work for music CDs or Data CDs.”

This one saved me from losing data on an external USB drive I was using for backups! Awesome software… free to try on a limited demo, but only $29.95 for a personal license, if you, like me, have a big drive recovery to do!

Active@ File Recovery

Efficient & easy to use data recovery tool for deleted, damaged or lost files, even if your PC doesn’t boot

Active@ File Recovery for Windows provides the ability to effectively detect and recover files and disks lost due to accidental deletion, disk formatting, virus and other reasons.

Active@ File Recovery Professional package also includes integrated Disk Editor (HexViewer; a utility for low-level data inspection), Active@ Partition Recovery (a tool used to recover deleted or damaged volumes), and Active@ File Organizer (a utility to organize/rename files after a catastrophic data loss).

Active@ File Recovery Enterprise extends the Professional package with Active@ Boot Disk Lite: an ISO image that you can use to create a bootable CD/DVD or USB with a lightweight version of Windows 7™ running in RAM (WinPE 3.1). It is the only way to recover your data when your system is not bootable and you cannot attach the corrupted Hard Disk Drive to another machine.

When to use it:

• Recover deleted files after Recycle Bin has been emptied, or files were deleted while bypassing the Recycle Bin (ex. large files)
• Recover files lost due to accidental disk formatting, damage by virus attack, malicious program, or a power failure
• Recover photos & pictures deleted from a USB Flash, or images lost after formatting a Memory Card (SD, CompactFlash)
• Data recovery when partition or volume is deleted, damaged or formatted, or disk has bad sectors

Everybody’s got their own special way of grabbing a screenshot from your computer screen. Want a really, really simple, fun way to do it? Now you have a free, Open Source way! ShareX! Check out the cool features!

It even has a Screen Color Picker, to get the exact color hex code from a portion of your screen… which I have been using another GSotW to do… Nattyware’s Pixie. Just select an area, hit the “Return” key, and it will auto upload the file to Imgur with a shortened URL that you can then include in your web page, like the ShareX logo to the left of this paragraph… cool!

ShareX – Screen Capture Tool

ShareX is an open source program that lets you take screenshots of any selected area with a single key, save them in your clipboard, hard disk or instantly upload them to over 25 different file hosting services. ShareX can capture screenshots with different shapes: rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, triangle, diamond, polygon and also freehand. It can upload images, text files and all other different file types. It is able to capture screenshots with transparency and shadow. The program also supports clipboard upload and drag-and-drop.

Capture methods: Fullscreen, Active window, Window list, Active monitor, Monitor list, Rectangle, Rectangle + Window, Rounded rectangle, Ellipse, Triangle, Diamond, Polygon, Free hand, Last region, Screen recording (Supports animated gif)

After capture: Add watermark, Add border, Add shadow, Annotate image, Copy image to clipboard, Print image, Save image to file, Save image to file as, Copy file path to clipboard, Perform actions, Upload image to host

Upload methods: File upload, Clipboard upload, Drag and drop, Send to from Windows Explorer, Watch folder

After upload: Use URL shortener, Post URL to social networking service, Send URL with Email, Copy URL to clipboard

Image uploaders: imageshack.us, tinypic.com, imgur.com, flickr.com, photobucket.com, picasaweb.google.com, uploadscreenshot.com, twitpic.com, twitsnaps.com, yfrog.com, imm.io, File uploader

Text uploaders: pastebin.com, pastebin.ca, paste2.org, slexy.org, pastee.org, paste.ee, File uploader

File uploaders: dropbox.com, Google Drive, rapidshare.com, sendspace.com, minus.com, box.com, ge.tt, localhostr.com, Custom uploader, FTP server, Shared folder, Email

URL shorteners: goo.gl, bit.ly, j.mp, is.gd, tinyurl.com, turl.ca

Social networking services: twitter.com

Tools: Screen color picker, Hash check

Have you ever wanted to email someone a file, but it was just too big to email? Well, now you can! With a free account from Streamfile, you can send up to 4 Gig files via a link and your friend, associate, etc. can download the file in a completely secure, encrypted method! Cool!

https://www.streamfile.com

“Choose Recipients & Upload Files

Our web interface makes it easy to share your files. Just click on Send a New Stream, add recipients, and select the file you want to send from your computer. Once you’ve picked out your file, you can add enhancements like custom messages, password protection, mobile notifications, and data center mirroring.

Share Your Files Via Email

We’ll deliver your files to the recipients you specified in a secure email. They’ll receive a notification that a file has been shared along with any messages you’ve included or options to enter a password. This keeps your files easy to share, but safe and sound on our servers.

Extra Features

In addition to secure file transfer between yourself and others, we also offer file tracking, API access, Glacier archiving, and custom upload sites (with custom URLs).

Professional and secure file transfers

Streamfile allows you to setup a custom, branded, password-protected space in the cloud where you can exchange files with clients securely.

Whether you need to send files too large to email, conduct an encrypted file transfer, or just require a space where project-related files can be accessed, Streamfile can help you.

File encryption

Streamfile helps you to easily distribute encrypted files without the need to install any 3rd party software. We support file encryption up to 1024-bit AES. Our private keys are distributed via SMS.

All communications with Streamfile and the user are encrypted using the Secure Socket Layer (SSL). This is the same functionality used by online banks and to transmit credit card details. Streamfile also offers the ability to store your files encrypted before they are uploaded to us, adding an additional layer of security.

Control and track every file activity

Streamfile provides you with an extensive audit trail. With our File Center you can check who has downloaded your files and when. You can also set a file expiration date or archive any files to never expire with AWS Glacier.

You can easily flag a Streamfile transfer to be replicated across AWS CloudFront network to maximise bandwidth access to a specific file set across the world.”