Category: Geek Software of the Week

Google Reader is dying. So, alternatives are being explored. And, this is a GREAT option! FeedReader!

Geek Software of the Week: FeedReader

Feedreader Online – Everywhere you go
Feedreader Online is one of the best Google Reader alternatives allowing you to view all of your feeds any way you want: in any browser, on any device, without installing a single application. Just sign in and enjoy your feeds!

Feedreader Lookup – All feeds in one place
Feedreader Lookup is a unique search engine for Internet feeds. Now you don’t need to tediously google them up from across the Web. Type in a few keywords in the Lookup search box, find the feed you need, and subscribe to it in one place!

Feedreader Browser – All your feeds within reach
Feedreader Browser lets you quickly find news and feeds related to any topic. What’s more, it allows you to view these feeds right in your browser, subscribe to them, and aggregate them in one feed on Feedreader Online!

Don’t spend your hard earned money on the Evil Empire (Microsoft’s) Small Business Server! Get all those capabilities and more for FREE! This was recommended by one of our faithful viewers that just installed it, and loves it!

Zentyal – Linux-based FREE Small Business Server!

“Zentyal is a Linux small business server that can be configured as a Gateway, Unified Threat Manager, Office Server, Infrastructure Manager, Unified Communications Server or a combination of them. The development of Zentyal started in 2004 and currently it is the open source alternative to Microsoft network infrastructure products aimed at small and medium businesses (Windows Small Business Server, Windows Server, Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Forefront…)

Highlights:

• New distribution base: Ubuntu 12.04, providing new versions of all the packages and services managed by Zentyal.
• Improved performance: there is now a global cache to speed up all the requests to the Redis configuration backend. Also, the MVC framework uses now a new model load system to save some CPU processing and to reduce memory usage.
• Improved reliability: new locking and transactions systems have been developed to avoid any risk of data incoherences or corruptions.
• Samba 4 integration: a full replacement of the Windows Server Active Directory, which allows Zentyal to join as additional controller of an existing AD Domain.
• Kerberos integration: single authentication for HTTP Proxy, Mail and Zarafa groupware, in addition to File Sharing which is already provided by Samba
• New look & feel for the Web interface along with usability improvements.
• New Master-Slave architecture: now it’s easier than ever to synchronize your users between several Zentyal servers.
• New UPS module:it helps to keep your server always up and running in case power outages.
• New Thin Clients module using the popular LTSP software.
• Reviewed HTTP Proxy with a simpler interface and improved filtering by time period.
• Zarafa 7.1: a new version of the groupware suite featuring a new web interface, multi-domain support and web chat integration.
• Support for advanced NAT rules in Firewall module”

Not too many of the Geek Software of the Weeks are a “paid for” product, but this one is. I needed a simple, clean, very cool email client. I had been using Thunderbird, but there were some things I didn’t like about it, and they have stopped development on it. So, I found Mailbox! It is only $10.00. And, it is nice, simple, and clean!

Postbox Email Client for IMAP, POP3, etc.

“Be focused, be organized, be awesome
Powerful, intuitive, and faster than a scalded monkey, the Postbox email client will help you stay on task, find information quickly and act, not react.

Conversation views give you the ‘big picture’
Postbox’s Conversation Views are powerful, actionable, and easy to use.

It works by gathering conversation fragments from multiple folders and presenting them in a unified view.

So the rumors are true, Postbox will actually make you smarter.

Powerful Tagging
Postbox Topics lets you organize your messages by keyword.

When you assign a topic to a message, it is also applied to other messages within the conversation, in addition to all future replies — a huge time saver.

Combine the use of Topics with the Focus Pane to attain a state of organizational bliss.

Awesome Gmail Support
Gmail Label support makes organizing easy.

Dedicated Important view for high-priority messages.

Send and Archive your messages in just one step.

Add detected dates to your Google Calendar.

Support for Gmail keyboard shortcuts for the power user.

Quick Reply
Quick Reply lets you reply to a message without the need to open a separate compose window, which is perfect for short, snappy responses.

It all happens within a message or conversation, so that you can get right back to what you were doing.

Use Quick Reply with Send and Archive to keep your Inbox tidy.

Send Dropbox links instead of large files
Drag files from your Dropbox folder to send them as links.

Messages send faster and you’ll save hard drive space.

Files can be updated outside of the email message.

You can also attach Dropbox files, but why would you?

Send emails with brains and beauty
Summarize in Compose creates a beautifully formatted who-said-what-when digest that cleans up messy email threads.

Format your replies with profile photos, or just text for business use.

Either way, you’ll look like a hero on each and every message send.

Track To-Dos within your Inbox
Our To-Do View lets you work on important tasks without distraction – within your Inbox!

Create new to-dos, annotate existing to-dos, and pin to-dos to the top of your message list so that they don’t fall out of sight/out of mind.

Combine the To-Do View with Unified Inboxes/Folders and the Focus Pane to crunch through your workload in record time.

Quickly find Documents and Images
Postbox gives you fast access to documents and images hiding within your email messages.

No more digging through email messages to find what you need!

It’s easy to save or send what you’ve found. Simply select a file or image, and click an action button.

Social connections add a personal touch
Auto-import profile photos from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Gravatar.

2Update your status on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

3Quick and easy links to sender’s profile pages.

Easy file searching within the Compose Window
The Compose Sidebar lets you search for documents and images while composing a message.

Open the Sidebar and start typing to begin your search. Then, drop what you’ve found into your message.

Reusing documents and images has never been easier!”

A neat utility to find out all that you need to know about your video card (GPU)! Cool!

GPU-Z – GPU Test and Info Utility

“Main Features

• Supports NVIDIA, ATI and Intel graphics devices
• Displays adapter, GPU and display information
• Displays overclock, default clocks and 3D clocks (if available)
• Includes a GPU load test to verify PCI-Express lane configuration
• Validation of results
• GPU-Z can create a backup of your graphics card BIOS
• No installation required, optional installer is available
• Support for Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8 (both 32 and 64 bit versions are supported)

.. and yes, the author of CPU-Z has granted us permission to use a name similar to his product. Thanks Franck.”

Imagine being able to teach a class on-line, with slides, whiteboards, videos, chat, etc.! Too awesome to exist? It does, AND it is FREE and Open Source! Zowie!

It can be installed on an Ubuntu Linux Server, or, you can download a pre-installed, pre-configured Virtual Appliance! Distance education can now be done for free! Check it out in the video below:

Big Blue Button Overview

“Presentation Control
A presenter can easily upload multiple PDF’s or Office documents. Once uploaded, the participants are able to see the current slide as the presenter moves through their presentation.

Audio Engagement
The moderator has complete control over all the audio within the conference. They are able to mute, un-mute and eject any of the participants by simply clicking on the necessary icon within the listeners module.

See Your Students
When logged into the conference, users have the option of sharing their video over the web using a built-in or external webcam. Multiple participants and a presenter can be sharing their video at the same time.

Chat Conversation
Students can take part in a group chat which is viewed by everyone within the conference, or select a user and begin a separate private conversation.

Mute/Unmute
When students join the audio session they can mute/unmute themselves as desired. This reduces background noise if students are in a loud area.

Recorded Sessions
Students are able to view previously recorded sessions that the presenter has recorded. The students are required to login, choose a recorded video and can then view it within the web browser.”

You can now visualize your diskspace, and get control over your drive and the space that you are using!

SpaceSniffer – Control Your Diskspace!

“SpaceSniffer is a freeWare (donations are welcome) and portable tool application that lets you understand how folders and files are structured on your disks. By using a Treemap visualization layout, you have immediate perception of where big folders and files are placed on your devices. Treemap concept was invented by Prof. Ben Shneiderman, who kindly permitted the use of his concept into this tool.

Start a scan process and see the overall situation. Bigger are the elements on the view, bigger are folders and files on your disk. You need more detail on a big folder? Just single click on it. The selected element will be detailed with its content.

Need more and more detail? Keep selecting elements and they’ll discover their secrets to you. Need a larger view of a small folder? Then double click on it, and it’ll zoom to the full extent of the view.

If you need to understand why no more free space is left on media, keep following bigger elements. Maybe you want to focus only on particular file types… ok. Just type the file type on the filter field (example: *.jpg) and press enter. The view will react and show you only JPEG files.

Want to exclude files? Then type a starting pipe before the filter (example: |*.jpg) and press enter. The view will show everything but JPEG files.

If you want to keep track of examined files you can tag them. Four colors are available. Just hover the mouse on a file and press CTRL+1 to tag it red. There are keys also for yellow, green and blue tagging. Use them as you wish. You can also filter on tags (example: :red will show only red tagges files, :all will show all tagged files and so on). You can also exclude tagged files (example: |:red will exclude all red tagged files)

Want to know if you have old files? Type the condition in the filter field (example: >2years) and the view will react accordingly.

You can also filter on file size, file date and combine all filters
(example: *.jpg;>1mb;<3months;|:yellow)

Once you have your result, you can produce a textual report by using the embedded Export Module. You can even customize the report layout to match your needs.

Why another disk scanning utility?

I must admit, in past years I looked for long time to a quick and easy way to analyze my disks space occupation. Found many products, some free some commercial but I never accustomed to anyone of them. It’s only a matter of taste but… since my work is not to analyze disk space all the day, for this annoying task I wanted a software that does not need to be re-learned every time I run it. Everything should be directly accessible. In my opinion, if I wonder what is the meaning of a button, then that button should be removed. This is the need that urged me to program SpaceSniffer.

SpaceSniffer tries to be intuitive. Moreover it has some graphical effects. Maybe people think they’re useless. I think they help to understand what’s happening. The zoom in/out effect for instance helps me to understand where i’m going. The blinking effect helps me understand what has been just scanned or what has changed under my eyes. I found them useful for me, and hope they can be useful for others.

Obviously, it’s a matter of taste. Sure there are people that cannot live without complex statistical functions and so. Maybe SpaceSniffer is too simplistic for them. But, if you don’t have much time to recover free disk space you’ll like a minimal interface.

Please don’t misunderstand: minimal interface does not mean simple program. The smart caching engine of SpaceSniffer is designed to permit navigation even during the scan process. More views can be opened on the same disk with different filters and different navigation paths, and a single scan will be performed. If the file system changes then SpaceSniffer reflects those changes even during a scan operation. In my opinion, the complexity of an application must not be visible to the user. Everything should appear simple and obvious. This is the target in the develop of SpaceSniffer.

So, there is plenty of disk analysis tools over the internet, each one has his own features and his own dignity. I hope that SpaceSniffer can be accepted for what it is: simple way to free space with minimum time expense.

There is a lot of room for improvements: suggestion are welcome!

In few words:

• Fast and easy to use
• Supports drag and drop
• Export module lets you produce customizable textual reports
• Intuitive structure layout, multiple views for different media
• Zoomable elements, navigate like a web browser
• The Windows folders and file popup menu is accessible by right mouse click
• It’s possible to restrict the view content by typing simple yet powerful filtering criteria
• Lets you temporary tag files with four different colors and perform filtering on them
• Different views of the same media can show differently filtered elements
• Customizable in geometry, colors, behaviors
• You can navigate even during the scan
• Smart cached scanning engine, multiple views, single scan
• You can refine a zoomed area by a secondary scan process, even with main scan active
• Reacts to file system events, keeps always in synch, warns you by blinking elements”
• Can scan NTFS Alternate Data Streams
• It doesn’t clutter your registry, only a plain XML configuration file
• It’s portable, no installation required, just put the executable somewhere and let’s go
• It’s freeWare (donations are welcome)

This one is something I REALLY needed recently, and it is not as “obtrusive” as some I have used. It is simple, stays “in the background” and is well done. It just plain works!

WinCDEmu – An Open Source CD/DVD/BD emulator

WinCDEmu is an open-source CD/DVD/BD emulator – a tool that allows you to mount optical disc mages by simply clicking on them in Windows Explorer. If you have downloaded an ISO image and want to use it without burning it to a blank disc, WinCDEmu is the easiest way to do it.

Features:
One-click mounting of ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD, IMG images.

Supports unlimited amount of virtual drives.

• Runs on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions from XP to Windows 7.
• Allows creating ISO images through a context menu in Explorer.
• Small installer size – less than 1MB!
• Does not require rebooting after installation.
• A special portable version is available.
• Translated to more than 20 languages.
• Does not occupy drive letters when not used.
• Supports data, DVD-video and BD-video images.
• WinCDEmu is free for any kind of use – it is licensed under LGPL

This is a very cool, and powerful, network protection system. Check out the great features!

Untangle Lite – Open Source Network Protection!

The Lite Package bundles together all of Untangle’s open source software. We’ve tried to simplify and consolidate all of the functions that IT admins need to keep their networks healthy. The Lite Package:

• Is Open Source (and Free) under the GPL v2
• Runs on standard Intel/AMD hardware
• Includes a common GUI with integrated logging and reporting
• Apps are pre-configured for the needs of small business and guaranteed to work together seamlessly

Web Filter

• Categories update automatically
• Add your own URLs and file types to block, log, or pass
• No proxy settings required
• Local database ensures fast web browsing
• Reporting and event logs help monitor web browsing behavior
• Set time and user-based policies (e.g. allow shopping during lunch and outside business hours)
• Pass, Block, and Logging options for all categories, such as porn, gambling and social networking sites like Facebook

Application Control Lite

• Application Control Lite lets you select the protocol signatures to log or block
• Custom rules can be added for any unsupported protocols
• Time-based policies let you decide when and if these applications are permitted
• Reporting lets you see which protocols are active on your network and who is using them

Virus Blocker Lite

• Protection on the most common email protocols: SMTP, IMAP, and POP
• Unlike desktop solutions, Untangle sits at the network gateway so there is only one application to keep up-to-date, which Untangle does automatically
• Protection for webmail and file transfer via HTTP and FTP protocols, an increasingly common route for infection
• Reports and event logs show you what viruses are being blocked on the network

And, much more!

Such as: Spyware Blocker, Phish Blocker, Intrusion Prevention, Attack Blocker, Firewall, OpenVPN, Reports, Spam Blocker Lite, Captive Portal, Ad Blocker!

This week Geek Software of the Week is SIV – System Information Viewer! This gives you a TON ‘o info about your computer! Check it out!

SIV – System Information Viewer

“SIV by Ray Hinchliffe. ‘System Information Viewer’ is a general Windows utility for displaying lots of useful Windows, Network and hardware info – CPU info, PCI info, PCMCIA info, USB info SMBus info, SPD info, ACPI methods, Machine info, Hardware Sensors, Networked computers, Operating System Information and more. SIV is designed for Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2012, 2008, 2003, 2000 and NT4. Windows 95, 98 and Me are also supported.”