Category: Geek Software of the Week

You know I love Open Source! And, I am always looking for alternatives to Microsoft software that is free, open Source, and that I can recommend. Well, here ya go! A FREE Open Source Microsoft Project compatible clone! How awesome is that? It even as a “ribbon” interface!

ProjectLibre Open Source Microsoft Project Clone

• “Compatibility with Microsoft Project 2010
• New Ribbon User Interface
• Printing feature (wow, how was that not available)
• Major bug fixes & more

It took a lot of work over many years but will be a significant alternative to Microsoft Project!

Our initial goal with ProjectLibre was to launch the ProjectLibre Project Server to produce a complementary server side solution that would replace Microsoft Project Server. We started down this road, but it was apparent the lack of a valid desktop alternative to Microsoft Project would be an issue for our ultimate mission. Our first step clearly was providing ProjectLibre on the desktop. We will release ProjectLibre Server as our second release. We want to build a large community and are pursuing this full time. We’ll figure a way to put our kids through college somehow! We do appreciate contributions and the opportunity for customization, implementation and training :-) There are enormous benefits in replacing Microsoft’s proprietary project solutions with ProjectLibre’s open source alternative! Once again, it is released in beta and was downloaded the first two weeks in 134 countries. You can download it free!”

A neat utility to see what ports are open on your system!

CurrPorts v2.02 – Monitoring Opened TCP/IP network ports / connections

• “Network Inventory – automated agent-free network inventory software. Network Inventory Advisor automatically discovers all network assets (Windows, Mac OS, Linux, SNMP-powered devices & more), scans them and builds network inventory reports.
• SmartSniff – Capture TCP/IP packets on your network adapter
• SocketSniff – Windows Sockets (WinSock) Sniffer

CurrPorts is network monitoring software that displays the list of all currently opened TCP/IP and UDP ports on your local computer. For each port in the list, information about the process that opened the port is also displayed, including the process name, full path of the process, version information of the process (product name, file description, and so on), the time that the process was created, and the user that created it.

In addition, CurrPorts allows you to close unwanted TCP connections, kill the process that opened the ports, and save the TCP/UDP ports information to HTML file , XML file, or to tab-delimited text file.

CurrPorts also automatically mark with pink color suspicious TCP/UDP ports owned by unidentified applications (Applications without version information and icons)”

Imagine a piece of software that runs on your PC, catalogs data, maintains that data on a web site, then “crowd-sources” suggestions and ideas to optimize your PC based on that data. Well, that is what Soluto does! Check it out. It is kinda weird at first, but it grows on you!

Soluto – PC Optimizer

Just download and install the application, then reboot your PC… over time, as you use your PC, reboot occasionally, etc. it will start to assemble suggestions for you to optimize your system. You can add in other PCs (up to 5) and keep track of them as well. Pretty neat, actually!

You really need this utility if you do any major work with Windows! This is especially useful if you want to do global replacements in the Registry!

“RegEditX makes your registry editing more productive than ever. RegEditX extends the standard Windows Registry Editor (REGEDIT), so you don’t have to learn new ways of accomplishing tasks you already know how to perform. Just keep using the same familiar Registry Editor — more efficiently.

Once you’ve tried RegEditX, you won’t want to edit the registry any other way.”

RegEditX 3.0 – Tweaks for the Windows Registry Editor (REGEDIT)

“Why RegEditX?

RegEditX makes your registry editing more productive than ever. RegEditX extends the standard Windows Registry Editor (REGEDIT), so you don’t have to learn new ways of accomplishing tasks you already know how to perform. Just keep using the same familiar Registry Editor — more efficiently.

Once you’ve tried RegEditX, you won’t want to edit the registry any other way.

Extensions Overview

The new toolbar contains buttons to launch the innovative RegEditX Crawler for lightning fast searches and bookmarks.

The new combo box under the menu bar tracks the registry keys which you have viewed or edited. Continue using REGEDIT as you did before — expand keys in the tree or edit them in the list — and these keys automatically appear in the combo box. Then navigate back to them by selecting them from the combo box.

The new combo box also lets you Cut, Copy, and Paste keys to and from the Windows clipboard. Many online documents contain references to keys such as HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\DCSoft\RegEditX. Simply copy this text to the clipboard and paste it into the combo box to instantly navigate to it.

The list columns are ‘automagically’ resized to optimally show key values – no more mouse gyrations to resize columns as you navigate to different keys.

A RegEditX pull-down menu is added to manage RegEditX.

Run RegEditX from any command-line (or open the Start menu and select Run) simply by typing ‘RegEditX ‘.

Works with XP / Vista / Win 7.”

This week’s GSotW is AWESOME! Can you say, “Life-saver?” Dewd! PCs these days come with all kinds of what we old time computer geeks call “crapware”… bloated, evil, sometimes even malicious malware that vendors pay PC OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) to imnclude on thier systems before they roll out of the plant. They slow down the new fast PCs like they were running through muck! But, with this great free tool (for which there is a purchased commercial version that is reasonably priced as well) for can clean your new (or old) PC an make it “lean and mean!”

The PC Decrapifier

“Is your PC running slow? Even brand new PCs often come with LOTS of pre-installed software that can cause that new machine to come to a crawl. Not to mention all of the annoying pop-ups! Others may have a PC that’s a couple years old and we’re the ones that installed a bunch of junk! It happens to the best of us. We try a bunch of programs over time and forget to remove them.

The PC Decrapifier is here to help! It’s a free tool for you to use that helps remove programs, unnecessary startup items and icons that can slow down your PC. It takes you step by step, giving you recommendations on what to remove, many of which can be removed unattended.

Simply download the file and run the executable. There is no installer. There’s no uninstaller. It’s all self-contained.

The PC Decrapifier is a program designed to remove or uninstall a specific list of unwanted software in an unattended fashion.

It can be used to clean off most of the annoying software that is typically shipped with new PCs.”

Have you ever wanted to email, or post, a photo or other image that was just too large? If you are a webmaster, do you have an image that you need to reduce in size, but need to maintain the quality of the image? Well, this GSotW is for YOU! It is a RIOT! (OK, bad pun!)

RIOT – Radical Image Optimization Tool

“Radical Image Optimization Tool (RIOT for short) is a free image optimizer that will let you to visually adjust compression parameters while keeping minimum filesize.

It uses with a side by side (dual view) or single view interface to compare the original with the optimized image in real time and instantly see the resulting file size.

The image optimizer is lightweight, fast and simple to use, yet powerful for advanced users.
You will be able to control compression, number of colors, metadata settings and much more, and select image format (JPEG, GIF or PNG) for your output file.

RIOT can be integrated as plug-in in well known programs like The GIMP, IrfanView and XnView

Main features:

• open many image types including rare/scientific types
• save and optimize JPEG, GIF and PNG with a simple, clean user interface
• works in dual view: (original – optimized image) or single view (optimized image).
• Automatic preview of resulting image
• in-place compare function (alternativelly display the original image over the optimized image to notice small pixel changes)
• compress files to desired filesize threshold
• fast processing (all is done in memory);
• see instant results including resulting filesize
• batch support (process multiple files at once)
• transparency handling options
• decide if you want to keep metadata (comments, IPTC, Adobe XMP, EXIF profiles, ICC profiles).
• Unsupported metadata is removed
• transfer metadata between image formats (destination format must support them)
• common tools: pan and zoom, rotate, flip
• basic image adjustments: brightness, contrast, gamma, invert
• visually reduce number of unique colors for PNG and GIF images in order to reduce filesize
• (two quantization methods are available: Xiaolin Wu and NeuQuant neural net)
• resize image by using well known resample filters (ex: Lanczos3, Catmull Rom, Bicubic, and others)
• out-of-the-box support for external PNG optimizers (optipng, pngout, etc)
• the compression and the results are comparable to those of commercial products, even higher.
• Adaptive logarithmic tone mapping algorithm (Drago) used for HDR images

Input image types:

• common bitmap images as well as Adobe Photoshop PSD files
• popular HDR formats and RAW camera images
• rare/scientific types (up to 128 bpp, integer and floating point)”

Some GSotW’s are better than others. THIS ONE is one of the best, most useful one’s in a LONG time! This one goes in my fresh build “must install” File… I find myself using it all the time now!

TextCrawler – Global (Multi-File) Search and Replace!

“TextCrawler is a fantastic tool for anyone who works with text files. This cool utility enables you to instantly find and replace words and phrases across multiple files and folders. It utilises a powerful Regular Expression engine to enable you to create sophisticated searches, preview replace, perform batch operations, extract text from files and more. It is fast and easy to use, and as powerful as you need it to be.

TextCrawler is Freeware!

Some Features…

• Search and Replace across files, Insert or Delete text
• Fast searching, even on large files.
• Simple to use interface
• Flexible search parameters
• Text Extractor – rip text into a new file
• Post-process extracted text – sort, remove duplicate lines, remove whitespace
• Search and replace using Regular Expressions. Create sophisticated searches.
• Regular Expression test tool
• Regular Expression library – Save your searches.
• Create backup files
• Fully Unicode Compatible – Search ANSI, UTF-8, UTF-16, etc.
• Highlighted search results
• Export Results
• Preview Replace Function
• Copy found files to new location
• Batch Find and Replace”

This week’s GSotW is a neat, little utility. You don’t have to install it, just click on it, and it runs! You can paste any text into the “notepad” style screen, and then click “play” and it will be read to you out loud!

SayPad – Text to Speech Utility

“SayPad is a free Text-to-Speech notepad application. SayPad uses the .net Speech API. SayPad allows you to listen the text entered, and save text as a .wav file.”

This is a great way to encrypt and fully secure Dropbox! Create a highly encrypted, secure directory within Dropbox for your most sensitive documents.

Secretsync

“Turn cloud sync into a private, encrypted pipeline for your files.

HOW IT HELPS

Your files never leave your possession without being encrypted first. SecretSync uses client-side encryption to give you absolute privacy and control over your data.

HOW YOU CAN USE IT

Secure synchronization

SecretSync is a great way to easily share proprietary, sensitive information using online synchronization utilities like Dropbox.

Offsite backup

Even if you’re not synchronizing, you can still use SecretSync to create an instant, secure, offsite backup. You can use it to backup financials, tax info, or any sensitive personal and business information you may have.

HOW IT WORKS

New! See the Getting started guide for more details.

We add an additional folder to your computer, a SecretSync folder. Anything that gets put in SecretSync is encrypted and then added to Dropbox to be synchronized to your other computers.

Before your files are synchronized by Dropbox to your other computers, they’re encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption, using a key to which only you have access. The files are only decrypted on the other end — that is, on your other computers.

Your files are always encrypted when online. This means that before your files leave the computer you physically control and own, they’re encrypted. They stay encrypted while being synchronized, until they’re back in your physical control.”

A great way to find duplicate files in Windows, even if the files have diffrent names! It compares at the bit level!

Anti-Twin File Comparison Software

• “Byte-by-byte comparison of user-defined files (file content)
• Search for identical or similar file names
• Pixel-based image comparison, e.g. search for similar pictures

Anti-Twin is a small software application which compares files, i.e. it searches for duplicate or similar files on your hard disk drive. All similar or identical files that were found can either be sent to the recycle bin or directly deleted. This will increase the hard disk space on your computer.

Select the option ‘Compare file content’ to compare the entire binary content of the files. This means that the file names are irrelevant. Here, the basic principle is: ‘Name is but sound and smoke – size matters! And never lose sight of the inner values.’

Anti-Twin is an excellent application to e.g. find and delete duplicate MP3 files in a download folder or to find similar images. Apart from that, Anti-Twin helps you clean up employees’ chaotic file repositories in company networks, e.g. by searching for unnecessary file copies and redundant data back-ups.”