Category: Geek Software of the Week

How cool is this? A Windows merging tool that is Open Source (and therefore FREE!) Check it out!

The WinMerge Open Source Project

“WinMerge is an Open Source differencing and merging tool for Windows. WinMerge can compare both folders and files, presenting differences in a visual text format that is easy to understand and handle.

WinMerge is highly useful for determining what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions. WinMerge can be used as an external differencing/merging tool or as a standalone application.”

KeyTweak is a simple utility that allows users to redefine their keyboard input signals. The functionality is made possible by a registry value first documented in Windows 2000, but also present in Windows NT 4.0. and included in XP, Vista and Windows 7.

KeyTweak Download Location

How Does It Work?

“Simply put, KeyTweak is just a front-end interface for editing a particular registry key. Microsoft did the low-level heavy lifting by creating this registry key. KeyTweak makes the editing of it a little less geeky.

Your keyboard communicates with your computer typically through a PS/2 port or a USB port. The data sent by your keyboard is referred to as Scan Codes. When you press a key, the ‘make’ scan code for that key is received by your computer’s i8042 controller chip. When you release a key, the ‘break’ scan code is sent. Prior to Windows 2000, device drivers had to be written to modify scan codes. Happily, Microsoft incorporated this feature into their operating system, thereby allowing fools like you and me to hack our registry and change the values to anything we see fit.”

Do you carry around portable apps (say, from PortableApps.com) on a USB stick? How about a cool menu to quickly select the app from your USB stick?

Portable Start Menu

“Portable Start Menu is a simple and free start menu application that can be installed on USB sticks or local PCs.

Organize your programs in a simple menu system and launch them via a tray icon. If you close Portable Start Menu on an USB-Stick, running applications can be closed automatically, too.

Main features:

• Organize and launch applications via a tray menu
• Closes running applications on USB-Sticks automatically
• Checks if an application has been changed before execution
• Quick Start functionality to start applications with a few keystrokes
• Automatically mount/dismount TrueCrypt container
• Runs on USB-Sticks without leaving any traces on a host PC
• Portable Start Menu is Freeware

Additional functions on USB sticks:

• Create an autorun file to automatically launch Portable Start Menu
• Close running applications when you exit Portable Start Menu
• Safely remove your USB-Stick

Since so much is in the news this week and last on security issues, I figured a security-based GSotW would be a good idea!

Let’s say that you run a web site hosted on a web server running Apache (how wise you are!) And, let’s say that you wanted to password protect a directory off your server via a .htaccess file. You could teach yourself to code the password into the file, or you could simply download and set up DirectoryPass!

DirectoryPass

“Features and Benefits

• Multi-Language Interface: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Turkish interfaces all in one script.
• Multi-Platform Software
• Tested on Unix, Linux and Windows environments.
• Cross-Compatibility
• Supports Windows .htaccess, Cobalt RAQ .htaccess and traditional .htaccess methods.
• Simple Installation
• Upload one file (less than 50Kb) and configure via browser.
• Open Source
• Released under GNU General Public License. DirectoryPass is completely free!”

DirectoryPass also gives you a web-based screen to manage usernames and passwords to web directories as well. Very cool stuff!

Have you ever wanted to make sense of visitors to your WordPress web site? What were they reading? Where do they come from? How did they find you? Well, this plugin rocks! It will give you a real feel for what is going on over time! Check it out!

WassUp Real Time Analytics

“WassUp is a WordPress plugin to track your visitors in real-time. It has a very readable and fancy admin console to keep track of your visitors that gives you a detailed view into almost everything your users are doing on your site. It is very useful for SEO or statistics maniacs.

The aim of WassUp is the knowledge of what your visitors do when they surf your site. It is not intended to show grouped statistics over preset time periods like visitors per day, pageviews per months, and so on (there are many others tools to better gain that, like Google Analytics). Instead, WassUp provides flexible, easy-to-read views into your visitors data that is customizable by time periods, visitor types, search keywords, and much more.

• WassUp comes with 4 admin submenus for viewing your visitors’ activities and for customizing those views
• There is a fancy “Visitors Details” view with search capability, view filters, plus a chart and top ten summary, that allows you to see almost everything about your visitors and what they do on your site.
• There is an ajax “Spy” view (like Digg Spy) that lets you monitor and geolocate your visitors, live.
• There is a “Current Visitors Online” view that shows a summary of your online visitors in real-time.
• There is an “Options” view with lots of customizable settings for WassUp.
• There is a nice Dashboard widget that shows a line chart of hits over time (24 hours default) and a count of current visitors online and their latest activities.

There is also a useful sidebar Widget that shows the count of current visitors online (default) and that can display recent searched terms, recent external referrers, top browsers, and top OSes. The widget is fully customizable.

WassUp works with two anti-spam functions to detect and omit (if you want) referrers spammers and comment spammers. It also detects and records unauthorized users’ login attempts, script injection, and other exploit attempts. Please note that WassUp just records exploit attempts. It does not block them or otherwise protect your site. You need a separate security plugin for that.”

This week’s GSotW is mind-bogglingly useful to clean up your old bookmarks. Stuff disappears on the Interwebs all the time, so it is good to check our your bookmarks occasionally!

AM-Deadlinks

“AM-DeadLink detects dead links and duplicates in browser bookmarks and text files. If a bookmark has become unavailable you can verify and delete it permanently. Additionally you can download Favicons for all your Favorites and Bookmarks. AM-DeadLink is Freeware!

AM-DeadLink can check the following resources:

Internet Explorer Favorites
Firefox 3.x bookmarks
Opera bookmarks
Chrome bookmarks
HTML files
URLs from tab delimited text files
URLs from comma separated text files”

Xmarks is software by a favorite software company of mine… Lastpass! I love Lastpass for managing all my passwords across the entire Interweb! Now, Lastpass has a product that manages all your web bookmarks across all major browsers! Very cool!

Xmarks by Lastpass

Sync and Backup
Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync.

Xmarks will sync across browsers too. Today we support Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Safari (Mac OS).

Smarter Search
Xmarks will highlight the top sites in your search results based on how other users have bookmarked and rated them. Simply click to learn more. (Available in Firefox only)

Site Info built into your browser
Click on the Xmarks info icon in your location bar to see detailed information about the site you are on, and discover other great sites just like it. (Available in Firefox only)”