Category: Geek Software of the Week

So, you signed up to the Amazon S3 cloud drive service, now, what? Well, you want an easy, cross-platform way to use your new service! That’s where DragonDisk comes in!

DragonDisk, an Amazon S3 Client

“DragonDisk is a file-management system for the Amazon S3 Service.

DragonDisk will backup, share and organize your data thanks to an intuitive interface similar to Windows Explorer’s.

Its functions and conviviality will persuade you from the start, whether you are an amateur or a professional user.”

• Intuitive Graphical User Interface.

• Cross-platform: Works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux.

• Multi-threaded HTTP/HTTPS engine.

• Job queueing.

• Copy or move files between Amazon S3 accounts.

• Folders synchronization.

• Cut copy paste or drag drop.

• Rename for files and folders.

• Filename filters.

• BiTorrent, time limited and signed URLs generator.

• Amazon S3 credentials encryption.

• Files integrity control.

• Metadata editor (custom HTTP headers).

• Proxy support.

• Permissions inheritance.

• Apply permissions to child objects.

• Keep permissions and metadata for existing files when overwriting.

• Support for versioning

• Support for CNAMEs

• Support for External Buckets

• Support for Reduced Redundancy Storage (RRS).

• Compression and encryption support : AES 128/192/256; Blowfish; 3DES

And, it is cross-platform with version for Windows, Linux, and Mac!

Evernote

Evernote allows you to take notes, anywhere, at anytime! It is a “Cloud Connected” application that runs on your phone, PC, Mac, etc.

“Take notes anywhere.
You’re always moving, your notes should be too. With Evernote, your memories are on every computer, phone and device you use.

Remember things you like.
Save everything cool and exciting you see online and in the real world. Snap a photo, record some audio and save it.

Plan your next trip.
Keep all of your itineraries, confirmations, scanned travel documents, maps, and plans in Evernote, so you’ll have them when you need them.

Save favorite webpages.
Save entire webpages to your Evernote account with our nifty browser extensions. You get the whole page: text, images and links.

Work with friends and colleagues.
Share your notes and collaborate on projects with friends, colleagues and classmates.

Keep everything in sync.
With Evernote, all of your notes, web clips, files and images are made available on every device and computer you use.”

So, maybe this is something that hasn’t irritated you, but it does me. When I need to download the FREE Cisco VPN Client, to get the latest version, I have to have a Cisco customer account to do so! Come on guys! It IS FREE! Well, I got so frustrated recently, I decided to do something that I normally do anyway. Find out if there is a FREE (truly free) alternative. And, guess what? There is!

Shrew Soft VPN Client

“Windows Platforms
The Shrew Soft VPN Client for Windows is a free IPsec Remote Access VPN Client for Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7 operating systems ( x86 and amd64 versions ). It was originally developed to provide secure communications between mobile Windows hosts and open source VPN gateways that utilize standards compliant software such as ipsec-tools, OpenSWAN, FreeSWAN, StrongSWAN, isakmpd. It now offers many of the advanced features only found in expensive commercial software solutions and provides compatibility for VPN appliances produced by vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, Checkpoint, Fortinet, Netgear, Linksys, Zywall and many others.

Linux and BSD Platforms
The Shrew Soft VPN Client for Unix is a free IPsec Client for FreeBSD, NetBSD and Linux based operating systems. This version is distributed under an OSI approved open source license and is hosted in a public subversion repository. It supports most of the features available in the Windows VPN Client version with the exception of those which are not cross platform compatible.”

If you ARE using Cisco VPN, and have a .pcf file from the site that you are trying to VPN into, you can simply import it into the Shrew Soft VPN Client! Awesome!

Ever wanted to turn an old laptop into a WiFi hotspot to share WiFi goodness with a group? Is THAT what you want to do? Well… now it is SIMPLE!

Connectify.Me

“Connectify is an easy to use software router for Windows computers. Users can wirelessly and securely share any Internet connection: a cable modem, cellular card, even another Wi-Fi network with other Wi-Fi enabled devices such as smart phones, laptops, and gaming systems.

At Home

Connectify can easily act as a repeater for your home router, extending its range and providing Internet access wherever you need it. Connect to your home network, enter the same Wi-Fi name and password, and hit “Start Hotspot.” Devices will automatically connect to the Internet through either your Connectify hotspot or home router depending on proximity. Before you know it you can finally have Internet access in that impossible back room or basement. In addition, if you run Connectify away from home with these settings, any devices that need to be bound to a specific network (such as Eye-Fi cards or wireless printers) will work flawlessly with no additional configuration no matter where you are!

On the Road

Connectify placed second in Lifehacker.com’s Top 10 Downloads for a Road Warrior Laptop and it’s not hard to see why. For the Road Warrior, Internet connectivity is a lifeline. Airports, Hotels, and Coffee Shops know this and charge accordingly, often as much as $10-$15 per day, per connection! These fees can quickly add up when traveling with friends or co-workers. The handful of hotels that do provide free Internet access occasionally only supply you with an ethernet jack, which leaves Wi-Fi only devices and smart phones in the dark. Even the lucky few that have mobile 3G cards or adapters are limited to a single connection. Because Connectify is free to download and use, users can save money on multiple Wi-Fi connections while on the road and still get all their devices online simultaneously.

At College

Many Schools and private institutions have restrictive limits on the amount of devices an individual can have registered to their wireless networks. In this day and age, these quotas are quickly exceeded by the wide variety of Wi-Fi enabled devices (such as smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and gaming systems) we use on a regular basis. With Connectify running on a laptop or desktop PC, you can circumvent these limits and securely connect any number of devices to your personal Wi-Fi network.

Offline Networking

Even without an active Internet connection, you can still run a Connectify hotspot. This provides wireless access to shared folders or drives on your network as well as the ability to play LAN games with others.”

So, go forth and be geeky!

This week’s GSotW helps keep you safe as you surf! And, these days, there are a bunch of hazards as we mozy around the ‘net! You don’t have to be surfing “bad” sites, some good sites are getting hijacked and turned into malware sites! WinPatrol helps keep you safe on-line!

WinPatrol Web Site

“You don’t have to be doing anything wrong on the Internet to become a casualty of malware. WinPatrol takes snapshot of your critical system resources and alerts you to any changes that may occur without your knowledge. WinPatrol was the pioneer in using a heuristic behavioral approach to detecting Zero-Day attacks and violations of your computing environment. WinPatrol continues to be the most powerful system monitor for its small memory footprint.

WinPatrol’s easy tabbed interface allows you to explore deep inside your computer without having to be a computer expert. A one-time investment in WinPatrol PLUS provides a unique experience you won’t find in any other software.”

Have you ever tried to delete a file, or directory, only to get a message: “File Locked by System?” Then you have to reboot, and hope that unlocks the file? What!?!? It still didn’t unlock! Sigh. Well, now, there’s an answer! Unlocker!

Unlocker – File Unlock Utility

Unlocker is a simple, and FREE utility… just be careful during install NOT to install the annoying Bing toolbar! And, you are ready to unlock files!

This is AWESOME! Open Source, FREE, and it handles nearly everything that you need for disk imaging! Also, there is a FREE Server Version as well as the regular PC Client Version!

Clonezilla – The Free and Open Source Software for Disk Imaging and Cloning

You’re probably familiar with the popular proprietary commercial package Norton Ghost. The problem with these kind of software packages is that it takes a lot of time to massively clone systems to many computers. You’ve probably also heard of Symantec’s solution to this problem, Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition with multicasting. Well, now there is an OpenSource clone system (OCS) solution called Clonezilla with unicasting and multicasting!

Clonezilla, based on DRBL, Partclone and udpcast, allows you to do bare metal backup and recovery. Two types of Clonezilla are available, Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE (server edition). Clonezilla live is suitable for single machine backup and restore. While Clonezilla SE is for massive deployment, it can clone many (40 plus!) computers simultaneously. Clonezilla saves and restores only used blocks in the harddisk. This increases the clone efficiency. At the NCHC’s Classroom C, Clonezilla SE was used to clone 41 computers simultaneously. It took only about 10 minutes to clone a 5.6 GBytes system image to all 41 computers via multicasting!

Features:

• Free (GPL) Software.
• Filesystem supported: (1) ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs of GNU/Linux, (2) FAT, NTFS of MS Windows, (3) HFS+ of Mac OS, (4) UFS of FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, and (5) VMFS of VMWare ESX. Therefore you can clone GNU/Linux, MS windows, Intel-based Mac OS, and FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, no matter it’s 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86-64) OS. For these file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.
• LVM2 (LVM version 1 is not) under GNU/Linux is supported.
• Grub (version 1 and version 2) is supported.
• Unattended mode is supported. Almost all steps can be done via commands and options. You can also use a lot of boot parameters to customize your own imaging and cloning.
• Multicast is supported in Clonezilla SE, which is suitable for massively clone. You can also remotely use it to save or restore a bunch of computers if PXE and Wake-on-LAN are supported in your clients.
• The image file can be on local disk, ssh server, samba server, or NFS server.
• Based on Partclone (default), Partimage (optional), ntfsclone (optional), or dd to image or clone a partition. However, Clonezilla, containing some other programs, can save and restore not only partitions, but also a whole disk.
• By using another free software drbl-winroll, which is also developed by us, the hostname, group, and SID of cloned MS windows machine can be automatically changed.

AWESOME! Now I can read my Kindle books in my Jolicloud session on my Acer Netbook! “Wha?!?”, you say? Well, now, if you have Chrome on ANY device, you can read your Kindle books! Witness ye, the…

Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader

Much awesomeness, guys! (And, if you don’t have a Kindle account… sorry for my excitement, but this is AWESOME if you do have a Kindle account!

Since we are doing a giveaway of a brand new, fresh in the box, Roku 2 to some fortunate viewer of Dr. Bill.TV, I found a great Geek Software of the Week to tie into the Giveaway!

Gabby Roku Media Center

The Geek Software of the Week this week is: Gabby Roku Media Center! Gabby is designed to give users the freedom to view content on their own networks! In other words, you can set up Gabby, and then view your photos, listen to your MP3 collection, and watch your videos, from your own local (LAN based) PC system! Simply install the Gabby Server on your local PC, set up the Gabby Channel on your Roku, then enter the code to associate the two, and you have local access from your PC to your Roku! Awesome! I will have a big overview of this process (very simple to do) on teh next Dr. Bill.TV Netcast!