Category: Geek Software of the Week

This week’s GSotW goes highly recommended by the aforementioned Patrick Norton, and his cohort on HD Nation on Revision3, Robert Heron! Handbrake is “yet another” video transcoder tool. But, it is free, Open Source, and has lot’s of neat features!

HandBrake Video Transcoder

“HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

Supported Sources:

Any DVD or Bluray-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image, real DVD or bluray (unencrypted — removal of copy protection is not supported), and some .VOB, .TS and M2TS files
Most any multimedia file it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode.

Outputs:

File format: MP4(M4V) and MKV
Video: MPEG-4(ffmpeg), H.264(x264), or Theora(libtheora)
Audio: AAC, CoreAudio AAC (OS X Only), MP3, or Vorbis. AC-3 pass-through, DTS pass-thorugh (MKV only)

Misc features:

Chapter selection, Chapter Markers
Subtitles
Vobsub and Closed Captions
SRT import and passthru
SSA passthru or burn-in (experimental)
Constant Quality or Average Bitrate Video Encoding
Support for VFR, CFR and VFR
Video: Deinterlacing, Decomb, Detelecine, Cropping and scaling
Live Video Preivew

Dewd! Sometimes a Geek Software of the Week just totally meets a need at the moment that you need it, and this is one that did that for me! I needed a handy way to quickly encrypt text files so that if you managed to get a hold of it, it would be useless to YOU, but important and easy to encrypt for ME! Done and done!

Google Chrome Extension: Quick Encrypt

“Protect the data in your email, your contacts, and more with Quick Encrypt. This extension will save a common password and allow you to quickly encrypt and decrypt the contents. To use the extension follow these easy steps.

– Enter you password in the Key field. (Only once. The computer will remember your password.)
– Enter the message to be encrypted (a bank account number, a very personal message, etc.) in the Phrase field.
– Click Encrypt to create a safe and copyable code.
– Click Undo if you made a mistake.
– Save, Forward, or whatever.

Use Quick Encypt to pass a note to a friend, forward a password to a friend, or store a social security number in an archived email message.”

Granted, it is for Google Chrome…. but, what else would you be using anyway, right? Grin!

Today’s Geek Software of the Week is very unusual in that it is a feature built into Windows 7! This feature is called Windows Easy Transfer. The software is based on an application that used to be a separate utility called AlohaBob. Microsoft bought the company that made this product and is now incorporated directly into Windows 7. Now you have the advantage of the original utility, but it’s built right into the product! However, a lot of folks don’t know about this feature. I heard about it on Revision3’s Tekzilla, and wanted to share it with you because it meets a need that a lot of people have asked about before. That is, the ability to transfer a lot of files and personal information, including profile information, from one computer to another. For inmstance, when you rebuild the computer. So, this is a very handy utility, and I think you’ll find it extremely useful if you’re moving from one computer to another or, are rebuilding a computer. The link below gives you a link to Microsoft’s page describing the product. Once again, it’s built into Windows 7 and it’s FREE!

Windows Easy Transfer

As many folks as have asked me about this… I know it will be popular! It order to find it, just type “Windows Easy Transfer” into your Windows 7 Start Search line. Cool!

Speaking of bad downloads (as in the previous post on Google Chrome) what do you do if you think that you may have been infected with Malware? Find a good scanner! Here’s a good one that comes in a free version, or you can purchase a license and unlock even more features!

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware

“Have you ever considered what makes an anti-malware application effective? We at Malwarebytes have created an easy-to-use, simple, and effective anti-malware application. Whether you know it or not your computer is always at risk of becoming infected with viruses, worms, trojans, rootkits, dialers, spyware, and malware that are constantly evolving and becoming harder to detect and remove. Only the most sophisticated anti-malware techniques can detect and remove these malicious programs from your computer.

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware is considered to be the next step in the detection and removal of malware. In our product we have compiled a number of new technologies that are designed to quickly detect, destroy, and prevent malware. Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware can detect and remove malware that even the most well known anti-virus and anti-malware applications fail to detect. Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware monitors every process and stops malicious processes before they even start. The realtime protection module uses our advanced heuristic scanning technology which monitors your system to keep it safe and secure. In addition, we have implemented a threats center which will allow you to keep up to date with the latest malware threats.”

Features:

• Support for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7 (32-bit and 64-bit).
• Light speed quick scanning.
• Ability to perform full scans for all drives.
• Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware protection module. (requires registration)
• Database updates released daily.
• Quarantine to hold threats and restore them at your convenience.
• Ignore list for both the scanner and Protection Module.
• Settings to enhance your Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware performance.
• A small list of extra utilities to help remove malware manually.
• Multi-lingual support.
• Works together with other anti-malware utilities.
• Command line support for quick scanning.
• Context menu integration to scan files on demand.

If you use Google Chrome, you will note that if you click on an RSS feed on a web site, you just get a list of the text of the site, it is not organized in a nice web screen, as it is in Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. This is a shame. They do it because they have their own RSS News Reader, that came out BEFORE they came out with Google Chrome. Sigh. I use an RSS plugin for Chrome called “Slick RSS,” but, if you want a “standalone” RSS Reader, try out RSSOwl!

RSSOwl – RSS News Reader and Organizer

“What makes RSSOwl unique?

RSSOwl can be used on all major platforms like Windows, Linux (32 Bit and 64 Bit) and Apple Mac OS X.

You can display news feeds side by side in multiple tabs. This gives you a similar user experience you might already be familiar with from your web browser. Of course you can configure RSSOwl to limit the number of opened tabs or to not use tabs at all if you are not a big fan of them.

Use the embedded Browser to open the full content of a news entry from the originating web site. You can open as many browser tabs as you like and open any web site from the address field.

Enable the grouping mode to group a list of news entries from a feed by a specific attribute. E.g. you can group news by date, author, category, feed and much more. This makes it very easy to get an overview of news that belong together.

Switch to the newspaper view to get the full content of a feed displayed at once inside the embedded browser. You can still perform common actions like marking a news as read or sticky from the browser by using one of the actions that is provided for each entry below its headline.

Select from one of the keyword feeds to receive news from a specific topic of your interest. The available keyword feeds include popular providers like Google, Technorati, Delicious and Flickr.

With the notion of Saved Searches, a search can be used like a feed you are subscribed to: The news entries of this special feed are made up of the search results. The number of unread entries in saved searches is shown and will update as soon as new entries are downloaded.

You can create any number of News Bins to store news you think are worth keeping. News can either be copied or moved from any feed. With the help of News Filters, you can create rules to automatically move or copy news to News Bins.

Use Labels to associate keywords with news entries. You can assign any number of labels and create new ones. Each Label has its own color to make it easy to distinguish labeled news from others.

RSSOwl knows about a number of communities like Delicious and Technorati to share your feeds and news entries with. Simply open the menu on one of your subscriptions or news entries to bring up a list of communities for sharing. This makes it easy to let your friends know about interesting articles and feeds.

Never miss a news anymore with RSSOwl’s powerful search engine. There is lots of available search conditions to create a fine grained search. Results will show up directly in the dialog and the matching terms are highlighted in yellow. You can even save a search to use it like a feed where the news entries are made up of the search results.

News Filters are likely the most powerful feature in RSSOwl. They allow to automate common actions like moving or copying a news into a news bin. You can create as many filters as you need. Each filter is made up of search conditions to match specific news and a list of actions to perform on them. Once created, the filter will work on downloaded news that match the search conditions. A filter can be executed on existing news as well. Use this feature if you want to update lots of news at once.

You can easily add more feeds to RSSOwl by using the Import Wizard. Choose to import feeds from a file or web site, your Google Reader account, or let RSSOwl search for feeds that match any topic you are interested in. You can limit the search for feeds to your language to get the best results for you.

Use the Export Wizard to export your list of subscriptions including saved searches and news bins to a file. In addition to your subscriptions, you can export labels, news filters and settings to easily setup RSSOwl on a different computer.

With the help of the Clean-Up Wizard you can easily get rid of old news entries or feeds that have not updated in a while. Housekeeping made easy!

The Notifier is a small popup that displays the headlines of incoming news even when RSSOwl is minimized. You can mark news entries as sticky from the Notifier to remember reading the full content of the entry at a later time.

Configure the Notifier to show an excerpt of content for news entries. Use News Filters to show specific news inside the notifier. You can assign colors to distinguish specific news entries from others.

You can easily customize the toolbar in RSSOwl to make actions you commonly use easy to access with a single click.

The Downloads & Activity dialog shows what RSSOwl is busy doing. Downloads (e.g. for Podcasts) are showing up as well as the progress of updating your feeds.

Using feeds that are protected by username and password? No problem, RSSOwl supports BASIC, DIGEST and NTLM authentication schemes.

Since RSSOwl is storing usernames and passwords for protected feeds, you should consider some extra protection by setting up a master password.

You can define lots of properties in a very fine grained manner on folders and feeds.

There is tons of things to configure in RSSOwl to make it suit your needs. Take your time to see through the preferences pages. The overview page gives you some advise and a little search field on top allows to search across all preferences.

Press F1 to bring up the RSSOwl Tutorial that is worth reading to getting started with RSSOwl.

RSSOwl comes with an integrated automatic update that helps you keep your version up to date. From the dialog you can see the new features of the new version and start the installation.

You can easily install additional features into RSSOwl by using the integrated Add-on wizard. For example, the Newsgroup Reader makes it possible to read newsgroups in RSSOwl like feeds. You should give it a try!”

Have you ever wanted to try Linux distros just to see what they were like, and you wanted to put it on your USB drive? Is that what you want? Well, it is EASY now, with PenDriveLinux’s YUMI!

PenDriveLinux’s YUMI

“YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer), is the successor to MultibootISOs. It can be used to create a Multiboot USB Flash Drive containing multiple operating systems, antivirus utilities, disc cloning, diagnostic tools, and more. Contrary to MultiBootISO’s which used grub to boot ISO files directly from USB, YUMI uses syslinux to boot extracted distributions stored on the USB device, and reverts to using grub to Boot Multiple ISO files from USB, if necessary.

Aside from a few distributions, all files are stored within the multiboot folder, making for a nicely organized Multiboot Drive that can still be used for other storage purposes.”

OK, so with my new video format for the show, which is, of course, M4V, I needed a converter to convert M4V to WebM (so I could also support WebM and HTML5, as in Chrome!) So, the search began! I have been using FireFogg, which is on-line, and free (free is good!) But, this gives me a “standalone option!

Ogg Video Converter

“OGG Video Converter converts M4V files to WebM easily. The software is a professional M4V to WebM Converter. You could customize video size, frame rate, and bit rate with converter so that the output file size is controllable. Besides WebM, the converter converts M4V files to OGG/OGM/OGV and H.264 that are HTML5 video formats either.

The software is also an all-in-one video converter that converts any formats to popular video formats such as OGV, 3G2, WMV, MPG, DivX, WebM, AVI, etc. It could convert DAT to FLV, 3G2 to OGM, 3G2 to WMV, H.264 to AVI, MKV to ASF, and so on.

OGG Video Converter supports batch conversion and, is full compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Vista and Windows 7.”

Excellent “tutorial-like” instructions on the web site as well!

This GSotW is, of course, only for folks that have WordPress software based blogs (like mine!) But, it is a good ‘un! Powerpress gives you more tools to use when publishing podcasts/netcasts on the web via your Blog! Very cool stuff! The new version sports a “fail over” from FLV or M4V to WebM video if you are using a WebM supported platform, also, lot’s of granular control over the way your podcast is “published” in your Blog. At the posting of the plugin on WordPress’ Plugins site, they say: “Blubrry PowerPress brings the essential features for podcasting to WordPress. Developed by podcasters for podcasters, PowerPress offers full iTunes support, the Update iTunes Listing feature, web audio/video media players and more.”

Blubrry Powerpress Plugin

Key Features

HTML5 video support: Add both mp4 and webm media to each episode for maximum platform compatibility

Full iTunes Support: Adds iTunes compliant podcast feeds to your WordPress blog.

Integrated HTML5 and Flash Media Players: Audio/video web players with embed support from sites such as YouTube and Ustream.tv.

Media Modifiers: Easily add, modify and remove podcasts form blog posts and pages.

Migration tools: Quickly migrate from PodPress, Blogger or Movable Type without losing episodes.

Multi-podcast support: Create separate podcasts by category (category casting) or by media format (Podcast Channels).

Supported Media Formats: mp3, m4a, mp4, m4v, webm, ogg, oga, ogv, wma, ra, mp4a, m4v, mp4v, mpg, asf, avi, wmv, flv, swf, mov, divx, 3gp, midi, wav, aa, pdf, torrent, m4b, m4r.

Media Statistics: Get FREE Blubrry Media Statistics from your WordPress dashboard. (If you are a member of the Blubrry community, also free.)

Languages supported: English, Danish, French, Simplified Chinese

I have converted our Netcast category here on the Blog to use Powerpress!

I had someone at work ask me if I knew of a bootable CD that would find and fix viruses on a blue-screened PC. Well, I found one on-line! It is maintained by Kaspersky Anti-Virus.

Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10

“Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 is designed to scan, disinfect and restore infected operating systems. It should be used when it is impossible to boot the operating system.

Kaspersky Lab products are always upgraded and renewed. In order to restore your system, Kaspersky Lab specialists recommend to use the latest version of Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10.”

NOTE: I got word back today (03/02/2011) that my co-worker took this disk home, booted the PC that blue-screened with it, and it scanned and found the virus, cleaned it off, and when he rebooted… ta da! It came up and is fine! A good report!

I mentioned this software on the last Dr. Bill show… and I had some reservations about resolution issues. But I have found those answers! Cool stuff! Highly geeky!

Supertintin Skype Video Recorder

“Finally, an easy way to record online conversations. Supertintin is a recording tool for online interviews, conferences, lessons, podcasts, or family VoIP calls.

Both Audio and Video: Record all audio and video streams including Skype voice mail and screen sharing video.

Easiest to Use: Very easy to record and playback.

Highest Quality: Supertintin records by capturing original media data while making sure there is no data loss. Because it is not a screen-capture recorder, video quality is not affected at all if you open, close, resize messenger windows while recording.

Picture-in-Picture: Record video in Picture-in-Picture, Side-by-Side, Remote-Only, or Local-Only mode! And you can also record local and remote video as two separate files.

Saving. Supertintin lets you easily save your conversations to your computer’s hard drive or a portable USB drive, allowing you to re-watch your personal and business conversations as easily as watching your favorite DVD.”

You can use this software:

Force Skype HQ/HD Webcam Video

“Allows you to Enable/Disable (and even configure) High-Quality Video in Skype, and even High-Definition Video!
Pay attention that normally Skype activates HQ Video only if you have a Dual-Core processor, and an expensive Logitech webcam.”

Then go in and set the resolution in Supertintin, as shown here: