Category: Geek Software of the Week

Have you ever used the vi editor in Linux or Unix? Need some practice with the editor in Windows so you won’t be quite as lost when you have to use vi? Well, now you can!

WinVi Editor

“This editor is especially useful for friends of the Vi editor, who do not want to give up the little conveniences offered by Windows. Many people think the advantages of WinVi suggest a turn to this editor.

This is a small selection of the features presented by WinVi:

* compatibility with Windows Notepad was my main goal
* nevertheless, it ought to be highly compatible with Vi
* a hexadecimal edit mode is available for editing binary files
* speedy program start because it is avoiding use of DLLs, MFC, etc.
* large files upto 2 gigabyte editable
* freely selectable background bitmap
* any font (variable spacing, TrueType, etc.)
* simple and clear handling with the availability of a toolbar and a status line
* support for Unix text file format
* fast change of character mappings for DOS files
* automatic word completion in command line (tab key)
* print support with choosable font (double column available)
* multiple language support (English, French, Spanish, or German)
* support of mouse wheels”

This week’s GSoTW is very cool! Secunia Personal Software Inspector keeps track of all your installed software and makes sure that you have the latest, greatest versions installed, which is safer from a security point of view! Very nice!

“The Secunia PSI is an invaluable tool for you to use when assessing the security patch state of software installed on your system. It constantly monitors your system for insecure software installations, notifies you when an insecure application is installed, and even provides you with detailed instructions for updating the application when available.”

Secunia Personal Software Inspector

• The Secunia PSI is available free of charge.
• Secure your PC. Patch your applications. Be proactive.
• Scan for Insecure and End-of-Life applications.
• Track your patch-performance week by week.
• Direct and easy access to security patches.
• Detect more than 300,000 unique application versions.

How about three for the price of one? (So to speak!) Three time based utilities for Windows!

Horst Schaeffer’s Software Pages

“Date Reminder – This is a Date Reminder for recurring or nonrecurring events, like birthdays, bills to pay, appointments etc… The program can be run from the Startup folder with an option to show only if there is something to remind you of.

Calendar – The Calendar window can be sized to display up to 12 month (any width/height ratio). The month range can be shifted step by step. Click on month or year caption to select any month or year.

TimeSync – TimeSync gets the current time from a NIST server, and adjusts the PC clock if necessary. Accuracy is usually within a second. Time and date are displayed according to the user’s regional settings.”

I know… weird name for a GSotW! But, hey! Check out what it does!

MicroTik “The Dude” Network Monitor

“The Dude network monitor is a new application by MikroTik which can dramatically improve the way you manage your network environment. It will automatically scan all devices within specified subnets, draw and layout a map of your networks, monitor services of your devices and alert you in case some service has problems.

* The Dude is free of charge!
* Auto network discovery and layout
* Discovers any type or brand of device
* Device, Link monitoring, and notifications
* Includes SVG icons for devices, and supports custom icons and backgrounds
* Easy installation and usage
* Allows you to draw your own maps and add custom devices
* Supports SNMP, ICMP, DNS and TCP monitoring for devices that support it
* Individual Link usage monitoring and graphs
* Direct access to remote control tools for device management
* Supports remote Dude server and local client
* Runs in Linux Wine environment, MacOS Darwine, and Windows
* Best price/value ratio compared to other products (free of charge)”

So, what if you could have your system “frozen in time” so that whatever you did while surfing the web was as easy as rebooting to undo? Well, that’s the idea behind “Returnil.” It is FREE to home users, and basically is the ultimate in system protection, because it freezes your system in a state in which it was working and can return to that if you get “pwned!”

Returnil Virtual System Personal Edition

“The Returnil Virtual System Personal Edition is a powerful virtualization technology that completely mirrors your actual computer setup and it can create a virtual storage disk within your PC where you can save documents, data, and files while using the System Protection feature. Returnil Virtual System’s protection concept is very easy to understand. It provides a simple, effective, and smart way to prevent unwanted or malicious changes from being made to your supported Windows Operating System and the drive where Windows is installed. You operate your system in a virtual environment, so anything you do will happen in the virtual environment, not in the real PC. If your computer is attacked or gets infected with Malware, all you need to do is simply reboot the PC to erase all changes. Once restarted, your system will be restored to the original state, as if nothing ever happened! Meanwhile, Returnil Virtual System can create a virtual storage disk for you; the purpose of this partition is to provide a place for you to save your data when the Virtual System Protection mode is turned ON, and you can customize the size of this disk to meet your individual requirements. When the Virtual System Protection is OFF, you can install or remove programs, save documents within the Windows disk drive, install security upgrades and software patches, alter configurations, and update user accounts. All changes made will remain following a restart of the computer.”

Here’s a useful and geeky program for Windows that let’s you modify file dates, times, and other file attributes, even to large numbers of files!

Attribute Changer Web Site

“Attribute Changer is a power user tool to change all kind of file and folder attributes, date, time and even NTFS compression. Basic features include changing file and folder attributes within en masse. A really useful feature is the compression/decompression of files stored on the Windows NT/2000 and XP NTFS file system. Furthermore, date and time on files and folders can be partially changed. In this case, you can advise Attribute Changer not to change the whole object data, but only parts such as day, month, year, seconds, minutes or hours. The progress can be monitored in realtime on the ‘Activity and Results’ tab. Filters and exceptions should be used to fine tune the process. Filters include attributes, size, date and time while exceptions are used to filter out files and directory entries using wildcards (* and ?).”

A commercial company (CoffeeCup Software) giving away free software! Pretty cool. This is a Dynamic HTML Menu Builder application. Great for the “budding” Web Designer that wants to add cool, drop down menus to their sites!

CoffeeCup Free DHTML Menu Builder

“Create professional looking DHTML (Dynamic Hyper Text Markup Language) menus for your Web site, without writing a single line of code. (No HTML knowledge required.) You will make great looking professional DHTML menus for your Website in seconds flat ! Make professional looking drop down, or side-step, menus. You can completely customize the colors, fonts, borders, alignment, padding and much more. It’s so easy to make your DHTML Menu match the look and feel of your Website. And best of all, it’s FREE! DHTML Menu Builder is able to create both horizontal “top menu” and vertical “side menu” navigation systems. You can create multi-level, or tiered menus with great ease. The Menus work in all browsers and even support frames. Your DHTML menu is totally customizable. You can adjust fonts, colors, borders, padding, alignment, even adjust the arrows for the sub-menus. Lots of features and options puts you in full control of the layout and design. Using the DHTML Menu Builder is fast, easy, and fun. Plus, it’s FREE!”

OK, this week’s GSotW is WAY geeky! As I have mentioned, two of my Linux web servers chose this week to die. And, die spectacularly! So, I searched for disk recovery software for Linux. And, I found some cool stuff! Sadly, nothing was able to recover my stuff… but that was because my data was too far gone. It got back the directory structure, but the files were 0 byte (not there!) Sigh. So, the recovery continues… I am at about 98% recovered… not too bad. The lesson, kids? Good, current backups. Linux is truly solid and reliable… but hardware has a limited life… and when it dies… it can make for a bad week! (Like mine!)

DiskInternals Linux Recovery

“DiskInternals Linux Recovery is a handy no-cost utility that runs under any version of Windows and designed to recover the erased or damaged information that is kept on Ext2/Ext3 partitions. DiskInternals Linux Recovery might come in handy on a number of occasions when due to the unforeseen contingencies there was a loss of important data stored on Ext2/Ext3 disks. DiskInternals Linux Recovery can recover both the files you just accidentally deleted and the files which have been erased long time ago. It is also capable of restoring corrupted files and can read and recover the information located on an inaccessible drive. The files you restore can be saved on any (including network) disk, which is visible to the host operating system. The utility also allows you to repair a corrupt or damaged partition table and attempt to restore a disk after a serious crash, so you’ll have a chance to repair a serious malfunction right away. In case you noticed that you lost a piece of valuable information only after you formatted a partition, DiskInternals Linux Recovery can unformat the disk and it will be up and running again.”

RightLoad is an FTP utility that allows you to “right-click” on a file and upload it to an FTP server. Very nice!

RightLoad FTP Utility

“RightLoad is a small program that allows you to quickly upload files directly from a Windows folder to your server. Instead of using a complicated FTP client just to upload a few pictures, you just right-click on the files, select the server and target folder and RightLoad will do the rest for you. When all files have been uploaded, RightLoad will automatically generate a list of different links to the files, ready to be copied into your post or website.”

Want to “Mac-i-fy” your PC? Now you can, with “Rocketdock!” It looks like a Mac, but it is also kinda cool on it’s on… imagine being able to drag and drop an app to the dock, then launch it easily. Very configurable, and it looks cool. It will “turn some heads!” Check out their site… they claim they are: “The single greatest piece of software. Ever.” Is it? Watch the movie and check it out… here:

Rocketdock Website

“RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. Now with added Taskbar support your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock. This allows for better productivity and accessibility.

Features:

* Minimize windows to the dock
* Real-time window previews in Vista
* Running application indicators
* Simple drag-n-drop interface
* Multi-monitor support
* Supports alpha-blended PNG and ICO icons
* Icons zoom and transition smoothly
* Auto-hide and Popup on mouse over
* Positioning and layering options
* Fully customizable
* Completely Portable
* ObjectDock Docklet support
* Compatible with MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, and Y’z Dock skins
* Runs great on slower computers
* Unicode compliant
* Supports many languages and can easily be translated
* A friendly user base
* And best of all… its FREE!!!“