Category: Geek Software of the Week

It seems we have been getting a lot of defrag utilities lately… but this one comes from our friends at CCleaner and Recuva, both of which have been GSotW honorees as well. And, you can defragment a file at a time, if you want. So, check it out!

Defraggler Web Site

“From everyone here at Piriform, the company that brought you CCleaner and Recuva… we now bring you a file defragmentation tool… Defraggler! It differs from other defrag tools on the market, by enabling you to quickly and simply defrag the files you want to, without having to process the whole drive. Simply run it, select the file and defragment in seconds. No more struggling with the Windows defragmentation tool! And remember like all Piriform products, Defraggler is completely free for both corporate and individual use.”

How about a FREE NAS system, or iSCSI SAN? Interested? Then you need to check out OpenFiler!

OpenFiler

“Openfiler is a Storage Management Operating System. It is powered by the Linux 2.6 kernel and Open Source applications such as Apache, Samba, LVM2, ext3, Linux NFS and iSCSI Enterprise Target. Openfiler combines these ubiquitous technologies into a small, easy to manage solution fronted by a powerful web-based management interface. Openfiler allows you to build a Network Attached Storage (NAS) and/or Storage Area Network (SAN) appliance, using industry-standard hardware, in less than 10 minutes of installation time.”

Very geeky… very cool! Find an old box, throw it on there… and play!

This is a great utility if you have a bunch of photos from your digital camera, and you need to size them all down to use them on the web! Your cool FIVE pixel digital camera will take HUGE shots… and you need them to be reduced to a more “web-friendly” size!

Fotosizer Web Site

“Fotosizer is a freeware batch image resizer tool. It resizes your photos in just 3 easy steps – 1. Photo selection, 2. select resize settings, then 3. Start the resize! Increasingly, sharing photos on the internet is becoming more and more popular. Photos, represented as JPEG files from digital cameras, taken at high resolutions are far too large to send over the Internet, with some photos ending up at 5 mega bytes. Uploading one photo to a photo sharing website is fine, but 10, 20, or even more, this can take forever, especially on a dial-up connection. With Fotosizer, you can shrink JPEG image files, along with other supported formats, and dramatically reduce internet transfer times, enabling you to quickly and easily prepare your image collections to be published on the web. Help unlock the photos from your digital camera. Use Fotosizer to batch resize your photos making it easier and faster to email to friends, upload to photo sharing websites or upload to websites that offer photo printing services. Fotosizer lets you resize in 3 easy steps, allowing you to choose the photos you want to resize, the dimensions, and where you want to save the new photos.”

This week’s GSotW may have a limited audience… but if you are a VMware System Administrator (like I am) you will find this is a powerful FREE tool in your “tool belt!”

Veeam FastSCP 2.0 for VMware ESX Server

“Veeam FastSCP (Fast & Secure Copy) facilitates the deployment and simplifies backup of virtual machines(VMs) on VMware ESX server. Veeam FastSCP is a fast, secure and easy-to-use tool to perform file management in ESX environment. FastSCP allows a user to copy files from ESX to Windows, Windows to ESX or ESX to ESX. This is the most natural way to deliver an ISO file to ESX Server, make a backup copy of an existing virtual machine (VM) or copy VMs and templates between ESX servers. FastSCP ensures security by using a one-time password feature and works over 6 times faster than SCP.

Features and Benefits:

Multi-ESX management
The user can work with multiple ESX servers at the same time within a single interface. Switching between servers doesn’t require re-entering login/password or specifying the server’s IP.

ESX to ESX direct copy
FastSCP allows a user to copy files directly between ESX servers and within one ESX Server. Copying is fast and secure and doesn’t require any configuration or setup.

Complete file management and Windows integration
FastSCP allows you to work with ESX servers just like you work with files and folders in Windows. Now it doesn’t make any difference to a user whether to copy files to ESX or to a desktop. FastSCP supports both Drag n’ Drop and Copy & Paste.”

This is WAY better than built-in defrag… check it out! You will like it!

Auslogics Disk Defrag Pro

Disk fragmentation leads to system slowdowns, PC crashes, slow startup and shutdown and sometimes to system failures. Auslogics Disk Defrag is designed for fast optimization of today’s modern hard disks. Get the maximum performance out of your expensive hardware investments. And it’s FREE to try.

Wow! This one totally rocks! If you have been looking for something like this, you will be amazed that it is freeware. No kidding! Check out the features!

Imgburn Web Site

“ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that everyone should have in their toolkit! It has several ‘Modes’, each one for performing a different task:

* Read – Read a disc to an image file
* Build – Create an image file from files on your computer or network – or you can write the files directly to a disc
* Write – Write an image file to a disc
* Verify – Check a disc is 100% readable. Optionally, you can also have ImgBurn compare it against a given image file to ensure the actual data is correct
* Discovery – Put your drive / media to the test! Used in combination with DVDInfoPro, you can check the quality of the burns your drive is producing

ImgBurn supports a wide range of image file formats – including BIN, DI, DVD, GI, IMG, ISO, MDS, NRG and PDI. It supports Unicode folder/file names, so you shouldn’t run in to any problems if you’re using an international character set. ImgBurn supports all the Windows OS’s – Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista (including all the 64-bit versions). If you use Wine, it should also run on Linux and other x86-based Unixes. It’s a very flexible application with several advanced features that are often lacking in other tools, especially when it comes to burning DVD Video discs. It supports all the latest drives without the need for updates (including booktype / bitsetting / advanced settings on many of the major ones – i.e. BenQ, LiteOn, LG, NEC, Plextor, Samsung, Sony). There is an image queue system for when you’re burning several images (which you can automatically share between multiple drives if you have more than one) and an easy-to-use layer break selection screen for double layer DVD Video jobs. The Automatic Write Speed feature allows you store your favourite burn speed settings on a per ‘Media ID’ basis, right down to a drive by drive level. Data captured during the burn (write speed, buffer levels etc) can be displayed / analysed using DVDInfoPro. Whilst ImgBurn is designed to work perfectly straight out of the box, advanced users will appreciate just how configurable it is. Oh and let’s not forget the best thing about it…. it’s 100% FREE ;-)”

This week’s GSotW is kinda specialized… BUT, if you are looking for the BEST Flash Video player for your projects, web sites, etc. This one will do it for you!

The Jeroen Wijering FLV Player

Jeroen Wijering wrote this cool player and allows folks to use it for non-commercial purposes… with a 15 euro charge (about $20.00 as of this post) for commercial use. It rocks! Lot’s of features!

“The JW FLV Player (built with Adobe’s Flash) can be used standalone, without the need for the Flash authoring tool. The player allows you to show your videos more controlled and to a broader audience than with Quicktime, Windows Media or Real Media. It supports playback of a single Flash video file, RTMP streams or RSS, XSPF and ATOM playlists (with advertisement possibilities), a wide range of flashvars (settings) for tweaking both behavior and appearance and an extensive, documented javascript/actionscript API.”

There’s even a WordPress plugin designed for it… among many other cool “add-ons!” Check it out!

Spyware Terminator Web Site

Yep! Free for personal AND business! And, it integrates with Clamwin Antivirus to give you both real time scanning of spyware, AND viruses! Wow! How’s that for cool!?!? Clamwin is a free and Open Source anti-virus, but does NOT have real time scanning… Spyware Terminator adds it’s “uniqueness” to it’s real time scan… rock on! Here’s the Clamwin download site:

Clamwin Download

“Free 100% Real-Time Protection is included in Spyware Terminator basic version – an essential function most other applications charge you extra for. Effectively remove spyware, adware, trojans, keyloggers, home page hijackers and other malware threats.

Safe Quarantine
Suspect files found during the scan are moved into Quarantine. Spyware Terminator prevents them from functioning and causing further damage to your computer. You can review and choose to permanently remove suspect files or safely store essential files.

Easy to Use
Spyware Terminator lets people of all skill levels detect and eliminate spyware. If you remove a program by mistake, you can easily put it back.

Manual & Scheduled Scan
Scan your computer manually or schedule an in-depth scan to be performed on a regular basis. The scan process runs in the background so that you will not be disrupted while working on other tasks.

Automatic Update Downloads
Spyware Terminator can be set to automatically download updates, ensuring the most effective protection for your computer.”

Every wanted to see what files are “clogging” your hard drive? Now, you can see it visually!

WinDirStat Utility

WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows (all current variants). WinDirStat reads the whole directory tree once and then presents it in three useful views:

* The directory list, which resembles the tree view of the Windows Explorer but is sorted by file/subtree size,
* The treemap, which shows the whole contents of the directory tree straight away,
* The extension list, which serves as a legend and shows statistics about the file types.
* Coupling. Select an item in the directory list: The treemap highlights it; and vice versa.
* Zooming.
* Built-in cleanup actions including Open, Show Properties, Delete.
* User-defined cleanups (command line based).
* Works with network drives and UNC paths.
* ‘Create disk usage report’ option.

I have searched high and low for the BEST MP3 tag editor… well, I should say, media file tag editor, because I wanted one that would tag ogg format files, as well as MP3s. I found free ones that did only MP3s and I found expensive ones that did all formats but were difficult to use. NOW… I have found exactly what I was looking for… simple, supports a lot a formats, and SO very clean! Check it out! (AND, it is FREE!)

MP3tag Editor

“Mp3tag is a powerful and yet easy-to-use tool to edit metadata (ID3, Vorbis Comments and APE) of common audio formats. It can rename files based on the tag information, replace characters or words from tags and filenames, import/export tag information, create playlists and more. The program supports online freedb database lookups for selected files, allowing you to automatically gather proper tag information for select files or CDs.

Mp3tag supports the following audio formats:

* Advanced Audio Coding (aac)
* Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac)
* Monkey’s Audio (ape)
* Mpeg Layer 3 (mp3)
* MPEG-4 (mp4 / m4a / m4b / iTunes compatible)
* Musepack (mpc)
* Ogg Vorbis (ogg)
* OptimFROG (ofr)
* OptimFROG DualStream (ofs)
* Speex (spx)
* Tom’s Audio Kompressor (tak)
* True Audio (tta)
* Windows Media Audio (wma)
* WavPack (wv)”

And, check out these features!

* Write ID3v1.1-, ID3v2-, APEv2-Tags and Vorbis Comments to multiple files at once
* Full Unicode support
* Support for embedded cover art
* Automatically create playlists
* Recursive subfolders support
* Remove parts or the entire tag of multiple files
* Rename files based on the tag information
* Import tags from filenames
* Format tags and filenames
* Replace characters or words from tags and filenames
* Regular Expressions
* Export tag information to user-defined formats (like html, rtf, csv, xml)
* Import tag information from online databases like freedb or Amazon (also by text-search)
* Import tag information from local freedb databases
* Support for ID3v2.3 (ISO-8859-1 and UTF-16) and ID3v2.4 with UTF-8
* and much more …