Category: Geek Software of the Week

This week’s Geek Software of the Week is Qliner Hotkeys! You can use this great, free utility to program keystokes that bring up applications!

Qliner Hotkeys

“Qliner hotkeys is a free and open source keyboard productivity environment. It is the first product of its kind that is usable by computer geeks and non geeks alike. Hotkeys builds on the concept of Windows shortcut keys but takes this concept to a whole new level. Do you think key combinations are hard to remember? Just hold the Windows key for three seconds and up pops a on screen Keyboard with icons on the keys that are configured. This you can use , not only to remind you of hotkey combinations, but also for Drag and Drop Configuration. Hotkeys is smart in the way it launches applications and opens documents. When a key combination is pressed hotkeys will first try to find an existing instance of the requested application or document and bring that to the front. This behavior can be overruled by holding the Alt key, which ensures that a new instance is always launched. If no existing instances are found a new instance is started. If multiple instances are running the Instance Switching menu is displayed. Holding the Windows key for several seconds, or pressing Win + Z shows the on screen keyboard. It is an easy tool to look up existing key combinations. The keyboard is also used for drag and drop configuration: you can drag the icons on the keyboard to different keys or drag new items onto the keyboard. The keyboard is highly configurable. You can change the color and layout to make it match your actual, physical keyboard. Besides support for more than 100 international keyboards layouts, hotkeys also supports Dvorak layout.”

I have used a lot of registry cleaners… and they seem to come and go. My old favorite was changed from freeware to a “regular” paid product, and a the same time it got way hard to use! So, forget that! How about one that is simple, free and safe? How about “EasyCleaner?”

EasyCleaner Registry Cleaner

EasyCleaner cleans you registry, but it does a LOT more as well. Check out these options:

– Clean Registry
– Add/Remove Programs
– Find File Duplicates on disk
– Remove unnecessary files
– Clean Shortcuts
– Display Space Usage on disk
– Display what is starting at PC Startup
– Clear files, cookies, and history in IE
– And, lot’s MORE!

Do you want to rip CDs to any format reliably? Do you want to convert audio files from one format to another? Interchange between formats like: mp3, mp4, m4a (iTunes / iPod), Windows Media Audio (WMA), Ogg Vorbis, AAC, Monkeys Audio, FLAC, Apple Lossless (ALAC) and many more? Then you need the FREE version of this great utility!

dBpoweramp Audio Utility

I bought the full version because it is SO impressive! The paid version adds some nice features, but the free version has great features by itself. Check it out! You will be VERY impressed!

Wow! That is my review. WOW! This is SO cool! OpenDNS is a great FREE service that allows you to set your local PC (or PC network behind a router) to their DNS servers. They then allow you to choose to block all adult sites in your OpenDNS web site account logon. So, if you set your PC to their DNS servers, you are then protected from ALL adult and questionable sites! After following their instructions on their web site, and if you are getting your settings from your local router’s DHCP server, you can then type in “ipconfig /release” at the PC command prompt… then do a “hard reboot” of the local PC system. After it comes back up, check again using the command prompt and type: “ipconfig /all” and look for what the DNS is set to. It should be set to:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

If so, you are good to go! If not, follow their instructions for setting up and individual PC. I have tried it, and it rocks! This is a great service to be FREE!!! Here’s the link to their web site:

OpenDNS Service

“OpenDNS is a safer, faster, smarter and more reliable way to navigate the Internet. Our service is free and requires nothing to download.”

They also have built-in speed enhancements to the DNS lookups, and auto-spell checking of your addresses typed in the URL address box in your browser… how cool is that?! Also, OpenDNS intercepts phishing attempts. OpenDNS customers will be warned if they attempt to visit a phishing site!

So, for this week’s great, free Windows utility, how about a cool program that allows you to manage MySQL databases and create, browse, query, create reports… and generally manipulate your MySQL databases with a handy Windows interface!

HeidiSQL Web Site

“HeidiSQL is an easy-to-use interface and a “working-horse” for web-developers using the popular MySQL-Database. It allows you to manage and browse your databases and tables from an intuitive Windows® interface.

With HeidiSQL you will also be able to:

* generate nice SQL-exports
* synchronize tables between two databases
* manage user-privileges
* import text-files
* export table-data as CSV, HTML and XML
* browse and edit table-data using a comfortable grid
* batch-insert ascii or binary files into tables
* write queries with syntax-highlighting (next version will have also code-completion)
* monitor and kill client-processes
* and much more…”

This week I am highlighting a venerable utility that has been around and recommended by a lot of super guru geeks for years… the Belarc Advisor! This utility, once installed and run on your PC, will create a web display in your browser with a boat-load of info about your PC and it’s configuration!

Belarc Advisor Utility

“The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server.”

The info on hotfixes and security releases alone is worth the price… which, of course is FREE, by the way! DEWD! How cool is that?!?!

So, you need to record a group of people (or, even a couple of people) for a podcast… or, you want to communicate over headsets while playing computer games on-line. Enter… Ventrilo! High quality voice communication over IP (the Internet.)

Ventrilo Web Site

“Ventrilo 2.3.0 is the next evolutionary step of Voice over IP (VoIP) group communications software. Ventrilo is also the industry standard by which all others measure themselves as they attempt to imitate its features. By offering surround sound positioning and special sound effects on a per user, per channel, per server or global configuration level the program provides each user the option to fully customize exactly how they wish to hear sounds from other users or events. Ventrilo is best known for it’s superior sound quality and minimal use of CPU resources so as not to interfere with day to day operations of the computer or during online game competitions. It is also preferred for the simple user interface that any first time computer user can very quickly learn because the most commonly used features are immediately visible and can be activated with a single click of the mouse.”

Very cool, indeed! I am also checking out “TeamSpeak” to see which is better:

TeamSpeak Web Site

It looks very cool as well… same concept… I’ll let you know which one I went with!

What does your PC’s CPU support in terms of modern system security? Now, you can find out with a small, free, and very neat program from Steve Gibson at GRC!

SecurAble Web Site

“SecurAble probes the system’s processor to determine the presence, absence and operational status of three modern processor features:

* 64-bit instruction extensions,
* Hardware support for detecting and preventing
the execution of code in program data areas, … and
* Hardware support for system resource ‘virtualization.'”

Us Linux dewds get spoiled by having a powerful tool like grep… now you can have it on Windows!

BareGrep Home Page

A free file finding and text searching tool. High-performance search algorithm. Regex syntax is a common subset of Perl, PHP and Java (see the Regex Reference). Simple search mode for literal strings, when not using regexes. Wildcard and regular expression file search. Files to find or search can be specified as a list including wildcards. Recursive directory search. Find and search matching files anywhere on the file-system. Interactive, incremental search. Searching while you type, to find results quicker. Feedback on regex syntax errors while you type, to build regexes quicker. Export search results to a file or the clipboard. Configurable selection of search result columns. Configurable prefix, suffix, alignment and truncation. Many file formats. Windows / DOS text files (lines end in CR/LF pairs). Unix text files (lines end in LF). Microsoft IIS logfiles (and other files terminated with a string of nulls). Many configurable user preferences. Preferences can be saved to a file, the registry or not at all on exit. Preferences are loaded from a file in the local directory, a file in the application directory or the registry (in that order). Preferences can be loaded and saved at any time by the user, and shared with other users. Single small executable, no installer. No installation needed, start using the tool immediately. Small executable can be run from the network. Easy to temporarily install and then completely remove.”

“This online generator creates your own custom unique WordPress Theme. Without any need for HTML, JS, PHP, or CSS knowledge. Change the colors, settings, layout, preview live, click “save” and download your unique WordPress theme zip-file. Extract, upload, set, and you are done!”

WordPress Theme Generator

I don’t usually highlight web based tools as a Geek Software of the Week, but this one struck me as VERY cool! You can design your own WordPress theme right on-line. Neat!