Category: Geek Software of the Week

Are you a sloppy HTML coder? (Aren’t we all?) Well, no worries! Now you can clean up that HTML code with a UI (User Interface) to the WC3’s HTMLTidy libraries! Cool!

TidyUI Download Page

Just download the file, unzip it, and place the contents of the zip file somewhere that you know you can locate, like:

C:\Program Files\TidyUI

Then, create a shortcut to the “tidyui.exe” file. Click on the shortcut, and you have a GUI (Graphical User Interface) that will allow you to select your poor example of HTML coding, then click on “Tidy!” and “viola’!” You have clean, neat code! (Now, if I could just clean my house!)

One thing I really like about Linspire Linux is that it has a “kill” option. If a window, or application gets “frozen” for some reason, you can kill it by starting the “Kill” app and hovering over the window and “killing” it! Goblineye’s YKill does this for Microsoft Windows!

YKill is a complete window manager that gives you full of control of windows and processes in your system. YKill…

* Can Close and Kill applications that stopped responding!
* Can help you manage top-level windows in your system.
* Can show you information about your system.
* Can show you information about running processes.
* Fully supports Windows® 98/Me/2000/XP.

YKill by Goblineye

It is pretty slick! Enjoy!

Have you eve needed an FTP client for, shall we say, a “non-technical” user? Someone that you know needs FTP access to upload files, but Filezilla (which I LOVE!) would just freak them out? Well here you go! Complete with my own “brain-dead-easy” instructions! “rcFTP” stands for “right-click” FTP.

rcFTP

Instructions:

Download the program “rcFTP” and install it. Here’s the location on the web of the file (Click on the link below to get the file, look on the right hand side of the screen that is displayed, for the file called “Setup.”)

Welcome

Save it somewhere where you know will where it is (the desktop is fine.)

Double-click the file you downloaded to install the program.

Click the “Install” button in the lower right corner of the screen that comes up, and click “Yes” that you want it to create the directory.

Click “Yes” to start the application for the first time.

Click “Yes” to add to the Startup folder.

Click “OK”… we will now need to use it the first time to create a “profile”.

“Right-Click” on any file, and look for the “Send to”… then choose “Upload with rcFTP”

Click “Delete” under the top line to delete the example profile. Then click “New.”

Fill in the screen that pops up with the following:

FTP Address:
yourftpaddress.com

Loginname:
yourusername

Password:
yourpassword

Click “Save” in the lower right hand corner.

Give it a Name like “My Files”

Click “Upload Now” in the lower left corner to send the file. You will see the file upload progress.

If you see a Windows XP Security pop-up that says “Do you want to open a port for rcFTP?” Click “Unblock.”

Click the “X” in the upper right hand corner of rcFTP to exit. You are done!

Wanna be a spy? Wanna sneak around and have no one be able to trace you? Are you freaked out by the NSA? Well, you probably shouldn’t be so concerned, dewd, but if you are, here’s a cool free service that will “anonymize” your surfing, so that no one can trace what you are surfing back to you.

Kaxy Web Proxy

Using the free Kaxy Web Proxy service, you can Google info, and no one can trace back to you. Why would you want this ability? Ahhhh, don’t ask me… but if you do, now you know. Shhhhh! I am sneakin’ around! Be vewry, vewry quiet! I’m huntin’ wabbits!

Addendum: Adam Wenner pointed out in a comment to this post that the EFF has a project called “Tor” that allows for anonymous surfing (and more) as well. Check out that link:

EFF’s Tor System

Thanks, Adam!

OK… this is pretty odd to be a “Geek Software of the Week.” Why? Well, for those that need it, it will be very cool. For those that don’t the reaction will be, “Huh?” This free utility allows you to “roll up” a window in Windows XP like a window sash. Why would you do that? Because you might have lots and lots of windows open and need to “clean up.”

WinRoll

Before

After

So, for those of you that say, “Dewd, this is JUST what I was looking for!” Great! For those that are still scratching their heads and saying, “Huh?” Well, pass it along… OK?

Nothing is more boring than a simple text editor… right? Well, no! If you are like me, I am always looking for great text editors, because I use one all the time! And, after a while, I started thinking, wouldn’t it be great if notepad did this, or that, or the other? Well… Notepad++ does just that!

Notepad++ Open Source Text Editor

“Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement) which supports several programming languages running under the MS Windows environment. This project, based on Scintilla edit component (a very powerful editor component) are written in C++ with pure win32 api and STL (that ensures the higher execution speed and smaller size of the program), is under the GPL Licence.”

Here are the features of Notepad++ :

Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding

Supported languages : C, C++, Java, C#, XML, HTML, PHP, Javascript, RC resource file, makefile, ASCII art file (extension .nfo , screenshot1, screenshot2), doxygen, ini file, batch file, ASP, VB/VBS source files, SQL, Objective-C, CSS, Pascal, Perl, Python, Lua, TCL, Assembler, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme, Properties, Diff, Smalltalk, Postscript and VHDL.

WYSIWYG

If you have a color printer, print your source code (or whatever you want) in color.

User Defined Syntax Highlighting

It allows user to define his own language : not only the syntax highlighting keywords, but also the syntax folding keywords, comment keywords and the operators.

Auto-completion

For most supported languages, user can make his/her own API list (or download the api files from dowload section). Once the api file is ready, type Ctrl+Space to launch this action.

Multi-Document

You can edit several documents at the same time.

Multi-View

You have two views at same time. That means you can visualize (edit) 2 different documents at the same time. You can visualize (edit) in the 2 views one document at 2 different positions as well. The modification of document in one view will carry out in another view (i.e. you modify the SAME document when you are in clone mode).

Regular Expression Search/Replace supported

You can search and replace one string in the document by using the regular expression.

Full Drag ‘N’ Drop supported

You can open a document by drag & drop. You can also move your document from a position (or even a view) to another by drag & drop.

Dynamic position of Views

The user can set the position of the views dynamically (only in 2 views mode : the splitter can be set in horizontal or in vertical).

File Status Auto-detection

If you modify or delete a file which opened in Notepad++, you will be notified to update your document (reload the file or remove the file).

Zoom in and zoom out

That’s another fantastic function of Scintilla component.

Multi-Language environment supported

The Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Hebrew Windows environments are supported. See Notepad++ under the Chinese Windows , under the Arabic Windows and under the Hebrew Windows in action screenshot.

Bookmark

User can just click on the bookmark margin (located right side of line number margin) or type Ctrl+F2 to toggle a book mark. To reach the bookmark, type just F2 (Next bookmark) or Shift+F2 (Previous bookmark). To clear all bookmarks, click the Menu Search->Clear All bookmarks.

Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting

When the caret stay beside of one of those symbol { } [ ] ( ) , the symbol beside of caret and its symmetric opposite symbol will be highlighted, as well as the indent guideline (if any) in order to locate the block more easily.

Macro recording and playback

m0n0wall (yes, that is with “zeroes” rather than letter “o’s”) is the BEST totally free software/hardware based firewall there is! Previously, I used Smoothwall, which is also excellent, but m0n0wall has a lot of very cool features that “puts it over” as the best!

m0n0wall Free, Open Source Firewall

“m0n0wall is a project aimed at creating a complete, embedded firewall software package that, when used together with an embedded PC, provides all the important features of commercial firewall boxes (including ease of use) at a fraction of the price (free software). m0n0wall is based on a bare-bones version of FreeBSD, along with a web server, PHP and a few other utilities. The entire system configuration is stored in one single XML text file to keep things transparent. m0n0wall is probably the first UNIX system that has its boot-time configuration done with PHP, rather than the usual shell scripts, and that has the entire system configuration stored in XML format.”

m0n0wall already provides many of the features of expensive commercial firewalls, including:

web interface (supports SSL)

serial console interface for recovery

– set LAN IP address
– reset password
– restore factory defaults
– reboot system

wireless support (access point with PRISM-II/2.5/3 cards, BSS/IBSS with other cards including Cisco)

captive portal

802.1Q VLAN support

stateful packet filtering

– block/pass rules
– logging

NAT/PAT (including 1:1)

DHCP client, PPPoE, PPTP and Telstra BigPond Cable support on the WAN interface

IPsec VPN tunnels (IKE; with support for hardware crypto cards, mobile clients and certificates)

PPTP VPN (with RADIUS server support)

static routes

DHCP server and relay

caching DNS forwarder

DynDNS client and RFC 2136 DNS updater

SNMP agent

traffic shaper

SVG-based traffic grapher

firmware upgrade through the web browser

Wake on LAN client

configuration backup/restore

host/network aliases

As a geek… I unzip and zip a lot! Now, along comes a totally FREE, and very useful, archive tool! Check this out!

IZArc Archiver Utility

“IZArc is the ultimate archive utility supports many archive formats like: 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO. With a modern easy-to-use interface, IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools. It allows you to drag and drop files from and to Windows Explorer, create and extract archives directly in Windows Explorer, create multiple archives spanning disks, creating self-extracting archives, repair damaged zip archives, converting from one archive type to another, view and write comments and many more. IZArc has also build-in multilanguage support.”

So… this one does it all! I got rid of several tools and now just use IZArc! Cool!

This one is worth every penny I didn’t have to pay for it! No bloated Nero to burn an ISO file to a CD! Now, you have a simple “Windows Wizard”-like interface to burn ISOs! It really, really does truly rock!

ISORecorder Download

“ISO Recorder is a tool (power toy) for Windows XP, 2003 and now Windows Vista, that allows (depending on the Windows version) to burn CD and DVD images, copy disks, make images of the existing data CDs and DVDs and create ISO images from a content of a disk folder.”

I used to really like Musicmatch. Then it got bigger, and “heavier” and finally started doing things that I just can’t stand, like showing ads, asking you to buy add-ons, etc. Yeesh! Then, I downloaded an update, and ever since it displayed an error every time my system was rebooted. I had had enough! So, I removed Musicmatch! But, then, I had to play my MP3s “one at a time.” Enter MediaMonkey!

MediaMonkey Download Page

Now, I can play albums, or collections of media again! And, MediaMonkey has assembled their free “jukebox-like” player using Open Source software bundled into their software! Cool!

“Manage a music library consisting of small to very large collections (50,000+ ) of audio files and playlists*, whether they’re located on your hard drive, CDs, or a network. Organize, browse, or search music by Genre, Artist, Year, Rating, etc., and never waste your time trying to find mp3s you know you have. MediaMonkey is the music organizer for the serious collector.

*Supports MP3, OGG, WMA, FLAC, MPC, WAV, CDA, M3U, PLS, etc.

Synchronize with iPods and other Portable Audio Devices in seconds. Simply configure MediaMonkey once, and then click the Synchronize button to synchronize tracks and related properties including Album Art, ratings, play history, and playlists with a broad range of portable devices. With Volume Leveling, the tracks will even play back on your device at consistent volumes!”

This is a GOOD ONE!