Category: Geek Software of the Week

This tool allows you to record a selected area of your screen and save it as a Gif.

ScreenToGIF

Features:

• Record your screen and save directly to a gif looped animation or a video.
• Pause and continue to record or start over by discard the recording.
• Move the window around to record what you want, it stays on top.
• You can add Text, Subtitles, Title Frames, Borders, Watermarks, Drawings, etc.
• Crop and Resize.
• Remove frames that you don’t want.
• Select a folder to save the file automatically or select one before encoding.
• Add the system cursor to your recording.
• Very small sized and portable executable.
• Requires .Net Framework 4.6.1. Download Net 4.6.1 here.

7Zip Download

FreewareFiles Editor’s Review – “7-Zip is a free zip program that is compatible with different file and archive formats, including the advanced 7z compression format. People commonly associate file compression with ZIP file format but there are actually many other formats out there, and it is good to have a single program that can handle most of them.

Compatible Formats

For compression and decompression, 7-Zip is compatible with 7z, TAR, ZIP, BZIP2 and GZIP. The program can also unpack many other file formats, including CAB, CPIO, ARJ, CHM, ISO, DEB, MSI, DMG, LZH, HFS, RAR, XAR, UDF, RPM, WIM, Z AND NSIS.

The program can be used to compress many file formats, including text and image files.

Compression Ratio

7-Zip generally compresses files better than other compression programs. For example, the program compresses 65MB of such easily-packed files as DOC to about 6MB while zipping the same files via Windows Explorer creates a zip archive of more than 8.5MB.

However, the free zip program does not compress JPEG files as well but remember that these files are already compressed anyway. The best compression results are achieved when native creating 7z files.

Features

7-Zip has several file compression features found in other compression utilities, including:
Multi-volume support
Password protection
Batch compression
Integration with Outlook
The program fully supports Windows Explorer, and almost all its functions can be accessed by right-clicking files.
Although it is possible to perform batch compression and extraction using either drag and drop or hot keys, the feature is not directly supported in the program. Users can also create self-extracting archives when they download necessary plugins and modules from the official website.

Support

While users will get limited support, this is true for most free software. Do not expect an active customer support. However, there are relatively active online forums and a built-in user guide.

Conclusion

7-Zip is a good free file archiver that can be used to compress files into many formats and unpack even more compression formats. However, its user interface is not the friendliest to ordinary people, especially considering that it lacks a Wizard. It has too many options that make it more suitable for users with some technical skills. Fortunately, many options are only available when a user presses the F9 key.

The .7Z files can also confuse many users who may not even be aware that they are compressed. However, the fact that the file format is not easily recognizable has its advantages. For example, you can use it to send an executable file as an e-mail attachment, something you cannot achieve with ZIP files.

Software Product Description

7-Zip is a free zip / unzip file archiver with a high compression ratio.

The main features of 7-Zip:

Highest compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL
Supported formats: 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB
For ZIP and GZIP formats 7-Zip provides compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
Self-extracting capability for 7z format
Integration with Windows Shell
Powerful File Manager
Powerful command line version
Plugin for FAR Manager
Localizations for 47 languages
works in DOS using HX Extender
There is port of command line version for DOS, Linux/Unix.”

You know I LOVE Internet Radio, in fact, I help technically with two stations! This freeware app will not only let you listen to Internet Radio, you can also record it!

Raimersoft TapinRadio Web Site

Key Features

Quick in memory search
Extensive station directory
Scheduled recording possible
Portable installation available (Choose portable during installation)

Benefits

Free (not all features available)
Pro version available which adds:

Allow multiple instances
Schedule recordings
Show cover art
Show lyrics
Station listing updated weekly

How cool is it to be able to install software on Windows as easily as apt-get does in Debian based Linux distros?

Chocolately Website

“Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows (like apt-get or yum but for Windows). It was designed to be a decentralized framework for quickly installing applications and tools that you need. It is built on the NuGet infrastructure currently using PowerShell as its focus for delivering packages from the distros to your door, err computer.

Chocolatey is brought to you by the work and inspiration of the community, the work and thankless nights of the Chocolatey Team, and Rob heading up the direction.

You can host your own sources and add them to Chocolatey, you can extend Chocolatey’s capabilities, and folks, it’s only going to get better.

With all of this in mind, think of Chocolatey as a framework that you can build on top of. Chef, Puppet and Boxstarter all have ways for using Chocolatey to ensure the state of a computer and packages installed. Even Microsoft has decided to use Chocolatey’s framework with the upcoming OneGet client! See Jeffrey Snover’s post for more information.”

This has the advantage of being very light on resources, and being FREE! Also, there is both an installed and a portable version.

Bandizip : All-In-One Free Zip Archiver

“Bandizip is a lightweight, fast and free All-In-One Zip Archiver.

Bandizip has a very fast Zip algorithm for compression & extraction with Fast Drag and Drop, High Speed Archiving, and Multi-core compression. It handles the most popular compression formats, including Zip, 7z, Rar, and so on.

Operating system : Windows 2003, XP, Vista, 7/8/10 (Support for 32-bit and 64-bit)
License : Freeware (No Adware/Spyware/Virus), EULA

Features:

Compression and Extraction:
Zip(z01), ZipX(zx01), TAR, TGZ, LZH, ISO, 7Z(7z.001), and EXE(e01).

Extraction Only:
RAR(part1.rar, r01), ACE, AES, ALZ, APK, ARJ, BH, BIN, BZ, BZ2, CAB, EGG, GZ, J2J, JAR, IMG, IPA, ISZ, LHA, LZMA, PMA, TBZ, TBZ2, TGZ, TLZ, TXZ, UDF, WAR, WIM, XPI, XZ, and Z.
Support for Unicode to display international characters.
Bypass files that don’t compress well using the ‘High Speed Archiving’ function.
Extract files to the destination folder directly using the ‘Fast Drag & Drop’ function.
Create self-extracting files (.EXE) and multi-volume (split) archives.
Optional archive encryption using ZipCrypto and AES 256.
Context Menu access including the ‘Preview Archive’ function.
Create or extract multiple zip files simultaneously from windows explorer.
Free to use at both home and in the office.”

Turn your old computer into a Chrome device! This sounds like fun!

Neverware’s CloudReady

Broad Hardware Support

“Support for almost any computer, with dead-simple installation.

Streamlined Performance

Lightweight install, great performance & automatic updates on machines up to 8 years old.

Linux, Like Never Before

With industry leading design and Google’s cloud services, CloudReady raises the bar.

Broad Hardware Compatibility

Chromium was designed to run only on specific Chromebook hardware. CloudReady makes it run on virtually any machine by providing a single installer image with broad driver support and compatibility fixes.

We’re constantly improving CloudReadys support for all the most common graphics, wifi, trackpad, and even hot-key functionality. It’s easy to install CloudReady and start using it right away. No headaches; no configuration, no expertise needed.

Streamlined Performance

CloudReady only runs one thing: a browser. This makes for a bloat-proof and lightweight OS that can keep machines up to 8 years old fast and responsive.

You don’t need to get a new machine to experience a market-leading OS or get reliable performance. CloudReady works on the computers you already have and lets cloud-services do the heavy lifting.

Linux, Like Never Before

You don’t have to settle if you want a headache-free Linux distribution. CloudReady is an alternative to other Linux distributions that gives you a clean, modern, and unobtrusive desktop.

Integrated throughout the OS is the full potential of Google’s cloud services, from Drive to Docs. Your settings, apps, and files follow you to any machine, and everything else gets out of the way.”

I published a post about MultCloud before, now as of this month (October 2015,) MultCloud has changed a lot, so I thought a Geek Software of the Month Update was definitely needed!

MultuCloud – One Place for All Your Cloud Services!

If you visit the old post, you will find there were only three features at that time in MultCloud. In fact, MultCloud’s functions have drastically increased! Transferring files and management have been enhanced. You can now transfer files between different services that have been added in MultCloud easily, and you can now drag and drop destination files directly; you can also use the “Copy to” method.

Now MultCloud even supports moving files after you disconnect, which is an important breakthrough. Traditionally, you would transfer a file immediately, another new feature of MultCloud is scheduled transfer. It allows you to set a specific time for scheduled file copy, such as daily, weekly, or monthly! It also supports notifying you after completing the transfer by email.

Multi-server parallel transmission is also available. MultCloud is highly secure, which I did not mention in my original post. MultCloud applies 256-bit AES Encryption for SSL data transfer. MultCloud’s authorization system is based on OAuth, which is a standard authorization framework that enables third party applications to build up a connections to cloud services without your username and password being required.

AOMEI had promised that MultCloud will support even more cloud drive systems in the future, and that promise has been fulfilled. MultCloud supported services have increased from 17 to 23.

The new services include:
MySQL backup
Flickr cloud drive
MediaFire
OwnCloud
Alfreco
aDrive

How can I 10TB for FREE?

Once you have registered in MultCloud, you can get 2TB of additional space for free, if you want to upgrade to 10TB. To get the additional storage, click the ‘gift icon,’ or the red text ‘To get 10TB Traffic for Free’ to switch to the following page:

Then share information about MultCloud in your own words and submit the share link. Please wait for the success message.

So, check out MultCloud… sign up and try it yourself!

Recover your photos!

PhotoRec – Photo Recovery Software

How PhotoRec works
“FAT, NTFS, ext2/ext3/ext4 file systems store files in data blocks (also called clusters under Windows). The cluster or block size remains at a constant number of sectors after being initialized during the formatting of the file system. In general, most operating systems try to store the data in a contiguous way so as to minimize data fragmentation. The seek time of mechanical drives is significant for writing and reading data to/from a hard disk, so that’s why it’s important to keep the fragmentation to a minimum level.

When a file is deleted, the meta-information about this file (file name, date/time, size, location of the first data block/cluster, etc.) is lost; for example, in an ext3/ext4 file system, the names of deleted files are still present, but the location of the first data block is removed. This means the data is still present on the file system, but only until some or all of it is overwritten by new file data.

To recover these lost files, PhotoRec first tries to find the data block (or cluster) size. If the file system is not corrupted, this value can be read from the superblock (ext2/ext3/ext4) or volume boot record (FAT, NTFS). Otherwise, PhotoRec reads the media, sector by sector, searching for the first ten files, from which it calculates the block/cluster size from their locations. Once this block size is known, PhotoRec reads the media block by block (or cluster by cluster). Each block is checked against a signature database which comes with the program and has grown in the type of files it can recover ever since PhotoRec’s first version came out.

For example, PhotoRec identifies a JPEG file when a block begins with:
0xff, 0xd8, 0xff, 0xe0
0xff, 0xd8, 0xff, 0xe1
or 0xff, 0xd8, 0xff, 0xfe
If PhotoRec has already started to recover a file, it stops its recovery, checks the consistency of the file when possible and starts to save the new file (which it determined from the signature it found).

If the data is not fragmented, the recovered file should be either identical to or larger than the original file in size. In some cases, PhotoRec can learn the original file size from the file header, so the recovered file is truncated to the correct size. If, however, the recovered file ends up being smaller than its header specifies, it is discarded. Some files, such as *.MP3 types, are data streams. In this case, PhotoRec parses the recovered data, then stops the recovery when the stream ends.

When a file is recovered successfully, PhotoRec checks the previous data blocks to see if a file signature was found but the file wasn’t able to be successfully recovered (that is, the file was too small), and it tries again. This way, some fragmented files can be successfully recovered.”

Draw.IO is a very cool graphics package designed for drawing flowcharts. It is a web application that will even work on your Chromebook! Check it out!

Draw.IO – Flowcharting Software

There are also other “how to” videos available to help you get started!

Diagnose your connection issues!

Why Can’t I Connect?

“‘Why Can’t I Connect?’ is a network diagnostic tool that makes it easier to resolve TCP/IP connection errors. Use it to diagnose connections to common server types (Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL Server, FTP, SFTP, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, IRC, LDAP, Usenet) and create generic TCP/IP clients and / or servers. Maybe a firewall is blocking the requested port, the port isn’t listening, DNS isn’t returning the expected address, DHCP hasn’t supplied a local IP address, the WiFi login isn’t complete… The application will step through the connection process, resolving all IP addresses, displaying all sent and received messages in both hexadecimal and ascii. Any errors will be reported with possible causes for the error. ‘Why Can’t I Connect?’ is a DIAGNOSTIC TOOL ONLY. It will find the root cause of the error but it will not, apart from incomplete WiFi / wired network logins, attempt to repair the connection. The application is intended for users with some network experience or users who wish to be able to supply technical details to a help desk. There is currently support for Windows and Linux operating systems.

The ‘Why Can’t I Connect?’ Android companion app is now available at Google play and the Amazon Appstore.

Windows install executables, rpms, and debians are available as well as source code. There is language support for Chinese (simplified character set), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish. Visit the Quick Tour for screenshots and an overview of ‘Why Can’t I Connect?’. Visit Help / Instructions for a more detailed explanation of the functionality. Visit the Knowledge Base to find useful information, make requests, report bugs, ask questions, and view solutions.”