Category: Geek Software of the Week

I simply can’t believe that FileZilla has NOT already been a GSotW, but I did a search on the site, and it hasn’t! What!?! I use it almost as much as I use ANY piece of software! I use it on my Linux systems, on my Mac systems, and on my PC systems! Dewd! How did I not mention it already?!? (well, I have mentioned it in my “perfect Linux builds” posts, but… wow!) This has been a major oversight! So, consider it rectified!

FileZilla – FREE FTP Client and Server

“FileZilla, (is) the free FTP solution. Both a client and a server are available. FileZilla is open source software distributed free of charge under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

Overview
FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive graphical user interface.

Features
Among others, the features of FileZilla include the following:

• Easy to use
• Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
• Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X and more
• IPv6 support
• Available in many languages
• Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
• Tabbed user interface
• Powerful Site Manager and transfer queue
• Bookmarks
• Drag & drop support
• Configurable transfer speed limits
• Filename filters
• Directory comparison
• Network configuration wizard
• Remote file editing
• Keep-alive
• HTTP/1.1, SOCKS5 and FTP-Proxy support
• Logging to file
• Synchronized directory browsing
• Remote file search”

A free malware cleaner from Commodo for you this week! One caveat: it is very aggressive! It is almost “Nanny-like” in it’s protection!

BOClean Anti-Malware

Why use BOClean anti malware?

“Spyware. Keyloggers. Rootkits. Adware. Hijackers. The list of threats to PC security is long, varied, and pretty scary. Our BOClean Anti Malware software automatically detects and destroys the many different types of malware.

Even if you’re the most careful PC user out there, malware can find a way to download itself onto the computer. A seemingly innocent email from a friend could in fact be a stealth method of exploiting security features. What appears to be a favorite website could in fact be an imposter, foisting its own malware on unsuspecting visitors. There are literally hundreds of ways in which personal information and entire operating system can be hijacked.

Here’s the good news: BOClean’s available, and it’s free. BOClean runs in the background without being bothersome, monitoring the memory for any malware-related activity. When it discovers malware, it deletes malware. Simple as that. And because of its unique memory-detection system, BOClean manages to catch malicious software earlier than most antivirus programs. It’s anti malware software you can set and forget.

Features of BOClean

• Full spectrum anti malware coverage and protection
• Protection against “Trojan Horse” attacks, spam proxies, and spam relays
• Disconnects the threat without disconnecting you
• Automatic updates for the latest in anti malware protection

Once installed, BOClean constantly watches memory, file system, and registry, waiting for any malware that attempts to load. Once it detects the presence of a malicious program, it springs into action. Malware: gone. Plus, BOClean expertly removes any and all ‘hooks’ the malware may have injected into the system, and restores its original condition.”

MariaDB is a completely “plug-and-play” replacement for MySQL DB. Why would I want to leave MySQL. Well, the MySQL project was acquired by ORACLE, like OpenOffice was. So… well, now you know why! MariaDB is for both Linux and Windows. It is lighter, faster, simpler to deal with, and very cool!

MariaDB

“MariaDB is a drop-in replacement for MySQL.

MariaDB strives to be the logical choice for database professionals looking for a robust, scalable, and reliable SQL server. To accomplish this, the MariaDB Foundation work closely and cooperatively with the larger community of users and developers in the true spirit of Free and open source software, and release software in a manner that balances predictability with reliability.

Why use MariaDB?

Famously Open
Our open license model and the enthusiasm of 100,000s of users globally makes MariaDB ideal for your web project

Global Expertise
Build a world-class database with five-nines performance and low operational costs. We’re there to help 24x7x365

Certified Binaries
Subscriptions come with certified stability, performance, scaling and features that you can trust to run your business”

Keep a replica (backup) of your files with this week’s GSotW! And it works for Linux or Windows!

Unison – File Synchronizer

“Unison is a file-synchronization tool for Unix and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.

Unison shares a number of features with tools such as configuration management packages (CVS, PRCS, Subversion, BitKeeper, etc.), distributed filesystems (Coda, etc.), uni-directional mirroring utilities (rsync, etc.), and other synchronizers (Intellisync, Reconcile, etc). However, there are several points where it differs:

• Unison runs on both Windows and many flavors of Unix (Solaris, Linux, OS X, etc.) systems. Moreover, Unison works across platforms, allowing you to synchronize a Windows laptop with a Unix server, for example.
• Unlike simple mirroring or backup utilities, Unison can deal with updates to both replicas of a distributed directory structure. Updates that do not conflict are propagated automatically. Conflicting updates are detected and displayed.
• Unlike a distributed filesystem, Unison is a user-level program: there is no need to modify the kernel or to have superuser privileges on either host.
• Unison works between any pair of machines connected to the internet, communicating over either a direct socket link or tunneling over an encrypted ssh connection. It is careful with network bandwidth, and runs well over slow links such as PPP connections. Transfers of small updates to large files are optimized using a compression protocol similar to rsync.
• Unison is resilient to failure. It is careful to leave the replicas and its own private structures in a sensible state at all times, even in case of abnormal termination or communication failures.
• Unison has a clear and precise specification.
• Unison is free; full source code is available under the GNU Public License.”

Proxmox VE 3.3

“Proxmox VE is a complete open source virtualization management solution for servers. It is based on KVM virtualization and container-based virtualization and manages virtual machines, storage, virtualized networks, and HA Clustering.

The enterprise-class features and the intuitive web interface are designed to help you increase the use of your existing resources and reduce hardware cost and administrating time – in business as well as home use. You can easily virtualize even the most demanding Linux and Windows application workloads.

Powerful and Lightweight

Proxmox VE is open source software, optimized for performance and usability. For maximum flexibility, we implemented two virtualization technologies – Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and container-virtualization.

Open Source

VE uses a Linux kernel and is based on the Debian GNU/Linux Distribution. The source code of Proxmox VE is released under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (GNU AGPL, v3). This means that you are free to inspect the source code at any time or contribute to the project yourself.

Using open source software guarantees full access to all functionalities – as well as high security and reliability. Everybody is encouraged to contribute while Proxmox ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

Open source hypervisor KVM is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It is a kernel module added to mainline Linux.

With KVM you can run multiple virtual machines by running unmodified Linux or Windows images. It enables users to be agile by providing robust flexibility and scalability that fit their specific demands. Proxmox Virtual Environment uses KVM virtualization since the beginning at 2008, since 0.9beta2.

Container-based virtualization

OpenVZ is container-based virtualization for Linux. OpenVZ creates multiple secure, isolated Linux containers (otherwise known as VEs or VPSs) on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict. Proxmox VE uses OpenVZ virtualization since the beginning of the project in 2008.”

This week’s GSotW was suggested by Linux user Rod, who watches the show! Thanks, Rod!

Clementine is for Linux AND Windows! Check it out!

Clementine – Music Player and Organizer

“Clementine is a multiplatform music player and library organizer. It is inspired by Amarok 1.4, focusing on a fast and easy-to-use interface for searching and playing your music.”

• Search and play your local music library.
• Listen to internet radio from
  Spotify,
  Grooveshark,
  SomaFM,
  Magnatune,
  Jamendo,
  SKY.fm,
  Digitally Imported,
  JAZZRADIO.com,
  Soundcloud,
  Icecast
  and
  Subsonic servers.
• Search and play songs you’ve uploaded to
  Box,
  Dropbox,
  Google Drive,
  and
  OneDrive
• Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists.
• Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS and ASX.
• CUE sheet support.
• Play audio CDs.
• Visualisations from projectM.
• Lyrics and artist biographies and photos.
• Transcode music into MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, FLAC or AAC.
• Edit tags on MP3 and OGG files, organise your music.
• Fetch missing tags from MusicBrainz.
• Discover and download Podcasts.
• Download missing album cover art from Last.fm and Amazon.
• Cross-platform – works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Native desktop notifications on Linux (libnotify) and Mac OS X (Growl).
• Remote control using an Android device, a Wii Remote, MPRIS or the command-line.
• Copy music to your iPod, iPhone, MTP or mass-storage USB player.
• Queue manager.

Do you have partition issues? Then try this week’s GSotW to fix your hard drive!

Partition Manager 2014 Free Edition

“Partitioning is not for amateurs. That is why millions of people have trusted our safe, stable technology and professional software solutions for over 19 years. Our latest 2014 version easily organizes your hard drive and redistributes free space to enhance system performance.

Secure performance of critical operations:
Easily resize and move partitions through the smart and safe Resize Wizard
Organize and optimize your hard drive with Create, Format and Delete Wizards
Latest hardware and software support

Proven expertise in partitioning technology:
Paragon Hot Resize™ technology to enlarge partitions without rebooting Windows
Paragon Smart Partition ™ technology to securely perform partitioning operations
Paragon Power Shield™ technology to provide data consistency.

Easy execution of key scenarios:
Organize your hard drive and gain additional space in your existing partitions
Simplify the backup process by separating your data from your operating system
You can install several operating systems on separate drive partitions”

Scan your network, find hidden shared folders, mount and explore network resources! This is link a Swiss Army knife for you network!

SoftPerfect Network Scanner

“SoftPerfect Network Scanner is a free multi-threaded IP, NetBIOS and SNMP scanner with a modern interface and many advanced features. It is intended for both system administrators and general users interested in computer security. The program pings computers, scans for listening TCP/UDP ports and displays which types of resources are shared on the network, including system and hidden ones.

In addition, it can mount shared folders as network drives, browse them using Windows Explorer, filter the results list, and more. SoftPerfect Network Scanner can also check for a user-defined port, and report back if one is open. It can also resolve host names and auto-detect the local and external IP range. It supports remote shutdown and Wake-On-LAN.

• Pings computers and displays those alive.
• Detects hardware MAC-addresses, even across routers.
• Detects hidden shared folders and writable ones.
• Detects your internal and external IP addresses.
• Scans for listening TCP ports, some UDP and SNMP services.
• Retrieves currently logged-on users, configured user accounts, uptime, etc.
• Mounts and explores network resources.
• Launches external third party applications.
• Exports results to HTML, XML, CSV and TXT.
• Supports Wake-On-LAN, remote shutdown and sending network messages.
• Retrieves any system information via WMI.
• Retrieves information from remote registry, file system and service manager.
• Absolutely free, requires no installation, and does not contain any adware, spyware or malware”.

To go along with our security theme this week, we are going with Nirsoft WifiChannelMonitor as our GSotW! Now, you can check for WiFi in YOUR area! (Be nice!)

Nirsoft WifiChannelMonitor

“WifiChannelMonitor is a utility for Windows that captures wifi traffic on the channel you choose, using Microsoft Network Monitor capture driver in monitor mode, and displays extensive information about access points and the wifi clients connected to them. WifiChannelMonitor also allows you to view the information about wifi clients that are not connected to any access points, including the list of SSIDs (network names) that they are trying to connect.

For every client, the following information is displayed: MAC Address, Device Manufacturer, SSID list that the client tries to connect, Sent Data Bytes, Received Data Bytes, Probe Requests Count, and more…”

Have you ever had a process that stops occasionally on your system, and you have to restart it? Well, now you can restart it automatically!

Restarter

“Restarter is an application that automatically monitor and restarts crashed or hung programs and applications. It was originally developed to monitor and restart game servers, but it will do the job for any console or form based program or application, For example; IRC clients or servers, FTP servers, mail servers, etc. Restarter will help to ensure that your critical programs are always up and running. If your application crashes or if someone accidentally shuts it down, the Restarter will automatically restart the program with all the parameters that you have specified. Restarter also has the option to log, raise alarms and execute scripts on critical events.

Features

• Monitors a specified Process existence
• Restarts and/or logs when the process fails, crashes or is accidentally shut down
• Automatically kills the monitored process if it is unresponsive or hung
• Option to execute external scripts if the process fails. Sample scripts includes Send e-mail, Restart Computer
• Option to play a selectable sound when process fails.
• Option to restart the process window Maximized, Minimized or Normal
• Option to force focus on the restarted process window
• Option to start your application from a shortcut and automatically have it monitored with Restarter
• Portable application – No registry settings & all program files in one single directory, making it suitable to run directly from a memory stick”