That’s right, it’s Friday, and I’m cleaning out my bookmarks again. This week, I found some links to some really terrific free utilities. 4 of them assist in managing and accessing your Media, and 1 of them is just plain handy. Hope you enjoy them.

TvVersity – Would you like to get all of that tasty media that just sits around on your computer, and put it on your TV? If you have any of the devices on this page, then you can do just that for free.

TvVersity supports generic UPnP / DLNA devices, which is actually a pretty popular set of protocols supported by lots of devices. XBox 360, PS3, and many, many others. I just heard about this software package this morning, on Tekzilla, so I haven’t had time to check it out. I’m anxious to try it out and see if it works with my Popcorn Hour. The software is free for home / non-commercial use.

KillBox – Ever try to delete a file, and some unknown program has it open? Killbox is a freeware utility that will end the process of any program that has a particular file open. Very handy. Don’t try it with explorer.exe though.

CDex – Converting your CDs into MP3s? Want to convert your audio book CD into one big MP3? CDEX is not only free, and powerful, but open source as well. I especially love that I can rip an entire CD into one file. It’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but it works terrifically.

Mp3Tag – Do you have any MP3s that you didn’t rip correctly, now all of the tags are missing, Mp3Tag is a great tool to help you get your MP3 meta information, the ID3 tags, in order. Did I mention it’s free?

DVDShrink – If you’re trying to make backups of the movies that you already legally own, then DVD Shrink is a very handy utility. It will take the original DVD, or the files that were already ripped, and allow you to select / deselect various content, subtitles, extra audio tracks, to be compressed.

It will then calculate how much it needs to compress your video to fit on a standard 4.7G blank DVD. I personally like to create .ISO files that I can copy to my Popcorn Hour.

Have any free stuff that you can’t live without? Let me know, post it in the comments.

Posted in free stuff, Multimedia, Utilities No Comments »

Have you ever looked at your hard disk free space, and wondered where it all went? I mean, when I bought that 250G drive, I thought I would never need more space.

WindirStat is a easy way to graphically see where all of that free space went to. I use it all the time, even on my networks, to see what is using up all of my drive space.

Of course, it doesn’t run instantly, after all, WinDirStat has to crawl through every directory on your hard drive. While directories are being updated, you are entertained with little packmen running back and forth next to the directories it is updating.

The visual representation of the files is neat, but I really look for the top half of the screen, pictured below.

Directories are listed with the largest on top, and you can continue to drill down into the subdirectories to find out what they are made up of.

This really is a great utility, and you can’t beat the price, which is free.

You can download WinDirStat from the Downloads page, also check out the WinDirStat Web Site.

If you like this type of Tech post, you should check out Two Guys Tech. A friend and I are working on it, and we even have a terrific podcast.

We’re always glad to answer questions, help people out, and help relate what we’ve learned. Get a new perspective on the tech topics and news that you’re interested in, come visit Two Guys Tech.com.

Posted in Applications, free stuff, Open Source, Personal-Computing, Reviews, Tech, Utilities 28 Comments »

If you’re in the habit of downloading large files, like ISO images, and you happen to be a Windows User, you may want to take a look at WinWGet.

Use your Bandwidth later

Personally, when I’m surfing the web, writing posts, or playing some First Person Shooter, I want all the bandwidth I can muster. So I try to schedule my downloads for when I’m sleeping. This is why I first decided to look at WinWGet.

Don’t use up all of your Bandwidth

Another reason that I like WinWGet is that you can limit the rate at which you are downloading. This is pretty handy if you are downloading a large file from a web site, and you want to still be able to use your Internet connection.

Or, if you are downloading a large file from a big web site, and you don’t want to use up all of your company’s Internet connection.

Resume Broken Downloads

One other benefit to downloading large files with WinWGet is that if the download stops for some reason, and the server supports it, you don’t have to start from scratch. If you ever try to download a 5G file from a flaky server, you’ll thank me for this tip.

What is WinWGet

WGet is a powerful command line utility in Unix / Linux, which among other things, allows you to download files from the Internet in the command prompt or console window. Luckily, for the Windows users, WinWGet is a very powerful GUI utility and WGet port for Windows.

Download and Install

If you go to the Cybershade.us homepage for WinWGet, you can find the download page.

I don’t usually advise it, but in this case, I would get the .20 beta version, which is a single download you can get here. I haven’t had any problems with this beta, and it is a heck of a lot easier to do it this way.

After saving the installer to disk, and then running it, the install is pretty straightforward. Click on Next 7 times (feel free to change any defaults to whatever your heard desires), and then install and finally “finish”.

After installation, you’re ready to start creating your first download jobs.

Posted in Internet, Open Source, Utilities, Wget, Windows No Comments »

Yesterday I posted a quick little article about Portable Apps, and today I wanted to talk about one of the really handy portable applications that is available.

Have you ever worked on a computer, not yours of course, that you suspect of having been taken over by a pesky virus or today’s most popular spyware? Trust me, I’ve seen my fair share of infected computers.

The one thing I always worry about, because I have seen so many viruses that do it, is that the installed anti-virus has been disabled or corrupted. Worse yet, is finding a machine without any anti-virus! Who knows what filth lurks in those ones and zeroes!

Enter ClamWin Portable. Now you can carry a working anti-virus program with you, either on a flash drive, or a portable hard drive. You can just plug it into the suspected machine, and scan away. No install on the local machine, if you have already installed it on the flash drive.

ClamWin can be updated with the current virus definition files, and it will do everything you would expect from a standalone anti-virus. It doesn’t offer real time protection, but is still a very handy tool to have, especially since it uses less than 20M of disk space.

This is just one of the very neat portable applications that is available from Portable Apps, thanks to Art for pointing their site out.

References:

- ClamWin Portable – Portable Apps

Also on Port 16:

- Bring your Favorite Applications with you – Portable Apps

- How to Manually Download Updated Definitions for Windows Defender

Posted in Anti-Virus, Portable Apps, Utilities 2 Comments »