MediaCoder - The universal audio/video transcoder

Here is a great tool for all you multimedia lovers out there. MediaCoder is an open-source application capable of transcoding audio/video files between several well known formats. It is also capable of doing some basic set of video editing, which include splitting and joining videos, resize, crop, rotate, etc. It also comes with in-build extension to help convert to popular video formats supported by various Mobile Phones, Digital Media Players, Game Consoles, Home Players, PDA etc. Various extensions are available to convert to specific models of these equipments. For example, it has pre-build extension to convert to iPhone, Nokia N70, PSP, Apple TV etc.

Interface

The interface looks quiet simple and easy to use. But, within a few seconds of its use, you can find how much complicated the interface gets. It might take some time to get used to the multi-tab based interface that it sports.

All you have to understand with the interface is that, when you change the tabs in the left section, the tabs in the right-section completely change to indicate all the options related to the topic you had chosen from the left tab. For example, if you choose Audio from the left tab, the right tab will show tabs for the audio formats that it supports transcoding to.

Also a bit confusing is the way the labels of various controls in these tab act. For example, if you choose the Audio tab, the Source, Encoder, Resample, Channel, etc. which are to left side of the various drop-down boxes, MediaCoder brings up advanced features related to these options.

Audio Conversion

MediaCoder features one of the best audio conversion system. It supports a wide range of formats to convert to: MP3, Vorbis, AAC, eAAC/AAC+, WMA, AMR, FLAC, APE, etc. It doesn't actually have its own convertors for any of these formats, but instead use the various freely available converts to do the job (e.g. MP3 can be encoded using LAME, Helix or Fraunhofer encoders).

One thing to remember when encoding audio only, is that you should go to the Video tab and unselect "Enable Video".

Video Conversion

First step to enable Video conversion is to go to the Video tab and select the "Enable Video" checkbox. For basic format conversion, this tab has option to choose the video format and the encoder. One thing to be very careful after this is that you should go to the audio tab and set a correct audio type that can be supported by the video type. For example, if you are converting to MPEG or XviD, you should choose LAME Mp3 from the audio tab.

Most of the other tabs within the interface are also related to Video Conversion. One important section is the Picture tab. It has options to resize, crop, change frame rate, aspect ratio etc. You can even use the Cropper button to play the movie in an in-build player and crop it interactively.

The Time tab is a very useful section if you want to cut a part of the video. It is specified by providing the Start Position and Stop Position times. If these seems difficult, you can use the "Select" button to interactively choose the section you want to cut.

Summary

Although its interface might seem a bit complicated for some people, it is one feature rich audio/video converter. Just play around a bit with the interface and you could get used with it.

Related Links

• MediaCoder Official Website

Windows Live Writer

My search for Software Tools that could help me blog better, brought me to this neat little piece of software from Microsoft. I had certainly not expected a blogging tool from Microsoft. It also turns out that Windows Live Writer is a free software. It is part of the Windows Live.

My first hunch was that it might only be compatible with Microsoft's own blogging service, Windows Live Spaces. But, it really turns out that Windows Live Writer is also compatible with SharePoint, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress, Community Server, and many other services.

Anyone with basic usage knowledge of a word processing software can quickly start using the software. The interface resembles a word processing software with basic formatting functions.

Managing Blogs

To begin with, the first thing to do would be managing the blog account by associating it with the writer. This is quiet easy. Just choose Add Weblog Account from the Weblog menu and a wizard appears. If you are going to manage a Windows Live Spaces or Sharepoint weblog, the options are available in the main screen. But when it comes to other Blogs such as Blogger, WordPress or other services, simply choose Another weblog service from the screen and in the next screen provide the URL of the blog, the username and password. Windows Live Writer will automatically try to detect the type of blog and setup the parameters.

Views & Usage

All the basic formatting options are available in neatly organized menus and toolbars. Inserting images are quiet simple. Just paste them into the window. Windows Live Writer will automatically upload the picture to the blog if your blog service supports it. Simply clicking an image brings up several options on the sidebar to layout and optimize the image.

Related Links

• Official Website

Free Download Manager

These days almost all decent managers have turned to being shareware. One of the remaining few download managers is Free Download Manager. It recently became fully open-source, which means it will remain free forever. Being free doesn't mean it has very few features. In fact, it is one of the most feature-rich download managers available. With features such as Pause/Resume downloads, Segmented Download, Audio/Video Preview during download, Flash video download (from sites like YouTube, Google Video, Blennus, MySpace etc.), BitTorrent support, Scheduler, Site Explorer, Site Password Manager, HTML Spider etc.

Interface

The interface can't be simpler than this. Just the simple set of buttons. The left side tree structure contains ways to filter out the downloads you want to see. It can be based on type, status, etc. The right side, on the other hand, is a split view between the list of downloads (on the top) and the details of the download in the bottom. The details section is further categorized into tabs to show the Log, Progress, Media Preview, and Community Comments (Extra tab might appear for Torrent downloads).

Flash video download

The Flash video download section is a relative new section to Free Download Manager. It allows you to download video files from some online video sites such as Google Video, YouTube, Blennus, MySpace, Dailymotion, LiveDigital etc. This section also has the option to convert the downloaded file between avi, wmv, mpg, mp4 and mp3 files.

Torrents

Torrents have become the hottest way to download stuff on the Internet. Torrent support is a brand new addition to Free Download Manager and you shouldn't expect much from it. But still, it does a quiet descent job with torrents. Please note that the "Torrents" section might only be available in the latest beta release. The latest version has support to select the files with a torrent files that you would like to download. You can also prioritize the files you want to download. Options are also available to restrict the Seeding of the file.

Scheduler

Free Download Manager comes with a very advanced scheduler which can do tasks such as Launch Program, Start/Stop download, Establish/Hang-up dial-up connection, Change traffic usage mode, Shutdown/Hibernate/Sleep system, etc. It can also be triggered on various events such as A given date/time, Certain days of every week, Every few intervals, At start-up, download completed etc. Tasks can also be deleted/disabled after completion.

Site Explorer

The Site Explorer is a unique part of Free Download Manager which allows you to view web sites in a folder structure. This allows you to download files more easily. It also facilitates in the browsing of FTP sites.

Site Manager

A section that stores the User Name/Password related to a web site. The user name and passwords are stored from the different sections of the application.

HTML Spider

Ever wanted to download a complete website or a part of the website. HTML Spider helps you download an entire section of a given website to your hard disk by following the links in the given page and the links within those pages and so-on.

Summary

Free Download Manager is one of the best download manager you can come up with. It has almost all the features you can expect from a download manager and more. It is also highly customizable using the Options available. Although, I have to admit it, the Options section might get a bit confusing for starters. Anyway, the free download manager can be downloaded from the Official Site.

 

Related Links

• Free Download Manager at SourceForge.net

Media Player Classic

Many people mistake Media Player Classic for an older version Windows Media Player and simply tend to ignore it. This confusion is because the interface looks very much like Windows Media Player 6.4 . This open source media player for Windows was created by a programmer called "Gabest".

Installation of Media Player Classic is quiet simple because it does not have an installation. It is just a single EXE file and can be run without any installation. Media Player Classic can be downloaded from SourceForge.net . The only issue here is that the original product is not under active development since 2006. A separate group had been working in fixing major issue found in the Player and adding new features. This modified version can be found at a separate website Guliverkli2.

You must note that although it can read most of the popular audio formats, it is only able to read most video formats if the correct codec is present on the system. It appears to have built-in support for VCD, SVCD and DVD formats. It also has support for DVD menus and sub-titles. But apart from that, the function as a complete Media Player suite, it is recommended that you install it with some of the popular Codec Packs such as K-Lite Codec Pack and Codec Pack All.

Interface and Speed

One thing you would love about this media player is it's speed and simplicity. The startup speed is quiet quick and the interface is quiet responsive. You wouldn't have any problem to start using this media player because the interface is quiet common. The plain old seek bar and the standard player button with the standard volume control. The volume can also be controlled using the wheel of a mouse. Most other keyboard shortcuts are similar to that of Windows Media Player. For eg. Space can be Used to Play/Pause and Alt+Enter can be used to toggle the Full Screen Mode.

The palyer interface comes in 3 modes. Minimal, Compact, and Normal mode. It can be changed from the View->Presets sub-menu.

Options

Media Player Classic are extensively customizable.

•  Player - This section has the basic options such as the Single/Multi Media Player window mode, Show/Hide Taskbar icon, Format association, Autoplay configuration, Keyboard configuration, Logo to be used when the player is idle, and the Web Interface (The web interface module appears to be a work in progress and wouldn't work)
• Playback - All basic playback options are available in this section. This includes the playback repeat rate, default zoom level, DVD/OGM advanced settings, Video rendering mode and Audio Output device.
• Internal Filters - Various settings related to Internal Filters are done here. The Audio Switcher sub-section can be used to filter out the audio output.
• External Filters
• Subtitles - All settings related to how sub-titles are rendered.
• Tweaks - Some basic tweaks like disabling XP-themes, Free Window Resizing etc.

Finally

Media Player Classic is a great add-on player that can be installed along with any other Media Player you might be using. For one thing, it doesn't use much space. Hope you have a great video watching experience.

Further Reading

• Media Player Classic on WikiPedia
• Media Player Classic Homecinema Home Page

Sandboxie - Try-out new software without messing-up your System

If you love to download, install and try out lots of Software, then this software is for you. The basic problem when installing and trying out lots of Software is that, the software tend to leave behind several additional files. It also makes lots of modification to the system, which might sometimes be undesirable.

What is Sandboxie?

Sandboxie is a software that helps you run an application in a Sandbox type isolated environment. To be more plain, you can install and try-out new software without affecting other parts of your system.

How does it work?

At the base level, any file operation done by an application run within the Sandboxie program will be intercepted by the program. The modification of the file (no matter which file it is) will not be allowed and instead a new file is created in a private folder of Sandboxie. Usually, the Sandboxie files are stored in C:\Sandboxie directory. Any future access to the file from within the Sandbox is re-routed to the file within the Sandboxie directory.

Application Usage

The application usage is apparently quiet simple. It has a very simple interface with a list of available Sanboxes. To run an application in the Sandbox, simply right-click the Sandbox and from the "Run Sandboxed" sub-menu, choose the application you would like to start. When an application starts running, you can see its process in the main list view window of Sandboxie.

When an application is started using the Sandboxie program, it's title bar will contain [#] symbol in the beginning and end.

Limitation / Problems

Not all programs are compatible with Sandboxie. You should take special care when running system level applications like anti-virus from within the Sandbox. Also, most Games would probably never work in Sandbox.

Another issue would be with speed. All these application intercepting can really slow down the application. You shouldn't be using an application within a Sandbox if you intend to use it quiet often. It would really slow the application as time goes.

Conclusion

Sandboxie is a great program if you like testing out the different applications available on the net. The most important thing it provides is security. Even if a virus is run from within the Sandbox environment, it can never affect the system.

Read This Review and More At SoftReview.co.cc

Related Links

• Sandboxie Homepage
• Sandboxie on Wikipedia

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Google Chrome Beta - At Last......

At last, it's here. The browser I have been waiting for ages. The browser from Google. Google Chrome. I had heard a lot about it. Yesterday, I was surprised to see the news of its launch at the official Google Blog. After seeing and using all the other products from Google, I was sure this one would also be one of its kind. I went forward and downloaded it from the Google Chrome site.

Interface & Appearance

The interface looked quite simple. No fancy animations or other such affect. Just a basic skin, with the standard browser buttons. Of course, like all other browser, it too has a tabbed structure. That is one of the best thing I like about the modern browsers. No menu bars are available. All the menu items are stacked in to the last 2 buttons to the right of the address bar. Most of the menu items are the standard ones found in any other browser. So, I am not going deep into it.

The tab structure does have a very unique feature not found in any other browser. You can simply drag a tab out of the browser to create a new window containing that page. In fact, dragging tabs between various open windows of Google Chrome is a breeze.

Speed & Memory Usage

At first use itself, I felt it has more speed that most other browsers I used (Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox 3, Opera 9, Flock 2,...). All pages seem to load quickly. Of course, my calculations could be wrong, considering the fact that, my Firefox and Flock browsers are clogged with dozens of Add-ons installed. Next, I decided to check the memory and CPU usage using Process Explorer. Here, I got a real surprise. I had around 7 chrome.exe running in my system. After a bit of study, I understood the fact that, for each tab you open in the browser, a different EXE is launched. In simple worlds, if you have 10 tabs open in the browser, it is (I assume) equivalent to running 10 instances of the browser. I am not sure about the implication of this on the system resources over time.

Webpage Compatibility

I didn't have much problem loading most websites. But, many Ajax based sites like Hotmail are not likely to work. I was surprised when the Yahoo! Mail's Ajax interface did work in the browser. The explanation is simple, Google Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine used by a few other browsers such as Apple's Saffari. Gmail worked perfectly with the browser. Of course, no surprise there, what else would you expect from a browser created by Google itself.

Security & Stability

From what I have heard, it seems Security is one of the main focus of Google Chrome. In fact, I guess this is the reason why each page is run as a different process. Each process runs like a sandbox with very limited access to the outside world. The browser also maintains two separate updated blacklist (one for phishing and the other for malware).

Stability is also one important part of the browser. Most users love to have lots of webpage open and running. Here again, the benefit of running each webpage in a separate process is that, if a webpage gets crashed, it would not affect the other open pages. To make things even better, it also has an integrated taskbar that displays all the open page instance of the browser. It also displays Memory Usage and CPU usage for each separate page.

Standards

Being a Google product, I was pretty much sure that the Web Standards support would be perfect with this browser. But still, to test it out, I just ran the Acid test. Here are the results:

Acid 1		Acid 2		Acid 3

As you can see, it didn't pass the Acid 3 test. Put it did come pretty much close. And anyway, most other browsers do not pass the test. So, I guess that's fine.

Few More

The browser does have a few other unique features integrated into it. Google Gears is one of them. It is a most promising standard from Google to support Off-line storage of data for supported websites. The best use of this is for the various web applications being created that need not have a server to run, but will need to store various data on the local system. Google Chrome also has a "Create Application Shortcuts" used to create shortcut for your commonly used Web-application on the Desktop, Quick Launch, or Start Menu. When run in this mode, the application will not display tabs or address bar. In effect, you get a full-screen display of the web-application.

Read the Original Review and More at SoftReview.co.cc

WinRAR - The ultimate in RAR and ZIP compression

WinRAR is the only official software to support creation of RAR files. RAR files have always been known for their excellent compression ratio. I have long given up other compression softwares like WinZip in favor of WinRAR. The main thing that attracts me is its simple and quick interface. The interface resembles to the classic look of the good old WinZip. WinRAR supports compression and decompression of RAR and ZIP files. Apart from this, it also supports decompression of CAB, ARJ, LZH, ACE, 7-ZIP, TAR, GZip, UUE, BZ2, JAR, ISO and Z formats. It also supports certain combinations of compression such as TAR.GZ and TAR.BZ2. Now getting to the size of the software, it one of the very few compression softwares left that can fit into a floppy disk. The size is just under 1MB.

Core features of WinRAR:

• Shell Integration - Like most other standard compression softwares, it too supports Shell Integration. It can be associated with all the supported formats. It can also show options on the context menus of any selected file (or folder) to compress it or compress and e-mail it.


• File List - The file list is a very powerful section of the software. Unlike the file list of other software, the file list within WinRAR can be used to browse the contents of Hard Disk, CD/DVD Drive etc., and not just the compressed archives. In fact, the address bar is very similar to the Windows Explorer's address bar and shows a list of major folders and drive. Owing to the various vulnerabilities of Windows Explorer, I often end up using WinRAR to browse files. You has have a shortcut command Ctrl+D to quickly open up the Drive selection menu.


• Tight Integration with Explorer - The integration does not end with file associations. You can drag a file within an archive to a folder in Explorer, and WinRAR will automatically extract the file to the specific location. Also, if you choose copy from the interface of WinRAR and paste in a Windows Explorer window, WinRAR extracts the file to the location.


• Convert archive to Executable (SFX) - For ZIP and RAR files, it supports a feature to convert a given archive into a self extracting EXE file. This means, after converting to EXE, it can be decompressed even on a system with no decompression softwares available. The SFX module is quiet powerful and you have the ability to create a miniature "Installation" for distributing applications.


• Recovery Records - WinRAR can store self-recovering records within RAR files so that they can be restored once the archive gets corrupted. There are different levels in Recovery Record percentage. The more, the better.


• Password Protection - Like all other compression softwares, it too supports password protection. In other softwares, even if you provide a password, the file list is not encrypted. You can easily open the file and look at the file list. You could also add your own file into the encrypted archive without knowing the password. In WinRAR, you can enable complete encryption, by which, the file list will also be encrypted.

Overall, this is a handy little utility that can help you open a vast range of compressed files. There i only one problem know with WinRAR. That is speed. The compression speed of RAR is very less compared to other formats such as ZIP. Anyway, no harm in having it installed.

Further Reading

• WinRAR official website
• WinRAR on Wikipedia

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Opera - The fastest browser on earth

My all time favorite browser, this is probably my most used browser. I don't exactly remember when, but I think I first started using this browser from 2000. From the start, Opera has always been popular for its High Speed, Extreme Customization, Tabbed structure, Skinnability, Standard Compliance, Security, etc. Till date, Opera's implementation of tabbed browsing is the best compared to all other available browsers in the market. Also, it is the oldest browser to support session management. Lately however, Opera's browser share has been declining after the advent of Firefox. The latest version is 9.51. Some of the features supported are: Tabbed Browsing, Pop-up blocking, Fraud Protection, Download Manager, Bittorent Client, Search Bar, Web Feed Aggregator, Full-fledged built-in e-mail client (Opera Mail), IRC chat, Speed Dial, Opera Widgets, and more...

Tabbed Structure

As I have mentioned earlier, Opera is one of the earliest browser to implement tabbed browsing. In fact, if you were to compare the tabbed browsing of the various browsers available, you will find Opera's tab implementation to be far superior to others. In the current structure, you can drag the tab around quiet easily. In fact, you can also drag a tab from one window to another. Accidentally closed a tab? No worries, the basket to the right of the tab-bar holds a list of closed tabs. You can choose the tab and it will re-open.

Session Management

This is also one of the oldest features of Opera. If you close Opera, the next time you open Opera, all the tabs and windows that were open when closing Opera, will be restored. For many other browsers, session management is a very new feature. In Opera, when tabs are restored, all the pages are loaded from the cache. So, I can open Opera when a connection is not available, and it will still show the old pages. Crash recovery is also a part of session management in Opera. Opera keeps saving the session every few minutes. If Opera happens to cash, the next time you open Opera, you can resume from were you left.

Privacy and Security

Opera supports all the encryption standard to access secure websites. Main among these being SSL 3 and TLS. Security information, if available, is shown on the address bar itself.

Opera has the least amount of security flaws compared to all other browser.s Also, when a security issue is found, Opera is quick enough to release a new patch.

Standards Support

Opera is one of the first browser to support Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Today, Opera supports many web standards, including CSS 2.1, HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.1, XHTML Basic, XHTML Mobile Profile, XHTML+Voice, WML 2.0, XSLT, XPath, XSL-FO, ECMAScript 3 (JavaScript), DOM 2, XMLHttpRequest, HTTP 1.1, Unicode, SVG 1.1 Basic, SVG 1.1 Tiny, GIF89a, JPEG, and full support for PNG, including alpha transparency.

Also, Opera is the first Windows browser to pass the Acid2 web standards test.

Opera Mail

Opera is the only major browser that comes integrated with an email client within the interface itself. The mail client will co-exist with all the other tabs you are browsing. It supports both POP and IMAP. At first appearance, it might look like a very weak e-mail client. But it is one of the best e-mail client I have ever seen. In Opera, there is no concept of folders. Instead, we have the concept of labels. This might be a bit confusing for new users. But believe me, it is quiet easy and powerful once you start using it. You can add multiple labels for a mail. And when you click on a label, it filters out all mails with that label. My favorite feature only found in Opera is that it can auto-detect mailing-list and create separate views for it. Also, the messages can be show threaded (the mails and its responses are grouped together).

The search within the mail client is very powerful. It is implemented as a "Search as you type". So, the search results are almost instantly available.

There is a small short-coming here. Opera Mail does not support composing HTML mails. In simple words, you cannot compose formatted (bold, italic, different size etc.) mails.

Lots More Left....

Due to shortage of time, I am stopping here. Opera has lots and lots of features. It is best if you download and try it out. For a starter it might not go well. But believe me, after some use, you wont feel like using any other browsers.

Speaking of all these, I still have to mention some shortcomings. One major problem with Opera is that it does not support extensions. Extensions can be found in Firefox and Internet Explorer (Add-ons). But in Opera, this is not possible. Plug-ins written for Netscape are supported by Opera. But, they cannot be a replacement for extensions as they cannot interfere with the interface. Also, owing to its high standard compliance, it does not support certain web pages that don't follow proper standards.

Related Links

• Opera Software Homepage
• Opera on Wikipedia
• Opera Official Tutorial

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DivX Player for mobile

I love my Nokia N73 very much. I know the model is now a bit old. But I simply love it. The best thing I love about Symbian based mobile is that it supports a vast range of software. At times, I like viewing video clippings or video songs on my mobile. Of course, I could use the internal Video Player. But, in my opinion, it sucks. So, I went out searching for different options to view video on my mobile. My preference was a player that support XviD or DivX formats. Of course, there is the ever popular Smart Movie Player. But, I wanted to search for something free. That's when I met the DivX Player.

After installing the player, I found it's interface to be quiet similar to that of Smart Movie player. Now to test the player, I encoded some video clipping into DivX and XviD formatted AVIs. It supported both formats. The DivX player is available for Windows Mobile 5 and Later, as well as, Symbian OS 9.0 (S60 3rd edition, UIQ 3.0) and Later.

Player interface is straight-forward. On start-up, you get a list of videos available on your mobile. If you want to update the list, choose Options->Refresh list. Pressing the joystick opens the selected video. By default, the video is shown in a small screen. But you can choose Full screen mode from the Options. After choosing Full screen, you will have to tilt the mobile to view the movie.

The joystick controls are also very simple. Left and Right for Rewind and Forward, Up and Down for Volume Up and Down. In full-screen mode, as the screen tilts into landscape mode, the joystick control also changes accordingly.

There are a few options available in Settings like changing the Audio/Video Sync. Overall, I find this a great software for your mobile device. So, if you have a supporting mobile. Just go and download the software. After all, its a free software and comes directly from the official DivX people.

Related Links

• DivX Player for Mobile

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Process Explorer - The ultimate task manager replacement....

Process Explorer is a process monitoring software originally created by Mark Russinovich. His company, Sysinternals, has always been known to make great softwares to monitor the internal details of a system. Lots of system utilities are available at SysInternals.com . Later, the company was taken over by Microsoft making it part of Microsoft TechNet. I have been a long time user of this software and must admit that it is quiet powerful. If, like me, you love to keep trying out softwares and keep lots of software running at time, you should install Process Explorer. What distinguishes it from Window's Task Manager is that it can show process in hierarchical order of opening and show icons of the process running.

Process Information

Apart from the hierarchical display and icons, it provides lots of extra information. The Description and Company Name of the running process is available in the main screen itself. If you want a much detailed view of the process, simply choose View->Show Lower Pane. This should bring up the detailed pane containing the DLLs accessed by the process and the Handles (File, Directory, Registry, Port, Thread, etc.) open by the process.

Well, the above mentioned informations are just a fraction of the information available. To get a more detailed info about the process, simply double-click or right-click and choose Properties.

The Process Properties page has lots of Tabs:

• The default tab (which is Image tab) contains basic informations such as the EXE file associated with the process, Command Line Parameters, User running the process, Parent ID, Started time etc.
• The Performance tab contains various Performance figures related to CPU (Priority, Kernel Time etc.), Virtual Memory (Private Bytes, Virtual Size etc.), Physical Memory (Memory Priority, Working Set etc.), I/O (I/O Priority, Reads etc.), and Handles.
• Performance Graph page contains graph related to the Process CPU Usage, Private Bytes History (Usually RAM access) and I/O Bytes History (Usually Hard Disk access).
• The Threads tab shows a list of tab associated with the process and details about the thread. You also have the option to suspend or kill a thread (Be careful, if you suspend or kill an important thread of the process, the program may become very unstable).
• TCP/IP tab lists all the Ports opened by the process and all the active connections.
• Security tab contains information regarding which users have what privilege on the process.
• The Environment tab lists all the environment variables that was set when the process was started.

Search Function

A search option is available to search all open processes and corresponding DLLs or Handles for a specific string. This can come in very handy if you find difficult to delete a file. If you are not able to delete a DLL or EXE, it means that the process is locked in use by some other process. The search feature helps you find which process is locking the process.

Users Menu

A simple menu showing all the Users logged into the system. On Windows Server systems, this can come in handy as several people might have connected to the system using Terminal Clients. For each User, a corresponding menu contains option to Disconnect, Log Off, Send Message, and View Properties.

Finally....

There are lots of other features available too. For example, like other process monitoring softwares, you can kill process. But unlike others, it also has option to kill Process Tree. The option also kills all process created by the selected process and their children hierarchically. You can also Suspend and Resume process. Finally, form the Options menu you can choose Replace Task Manager to completely replace the Windows Task Manager with Process Explorer.

I hope you have a good time with this software. See you next time...

Related Links

• Process Explorer Official Webpage
• Process Explorer on Wikipedia

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PortableApps.com - Collection of Portable Apps

Today I was just lazily surfing through SourceForge.net. You see, I love trying out Open Source softwares very much. That's when I met PortableApps.com. Basically, it's just a platform for a large collection of portable softwares. PortableApps is an ideal solution for carrying your favorite apps in Pen Drives. It also has folders to store Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos etc. It also has option to Backup and Restore data.

PortableApps come in 3 flavors:

• Platform Only - This edition contains just the PortableApps stub. No extra portable apps are included. Extra apps should be downloaded and installed into the application separately.
• Suite Light - Apart from the PortableApp stub, this edition also contains several important portable softwares. Some of these are: Mozilla Firefox (Browser), Mozilla Thunderbird (E-Mail Client), Mozilla Sunbird (Calendar Client), ClamWin (Anti-virus), Pidgin (Instant Messaging), Sumatra PDF (PDF reader), KeePass (Password Manager), Sudoko (Game), Mines-Perfect (Game), CoolPlayer+ (Audio Player), AbiWord (Word Processor) etc.
• Suite Standard - The only difference with the "Light" edition is that OpenOffice.org (Office Suite). It comprises of Writer (Word Processor), Calc (Spreadsheet), Impress (Presentations), Base (Database Utility), and Draw (Drawing).

All the apps included are open-source and have been customized for PortableApps.com. Apart from these apps, a collection of customized portable apps are available at ProtableApps.com . Overall, if you are an extensive user of pen drive and have to switch between different systems, this app is a must for you.

Flock Browser - The Social Web Browser

Most users have hardly heard about this browser. But, believe it or not, the community of this browser is quiet big and active. Basically, it is an Open Source browser branched out from the most popular open source browser "Mozilla Firefox". This means that, Flock directly posses all the abilities of Firefox. Most of the extensions of Firefox are compatible with Flock. Any specific page written to support "Only Firefox" will work in Flock. In short, it can do all that Firefox can do.

Why Flock when it is a copy of Firefox?

Flock can be considered to be FireFox on steroids. To a newbie, the interface and options would appear to be a copy of Firefox. But, a few extra buttons are visible. The real power reside behind these buttons.

Social Networking is the hot stuff on the net right now. Blogs, Social Communities, Videos, etc. Flock is a "Social Browser". This means, it has been made from "ground up" to support many popular social networking sites and make social networking much easier.

At the time of writing this Blog, the Version 2 Beta 2 of this browser supports Digg, Facebook, Flickr, Pownce, Twitter, YouTube, Photobucket, Picasa, Piczo, Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wordpress, Xanga, Self-Hosted Blog, del.ico.us, Magnolia, AOL Mail, GMail, and Yahoo! Mail. Now that is a huge list.

Making Blogging Easier

Are you into blogging? If yes, Flock is the browser for you. It is the only browser with in-build Blog Editor. The blog editor is pretty much perfect, with option to insert pictures, edit tags and edit HTML. You can post directly to most of the popular Blog services from within the editor. It also comes with a Preview pane to see a Preview of your Blog.

The picture uploader module is integrated into the Blog Editor window. So, if you paste a picture or if you paste a picture file, the file will be uploaded to a Picture Sharing Site (Picasa, Photobucket or Piczo) and the link will be integrated into the blog.

It does not end there. Most big pictures and videos you see on websites will have a flock toolbar attached. This toolbar will have option to "Blog" the pictures. Clicking this brings up the Blog Editor with the picture attached. You can also drag pictures from any site, into the Blog Editor window.

Photo Uploader

The Photo Uploader is a basic, but quiet useful utility, which helps batch upload of pictures to online web albums on Picasa, Photobucket or Piczo. The uploader has inbuilt options for resizing and cropping pictures.

Bookmark Integration

Tagged bookmarking has become quiet popular with the advent of sites such as del.ico.us . For most browsers, there exist extensions and links to Bookmark a given page in these online bookmarking services. Flock too supports bookmarking to del.ico.us and Magnolia (inbuilt). What sets it apart is that, it also integrates your online bookmarks into the Favorites menu of the browser, making it easier for accessing the bookmarks from any place.

People

Are you an extensive user of online social networking sites? Flock integrates with many Social Networking sites, Facebook, Flick, Pownce, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, etc. Integration with other social networking sites such as Orkut are still pending. The sections helps in direct media sharing from within the browser.

Media Bar

Media Bar is a small strip that appears across the top of the tabs. It can show picutres from your online photo albums, or videos from your favorite video sharing site.

RSS and Mail Integration 

Like all modern browser, it too has a good RSS Integratoin.

It can also integrate with your online mail provider such as Gmail, Yahoo! or AOL and check for mail regularly. Also, email links in webpages can be redirected to these online mail sites.

Packing Up.....

Overall, Flock is a very innovative browser. I recommend that you give it a try. It should please you (atleast for a while). The memory usage is also quet impressive (considering the heavy loaded features it support).

Read Original Review At: SoftReview.co.cc

Edit Plus

This is one simple text editor I love the most. The main plus point of this software is that, with all those complex features it support, it is still a very fast and simple text editor.

From a developer's point of view, it supports color coding of: HTML, ASP, C/C++, Perl, PHP, Java, JSP, JavaScript, VBScript, CSS, XML, C# and SQL. To support more languages, you can download or write your own syntax file. The syntax file structure is very simple.

Features

• Syntax Highlighting support for: HTML, ASP, C/C++, Perl, PHP, Java, JSP, JavaScript, VBScript, CSS, XML, C# and SQL.
• Tabbed structure when showing multiple files.
• Ability to capture outputs from external Console Applications (e.g. It can capture outputs from a Java or C++ compiler and show it within the interface.
• Regular Expression - The Regular Expression supported by the Find & Replace of this software is probably the best I have seen in any software.
• FTP - Ability to open and upload directly from an FTP server
• Has many text formatting features like: Trim Trailing Spaces, Convert Tabs to Spaces and Vice Verse, Join and Split lines, Increase and Decrease Indent, Line Comment and Uncomment, etc.
• Column Selection - This is probably the only Windows Application I have seen that supports column selection. A cool feature if you want to delete the starting few character(s) of all lines in a file.
• Integrated Browser - Many software support Integration of Internet Explorer. So, nothing new here.

Overall, this is a great utility for developers. Of course, it cant replace other major development environments. But still, this can be a handy utility in your toolbox.