- FlexTK Makes File Management Easy
If you're like us, your hard drive is anything but tidy. That's because us power users can't be bothered to keep things organized - there are just too many awesome things out there to download, extract, and forget about because half of them turn out to be garbage.
FlexTK for Windows helps make short work of cleaning up after yourself, offering a full complement of file management tools in one handy package. Folder sync, duplicate file search, temp file cleanup, storage utilization, search, and an advanced organization module are all included. Navigation is handled beautifully in an explorer-like manner, tweaked by the addition of breadcrumbs and a "bookmarks" pane that allows you to quickly link your favourite locations.The built-in search is wicked fast, taking a mere 2.25 seconds to return matches found in more than 51,000 files. Storage utilization and file type classification reports generate quickly and give you an accurate and detailed view of what kinds of files are eating up all the space you swear you had free on your hard drives. The cleanup tool is equally impressive, as it found nearly twice as much filesystem flotsam as CCleaner on the same test system in about one-third the time.
What really sets FlexTK apart is the insanely versatile organize feature, which allows you to set up complex routines for manoeuvring your files. You can select any drive or folder, set up multiple searches and custom operations for each one, and even preview the action before actually executing it.
FlexTK packs a truckload of great features into a 3.9MB download, and is totally free. What's not to like? [via Download Squad]
- Liberate, Sync and Share Your Media With DoubleTwist
DoubleTwist is a Windows-only desktop application which liberates your media from the Digital Rights Management (DRM) labels and lets you share it with your friends and also synchronizes it with various other devices including external devices such as Blackberry, Nokia N Series and Sony Ericsson Walkman Series phones. It can also convert the songs in your iTunes library and lets you share them with ease. Plus it also works on video.Liberating Your Media
As big stores continue to move away from DRM and give more rights to their customers so that they have more control over the music which they've bought, DoubleTwist is a new and different software which lets you liberate your media with ease. We know that there are huge numbers of such software available, but DoubleTwist makes the task very easy by playing the media and stripping off its DRM label, if any, in the background.
Sharing Media
DoubleTwist lets you share media with your friends and recommends using the iTunes software.
Media you can send using DoubleTwist:
- Video: 3gp (used by most cell phones), MPEG4 (.mp4, .m4v), wmv, avi and MPEG2 (.mpg, .mpv, .mpeg)
- Audio: mp3, aac/m4a, wma, wav
- Pictures: jpg, gif, png, bmp
The DoubleTwist software allows you to login to your Facebook account and add friends or share media with friends by emailing them. If your friends are using DoubleTwist then you can share stuff using simple drag-n-drop in the software.
DoubleTwist also provides a Facebook app named Twist me! which can integrate with the desktop app and act like a media drop box, enabling you to privately send audio, video and photos to your Facebook friends. For files sent through this Facebook app, there is a 10 MB limit per file.
Syncing Media
As I've already mentioned, DoubleTwist works best with iTunes and lets you sync your iTunes playlists to a number of devices. It also lets you convert the legally purchased iTunes files to other formats like MP3.
Currently it supports syncing with the following external devices :-
- Nokia N & E Series phones, including the N95, E61i, E62, and others
- Sony Ericsson Walkman & Cybershot phones
- Windows Mobile 5.0/6.0 platform (e.g. Treo, HTC, Palm)
- BlackBerry Curve and Pearl
- LG Viewty and LG Voyager
- Sony PSP
- Amazon Kindle
However it doesn't support the iPod or iPhone yet.
Overall it looks like a nice software, especially for those who love to share media with friends. This is still a new app and we can expect many more features in the future. [via MakeUseOf]
- Google Alerts : News Alerts to your Email
Google Alerts is an extremely useful service that helps you monitor and stay up to date on latest developments about any product, website, blog, person, news story etc. It continuously scans web for relevant stories and delivers updates to your email address.
There are 6 types available: News, Blogs, Web, Comprehensive, Groups and Video. News alert monitors news sources, Blogs for tracking blogs, and so on.
Some ways to use Google Alerts:
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Stay up to date on a developing news story.
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Get latest news on a celebrity, your favourite sports team or event.
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Be the first to know when you or your website make the news.
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Stay current on a competitor.
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What makes Google Alerts particularly useful is the ability to use standard Google Operands like quotation marks, OR and AND connectors. For instance setting up an alert for Clinton AND Obama will bring you all news stories that mentions both of them.
Registration is not required, all it needs is an email address where you want to receive the alerts. Though if you subscribe you will be able to manage and edit their alerts from one place. [via MakeUseOf]
- Kid-Proof Your PC with SteadyState
When you've got your Windows XP or Vista setup running perfectly, you don't want to lose all your painstaking customizations to a reckless tot, an experiment-minded friend or spouse, or a rogue system-lousing program. Windows SteadyState helps you to create a kind of virtual rubber room those types can play around in and not really harm anything. SteadyState can also restrict web site access for innocent eyes, set timer limits on user access, and get better control of those other folks who use your computer-in other words, SteadyState makes you the Grand Master Sysadmin of your single-unit empire. Let's take a look at setting up SteadyState and get familiar with a few of its key features.
Prep your system
Take Microsoft's advice and do a little groundwork before installing and setting up SteadyState. Download the latest updates for your system from Windows Update, set a password for the main user, or "Administrator," account if there isn't one already, and make sure that other users only have access to the programs you want them to. To see if that's the case, create a new user account (Control Panel->User Accounts->Create a new account) or log into an account other than your own if you're already sharing a system. Peek into the Start menu, look around on the desktop, and if they've got access to stuff you don't want them playing around with, regardless of any protections, head back to your account and uninstall the program. Some programs give you an option to install them for "Just this user," so try re-installing the app with that option if possible.
Getting started
If you haven't already done so, download your copy of SteadyState. You'll likely be prompted to install or run a Windows Genuine Advantage tool or plug-in before downloading; go ahead and do so, install the program, then launch it from the Start menu. Close down the help window that pops up, and you're at SteadyState's main launcher:
From here you decide how you want to protect your system. Are you creating a long-term, super-locked-down account for adventurous young minds or accident-prone users? Are you trying out an app or system change that might throw everything into calamity? Let's look at your options.
Restrict a new or existing account
If your potential system-messers are going to be around for awhile, you'll want to hit "Add New Account" in the lower right-hand corner, or choose one already there. Give them a name (or just "Shared" if you want everyone to use the same locked-down, guest-type account), password, and icon. If you've set up separate hard drives or partitions on your system, you could also have that user's profile placed on one of them for easier portability (and fixing), but you'll likely just be hitting "Next." You'll arrive at the main account dashboard. Here's a few items you'll want to look into:
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"General" tab: The use timers are pretty helpful for parents who want to limit their young ones' monitor-zoning, but the real power-tweak here is the "Lock profile" button, which makes the account something like a public terminal-nothing a user changes in their user profile is saved once they log off.
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Windows restrictions: Now we're getting to the serious stuff. There's a lot of buttons to toggle and explore, but the general High->Medium->Low category selectors are pretty good guidelines for getting started. In most cases, you'll want to block off access to the Registry editor, Task Manager, Control Panel, and (these are important) prevent them from locking the computer or changing their passwords. You can also block off access to specific drives from this screen.
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Feature Restrictions: Here's where you lock down the Internet, for both young minds and those who download and install whatever they see online. Most of the options are self-explanatory, but check out the top option-you can create a whitelist that this account can only see online (at least in Internet Explorer, and assuming you've locked down installation of other, trickier browsers). You'll want to remove the users' access to IE's settings, and there's a few tweaks for Microsoft Office as well.
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Block Programs: Pretty straight-forward-search for or click on an app on the left, then choose "Block" to remove access to it.
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If you missed anything in any of those menus, you can always head back to them by clicking on the user account in SteadyState's main menu. Before you close out, though, click on "Set Computer Restrictions" and peruse the options there. Most important among them are the settings that remove access from the Administrator account, just in case your fellow users are good guessers or slightly devious. You've now got some seriously locked-down accounts, and you can import and export them from the main menu if you need this kind of setup on multiple systems. But you can take your protection a step further by creating a crash-proof hard drive.
Enable Disk Protection
From SteadyState's main menu, head to the "Disk Protection" section:
Close out any serious work you're doing-enabling the Disk Protection feature is going to bring up one of those inescapable restart prompts-and make sure you've got a little disk space to spare. Once you enable this feature, Windows creates a large cache file to store all the changes you or anyone else is making to the system, which it unceremoniously dumps at restart, or whenever you tell it to let go.
Let me stress this point: Disk Protection will reset everything you do while it's turned on: new Word documents, browser bookmarks, system settings, you name it. Turning it "Off," though, deletes the cache space and requires a restart, so switch it to "Retain all changes permanently" when you need to get things done.
Those are the basics of SteadyState, but if you need more help, SteadyState's home page has a video introduction and reference materials, and the program's own help menus are impressively detailed. [via Lifehacker]
- Digital Shopping List/Recorder makes shopping hi-tech and a lot easier
Those grocery lists. We have to write them every week. Milk, eggs, butter, yada yada yada. But what if you could just speak into a mic and have something print out for you? That way you can make your list while on the fly without having the fridge open or sticking your head into the pantry and then writing stuff down. I hate writing stuff down! But with the Electronic SmartShopper Grocery List Maker, you have one less list to write. It really couldn't be easier.
With it's voice recognition system, the shopper just records what they want. The Smartshopper not only prints out a complete list, but even organizes it by sections of the store. This makes shopping quicker and more efficient. And should the shopper remember something on the way, they just hit record again and the SmartShopper reorganizes the list and reorganizes it before printing a new copy. (Isn't that a waste of paper? - Ed)
Improvements to the voice recognition and organizing software makes this worth dropping $150 on just to see how well it works. [via Coolest Gadgets]
Ed. If they had a Thai version I'd buy it tomorrow. Can't count the number of times we've returned home only to find Mrs Einstein has forgotten an essential item or five
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