Fing checks who's in your network

We've talked about the risks of using a public WiFi network before, and so today we bring you a nice little tool that you should always keep at hand in your Android or iPhone: Fing.

Reboot Restore RX keeps your Windows safe from harm

Haver you ever faced a problem with a computer where you wished you could simply go back to how things were "yesterday", when all was well? There are so many things than can go wrong - particularly with more trusting users that click on every popup they see on the internet and that requests them to install the latest "internet accelerator/amazing video codec/malware remover/etc." More often than not, they'll end up with a computer filled with virus, malware, addon toolbars, and the like.  Wouldn't it be nice if you could just simply reboot the system and have everything back in order? Thankfully... you can.

Although I'm personally a fan of a program called Deep Freeze, today I suggest you a free alternative that will take care of things while costing you nothing but a few minutes of your time. I present you: Reboot Restore RX.

How does it work? Well, it's amazingly simple.

You install it and select which drives you want to protect, and from then on, no matter what you do on those drives, you'll get everything back to the way things were once you reboot. Meaning... suppose you delete an important windows folder that would render your computer useless. No worries... just reboot and it's back to normal. The same for any virus that thinks it got hold of your system... reboot and it's gone. And so on, and so on.

Of course, you need to keep in mind that if you save something on your desktop or on that protected drive... it will also be gone. That's why this works best when you use a second partition for you data. Then there's also the thing with updates... using this system you'll need to manually disable the program, update your computer and then re-enable it again (there's a paid version that takes care of that for you automatically). But even so, for those cases where you want to ensure you'll have a "protected" error-proof windows environment... this is definitely something you should look into.

Paste Images Directly to the Web

It's kind of sad to notice that, even with decades of computer and software evolution, there are still so many "basic" things that make us perform dumb repetitive steps in order to do it. Take, for instance, the sharing of a simple screenshot of your desktop on the web.

You'll need to:
1) Press PrtSc to transfer your screenshot image to the clipboard
2) open a image editing program
3) paste the image into the program
4) save the image somewhere, with some name
5) upload the image to some web site to host it and share it
6) delete the temporary image on your computer

Is this really acceptable in our day and age? What if it could be done in a much simpler way?

Thankfully it can. Thanks to Snaggy you can paste your image directly to the web. Making the thing as simple as:

1) Press PrtSc (or copy any image from any other source)
2) Press paste on the Snaggy web page

... Much simpler, no? Kind of makes us wonder why doesn't every other image uploading service allow a similar way to upload images?

USB Alert - Never Forget your Flash Pen Again

If you're like me, you've already lost a couple (or more) USB Flash Pens, by simply forgetting about them after you've attached to someone else's PC.

Well, if you're tired of repeating the same mistake, one solution can be this USB Alert.

This small program reminds you of any connected USB storage devices whenever you lock, loggoff or shutdown your PC.

Hopefully, that will be enough to keep you from leaving a USB pen filled with personal data laying around.

[via 4sysops]

Digeus System Optimizer 8.2

It's no secret Windows operating system often needs some tuning to get it back in perfect running order.

There are several tools out there, but the Digeus System Optimizer is considered to be one of the best when it comes to prevent system problems and restore your Windows PC into an healthy state.

This bundles comes packed with goodies that allow you to tune your system to perfection. Need to find duplicate files that are using up valuable disk space, or find which files are taking up most space? Need to speed up your computer's  registry that is becoming increasingly (and annoyingly) slower? How about cleaning your system from "forgotten" files left behind by poorly coded uninstallers?

You can do all that and much more with the Digeus System Optimizer.

Here is a list of tools included in suite:

• Digeus Data Encryptor
• Digeus Disk Space Analyzer
• Digeus Drivers and Programs
• Digeus Duplicate Files Finder
• Digeus Icon Manager
• Digeus IE Manager
• Digeus Junk Files Cleaner
• Digeus Memory Cleaner
• Digeus Multimedia Settings Tweaker
• Digeus Optimization Wizard
• Digeus Privacy Protection
• Digeus Process Manager
• Digeus Registry Cleaner
• Digeus Registry Defragmenter
• Digeus Repair System Settings
• Digeus Service Manager
• Digeus File Shredder
• Digeus Smart Uninstaller
• Digeus Startup Manager
• Digeus System Customization
• Digeus System Info
• Digeus System Security Tweaker
• Digeus System Speed Optimizer
• Digeus Unnecessary Files Cleaner

As a special offer, if you try Digeus System Optimizer and talk about it in your blog, Facebook page or Twitter, you can contact alise.johnson@digeus.com with a link to your review and (maybe) be lucky enough to receive a free activation code.

Preme for Windows 7

For Windows 7 power users, this Preme for Windows 7 will certainly be a fine tool to include in your repertoire.

It basically adds several useful shortcuts that will save you valuable seconds during the day.

Once you get used to it, using a non-Preme Windows 7 will feel... awkward.

SSD Tweak Utility

If you're a proud owner of a SSD (Solid State Drive) and want to make the most out of it without going through endless pages of SSD tweaks and doing it one-by-one by hand, here's: SSD Tweak Utility.

With just a couple mouse clicks you'll be able to optimize your Windows for SSD use by enabling/disabling features that were meant to be used with rotating drives.
Things like defragging and indexing no longer make sense in these faster and instant-access SSD drives and are often, counter-productive.

Extended Task Manager

If you want to know what your Windows operatins system is doing behind your back, there are a couple of tools you might want to keep at hand. Process Explorer is one such tool - though it can often cause some weird behavior when playing games (due to the lame DRM in the games, not from the tool itself.)

But if Process Explorer is too complex for you to use, you can use Extended Task Manager.

Don't you just hate when your computer starts accessing your hard drive like crazy and you can't figure out what might be causing it? With this Extended Task Manager you'll be able to immediately find the culprit.

Once you find the offending program or process (using too much CPU, Disk, or Memory) you can pause it (or terminate it) to quickly do some other task before allowing to run as usual.

This process explorer can also show locked files and which processes are locking it -particularly useful whenever you're trying to delete a file and getting the "file in use" warning.

How to Write Upside Down Text

Ever came across a piece of text that looks like this: ʇxǝʇ uʍop ǝpısdn ?

Yes, that's upside down text, and you'll find it scattered around the internet, whenever someone thinks it's funny to play around with their friends (or just to annoy someone ;)

But today I'll reveal the secret behind this strange flipped text and how you can do it yourself.

The trick behind it is that we'll be using special characters and symbols that look like inverted letters - and if it "looks" like it, it's as good as real inverted letters, right?

How can you write flipped upside down text? It's actually quite easy:

You just need to visit any of the websites that do all the hard work for you, sites like:

• Upside Down Letters
  
• FlipText
• Upside Down Text

You'll just need to type your message, and then copy the resulting flipped text and paste it wherever you want.
(Just keep in mind they'll need to support unicode characters - or else you'll be restricted to just the "plain letters.")

¿ɹoɟ ƃuıʇıɐʍ noʎ ǝɹɐ ʇɐɥʍ

SnapIt Screen Capture for Windows

It's surprising to see how modern Operating Systems often lack simple features that we often need, and that force us to do laborious boring and lengthy work to get it done.

Remember my SenderClipboard program that easily allows you to past a list of file names into a document?

Today I'll be talking about a similar program but for screen captures: SnapIt.

It's incredible how - after all these years - we're still missing a tool to easily manage screen captures in Windows. Sure you can press PrtSc at any time to grab a screenshot of your current screen. But effectively using it is an entirely different matter. Usually it involves something like: opening an image editing program (like MS Paint), pasting it there, saving it somewhere, closing the program, going to whatever other program you wanted to insert it to, and finally embed it or send it.

If you happen to need several different screenshots, the workload becomes increasingly complicated, repeating most of these steps over and over again.

With a small program like SnapIt, this task is immensely simplified.
After installing it you'll get a new icon on your system tray.

After that you can adjust it to your needs, selecting the hotkey you want to use, if you want to save it to files, etc.

This allows you to easily capture a sequence of screen grabs just by repeatedly pressing PrtSc (or any other hotkey of your choosing) and then simply grabbing the resulting image files.

While it isn't free, you're free to try it for 14 days before making your own decision.

Bitlet - Instant Torrents

You've certainly heard of torrents before. BitTorrent is a protocol that efficiently transfers large quantities of data without requiring a large distribution infrastructure.

However, it's not uncommon for someone to find a torrent file and know nothing about how to actually download its data.

If you don't want to worry about installing and configuring a torrent client, you can simply use BitLet.

You just browse to bitlet.org page, paste/select the torrent file you want to download... and it's done.
(All you need is a java-enabled browser.)

Eee Rotate

Have you ever wondered how it would be to use your Eee PC as an eBook reader - or simply, how it would be to use it in portrait mode?

Well, all you need is this Eee Rotate and you can see for yourself. Just press CTRL+ALT+RIGHT to rotate the screen 90º clockwise, or press CTRL+ALT+UP to get it back to its original setting.

Better yet, the trackpad input is rotated as well, to match the screen orientation. (Though external USB mouses won't have the same treatment and become pretty much useless, unless you really have an extrordinary eye-hand coordination. :)

SenderClipboard - Copy-Paste Filenames on Windows

Sorry to bring up something I had already talked about, but again I received in my email a dozen screencaptures wasting Megabytes when all I needed was for someone to send me a folder listing with the relevant filenames in text format.

With my tiny SenderClipboard, all you have to do is select the filenames, right click on it and "send" those to it. Afterwards, you can simply paste those filenames into any text document or email.

Simple and easy.

Capture.NET for Windows

If you're the kind of person that always carry around a swiss army knife with you, you'll love to hear about this Capture.net for Windows.

This small program (takes just about 8MB Ram when running) is a life saver when it comes to do lots of the "small stuff" that often takes so long to do with other programs.

In its main screen you get a calendar and pixel-ruler:

But you also get a screen capture tool:

A multi-mode color picker:

And a privacy-cleaner as well:

But that's not all, there still a lot more this small programs does that might save you a lot of time and effort: from a post-it note editor, reminders, secure deletion of file, and much, much more.

If you want to try it out:: Capture.Net

How to Detect Edited Photos

In this day and age, most photographs you'll come in contact with will most likely be "digital photos".

And, with the ever improving photo-editing software, detecting if a photo is "real" or "edited" is becoming increasingly difficult.

...That's why this error level analysis utility can come in handy sometimes.

This program analyzes the digital image and enhances subtle variations that occur whenever someone alters the pixels. That makes it a lot easier to detect an altered photo.

PDFescape - Byebye Acrobat

If you ever need to edit or create a PDF file but have no suitable software installed, it's time to turn to the PDFescape. If you think Web Apps are useless just wait till you see everything you can do with PDFescape without installing anything in your computer - everything is done inside your browser.

With PDFescape you can edit and create PDF without setting sights on Adobe's Acrobat.
PDF Forms are also easily filled and designed.

So, next time you need to PDF something, remember: PDFescape.

Send Filenames to Clipboard - SenderClipboard

It amazing how simple things can end up being so complicated.

So; you're talking to a friend on messenger and he asks you to send him alist of your MP3's.
You immediately go to your music folder and... and... and now what?
Who you can easily send him a list of files short of capturing the screen with PrtSc and send him an image?

DOS timers will still be able to pull it out by running command line, navigating to the right folder and DIR > mp3list.txt but that isn't practical to do everytime you need it.

Shouldn't Windows have a better way to do this?

Well, probably there's a freeware somewhere that does this, but after searching for it on Google - and having found nothing like I wanted - I decided to put my coder skills to use and do it myself.
And so it was born: SenderClipboard.exe (176Kb unzipped)

Basically, this small program allows you to select any number of files and/or folders and create a list of its names on the clipboard, ready to be pasted somewhere else.

I though of implementing lots of advanced features, but for that you can use programs like Karen's Directory Printer - this one was kept simple: it does the basic stuff, and nothing else.

Its done in C#, so be sure you have .Net Framework installed (don't worry, your PC probably has it already even if you don't know what it is.)

How to use it:

Well, this might scare you a bit, but instalation isn't that hard. You just need to extract the .exe file into your "Send To" folder next to your Start menu.
(Right click on your start button, choose explore, and look for the right folder)

From now on you should get it as an option on your right mouse button context menu. Just choose a bunch of files in explorer, right click over it and select "Send To" SenderClipboard.

Now you just need to Paste into a text area (like notepad or Word) and you'll see the file list in text format.

(Folder names appear enclosed in "[]" square brackets)



As always, I make no guarantees about it, use it at your own risk. Don't blame me if this program causes the Universe to implode, formats the entire Internet, or something worse...

Hope someone finds it as useful as I did.