Tag: Software

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News

Skype shows off its international presence with free calls for a month

Do you use Skype to make calls through the internet especially abroad? Most who are Skype regulars will be looking closely at the fact that Google is leveraging Google Voice which is now available to all users in the US. Winning a brand war is important like you see no one even talks about Amazon Kindle and almost everyone talks about Apple’s iPad.

So now that Google Voice is making a splash Skype has decided on the same day to announce free landline international calls. Skype does say it is doing so because it will allow football fans to connect during this football season but that is a little strange as the Fifa World Cup 2010 started about 2 weeks before this announcement was made and on the same day when Google Voice was made available to all US users.

So Skype has not offered for a whole month free unlimited calls to US, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Chile, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands and many more countries. Also many other countries have free minutes in talk time ranging from 60 minutes for Cameroon to 400 minutes to Brazil.

What is notable is when Google Voice is just about making a splash in America, Skype is showing off its international presence and visibility.

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If you are looking to get this free package with Skype look up their page with relevant links.

Ofcourse this is not available in India because of VOIP licensing issues but many still do use Skype online for chatting and video conferencing and group conferences.

So what do you think will happen to Skype a few years down the line? Will it survive or will it be mowed down by Google Voice? Do let us know through your comments.

Link: Skype Blog

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Reviews

Access files on your computer remotely using HomePipe

Let’s say due to some urgent work you want to access the files of your office PC from your home. There is no other person to initiate remote desktop connection. Definitely it is not possible to connect with the office PC.

HomePipe is a free application which lets you access the whole directory of any computer from anywhere. You can also access the files in your mobile phone web browser.

All you need to do is sign up with the service, install a small application on your computer. During installation you have to fill the login credentials on the application window. A small Homepipe icon will appear on the system tray.

homepipe

Now on some other computer, visit the HomePipe official website. Sign in with your user name and password. That’s it. You can see the whole computer directories on your browser screen. Click on any folder to open it. You can view files, documents, images and videos with the help of supported plugins.

pc share

This method only works if the shared computer is turned on, connected to the internet, and the HomePipe Agent running in the system tray.

It is easy to use, no hassle involved like other remote sharing tools. Also It is secure to use. It is available for Windows and Mac users.

If you liked reading this post your might like reading up on Dropbox to share files on different computers.

Check out HomePipe to access your PC from anywhere.

Do you access your computer remotely? Do drop in your comments with your views.

Categories
Reviews

JJSplit: Free Opensource alternative for HJSplit

I’ve been using Linux for some months and was searching through the synaptic Package Manager and cannot find an equivalent Utility to HJ Split. The Linux version of HJ Split was not very effective and I went through many forums and posts. Got some results but not really satisfied!

I wondered if I’m just not using the right search parameters?

So, I tried randomly by replacing ‘H’ with ‘J’ in HJ Split as in for example I have entered JJ Split and hit the search button.

I found a software that is named JJ Split.

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What does it do?

  • A file splitter made in java to split and join files very quickly for easier transfer over the internet.
  • It has the option to delete parts one by one while joining/splitting.
  • Supports joining .001, .002 parts as well. Just double click to join the files..”
  • I was pleasantly surprised and stunned in its speed and performance. It guess it is surely be few times faster than any other software like  HJ Split.
jj split1
jj split

Features of JJSplit

  • Just open the first part to join.
  • Option to delete the parts one by one while joining to free up space and time.
  • Multithreading (supports multiple splitting and joining at the same time)
  • Portability (no need to install)
  • Platform-independent
  • Supports joining the popular .001, .002 split-files as well..
Requirements:
Requires Java to be installed but chances are that if you are downloading this, you probably already have Java installed.

I found that, it is a product created by a student by name Vigneshwaran. 🙂

Hats off to him for making my splitting and joining tasks more easier than ever before  🙂

Links : GTUG Madurai | Sf.net | softpedia

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Reviews

Top 5 Free Softwares to Reveal your Asterisk hidden password

A password is a secret word, that provides the access to the resource. As a password does the job of protecting our personals from mail accounts, PDA’s to credit cards and many more.

There might be few situations like you have registered for a services like GTalk, Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger etc, and in hurry if you just signed in that new account. After a while you may forget the login password for that newly opened account and there it shows the Asterisk key (*****) on the messenger. This is the actual situation where you need these Software tools.

Here is my list of the Top 5 Softwares to Reveal your Asterisk hidden password

  1. Asterisk Key
  2. Password Viewer
  3. Asterisk Logger
  4. Show Password
  5. Password Decryption Software
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There 5 are best and free Asterisk Hidden password revealers. Let us check them out

Asterisk Key : Uncovers hidden passwords on password dialog boxes and web pages. It provides the State of the art password recovery engine – all passwords are recovered instantly. Best of all, it’s totally free. It supports Multilingual passwords and Full install/uninstall support is provided.

Asterisk Key

Password Viewer : Password Viewer is a Windows utility that allows you to view password fields. It enables to you to peek the password not only at the password edit boxes on different programs, but also the password input field data on a page inside Internet Explorer window ( Win2000 and later )

Password Viewer

Asterisk Logger : Applications, like CuteFTP, CoffeeCup Free FTP, Outlook Express, and others, allows you to type a password for using it in the application. The typed password is not displayed on the screen, and instead of the real password, you see a sequence of asterisk (‘****’) characters. This utility can reveal the passwords stored behind the asterisks in standard password text-boxes.

Asterisk Logger

Show Password : This allows us to view the passwords which are hidden by asteriks. If you find a textbox where there are hidden passwords, which will be replaced with asterisks, these can be easily revealed with this program, only by executing it and moving the cursor over the textbox. It’s good too in 99.99% of cases but the rest 0.01% can be very important for us.

Show Password

Password Decryption Software : Data doctor hidden password unmask utility decode any typed key board character in asterisks form **** of password text box. Recovery software is easy to use, free of cost, user friendly password reveal utility that extract password from password textbox, user login form of yahoo, gmail, hotmail, orkut, messengers and many more.

Password Decryption Software

So what are you waiting for?

Download your favorite tool for revealing your Asterisk hidden password.

Do let us know which software you use in your system to reveal Asterisk password?

Categories
Reviews

Monitor energy consumed for computers using Joulemeter

Joulemeter is a new application from Microsoft to monitor the consumption of power in computers. This application was released by Microsoft on 19 May 2010 and is currently in alpha-test state.

About Joulemeter

joule

  • Joulemeter is designed to track the power and total energy consumption of running computers. This light-weight application will always reside in your memory, even if not started manually.
  • The statistics reports the power being consumed, average power, the total energy consumed and the total volume of CO2 released. The interface is so simple and neat. More developments can be expected in the stable version.
  • The statistics provides details about base power for running PC, power consumed for CPU, hard disk and monitor.
  • The uncalibrated model only gives the approximate statistics. For getting accurate measurements, calibration is necessary. But as far as I am concerned, the calibration always failed in all three attempts made. This may be due to some bug which is hoped to be fixed in the stable version.
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The approximate statistics of power being consumed is calculated in watts (W) and the total energy consumed in calculated in kilowatt-hours (kWh). 1 kWh is commonly referred as 1 unit of energy. It is the same unit as read on the energy meters at home. As you can see in the screen-shot, using my laptop for 48 hours cost me about 1 unit of energy. Read more on calculation of energy consumption at labnol.org.

Joulemeter is handy and consumes very less memory. It gives the basic idea of power consumption in computers. A few and old energy saving tips can be found here.

Links: Download Joulemeter | Joulemeter Project

Hope this application would help you estimate the cost of running the computer. Do share your views on Joulemeter here.

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Reviews

MyDefrag – Free Tool to Increase Hard Disk Speed and Life

As pin-pointed quite correctly in this blog post, one of the most important steps to keep your computer running fast for longer period of times is defragmentation. Windows comes with a built-in defragmenter. And like many of the default accessories in it, the defragmenter is also a huge disappointment. So here is a faster and free defragmenter called MyDefrag.

Continue reading “MyDefrag – Free Tool to Increase Hard Disk Speed and Life”
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Tips

Move any Program to System Tray with TrayIt!

When you have a number of programs running on your system for most part of the day, that surely doesn’t mean that you are working only on those programs throughout, rather they will stay idle for most part of the day, and you will need them only when you need to perform a related task. This increases the number of tabs in the taskbar and the amount of space the programs occupy is annoying!

TrayIt! is a handy tool that lets you organize your taskbar by providing you the functionality to choose the programs which you like to place in system tray. The app is made to place the minimized background programs on your system on to the system tray, where it takes the form of a small icon as in the screenshot above.

To put a program into system tray, right-click on the minimize button on the program and select “Place in System Tray“.

Another way to move the program to system tray is by directly selecting the program from the TrayIt application interface and then clicking on “Place in System Tray” button.

TrayIt also allows you to group similar programs together even in the system tray. When two or more similar programs are minimized to tray, then it creates a single icon for both of them. This will prevent the overuse of tray also.

Some of the other programs related features include – permanently keeping the program in system tray, hiding the program from system tray also, and some customizations related to TrayIt application itself. This is the simplest way to switch in between programs yet keeping the taskbar clean! Simply download it from the link below, extract it in the folder of your choice, and keep your taskbar neat! TrayIt! runs on Windows 95/98/Me, NT/2000/XP only.

Download: TrayIt!

Do you know any other application that performs similar task?

Categories
Tips

How to Take Snapshots of Videos in VLC Player

VLC is one of the best video players on the internet with so many excellent features. And now, you can take the screenshots of your favorite movies and tv shows. First of all, download and install VLC Media Player.

Continue reading “How to Take Snapshots of Videos in VLC Player”
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Reviews

Utilities to Turn Off your System Automatically

Those of you, who make full use of free internet hours late in the night or watch movies/listen to music late night or perform any other task on your system would not want your pc to be turned on all the time. To help you out, there are few utilities that automatically shut down the system after the completion of the task. Earlier we shared with you an easy way to Power-on and Shutdown your computer automatically.

Listed below are a few softwares to help you to turn off your pc even in your absence:

KShutdown

Kshutdown is a multi-platform utility that can be used to schedule system Shutdown for Windows/Linux/KDE. Set the date and time to whenever you want your system to turn-off automatically. Apart from shutdown, this utility also allows you to restart, hibernate, lock screen or logout.

For KDE users, it also comes with command line support, that can be used to turn off a particular program via the extras option.

Download link – KShutdown.

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Slawdog Smart Shutdown

Slawdog Smart Shutdown allows you to perform various shut down operations manually and automatically. Using this software, you can log off, reboot, lock, turn off, hibernate, disconnect from the Internet or network, enter standby mode in Windows, and shut down/reboot computers in your network.


It is a free and commercially used utilities that can even detect the inactive systems for a specified period to force auto-shutdown. Slawdog Smart Shutdown is available for  all versions of Windows.

Download link – Slawdog Smart Shutdown

You can also download Slawdog Smart Shutdown LX with more features, the successor of the Slawdog Smart Shutdown.

Do you use any such utility to support your daily activities? Let us know.

Categories
Reviews

Animate your face with online photo editor pho.to

This is a guest post by Murugappan M, if you like to guest post for Devils’ workshop, do check out our revenue sharing program.

I had been to this website just a couple of days ago. Today, I noticed  a feature in pho.to which can make emoticons of our own face by detecting each part of your face. Do you Have a pic with the best background, but your face with no smile?  Then pho.to cartoon is what you have been hunting for.

How to turn a weeping pic to a smiling one?

  • Visit cartoon.pho.to and upload an image you want to animate. Then select the type of emoticon, wink or smile.
  • Check Animate if you want it as a .gif file or keep it unchecked if you want it to be a still image with the effect in action.
  • Set the photo size of your choice and then Apply.
  • You can use this website without the need to register but if you do register you can save your photos online where as if you are not registered the photos are deleted after 12 hours.

Before:

After:


There are other features like Photo editor, Photo enhancer and more in the pho.to website. But only pho.to’s cartoon made me write an article about it.

If you like this post you might also like reading up on how to remove background from your image and 1o photoshop text effect tutorials.

Which feature of pho.to did you like the most? Drop your views in the comments.

Link: Pho.to | Pho.to Cartoon