GOM Player

One of the main use of my laptop is to watch movies. Having a great video player would help when watching a film comfortably. I have always tried to stick with the “alternative” players instead of the Windows standard Media Player. One reason for this is that most other players are far more stable than Windows Media Player. Earlier I had introduced a fine piece of open source software which goes by the name Media Player Classic (MPC). But the MPC development has be stalled for some time. So searching for a more up-to-date freeware video player, I came up with GOM Player.

GOM Player (Gretech Online Movie Player) supports a wide range of standard video formats MPG, AVI, VOB, WMV, 3GP etc. It also supports playback of HTTP Streaming (Internet Streaming) ASF, OGG, MP3 and AVI contents.

Usage/Interface

Right after installation, the setup shows a basic wizard to configure the quality, output mode (VMR7/VMR9), sub-titles, the video/audio codec to use, speaker channel support, automatic file association, process priority etc.

The interface is quiet clean and simple. Just a section to view the video and all the basic controls (Play,Previous,Next,etc.) and seek bar at the bottom. Most users should quickly get comfortable with this interface.

The seek bar is a quiet comfortable one, and the mouse wheel can control the volume. The only problem I found at the interface level was that double clicking on the screen does not automatically switch to full-screen, like most other players.

One simple question you could ask is “Where are all the menus?”. If you are very much used to modern media players, you know very well where to look for it. Simply right-click the screen, and you are presented with a host of options. All major options including Opening a DVD/VCD, Playback settings, Video/Audio settings, Aspect ration, Pan & Scan, Skins etc. are directly available in this right-click menu. So, not much to learn.

Speed/Stability

On extensive usage of the software, I found it to be quiet stable. It can read most “scratched” DVDs without actually “crashing”. Since the interface is so simple, it is no surprise that the software starts-up in no-time. The response time is also quiet quick.

Related Links

• GOM Player main download site
• GOM Player on Wikipedia

MetaCafe Pro

Most video lovers don’t need any introduction for metacafe.com . It is one of the most popular community based video sharing site around. With hundreds of videos being added daily, it is hard for people to keep track of new videos. To help it’s users, MetaCafe released MetaCafe Pro. Don’t be mislead by the “Pro” prefix. This is an absolutely free software that can be downloaded from metacafe.com .

Usage of this software is quiet simple. Several arrows show up in different parts of the software to help you learn the interface. Anyway, there is not much to learn. After installation, and logging-in using a username and password (if you do not have a username at metacafe.com, you can create a new registration from the interface itself), it automatically starts downloading new contents as and when they are available.

New contents once downloaded, would be directly available in the “New Items” tab. Metacafe comes integrated with a video player, so you can start playing directly from the interface. This is really important because all online video sites use the new “Flash Video (FLV)” format, which is a less supported system on most systems and most major players do not support it by default. It also has a “TV mode” which plays all the newly arrived video sequentially in full screen mode. One fault I did find was that, when in “TV Mode”, it failed to show a seek bar. So you cannot rewind or forward when in “TV Mode”.

Once you find a video you like, you can click the “Save Item” button, which moves the video to the “Saved Items” tab. If you need, you can also save the flv file to a specific folder.

Content Settings

This option is available from the left section of the interface. From this dialog, you can select the types of Videos, Images or Games you would like to automatically get downloaded. There is also a section for “Family Filter” which helps in filtering out violence or explicit videos (nudity or very sexual).

Options

The options dialog box also has several extra options to allocate a specific disk space area. Metacafe will use this space to store automatically downloaded videos. You also have options to control various Traffic related settings here.

Uniblue SpeedUpMyPC 2009

No matter how high end system you have, it always appears to slow down with time. This has become inevitable. Most people know that the reason for this slow down is installation of junk software. Most people tend to install software they find on magazine CDs, internet shareware sites, etc. Over time, this leaves junks of waste data that are not properly disposed by the system.

Uniblue SpeedUpMyPC 2009 is a system cleaner with integrated Junk File and Privacy File cleanup. Also integrated is a set of Network tweaks, Windows tweaks and Startup tweaks. The interface is very basic and quite easy to use.

Junk File Cleanup

The junk file cleanup section contains the standard set of temporary files including chk, dmp, old, tmp etc. There is no extra features compared to other junk file cleanup software available. Just plain old find by extension and delete.

Privacy Cleanup

Again a standard set of features here. Browser history & cookie cleanup of Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, Find file list, Chat history, MRU, Downloaded Files etc.

Optimizations

• CPU optimization enables you to control the priority of the process.
• Memory optimization cleans-up memory and clipboard data.
• Network optimization contains tweaks for Firefox, Internet Explorer and also general Network tweaks.
• Application optimization is a set of 3 sections: Startup manager, Uninstall manager, Quaratine manager. Of these, the Quarantine manager is a unique product not found in any other applications. In this section you can isolate or disable a running process in your system if you suspect it is a malicious process.
• Windows optimization contains a set of registry based Performance tweaks, Hard drive tweaks, XP user interface tweaks and Vista user interface tweaks.

Final Note

It cannot be said to be the most powerful of its class. There are several other software in this category that does a better job. But yet, it is quiet easy to use, and it’s interface is quiet pleasant.

SpeedUpMyPC 2009 is also available as a part of Uniblue PowerSuite 2009 (which also contains Registry Booster 2009 and Driver Scanner 2009)

Related Links

• SpeedUpMyPC on UniBlue.com

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Google Picasa 3

If it’s from Google, it should be one-of-a-kind. Google Picasa has always been one of the best and unique Picture Management software of all times. All Google products showcase cutting edge technologies and features not find in any other software. Picasa is no different.

At it’s root, Picasa is a picture aggregator. It collects pictures from all over your hard disk and displays it as a single collection, which can then be categorized based on year taken and folder. Different custom views are also available.

Photo Editing

The photo editing features found in Picasa are some of the most unique set of features.

• Basic Fix – Enables you to do basic touch-up of the photo. This includes Retouch, Auto Contrast, Auto Color etc. Also featured is the “I’m Feeling Lucky” option which analyzes a photo and tries different fixes possible.
• Tuning – Very basic set of option to Fill Light, Highlights, Shadows, Color Temperature, Neutral Color Picker etc.
• Effects – Different kinds of effects that can be applied to a photo like Sharpen, Sepia, B&W, Film Grain etc.

Collages

With Picasa, creating Collage is a breeze. Just select the set of photos that you want to appear in the collage and press Collage button. A randomly order pictures are shown. You can align, rotate or resize the photos to get a perfect effect.

Photo Sharing

Photos Sharing is one of the main purpose of Google Picasa. Picasa supports direct upload to Google’s online Picasa Web Album. This can be very helpful if you want to share pictures with friends and relatives. You can also specify to only allow access to a specific album public access. Another part of sharing supported is the “BlogThis” features. Using this option, you just have to provide the Google account username and password to post the updates to out website.

Conclusion

Google Picasa is a must-have app if you have lots of photos to manage. Quiet simple to use and packed with very powerful features, that is Google Picasa. The above options are just the start. It has tons of more options like Movie Making, Geo-tag, tagging, etc.

Related Links

• Download Picasa 3

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IrfanView 4.23

This software does not require much introduction. It is one of the most popular image viewing software with over 1 Million downloads every month. Packed with such a large set of features and tagged as a freeware, it is a must for any computer. I was started using IrfanView around six years back. After that, I have never found another image viewing software with such feature pack and simplicity.

IrfanView is created by Irfan Skilijan. It has always been popular for it’s speed and simplicity. At first look, it is just like any other image viewing software. Just the basic set of toolbar icons. The menu also appears to be very normal: the usual File, Edit, etc. All the power is actually packaged in to the menus.

File Opening, Saving and Converting

IrfanView natively supports around 20 popular image/video formats natively. These include the popular jpg, gif, png, psd, tif, ico etc. Apart from these, it also support around 45 other formats using plug-ins. Although the viewing of video files are quiet limited, it can still be considered as a simple video player. It also supports opening Macromedia Flash Format (swf) using plug-in.

It has to be noted that saving of images can only be done in 21 formats. Video cannot be saved, and it cannot be converted to images. Also, incompatible formats like flash cannot be converted to images.

Batch Conversion options are also available to convert a set of files to a different format using any required image processing.

Image Editing & Enhancement

Although it is not a full-fledged image editor, it still supports lots of good image manipulation options. Starting with the basic option of cropping, resizing, rotation, flip, grayscale, sharpen etc., it also supports some special enhancement options including 3D button, blur, emboss, edge detection, explosion, sepia, negative etc.

Shell Integration

IrfanView supports advanced shell integration for all the formats it support. Although, by default, it shows the same icon for all files (in any format) that has been associated with this app, it has an advanced option to show different icon based on the format. For example, jpg files will have JPG inscribed under the icon.

You can also associate IrfanView with USB events of scanner, digital cameras, webcams, etc. For example, if your webcam has a button to take picture, if the button is pressed, you can configure IrfanView to show up the taken picture.

Screenshot capturing section is also available where you can specify which areas to be take, the hot key that will activate screenshot, etc.

Conclusion

I might have mentioned only less than 1/4th of the options available with IrfanView. The options available is so diverse and complex that the configuration page itself contains 12 tabs. Overall, this app is a must have. If you have any other image viewing software, you can still keep a copy of IrfanView on your system. After all, it’s free and quiet light-weight.

Related Links

• Download IrfanView

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DAEMON Tools Lite

DAEMON Tools Lite is a freeware CD/DVD emulation software. If you have lots of CD/DVD images of software and games, you can load it into this software to emulate a virtual DVD drive. This virtual drive can have all the functionalities of a DVD drive. Most games and applications that require the setup DVD to run properly can instead use the emulated drive and the image within it.

One of the best thing about DAEMON Tools Lite is that it supports around 10 different CD/DVD image formats. This include the popular ISO, NRG, CUE etc. And overall, it is a free software, so you can always have it installed. This lite version only supports a maximum of 4 virtual drive. But this is enough for most people.

DAEMON Tools Lite, although limited in features compared to its Pro and Pro Advanced version, does support emulation of CD/DVD protection so that software that rely on these protections can work properly with the emulated CD/DVD too. Currently, it supports SafeDisc, SecuROM, LaserLock and RMPS protections.

Overall, DAEMON tools is a great edition to your list of system tools. Considering the fact that big companies are providing DVD images for their video tutorial and large freeware software.

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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 software 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 information 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 information 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 software, 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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