If you're after torrent downloads, chances are you're searching Piratebay, IsoHunt, Mininova, and possibly a few others. Why not save yourself time and effort and search them all in one place?
USniff provides a nicely styled web 2.0 interface for multi-site torrent searches and allows you to query up to eight sites simultaneously. Results load extremely quickly, and I was pleased to see that they sort by number of seeds by default.
It's ajax, so filtering and re-sorting your results is almost instant. The design is totally clean so far, there's not even a single banner ad in sight. You'll still have to click through to the actual tracker, of course, to grab the actual torrents. USniff doesn't host anything...blah blah blah...insert usual torrent search engine disclaimer here.
For anyone looking for multiple options to download that new Ubuntu release (since you're all using torrents for purely legal downloads, of course!), take a gander at USniff.
Ok, I filed this under "fun," but once you give it a shot you might disagree with me.
I Wanna Be The Guy may be the most frustrating, hair-pulling game you ever play. As the developer states on one of his Zazzle shirts, it's "The game where everything kills you. Even the moon."
Within the first couple of minutes, I'd died more times than I cared to count, and that's the point. My poor keyboard nearly got smashed across the edge of my workbench. The game is so difficult (and addictive in a masochistic way) that you want to beat it just to say you did.
Levels have an old-school feel to them and borrow certain elements from some of your favorite classic games, like Bullet Bill and Zangief.
What makes it so hard? Anything can pop out from anywhere and kill you. Keep your eye on that wall, it'll start chasing you and then impale your unsuspecting butt.
IWBTG is kind enough to let you turn down the amount of splatter from your death, as well as music and sound effects - which can get a little irritating during an extended session.
This little baby is freeware, Windows only. If you're not ready for the full dose of insanity, grab the demo download and try the first few levels before taking the plunge.
There are lots of nice launcher apps out there (Launchy, SpeedLaunch, Executor, etc.), but why bother with them when you can do the same thing with functions already built in to Windows? Explorer's running anyways, so you may as well get something out of it.
First, create a new folder that will contain your shortcuts. If you've got a data drive or partition, put it there so it'll stick around after a reformat. Next, right click my computer, and open system properties.
Click the advanced tab, then click the environment variables button. In the bottom box, find path and click the edit button. Now scroll all the way to the right, add a semicolon to the end, and input the path to your new folder.
Results from a new survey by Marshal are in, and apparently 29% percent of the respondents to a recent survey admitted they made purchases from spam messages. That number is up from a 2004 survey in which only 20% admitted doing so. I was all set to vent about people getting sucked in when I realized something: who cares?
Marshal's VP of Products, Bradley Anstis, said "Many of us often question ourselves, why is there so much spam? The answer is, enough people are purchasing products from spam to make it a worthwhile and profitable endeavour for spammers."
I understand that Photoshop is a great program. I'm willing to concede that there's really no comparable software for the professionaluser. What I just don't get is why the average user thinks 1) they need Photoshop and 2) they need to pirate it.
A few years ago, no one came in and asked me "Can you put Photoshop on my computer?" Most users hadn't even heard of the program. Now the perception from the public seems to be that if you want to edit photos at all, you've got to have Photoshop to do it - and that you might as well just steal it.
But why? Most users don't need even half of the functionality in Photoshop, and there are plenty of great editors that are easy to use, less hard on computer resources, and completely free.
Clear your conscience and try one of these alternatives!
While I know there are plenty of good replacements out there for Windows Explorer, I'm not ready to jump ship just yet. I don't really need any really advanced functionality, but there are a few things I'd like to add. Vista-style breadcrumbs and tabbed browsing, for example.
QuizoApps has coded two small extensions that do the job quite well with a minimal impact on resources. Both addons are activated by clicking view -> toolbars in any Explorer window.
The Breadcrumbs addon (QtAddressBar) is extremely responsive and even displays links to subfolders (you can see the arrow off the Adobe folder above).
Brad blogged about using QTTabBar to add an up button in Vista a while back, but it also adds several other tabbed browsing functions. You can create groups to open several tabs at once, clone a tab, merge tabs from another window, undo tab closing, use hotkeys, and it even includes enhanced replacements for Explorer's standard buttons. It even maintains a list of recently closed folders for quick resurrection.
Customization offers tons of enhancements, like grid lines, alternating row colors, minimizing to tray, and a lot more. If you want, QTTabBar will restore your tab previous tab layout on launch - I use it to keep the Control Panel and my Printers close at hand.
These are two great addons for any Windows XP. .NET 2.0 Framework is required.
If you're a heavy Twitter user, you've no doubt accumulated a huge collection of tiny text messages. Losing all that information would be a giant pain, but how do you save a copy for yourself? Have a look at Tweetake!
The interface is dead simple: enter your Twitter username and password, select what you want to back up, and press Get 'em! to release the hounds.
Within a few seconds Tweetake presents you with a CSV file containing all your valuable messages. Tweetake grabs the sender's name and screen name, their location and description, timestamp, and the tweet text, along with just about all the other info that Twitter stores.
How many of you back up the files on your PC regularly? I'd wager the number backing up online data (like Twitter) is even lower. Play it safe, and back up your tweets!
If you didn't notice from reading my last massive time waster, I love classic gaming. I'm also a Firefox user, and always on the hunt for good addons like the rest of you. Thank god for FireNES, an awesome addon for Firefox that gives you ready access to a massive repository of NES games.
After you install it, customize your toolbar and add the FireNES button to give yourself one-click access to the sidebar. The full ROMs list is massive, The toplist contains the 100-or-so most played titles, and you can add any game to your list of favorites with a simple right click.
Best of all, you don't have to hunt down ROMs on horibly cluttered, scam-laden websites. Awesome.
The only possible downside to all this: habla usted español? The developer's page is Spanish only - not a big deal, the install link is easy to find and you can always run it through your favorite translation app.
Since switching to Firefox, there's one Internet Explorer function I've been wanting to duplicate: copying my browsing history when opening a new tab or window. Developer Twanno has created an extension that adds that missing functionality, and another that I find particularly useful.
The Duplicate Tab extension does exactly that, creating a second instance of your selected tab in a new one (or in its own window). It can also perform two other useful functions. First, it will "detach," a tab - close it in your current window and open a new window with the same URL and your browsing history.
Second, you can use it to merge different windows - combining their tabs and history in a single window.
Tab Clicking Options gives you the ability to control your tabs through different mouse click actions. It's compatible with other tab extensions, so I've set mine up to duplicate a tab when I double-click on it. A host of action are supported, including reloading, bookmarking, closing, and even switching to IE view (if you have the extension installed).
These are two great, small extensions for Firefox users looking for more control over their tabs and windows.
Yes, I understand that a decent video card that will run Crysis can be had for just North of $100, but these fancy-pants games just aren't for me. I grew up with a Commodore 64, Wildcat BBS, and MUDs. Every now and then I get a hankerin' for some old-school gaming action, and here's where I go to get my fix.
Abandonia Abandonia is one of the biggest and best-known abandonware sites around. Abandonware is software the copyright holders don't support or distribute any more. Why does that matter? Well, it means that they mostly don't care whether someone like Abandonia distributes it for free (read Wikipedia for more).
And Abandonia is more than happy to redistribute forgotten classics. Their collection boasts such classics as Descent, Ghosts 'n' Goblins, Bad Street Brawler, Starflight, and Betrayal at Krondor. What's more, they have "extras" like boxshots, CD inserts, and printable maps for many of the titles.
Design inspiration can come from a lot of different places. If you find yours from digital sources on the web, Palette Grabber for Firefox might be incredibly useful to you.
Install it, and Palette Grabber sits in the left corner of your status bar waiting to leap into action. A single click (right or left) exports a selective palette based on your current page in Firefox. Palette selection is very intelligent, producing accurate swatch sets for each of the websites I sampled.
Palette Grabber supports several file formats, including Photoshop, Flash, Fireworks, PaintShop Pro, the GIMP, and Mac OS X Color Picker. Minimalists and power users can elect to save a tabbed text listing of RGB values.
For a 25k download, Palette Grabber is definitely worth adding to your Firefox install if you do any digital design work.
Hamachi is a great app. So is VNC. Torrents are great, too. You see where I'm going. These are all great on their own - so when Remobo rolled them all in to one, tasty package, I was pretty excited.
Set it up, add your buddies, and you've got an instant, private P2P network. Click the My Shared Files link and create torrents of your folders and files with two clicks. When your buddies view your shares, they'll see a simple web page with links to the torrent downloads. It's simple, and it works quite well.
Clicking windows file sharing on a buddy will display their Windows file and printer shares (like Hamachi does). File access speeds (even over my sluggish DSL) are good, and at least on par with Hamachi's free offering.
I've used plenty of hotkey applications, but none is as visually appealing or easy to configure as QLiner.
Download and install QLiner, launch it, and then press win + z to open the main window (above). New hotkeys can be added by simply dragging a shortcut from your desktop onto a key - it even works with URLs from your browser.
More than just a launcher, QLiner first tries to match your hotkey with a running application. If it finds a match, it'll bring that window to the front instead of spawning a new process. You can add runtime arguments to your hotkeys as well: for example, /auto on CCleaner to add a one-key system cleanup.
QLiner also has built-in layouts that are tailored for Sony, IBM, Toshiba, and Dell laptop keyboards. Dvorak keyboards are supported, and international users will be thrilled by the massive number of languages available.
Its 45mb memory footprint is a tad on the bulky side, but it's easy to overlook because of QLiner's ease-of-use and flexibility. QLiner is freeware, Windows only.
For those of you charged with the unenviable task of malware removal and defense, keeping your toolbox current can be a lot of work. Lunarsoft's Anti-Malware Toolkit simplifies the process by providing an easy way to handle downloading.
The Toolkit is really just a downloader which fetches the current versions of programs like Super Antispyware, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, HijackThis, Spybot, Autoruns, CCleaner, and LSP Fix. It also grabs programs that you'll want to install to prevent further issues: Avast, Firefox, Comodo Firewall.
Point it to your USB flash drive or network share, hit the download button and grab yourself a cup of coffee.
While you could do this with just about any decent download manager, why bother? Anti-Malware toolkit already targets most of the tools you're going to need and it's as simple to maintain them as clicking a single button.
If installing a program like Trust No Exe isn't your style, you can always use registry edits and policy changes to lock down PCs. That can be a little tiresome, but Nawras PC Supervisor makes it as simple as checking a few boxes.
PC Supervisor gives you control over just about everything you might want to restrict. Control panel access can either be blocked completely or limited to only those options you want displayed. Hide drive letters and features like "run as," network connections, and the places bar.
Use it to disable everything from registry editing and task manager to display settings changes. Set up privacy tweaks like auto-clearing the recent files list and hiding the last logged on username.
Granted, most of these changes can be made using gpedit.msc and secpol.msc (built-in controls in Windows XP Pro), but PC supervisor's interface is easier to get around and it can make changes on XP Home installs as well.
PC Supervisor doesn't require installation, and is completely free. Right now there's no help file, but it's still a nice addition to your admin toolbox.
Abandonia
