Archive for the ‘Software’ Category
Configure avast! Antivirus to update behind a proxy
One of the problems I ran into when I moved to another university was the awkward way in which internet access was provided for the students. Instead of having routers in each dorm room that connected onto a high-speed fiber connection as I was accustomed to, I had to be satisfied with inconsistent WiFi. Anyway, this post is not meant to complain about unreliable internet access. On rare occasions you may find that your internet provider requires that you connect through their proxy server with a username and password in order to surf freely. This presents no problem for your web browser once the settings are configured, but what about all those other applications such as your antivirus software that require a constantly active connection in order to download and install definition updates?
Free programs to open any file extension!
Do you sometimes find yourself with a file that you cannot open because you do not have the correct program installed? Or perhaps you only encounter them on rare occasions and find that this is not a sufficient enough reason to purchase the necessary software. Instead of requesting another format, why not use the variety of free software available to open the file for you!
Check out OpenWith.org for free software that will allow you to open a multitude of file extensions. Long gone are the days of not having the correct program for the job!
Free DVD ripping software for Windows
DVD ripping is an “iffy” subject because it can be used for illegal purposes. In some cases it may be illegal even if stealing is not involved since encryption has to be broken. However, it should be perfectly fine to back up your legal DVD movie collection. I will not go further into the legality of this topic because things can get complicated.
Customize webpages with Stylish
There are a few websites you visit frequently, but some of them could use a makeover. Perhaps the entire styling of the site could be improved for visual attractiveness or tweaked for improved usability. Before I found out about Stylish, I did not think this was possible. However, after applying some of the custom CSS found at userstyles.org I realized that I could customize the look of a few very popular websites I frequently visit and even create custom styles myself!
The Stylish plugin works within Mozilla Firefox (there are alternatives for other web browsers) and enables you to use your very own stylesheet to determine how you want a particular site to look. Many users have submitted their own styles for a few popular sites that you can take a look at. Just load the style into Stylish and the changes take effect immediately! My favourites are the ‘Google web search – dark grey redesign (vC)‘ and ‘Gmail Redesigned (by Globex Designs)‘ styles, the latter of which works in both Gmail and Google Apps E-mail.
In addition to site styling, there are also App Styles that can replace quite a few extensions available as separate plugins. Should you want to try your hand at customizing the style of your own, read through the Honestly Illustrated guide that goes into a lot of depth about the tools you will require.
I am quite fascinated with this plugin and what it can do. There are always new styles to discover and test out. One word of warning, however, is to constantly check for updates on your custom styles. As sites undergo changes, these changes will have to be adjusted for in the custom user styles. Sometimes functionality may break, but deactivating the style is usually a quick short-term fix. Enjoy!
Free disk imaging and backup software
This is yet another one of my posts aimed at telling you about free and open-source software solutions for performing common everyday tasks. While you may require CD/DVD burning applications on a regular basis, you rarely require backup software until it is time to completely reformat your system, migrate your data, etc. In the worse case scenario, your hard disk is failing and you need to back up an entire partition so all your precious files are not lost in the digital abyss of doom! On the other hand, you may be one who would like a way to be able to completely restore a PC with Windows and all your applications installed so that you do not have to spend valuable time performing individual installations.
The solution is to create disk images, which are simply snapshots of all of the data on a particular partition or disk just the way they are at the point of creation that you can use later to restore to that exact state. Many people use disk imaging when they are upgrading their hard disks; many disk manufacturers supply their own “disk cloning” software for free as part of their disk installation utility CD. However, there are other pieces of software out there that allow you to do a bit more than this. Symantec’s Ghost (AKA Norton Ghost) has been an easy-to-use paid solution for many years and it is not surprising that many of the free alternatives out there have many things in common with it and even have extra features that you would not find in Ghost.
Free CD and DVD burning software
In my effort to find free and open-source software around the interweb I thought it would be good to list some CD and DVD burning applications.
When it comes to burning discs there are good commercial products available. The Nero Suite has been a favourite for a long time, although I believe their software packages are starting to get a little bloated. Before I knew about free alternatives I used Nero for all my burning needs; I was especially drawn to the easy-to-use Nero Express wizard that enabled quick DVD video conversion. Many persons have expressed the superiority of Ashampoo Burning Studio which basically does everything that Nero does without the excessive bloat and system slowdown. Unfortunately, I cannot testify to this since I have never used it. Then again, why should I? There are free and open-source alternatives for doing the same thing!
Firefox’s Find and Quick Find
Did you know that Mozilla Firefox has two page search features built in? Well, you probably know about ‘Find’, accessible by pressing CTRL+F which launches a small bar at the bottom of the window for you to input text. You probably do not know what ‘Quick Find’ does even though you may have been introduced to it before on an occasion when it annoyed the life out of you! Yes, the ‘Quick Find’ feature, accessible by just pressing the ‘ or apostrophe key launches in the same way as ‘Find’, but does something different.
You probably encountered ‘Quick Find’ while typing somewhere while in Firefox and suddenly saw that none of your input text was showing up on screen. After closing the ‘Quick Find’ bar you probably continued to type only to be annoyed once again by this bar reappearing at the bottom of your browser window. First of all, ‘Quick Find’ does have a useful function (believe it or not), one which has not been highlighted in Firefox’s feature-set or documentation. ‘Quick Find’ searches URLs, whereas ‘Find’ searches browser page text. ‘Quick Find’ can be used to search page text if you press the / key. Try it out for yourself.
This just goes to show you how some things that we may find annoying may actually have some usefulness. I have been searching around for a way to disable ‘Quick Find’ in the latest version of Firefox (2.0.0.13) and found this plugin. It worked perfectly! Just install it and restart Firefox. ‘Quick Find’ is immediately disabled so there are no setting changes that you need to make. Yay!
