Many webmasters, network administrators, hackers, and other geek types use diagnostic tools to perform certain tasks. They often use a command line to run programs such as ping, traceroute, nslookup, whois, etc. Codeflux has an Internet tools gateway that allows you to run such programs from the convenience of your web browser.
The following tools are available on codeflux’s Internet tools gateway:
As technology progresses, numerous different types of media, and thus new file formats, emerge. This can pose a problem, though. With audio formats ranging from AIFF to WAV, trying to listen to music or even watch videos on your computer can become difficult and possibly tedious.
Today, I will show you some of the top free media converters for Windows to allow you be able to use, watch and listen to all your video and audio files.
I guess I got very used to working for the man and the perks that come with it. I have had Adobe Professional on my desktop and laptop for a long time now. When I had to create a quick PDF from a word document on a client’s site - after my laptop suffered from battery drainage I had some issues.
I quickly Googled around looking for a free, easy solution. Lots of places claimed to do what I wanted but the first one that did it EASY and FREE was doPDF.
Back in February I wrote an article, 4 Youtube Tools You Probably Don’t Know About. Today I am going to do a follow-up on it. Although we all use Youtube on a regular basis there are plenty of awesome things about it most of us have no idea about. Here are my current 6 best things about Youtube.
As you probably know some Youtube videos can be watched in higher quality. For all such videos Youtube displays ‘watch in high quality’ link right below the menu. Clicking on it will refresh the page and start playing high quality version.
Switching over from Windows to Mac is relatively painless because Mac has support for a lot of commonly used files like Microsoft Word documents, Powerpoint slideshows and Adobe PDF files. So, compatibility is hardly an issue. One thing which you do have to take note of however while switching over to Mac is your iTunes library. So how do you migrate your iTunes library from Windows to Mac
iTunes for Windows is built with Windows Media Audio (WMA) support - it is able to play and convert WMAs. However, because WMA is a proprietary codec, it isn’t available in iTunes for Mac. If you’re not careful, you’ll be left with a lot of WMAs which will be unplayable on your Mac.
xVideoServiceThief is an open source online video downloader designed specifically for just downloading videos from Youtube and alike video sharing websites.
I know there are dozens if not more Youtube downloaders out there but this one is really different. Let’s quickly go over some of its features.
The program is available for Windows (both XP and Vista), Mac and Linux PCs. So it can be installed pretty much everywhere.
As you would expect from any other download manager it can download several files simultaneously. In the screenshot below you can see that I was downloading 4 videos at the same time.
These days the internet has transformed itself into a large source of media content (apart from other things), be it video, audio or images. However with so many media formats, it often becomes necessary to be able to convert from one type to the other.
FormatFactory is one such tool that can assist you in most of your media conversion needs.
FormatFactory is a multifunctional media converter that supports:
Audio Conversion:
From all formats to MP3/WMA/MMF/AMR/OGG/M4A/WAV.
In no way do we wish to encourage you to infringe copyright.
On an unrelated note we’d like to share some tools for the purpose of ripping, converting, downloading and backing up videos.
Since we’re starting from scratch the first thing I suggest you download is a Windows codec pack. Codecs are necessary to play various different ‘digital streams’ (thank you Wikipedia for making me sound smarter) and files. Varun has alsom briefly covered it in his article about Playing Unplayable Videos on your PC.
Are you one of those internet users who is addicted to Yahoo and will only use Google if you can’t find it on Yahoo? Well, I know a quite a few people like that but after showing them all that you can do with Google, they were very quick and eager to switch.
A lot of people complain about Google but you have to give them credit, their search functions are some of the best around right now. So, since there’s so much that you can do with Google Search, I decided to share a few shortcuts with you that I’m sure will come in handy.
I got a rather strange request this morning in my AskTheAdmin inbox. It sounded strange to me at first but after thinking about it, I realized it wasn’t that odd. The request was for a way to rip the audio from a YouTube video… wait there’s more!
So the ripping method could not involve any downloaded or installed applications and had to be done online - and of course for free. The end result had to be a MP3 that could be played on a Windows Mobile phone.
There might be several reasons why a reader would want to be able to convert a web page to PDF, such as: to share with a non-online friend, to be able to email it or to put it into a PDF device to read later; while still retaining the original form of the page. That’s why web to PDF conversion tools are gaining popularity.
But if we look it from the perspective of the site owner, giving the readers the ability to ‘PDF-print’ your pages will improve your site likeability by several points, and increase the site’s exposure to new readers.
This week on the podcast I’m talking to Jerry Kidd, one of Make Use Of’s newest writers, about a great tool to help you sell your home online. I’m also looking at some Make Use Of articles about Bit torrent, bookmarklets, and syncing. Plus, a first look at the latest Twitter clone, identi.ca.
I’d love to hear from you. Send me your MP3 files containing comments about the show, reviews of your favourite websites or just general chitchat. I’ll choose a few to play on the show each week. Send them to podcast [at] makeuseof [dot] com.
Just the other day Abhijeet wrote a very good post about 4 Quick Ways To Download YouTube Videos Off The Net, Aibek has previously covered Top Online File Converters, and I showed you how to easily convert units in my Master the Google article.
With youconvertit there is an online tool that can do all of the above and a little more.
DoubleTwist is a Windows-only desktop application which liberates your media from the Digital Rights Management (DRM) labels and lets you share it with your friends and also synchronizes it with various other devices including external devices such as Blackberry, Nokia N Series and Sony Ericsson Walkman Series phones. It can also convert the songs in your iTunes library and lets you share them with ease. Plus it also works on video.
From the perspective of a downloader, there are two species of files roaming around the virtual world: the easy ones and the difficult ones. While the members of the first set of species are easy to handle - ‘Right Click’ then ‘Save As’ and they are all yours, the members of the second set of species appear to be impossible to download. Videos and other multimedia files usually fall into this second category.
As editor of Make Use Of, I can easily testify that there are not enough hours in the day to do everything that I want to do. So there are often lots of posts in my RSS reader (1000+), easily several days worth at a time, and I’m sure you’re the same. You have to go to work or to school, you have children to look after…..basically everyday life gets in the way of things.
Acrobat.com is a collection of web applications from Adobe which includes lots of cool features.
Acrobat.com claims to offer the first real online word processor, web based file sharing and storage, ability to create PDF’s, online screen sharing and web conferencing.
Lets take a look at all of these one by one, shall we?
1. Adobe Buzzword
Adobe claims Buzzword to be the only real online word processor. They are justified in their claims as it turns out. For starters Buzzword supports the docx format, but that’s not all as it has a host of cool features that takes it closer to the desktop experience.
FAVC is a free collection of tools used to convert your media files, such as AVI, MP4, WMV and more to a DVD disk. FAVC is currently for Windows only. You can convert one video or multiple videos to a disk, and it includes automatic menu creation.
FAVC is a frontend for a handful of other free software. It includes:
(Encoder)
I started using widgets back when it was known as Konfabulator and Yahoo hadn’t meddled with it yet. I was still on my Windows XP laptop then and I tell you, it sure did give my RAM a hard time. When I switched to Mac, Dashboard came pre-installed and I took it for granted. Only when I remember the times I had back on my Windows laptop, I’m grateful that I’m using a Mac now.
For this is a tribute to Dashboard - Mac’s solution to Konfabulator.
The main function of an audio converter is to change audio file from one file format to another. Sometimes, it’s good to experiment with different audio codecs to see which ones fit you. Some prefer MP3 or AAC, but others like OGG. Why? Different sound quality, smaller file sizes, for playing files on other devices (iPod, mobile phone etc.), it all boils down to your personal perference.
This is how it works: load the file you would like to convert to another format into the converter, choose the output format you want for your file and the converter will first decode the file and then re-encode it to match the output format.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past years figuring out how to get my DVD collection onto my PC so I can use my Home Theater PC (HTPC) to play my library on my TV. The following is the two step process I’ve come up with to do this; all other programs I’ve used either are not free, install spyware, or desync the audio.
Install and use DVDFab HD Decrypter.
The settings here are pretty straightforward. Select “Full Disk” and where you want to save the file. Click start, and about 40 minutes later you will have your DVD on your hard drive and ready to encode.
Back in April we published about cool PDF Tools, artice listed online ‘from XYZ to PDF’ converters, couple of Adobe Acrobat alternatives, and a number of PDF printers. Although this time there are only 3 tools, each of them offers some useful features that were not addressed earlier. Defnitely check them out.
PDFHammer is a web-based application that allows you to merge and rearrange PDF documents online. It’s extremely easy-to-use and runs directly from the browser. Just upload your PDF files and start arranging the pages in any order you want. You can also delete any page you want. Once done, use the “Export Final PDF” button to download ready PDF to your PC.
A bunch of really useful email contacts: PDF converter, invisible personal assistant, scanner (for real), quick document sharing, and an excellent group conversation starter.
(1) PDF@koolwire.com
Koolwire is a simple, no-login required PDF conversion service. Simply send the document (DOC, PPT, XLS, JPEG, GIF, RTF, and TXT.) to ‘PDF@koolwire.com’ and shortly after get it back as PDF.
(2) WHATEVER@drop.io
Drop.io lets you create so called drops and use them as private file storage boxes. Drops can be shared with others on a variety of access levels (viewer, contributor, etc.). Best of all, each drop gets its own email address, so everything emailed to that email will be added to the drop.
I am sure that once in a while everyone needs to do some kind of currency conversion. Whether you are comparing prices on non local shopping sites or checking balance in your offshore bank account, The Universal Currency Converter from xe.com can make it much easier.
UCC provides free and up to the minute conversion rates. Service is extremely user-friendly and fast. All you need, is to select amount, base currency and currency to convert to.
Subscribe to MakeUseOf and get daily updates about new cool websites and programs in your email for free. Plus get free cheat sheets to your favorite programs.
I always thought...