Bookmarks gather by the dozen each day and they gather dust just as quickly. Today, a browser like Firefox offers tagging as a means to clean up bookmarks. Subject specific folders have always existed to bunch similar bookmarks together.

But bad habits reign supreme and usually bookmarks end up in a haphazard array. A lot of sites have their fifteen minutes of fame and then disappear. But the bookmark is left behind like a gravestone marker. A lot many sites update their favicons or change over to a new URL. But the bookmark remains stuck as a misdirected pointer on the web highway.

The broom to clean up bookmarks and bring them up to date by eliminating the dead ones is called AM-Deadlink. The four browser bookmarks it helps sweep are of Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla and Firefox (FF ver. 3+ with an alternate method).

AM-Deadlink detects the dead links and duplicates, and marks them for removal. It can also clean up duplicates in comma-separated and tab-limited text files and saved URL files. Also, AM-Deadlink downloads the current favicons for all your Favorites and Bookmarks for the four browsers.

AM-Deadlink is a 1.3MB free download. Its operation is fairly straightforward. Let’s see it in action.

Sweeping away the dead bookmarks

1. On install, AM-Deadlink provides an option to install itself as a normal Windows program or as a portable program on your thumb drive. The second option is for those who want to carry the freeware around on their flash drives and use it to clean up multiple computers. In other words, it’s a portable app!
2. The interface is simple with a dropdown to select the browser of choice. Selection of the browser triggers the program to list out the bookmarks for the specific browser.
3. Proceed to check the bookmarks with a single click. The time required for complete checking will of course depend on the number of bookmarks you have piled up. The software went through the 360 odd IE bookmarks in approximately 8 minutes and alerted the completion with a sound.The Status column shows the state, whether the link is lost, it’s healthy or there is some other error with the page. You can sort the errors to the top the list and individually re-check them by opening them in an internal preview or in a browser.

   

4. After validating the links, you can choose to delete the faulty links. Sorting the errors on top also enables to delete them all together.
5. Favicons can also be similarly checked, updated or deleted.
6. AM-Deadlink searches for duplicate bookmarks which is a common affair for most of us.
7. It’s always good to have a backup copy in case you delete the wrong bookmarks. AM-Deadlink makes safe your browser bookmarks from your itchy-delete-happy fingers by providing a backup option in a zip file.

Alternate Method for Firefox 3+

AM-Deadlink does a good job with IE and Opera but falters slightly when it comes to the latest version of Firefox. You have to go around a bit because the latest version of Firefox uses a database rather than a single URL file to store all the bookmarks.

The alternate method involves using the Export HTML feature in Firefox’s Bookmark Organizer and processing this HTML file through AM-Deadlink. The cleaned up HTML file can then be imported into a fresh bookmarks folder (importing it into the older bookmarks will create duplicates).

The bit of manual labor with the latest edition of Firefox is the only slight flaw in an otherwise impressive free program. Also, apart from the Help file, AM-Deadlink does not really make it clear how to go about the Firefox cleanup job.

But the end, AM-Deadlink does a dandy job of cleaning up the waste that lies in our bookmarks folder. Now, it’s only left to us to pay those links an occasional visit.

AM-Deadlink (ver.3.3) is supported on Win9x/Me/NT4/2000/2003/XP/Vista.

Image Credit: P/\UL

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But for argument’s sake, let’s say you are the Human Resources manager and you have an Excel chart of everyone’s salary – that should not be stored on the network and if the file falls in the wrong hands, the consequences could be severe. But if you were able to hide that drive from prying eyes even if they are able to circumvent your security, you will be safe.

Let us take a look at No Drives Manager, an application you can use to hide drives. You can grab the download from this link on SourceForge directly or from the users page on SourceForge here.

The application does not need to be installed and can be run from a memory stick. What the application does is modify the registry so you don’t have to! Take a look at the GUI.

The interface is very intuitive and easy to use. There are drive letters listed along the top drives A: through Z:. If the drive has been hidden, it will have a check box next to it. Chances are starting out no drives will be selected. You can hit the Hide all drives button to hide all your drives. But more likely you will want to hide a single drive. Let’s see how to do that.

Here is what my Explorer has to say about my current drives on my system:

Let’s say, I want to hide my D: drive aka WhosYourDaddy. I simply check the box next to the letter D. The Binary and decimal settings will be auto-populated and you will not need to mess with them. If you want to use this application to teach yourself how to hide drives manually – you can use this data to do so.

After you choose the drive you want to hide, you have to hit the Write current setting to the registry button. That will tell you that you need to log off and back on to see your changes.

I am logging off to complete my task. OK, I am back and logged back in. Now let us take a look at my Windows Explorer – My Computer again:

I feel like a cheap magician! Wow, look it has disappeared! And with a wave of my magic stick I can make it re-appear. Well, a click of the Run button that is…

This exercise will show you that the drive is hidden but shortcuts and typing in a path or direct file path will take you to where you need to go as you can see below.

Un-doing it is just as easy concealing the drive. Bring the application back up, then uncheck the box next to the drive letter you hid – the D: drive in my case. And write your modifications back to the registry using the Write current setting to the registry button. After you log out and back in again your drive will be magically restored. We have tried doing this with the Windows tool diskpart – but we wound up corrupting data so this is far less risky!

Do you have an easier way of doing this? We would love to hear about it in the comments, come on don’t be shy!

No Drives Manager.

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Thanks to my flash drive accessory, I can literally carry a computer in my pocket. Among a lot of other portable software, a dictionary is a key weapon for my job as a writer.

The great thing about a dictionary is that you can have too many of them and still require more. Just like the hardcover versions, each digital dictionary has its own nuance.

Lingoes is a free dictionary application and a multi-language translator which caters to over 60 languages. But with my penchant for the portable versions, we will take a look at Portable Lingoes. Both are essentially two faces of the same software. With the portable version you don’t have to install anything and can run it straight off its folder on your pen drive.

Lingoes starts its life as a 5.3MB download. And here’s how it looks when you first crank it up with a word.

Wait! Wasn’t this just a dictionary and a free language translator? Principally yes, but there are quite a few, other useful nuggets tucked away inside the program. Let’s take it feature by feature from here on.

The Dictionary – Both Online and Offline

Get the meaning of the word from a number of pre-installed resources like Google Dictionary, Essential English Dictionary, WordNet Online, Spelling Suggestion and Google Web Definition. You have access to a lot of renowned and popular dictionary packs which can be installed for free.

The top of the line dictionary downloads includes dictionaries and thesauruses from Longman, Collins, Merriam-Webster and Macmillan. That’s just one shelf of choices from the many that are on offer inclusive of dictionaries in over 60 languages. All dictionaries can be managed from a single interface.

Please note that the sizes of these dictionary packs are considerable from a few to double digit MBs. So make some space for them on your flash drive.

The cursor translator can be configured from the settings. It allows you to lookup the meaning or translation on any webpage or Windows on the click of a mouse over the word.

Wikipedia – One Touch Access to Over 3,500,000 articles

This is one resource that you should always make space for. The English version of the online knowledge bank tops at 257.48 MB of download. Heavy but worth each MB it gulps up.

Free Language Translator – Get Over 44 Lingos

Lingoes uses a cursor translator (select a word or a sentence with the cursor) to cross translate in 23 languages. You can set your native language in the settings and Lingoes decodes foreign words into it. The translation service can be selected from a dropdown and the choices are aplenty.

Configure the hotkeys for productivity and you won’t have to halt in your tracks for the translations. I tried it out with my native tongue and the results were pretty close and understandable.

Speaking Sam

Lingoes uses the default Windows installed Microsoft Sam to voice text. It also offers real time word pronunciation while selecting or looking up the word. If you further want to enhance the voiceovers, Lingoes makes it easy to download and install a Natural Voice Packages from Longman and Webster.

A how-to on how to build your own voice package is also given.

Extra Nuggets – The Appendices

Unlike the human one, you won’t throw this away. The Appendices are a useful subset of tools helping you with things like currency conversion, time zone calculations, International Dialing Codes and weights/measures converter. Many others are downloadable from the website. To expand the mix, there are a few games also on offer.

After downloading it, I am still playing around with it. As a dictionary it is a very good alternative to the ever popular WordWeb. Lingoes offers a lot of expandable options. Connected to the internet, it becomes a powerful interface for clearing away my wordy cobwebs. But even without the net, it offers a lot more that belies its freeware tag. For instance, with the kind of space today’s thumb drives offer, I can download and install the weighty Wikipedia file and use it for offline lookups.

Lingoes (v2.6.2) ’speaks fluently’ with Win 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7 + IE6 or later.

Let us know how do you like the sound of Lingoes. If you like your words and the meanings behind them, I am betting you should like the little green parrot.

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Do you know where your 200GB is on free space? What’s that? You only have 72MB free? What is using all that lost hard drive space? What do you mean you don’t know?

It looks like you are in need of a virtual canine application called Space Sniffer (Windows only)… Get it? Like a dog.

Umm well, the software is MUCH better than my joke – I assure you. No, really!

Go ahead and grab the download from here. It is a 1.1MB file. Once you get that file downloaded, go ahead and extract the executable file from the zip file. It is called SpaceSniffer.exe and it is completely portable!

Once you get the file out and run it you will see a screen that looks like this:

On that first screen, select the drive you want to analyze or sniff for lost hard drive space. I selected my C:\ drive. And hit Start. That starts the action and you will see a moving representation of your selected drive as it sorts out what is on your drive. You will see something similar to this as it runs:

If you click on any of the drive portions, you can “Zoom In” like so (even while you are still scanning). I double-clicked on the desktop portion occupying 5.4GB of data and saw this:

It is pretty damn cool to see the directories or drives broken down like this. My drive did take some time to complete. In the area of 15 minutes. But I was using the system as I went for normal day to day activities. Then it was complete.

Now let’s take a look at your options. You can see them by hitting Edit – Options. Then, you can see each of the four tabs below:

The first tab denotes if you should show free space, show unknown space, sort item and the minimum size of an element (this is the smallest items), proportions of items against each other and initial detail level. Mess around with them and see what works for you.

Hmm dynamic zoom as a effect? Let’s enable it and see what happens. After enabling this feature it, shows the effect of “Zooming in”. It’s cool but not very useful. It did not use as much memory as I expected.

Scan alternate data steams? This had me stumped so I checked my friend Google and read this:

Just after that I heard about an Alternate Data Stream (ADS) scanner named LADS. When I ran it on one of my drives I was shocked to find that I had over 17,000 hidden objects that ETrust had apparently placed there as part of it’s virus scanning procedure. They’re “Alternate Data Streams”, and one was associated with every file on my NTFS partitions. [http://www.2kevin.net/datastreams.html]

That sparked my interest enough for me to check the box and re-run my scan.

My new scan showed free space but no Alternate Data Streams – but I will scan my servers tonight and let you guys know via the comments how it went later on.

The last option in the preferences is the colors of items placed on your map. Tweak them to your heart’s desire and let us know how it works out in the comments!

Do you use a similar free program to find lost hard drive space? We would love to hear how you keep your hard drives in check! Voice it out in the comments.

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NirLauncher can be downloaded here. It is approximately a 7MB download that unpacks to give you over 100 useful tools and utilities that are always good to keep in handy. Listing all of them would be quite a task, but NirLauncher manages to present them in a very usable interface categorized according to their functionality. You can find portable utilities for your flash drive from ranging from password recovery tools to outlook and office utilities all ready to be fired up.

You might not know about all the tools that are listed in there, so NirLauncher provides a brief description of the tool letting you know what it would do. NirLauncher also lets you know the version and homepage of the tool/utility in case you need some more information about it.

Some of the tools included in NirLauncher might need administrative privileges in order to function properly, for such tools there is a Run As Administrator option in the file menu. If you need even finer controls while invoking any utility, try the Advance Run mode. The Advance Run mode lets you specify command line parameters that would be passed to the tools, environment variables, directory path and window mode options for various tools.

You can easily add or remove a software package via the appropriate commands under the Launcher menu. NirLauncher stores all the details regarding a software package in a .nlp file. So you would require one to add another software package. While it may not be easy to find one mentioning your favorite tools, it is easy to edit the existing nirlauncher.nlp file to do just about anything you want. The .nlp file is a regular text file you can edit with your favorite text editor. It is nicely structured and self explanatory. You can find additional details here if you get stuck someplace.

To remove an application, simply remove its entry and remove the executable and all related files from the NirLauncher directory. To add another portable tool, drop the required files and create a new entry under the appropriate group. Restart NirLauncher and you should see the changes you made. NirLauncher’s site provides an .nlp file for the ever so popular Sysinternal applications that you can use to integrate Sysinternal Suite into your list of tools.

There are some handy shortcuts you should get used to that will make navigating NirLauncher a snap. F7 and F8 keys can be used to move to the next and previous group or category. F3 and F4 keys can be used to switch between various software packages you might be using within NirLauncher. Use F6 to quickly access the Advance Run dialog and Alt + M to run any application with administrative privileges.

NirLauncher is an awesome tool that gives you access to hundreds of cool applications. Definitely one to keep handy on a USB drive. If you can spare some time, add your favorite tools and remove the ones you don’t like for a customized launcher harboring all your favorite portable applications.

What are you favorite portable applications? Would NirLauncher find a place on your flash drive? Tell us in comments.

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Being portable, none of them require installation and can easily be run off a USB stick. These portable games for flash drive are fairly simple and straight forward so don’t expect any World Of Warcraft types of game. But that doesn’t make them any less fun to play.

So, let’s take a look at 5 portable games and see which ones are best.

Jooleem Portable

Jooleem’s appearance reminds me a bit of Bejewelled (a.k.a. Diamond Mine). In Jooleem, you have to click on four marbles of the same colour to form a rectangle. They then disappear, the remaining marbles rearrange themselves and off you go again. It takes a while to get the hang of the whole rectangle thing but eventually you are whizzing along and the whole thing is really addictive. Guess what I’ve been doing today! Still, I prefer Bejewelled and I wish it would be brought out as a portable app game.

Atomic Tanks Portable

Another addictive time waster!  In my opinion, Atomic Tanks is the best of the bunch. You are a tank, pitted against another tank and you take turns firing potshots at each other. You use your arrow keys to aim your gun at the right angle then fire with the space bar. The first one to destroy the other one wins.

I spent literally hours today playing this. The best and fastest way to win is to destroy the ground around the enemy tank which makes the tank sink lower into a hole. This makes it more difficult for them to aim at you properly. Once you have them deep in the hole and you have the right angle for your gun, then you have them at your mercy.

L Breakout 2 Portable

Maybe I am just being a bit slow today but it took me a while to figure out how to play this game. I eventually worked it out. You launch a ball and then, just like tennis, you have to move left and right hitting the ball again towards the bricks until all the bricks are destroyed.

This is actually a really difficult game to play – it requires lightning fast reflexes as the ball comes back at you really fast. You don’t have any time to hesitate or think about it. Just keep moving left and right with the left and right arrow keys, trying to catch that ball before it gets past you (and it got past me MANY times!)

Tile World Portable

This one is a maze puzzle. In the middle, you have Chip and you have to guide Chip towards the exit so he can proceed to the next level. Trouble is, there are many things in Chip’s way, such as blocks and hostile creatures. You have to successfully navigate the maze and bring Chip out without bringing him to any harm.

Poker TH Portable

I am currently trying to learn Poker (blame it on my repeated viewings of James Bond’s Casino Royale!). This portable version of Poker Texas Hold’em is a good opportunity to play poker with 6 networked or computer players. It also has custom avatars, custom cards, online chat and sound.

There are many other portable games for flash drive in the Portable Apps Games Section but these were the ones I found to be the best. Which ones do you like the best? Let us know in the comments!

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Secondly, you may be someone putting together a tutorial on how to do something, like how to use a specific piece of software. Another use is sharing cool things with others, such as many posts here on MakeUseOf.

As you can also tell from reading articles here is that there are a few different software options when you want to take screenshots. There’s the PrtSc Button, Gadwin PrintScreen, Jing, and Wink (from Ben’s article, 4 Tools For Creating Screenshots and Screencasts).  Also check out Ann’s post, All You Need For Making Awesome Screenshots.

This article is about the tool I use to take screenshots, Lightscreen Portable. There are several reasons I choose to use Lightscreen Portable including ease of use, stability, and portability. I would like to run through some of the features and then share some new features that are available in the newest release.

Lightscreen Portable is how it sounds, light.  It doesn’t slow everything down when in use.  It has some basic features that are helpful but isn’t over laden with so much that it’s confusing to use.  When you open it, click on the large “Screenshot” button.

You’ll then be offered four options, three of which having to do with what you want a snap shot of.  You can grab the whole screen, the open window, or an area of the screen that you choose.

If you click on the “Options” button, you can modify some settings. You can choose the directory the image files will automatically be saved in, the filename properties, the type of image file, and whether or not you want a delay (I haven’t tried the delay option but it enables you to get prepared for the perfect shot by delaying the capture). You can also choose to start the program when Windows starts (I’m weird about setting programs to start with Windows because I only want programs running that I need running).

Click on the “Hotkeys’ tab and you can learn some keyboard shortcuts that’ll make grabbing screenshots that much easier. In fact, you can click on each one and you’ll have the ability to set the hotkey to whatever you want.

Click on the “Options” tab and you’ll get – guess what – more options! The two I make sure are checked are the “Show a system tray icon” so I can open the program quickly and easily when it’s running in the background, and the “Hide Lightscreen while taking a screenshot” so I don’t accidentally grab a screenshot with the Lightscreen program window in the way.

Using Lightcreen Portable is very easy. Once it is installed and running, all you have to do is hit Ctrl+PrtSc to chose the area to grab (just hitting PrtSc will save a snapshot of the whole desktop) and a file will automatically be saved in the directory you choose in the settings. You can either use the image file as is or open it in whatever image editing program you use to add notations, etc. It really is that easy!

It being a portable application, once installed you can actually move the containing folder to whatever drive you want, including a portable drive, and you can still run it just by clicking the program file.  It just adds the flexibility we all can use.  Check out PortableApps and look into using the PortableApps Suite from your USB drive.

There are some new features introduced in the newest version of Lightscreen. First of all, you can choose to have a save-as window pop up so you can choose the file name and location while in the midst of grabbing screen shots. Also, there is now support for cursors. This can be helpful if you are trying to point something out with your cursor. Check out Lightscreen’s “What’s New” page to find out more of what is new.

Everyone has their opinion about what software to use for what job and screen capturing is certainly no exception. Tell us all about your favorite tool and why it’s your favorite!

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Stick is an application that lets you attach tabs to the sides of your screen so that you have a convenient tabbed desktop. The tabs can contain a wide variety of content ranging from contents of a folder to web pages to RSS feeds to Notes to a calendar or calculator.

Let’s have a look.

You can download stick from iWonderDesigns. The application is available as an installer as well as a portable version that you can run off your USB drive. When running for the first time, Stick prompts you start building a tabbed desktop by adding the tabs. Go ahead and create some that you would like. You can create 6 types of tabs:

Notes

• Lets you store notes in rich text format which makes it perfect for things like a To Do list you can access quickly from your tabbed desktop, or any kind of random scribblings you access often.

Navigator

• The navigator tab can be used to create a tab to point to your favorite folder location or any URL of your choice. Excellent for things like Gmail and Google Reader that you like to keep open.

RSS Reader

• I mention Google Reader above, however Stick offers an RSS reader of its own. Complete with auto refresh and previews you can view one or more RSS feeds in an RSS tab. It can also notify you of new items in the feed via a popup.

TaskBar

• Displays a list of all items you have opened, similar to the Windows Taskbar

A Calendar and Calculator

It can take some time to think out a perfect tab setup for your desktop. You can of course add as many of them as you want to begin with and then narrow down or refine your choices to get the perfect setup. I have a To Do tab, some other random note tabs, a Gmail tab, a Twitter Tab, another for a quick Google search, and some that point to local folders that I access often.

You can simply move the tabs around to stick to any edge of the screen. You have to move the tabs one by one to wherever you want them to be which is a pain. It would be nice to have the ability to move all the tabs as a group.

Stick offers you a dedicated Tab Manager that you can use to create and delete tabs. In addition, the Tab Manager lets you change the properties of any tab. Properties include options like always on top, autohide, autoshow, keyboard shortcuts to toggle visibility of any tab, transparency and themes.

You can store a set of options for the tabbed desktop as a template and thus change the options of all tabs together in a snap. This comes in handy when you would be working full screen or want to get rid of all the distraction for whatever reasons.

Stick is loaded with options and lets you tweak almost every aspect of the tabs to your liking. It is a great alternative way to display information which I prefer over gadgets and sidebars that keep staring at your face.

Do you have other creative desktop setups or favorite applications you use for similar purposes?  Please mention them in the comments!

If you missed the link above , here is the link to Stick

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You can download MobaLiveCD from here. A mere 1.6 MB download, MobaLiveCD presents an inviting prospect over virtualization solutions like Virtualbox, although it is not as feature rich. Under the hood, MobaLiveCD uses QEMU – the open source emulator. If you ever tried using QEMU, you would know that it requires a fair bit of configuration and know-how. MobaLiveCD does away with all that and provides you with a single executable file which launches the application, you don’t even need to install MobaLiveCD.

MobaLiveCD is a portable application, the interface is intuitive and straightforward. To run a Linux LiveCD:

• Just click on the ‘Run the LiveCD’ button.
• Browse to the iso image.
• Choose whether to create a virtual hard drive or not and the LiveCD boots up.

MobaLiveCD needs to copy files to the system32 directory, so you should run MobaLiveCD with elevated rights if you see an error like the one below. To do with elevated rights just click on the exe file and choose Run as Administrator.

Keep in mind that you are essentially running another operating system inside Windows thus the resources available to MobaLiveCD will be limited. So you should not expect the same performance levels you would get by restarting the computer and booting from the CD ROM. Nevertheless depending upon your computer’s configuration you can still get decent performance, enough to let you try out the Linux Live CD thoroughly.

You can toggle full screen mode using Ctrl + Alt + F and Ctrl + Alt would bring the cursor back to the host operating system. In addition you can use the Right-Click Menu button that would create a right click context menu entry for ISO files, allowing you to run an ISO file directly within MobaLiveCD from the context menu.

The latest version of MobaLiveCD can also be used to run a Live USB drive right inside Windows. Click on the Run Live USB button and follow the prompts. If you would like to save the state of your work MobaLiveCD also lets you create a virtual hard disk.

Oh and in case you are wondering which LiveCD you should download, check out the Unofficial(fake) Chrome OS. And now that we are on the topic, let me confess that it was out of an urge to try out the fake Chrome OS(and laziness to set up a virtual machine in Virtual Box) that I realized MobaLiveCD is a cool application we haven’t covered yet, so now you know about it.

MobaLiveCD is great for testing new Linux distributions with a Linux Live CD, downloading ISO’s before burning them or testing remastered Live CD’s that generally require some hit and miss to get things exactly the way you want. With MobaLiveCD you can test them without needing to set up a virtual machine or burning CD’s.

Have you used MobaLiveCD? Do you know of any other similar application? Let us know in the comments.

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But not all in the scattering of software programs are made keeping in mind such best practices. But then there’s the Windows default Add/Remove tool.

True, it’s there but it sometimes fails as an umbrella solution. Though not entirely its own fault, as some programs are just not designed keeping good package management practices in mind.

But as some users will attest, it is notoriously slow and lacks some basic handling features like search and full featured seek and search tasks which make for easier program management. There have been instances where a quirk has rendered the tool defunct.

That’s why it helps to keep another free software uninstaller app ready and primed for an emergency surgery on your system. There are in fact too many tools for the job. Selecting one is like checking out the surgeon who is best suited for removing a mass of tissue from your system.

For a long time my tool of choice has been Revo Uninstaller. But lately I have been hunting around for apps which I can just drop into my thumb drive. Call it convenience or call it a new found respect for portable software.

So here are three free, portable software uninstallers which just might fit the bill and the flash drive.

Revo Uninstaller Portable(v1.83)

Shifting loyalties from the big brother to his little one wasn’t so difficult. The zipped version of Revo Uninstaller is in the same form albeit in a portable version. It downloads as an itsy bitsy 900KB package. Extract and drop into your flash drive.

I won’t go into too much detail with Revo because it features the same layout of features as covered in the earlier review. My first impressions confirmed that, as I got the same listings of apps which the default Windows Add/Remove missed. It also features the same set of optimization tools like a registry cleaner and a junk cleaner. The utility of the Hunter Mode remains the same – point the cross hairs over an icon and you get all details and uninstall info on it.

Revo Uninstaller Portable is a free Win2000/XP/2003/Vista software.

MyUninstaller (v1.50)

Another lithe add/remove alternative not better than Revo but still quite handy…the 63KB package can be unzipped and used in a portable fashion. The NirSoft software lists all the installed programs (and updates installed under Windows and suites like MS Office) and other related info like product name, company, version, uninstall string, installation source, registry key, root key and default installer used.

MyUninstaller keeps tabs on the state of your system before and after the installation of some software. The software reports can be saved into a text file or HTML file. Program entries can also be directly opened to their registry entries. Delete multiple software in one go via the advanced mode.

The one apparent flaw I noticed was that the program is slow to start-up. But the help file offers a Quick Mode workaround in which the settings are saved to an INI file resulting in faster load times.

NirSoft MyUninstaller is a free Win98/Win2000/XP/2003/Vista software.

KUninstall (v0.3)

Three words – small, quick and powerful. The 322 KB portable, free software uninstaller has a clean cut interface for the job. It loads up very fast and works quickly to list all programs installed in your system. You can get some detailed info with a right click on a program entry like direct access to its website, its registry entry, its installation folder and other detailed info.

The Finder tool in KUninstall lets you remove or uninstall running programs by terminating the process associated with that program. You just need to click the running program and then click the finder on the interface of KUninstall. You can also drag and drop a shortcut of an installed program for a fast uninstall. Long list of programs can be scanned and filtered using the search box integrated in the portable software.

KUninstall is a free Win2000/XP software.

Installing is a cinch in Windows. But uninstalling sometimes turns into a game of blind man’s bluff. Blame it on little program leftovers on the wake of an installed program. These three free software uninstaller are just three alternatives which makes the chore a lot more user friendly. A clean system is a lot healthier system. If you believe that, also read Stefan’s post on How to Uninstall Applications Efficiently and Remove Obsolete Files.

Finally give us some of your own pointers on how you keep your system clean. Which are your apps for the uninstall hatchet job?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• USB Office Showdown: Tiny USB Office vs. Portable Apps (14)
• Toss Broken Keyboard to side with Portable On-Screen Keyboard (14)
• How To Create A Portable Ubuntu Installation USB On The Mac (43)
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• 5 Awesome Apps To Make Things Easier On A USB Drive (28)

Doing my research for this post (yes, it’s almost like real journalism here at MakeUseOf), I was surprised to read the first version (1.0) was released only five years ago, in November of 2004. Even with the recent extra competition brought on by Chrome from Google, Internet Explorer and Opera, it kept gaining popularity. Mozilla Firefox now has a market share of about 22%.

Alright, enough with the history lesson. Many people like to take Firefox with them on a USB drive to college or work so that they can use their personalized settings and plugins. A lot of these places still use Internet Explorer 6 or something like that, so using a portable version of Firefox seems like the smart thing to do. Installing is easy when you use the portable version PortableApps, but updating Firefox portable is not so easy. If you don’t have a portable version of Firefox installed yet, read this article on how to turn your USB drive into a fully functional PC or just go to www.portableapps.com to install it. But if you want to update a portable Firefox app, you can’t just click the auto-updater button that pops-up when there’s a new version. You have to install a normal version of Firefox, with some special settings. Here’s how.

Download the regular setup file

You can download the regular setup file from Mozilla. The latest version at the time of writing is 3.5.2. So if you have a previous one, it’s wise to update because Mozilla keeps plugging security holes all the time.

Start the installation

Double-click the file you have just downloaded. Click ‘Next’ in the first window. Now pay attention as it goes a little differently than usual. In the second screen, select “Custom” and deselect the check-box next to “Use Firefox as my default web browser”.

Click ‘Next’ to continue.

In this screen, click “Browse” to search for the folder where your portable Firefox is installed on your USB drive. Select the “DefaultData\Firefox” folder so the location ends with “\FirefoxPortable\DefaultData\Firefox”. This way, you overwrite the files from the current installation but keep all your settings and plugins. Click ‘OK’ and ‘Next’.

In the next screen, deselect the options to create icons since you already have icons from the previous installation. After this, you can click ‘Next’ to check the summary and press “Install” to do just that.

There you have it, your portable Firefox is updated, all secure and future-proof. Until the next update anyway. Click “Finish” with the checkmark in place to check out the newest version of the open-source browser. You can take Firefox with you to your school or office. It’s also a great way to try out the newest alpha versions without endangering your stable version. You can find the latest test versions here, but as Mozilla themselves claim it “might delete all your files and cause your computer to burst into flames”.

If you’re new to the portable apps, I recommend looking around at their site Portableapps.com. There is a suite of the most used software that you can start with. Some apps to check out are OpenOffice.org Portable, Pidgin Portable and FileZilla Portable. Here are some more portable app suggestions.

Do you use portable apps? How do you update them to the latest versions? Share your technique in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• USB Office Showdown: Tiny USB Office vs. Portable Apps (14)
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Sure you could use Group Policy to monitor files for changes, but how many of you out there know how to do that? Instead, a small portable application called HDD Profiler rocks hard core. It can tell you who has modified, accessed or created a new file/folder inside the folder you are monitoring….that’s a mouth full! Long story short – you can tell what was accessed or changed by a simple snapshot method.

I have a directory in mind. One that I want to monitor, but I also don’t want anyone to know that I am watching this folder and with HDD Profiler that is exactly what you get.

When you run it, you will see a screen that looks like this:

You can see that there are tabs for each of these: New Files, Removed Files, Created Files, Modified Files, Resized Files, New Folders and Removed Folders. There will be nothing in any of the tabs initially. We need to take a snap shot of the folder we want to monitor first. I choose my desktop by hitting either F8 or go to the Menu – Task – Snapshot.

Choose a folder you want to monitor for changes and a folder to store the snapshot file. If you are working locally check the Local Snapshot button. Leave it un-checked if you are using a remote machine’s folder. Then simply hit SnapIt.

It will save the snapshot file to your specified directory. These snapshot files all will have a .hps extension. I save mine to My Documents. Next go ahead and make some changes to that folder. I created some new sub-folders, renamed a file, deleted a file and opened a document. HDD Profiler recorded all of that for me. Let’s take a look.

To compare the current version of the folder against your snapshot you hit Menu – Task – Profile or F9. After you do that you should be able to see all the changes you made to the folders contents. There is no user information associated with it but you will know that someone messed with something!

This is an awesome way to manually monitor files for changes that no one will know is in place. The only downside of this application is that you need to manually snapshot the folder in question and you need to know about the problem before it happens….hey some of us Admins stay ahead of the game!

For me I will be using this to watch some of the executive folders on a local server to see who has been accessing what. You can put this to use when you think someone is spying on you or maybe someone is randomly deleting files. This will help you become Sherlock Holmes!

How do you track folder usage or audit your file system? Maybe someone out there has an easier way or something a little more automated?

We would love to hear about your ways in the comments!

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Two things immediately stand out about this free software (apart from the fact that it’s free!).

First, it’s specifically meant to increase the size of digital images while trying to retain the quality. It is not a full featured image editor or even an image viewer.

Second, you can unzip it and run it as it is without an installation. That means I can carry it around like portable software.

Before we start with the hard facts about this open source software, let us again remind ourselves that enlarging an image from its normal dimensions will result in loss of quality. The trick is to do it in a way that’s not detectable to the human eye or the loss is at least within a fair to middling range.

The Look of the Program

SmillaEnlarger is a standalone application. Fire it up and you are greeted with two viewers – the Source and the Preview. Don’t mind the husky dog. Smilla doesn’t bite!

• Bring your file into the SmillaEnlarger image program in the usual way or by dragging and dropping. Set the destination directory for the enlarged image or keep it in the source folder.
• A grey square in the middle of the Source image marks the area which is under preview. Grab the grey frame to move it around the source image. You can move the image in the preview window also with the mouse.
• If you want to enlarge a definite area of an image use a cropping rectangle. By clicking the mouse and dragging it in the source window, you can set a new cropping rectangle. Enlarge and Save to get the cropped (and enlarged) section or click Undo Cropping to reverse the action.
• The new enlarged size can be set either through the zoom slider or by typing a New Width and New Height.

The Six Filters for the Touchup

• Sharpness – for sharper edges.
• Flatness – for matte like gradient less finishes.
• PreSharpen – for sharpening the source image before enlargement.
• Dithering – for smoothening jagged edges.
• DeNoise – for removing artifacts and noise.
• FractNoise – for a more grainy effect

This is where a graphic designer’s eye comes in handy. For us laymen, it boils down to sliding the sliders and experimenting. For best results, increase sliders by a minimal amount and click preview to test. Also to understand what the filters are doing, you can zoom into an area of an image and try out each filter one by one.

The enlargement done, the filters applied and with the preview checked out, a click on the Enlarge & Save button gives you the blown up image, hopefully with very little loss in quality. SmillaEnlarger saves the new image with the original file name plus a suffix.

After the Blowup

Compare the image below with the one in my previous article. (With some latitude for web compression)

Trying to increase the size of an existing digital image is a bit of hit-and-miss given the fact that an image program has to figure out how to add pixel information to the bitmap using available information. Also, the original quality and the color ranges in each image make for varying results. Is that why a batch processor for handling many images in one go is such a bad idea?

Maybe it could do with one. But a version number of 0.8.5 shows that it’s still early days for SmillaEnlarger. So far the enlarged image and the SmillaEnlarger software both look good.

SmillaEnlarger v.0.8.5 is open source Windows only software. Download the 8MB zip file and let us know if you would like to give up the bytes for it.

Image Credit: kevindooley (Wanted: Santa Claus)

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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ControlPad allows you to execute custom run commands by entering specific numbers. Press the * key and then enter the numbers or what we will call a ‘code’ and the appropriate command will be executed.

ControlPad is available as a Windows installer package as well as a portable zip version that you can put on your USB drive to carry it along with you.

Once you have installed the program (or you have run the portable version) you will see ControlPad residing in the system tray waiting for your input. The way you use ControlPad is really simple: Press and hold the * key till you see an input panel like below

Now you can key in the numbers to run any command. ControlPad allows you to run commands and applications, open any document, open any web address, or send keystrokes to the application in focus to make repetitive tasks easier.

However before you can go about executing commands in a hurry you would have to tell ControlPad what you want to do when you key in a particular code. This is easily done from the same interface. Follow these steps :

• Press and hold *
• Enter the code you want to configure
• Then hit the ‘/’ (divide) key. You will now be able to enter the command you want to execute or browse to the application you want to launch at the specific code. You can also use the built in useful commands to control your media player, browser, volume etc.

Now whenever you enter this code, the appropriate command will be run. All the commands are stored in a “command file”. The command file is a simple text file, you can easily back it up or edit the commands to your liking.

You can customize ControlPad from within ControlPad Settings. You can customize the font, the look, transparency, sound, save/restore settings etc from within the settings dialog.

ControlPad also has a beeper function that allows you to set up reminders and alarms quickly.

• Use the ++X syntax to set up a alarm to sound off after X seconds.
• +XXXX would sound an alarm at XX:XX (in 24 hr format)

So using ++7 would sound off an alarm after 7 minutes and +1700 will sound an alarm at 5 pm.

You can also use the + key when entering codes to run multiple commands. As an example if 1 launches Firefox and 2 launches Winamp, then entering 1+2 will launch both Firefox and Winamp. As an indication you will see a green mark in the lower right corner of the interface whenever a command is available for the code (or combination of codes) that you have entered.

ControlPad does require that you know the code to run a particular command – however since you are the one creating the code that should not be much of a problem. It is a handy application and the ability to carry it along on a USB drive makes it even more useful. You can now easily launch applications using the same codes on different computers as long as the commands remain the same.

Let us know what you think about ControlPad in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• USB Office Showdown: Tiny USB Office vs. Portable Apps (14)
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Armed with my faithful MacBook, an internet connection, and a 2GB USB flash disk; I set out on an adventure to bring my daughter’s future netbook alive.

Deciding on the OS

It didn’t take long for me to decide to install Ubuntu on the netbook. Free would be the first reason and familiarity is the second. I’ve tried Ubuntu before and I have the installation CD with me.

As naive as it sounds, some people still think that you can just copy and paste the content of the CD to the USB drive and boot the machine with it. That’s why my first quest is to find out how to transfer the installation ability of the CD to USB as a portable Ubuntu installer - the Mac way of course.

The search ended up with an unexpectedly different result. I found something more interesting: there is a netbook version of Ubuntu called Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR for short) which is designed for the small screen and Intel Atom processor (as most netbooks are). The minimum requirement is 384MB of RAM.

So I choose the nearest download location for me and hit the "Begin Download" button.

Note: If you are wondering whether your netbook is compatible, you can check their list of tested and compatible models, but in general, it should work with most netbook models. Mine is not listed but I’ve discovered no problem so far.

Creating the Portable Ubuntu USB installer

The Ubuntu site has a page describing how to create the USB installer. Basically, you have to get an .IMG version of the Ubuntu installer (UNR is already in IMG format), and then convert it to the USB drive.

Windows users have the luxury of an easy GUI way of converting the IMG with the help of Disk Imager . Ubuntu users has their own Ubuntu ImageWriter. But Mac users and other Linux users have to bear with the geeky command lines method.

The first thing to do to create the portable Ubuntu USB installer using Mac’s Terminal command line is to make the process easier by moving the UNR installer file to the highest position of the folder structure and then changing the name to something shorter like "unr.img" (sans quote). Don’t forget to make sure that there’s no USB drive plugged.

Then follow these steps:

• Type : diskutil list in the Terminal and hit Enter
• Plug in your USB flash disk and repeat step 1
• Compare the result and you’ll have the device node assigned to your flash media. Usually something like "/dev/disk2" (sans quote)



• Type : diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN in the Terminal and hit Enter. You’ll have to replace the /dev/diskN with the device node that you got from step 3. From the picture above you can see that the device node assigned for my USB flash drive is "/dev/disk1" (sans quote)
• Type : sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/diskN bs=1m in the Terminal and hit Enter. But there are several things that you have to change here before you hit Enter:
  - first the /path/to/downloaded.img is the location of the downloaded UNR installer file. As we’ve already taken care of this before, all you’ve got to do is to change the string into /unr.img
  - second, the /dev/diskN is the device node which is the same as step 4
  - and the last, if you see the error line: dd: Invalid number ‘1m’ then you need to change the bs=1m into bs=1M (notice the capital ‘M’)
• Write your password, hit enter, and wait until the process is finished. Please be warned that all the data in the USB drive will be lost.
• Type : diskutil eject /dev/diskN in the Terminal and hit Enter.
• Unplug your USB drive.

Installing UNR in the Netbook

We now come to the climax of the story. I plug the USB drive into the Netbook’s USB port and start the machine. During the booting process, I press the F10 button to go into the booting option, choose to boot from the USB drive, and….the prince and princess live happily ever after.

Every manufacturer might have different settings for this booting menu, so please refer to your machine’s documentation. Another option is to look carefully at the bottom left part of the screen during the beginning of the booting process because usually the booting instructions are written there.

Now the netbook is alive and well, running UNR while my daughter has to continuously ‘compete’ with his father – yours truly – to use the tiny machine. As for me, I am now addicted to the concept of a USB Drive as the OS installation method and will surely try to find out more about it.

Have you tried UNR? Do you know any other method to create an installation USB drive for other OS’s? Share using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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As busy as we all are, and as much as we are always on the move, it ends up being a real pain trying to carry our laptops around with us. With our laptops, we need to make sure to bring our peripherals, including our power supplies, mouses, and possibly even our printers and such.

Today I want to share 4 methods of using a USB drive or an external hard drive to make your computing portable so that you can leave your laptop at home for once. This way, you can use any local computer you want, taking advantage of the convenience of just carrying your portable hard drive with you.

For each one of these methods, there have been previous posts written (both by myself and here on MakeUseOf) so I will link to them as I go.

(1)  File Syncing:

The first option is possibly the easiest option and is done with the least effort. The basic idea is to have a copy of your most needed files saved on a portable external hard drive. This is handy because any computer you end up using these days will have USB ports so you can gain access to your files.

You also want to make sure that all of the most recent changes to those files are with you. You can do this by “syncing” (or synchronizing) them.  Here on MakeUseOf, Shankar has written an article showing how easy the process can be. Just make sure that when you return to your computer, you sync the USB files and the originals on the computer. With all of your files a portable hard drive away, your important functions will be as portable as your portable drive is.

BUT, what about those programs you leave behind on your own PC?

(2) Portable Applications:

Portable applications (aka portable apps) are programs that you can install on an external hard drive to be run on almost any computer with a USB port. All parts of the program are typically located in one folder and therefore it is portable. This is very handy because you can find many useful programs (Aibek lists 100 Portable Apps in this post) that you can carry with you, feeling confident that all of your settings are staying the same. Now, any computer you come in contact with will have your favorite programs right there for your use.

Portable applications, along with your personal files synced, will make your computing experience virtually portable.  Check out a review of a cool suite containing many portable applications, including a standalone programs menu, called PortableApps Suite.

BUT, what if you enjoy having a consistent Operating System experience?

(3) Virtual Operating System:

Mojopac offers a solution you may like. It’s almost like Windows XP installed on your external hard drive.  This means that you can have your OS settings, programs, and files just the way you like running on any computer that has an external hard drive (and that runs XP but most if not many still do so it shouldn’t be much of an issue).

The programs installed in the Mojopac installation are all located on your portable hard drive so it enables true portability. I did a review but if you want cool screen shots and a video, check out the 4 Ways to Carry your PC on iPod or USB Thumbdrive that was published earlier on MakeUseOf.

What if a “virtual” OS isn’t good enough?  What if you want the safety and flexibility of actually booting from your portable hard drive?

(4) Operating Systems Which Are Boot-able From An External Hard Drive:

Another solution for making your computing portable is to install an operating system that can be booted straight from your thumb drive. There are several operating systems that you can use in such a case, one of which being Windows XP!

Basically if you can get a bootable live CD version, you can use an external portable hard drive instead of a CD!  Check out some of these links showing how: How to make your own Windows Live CD (check out this added help from Lifehacker), UNetbootin Creates USB-Bootable Linux the Easy Way.

There you have it, four methods for making your computing portable! Which of these do you typically use? Can you think of another method that doesn’t fit in these four categories? Let us know!

Image credit: Wheels00

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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I am talking everything here. They have the best free applications for everything including anti-virus, virus/spyware removal, password recovery and even DVD burning. The magic behind this baby is that it comes with a downloader so that you can use your jump drive to launch a program. That program grabs the latest and greatest versions of a whole bunch of portable tools. With that same program (Ketarin) you can keep your applications updated as well.

Once you download the zip file from here you then extract those files to your memory stick. Then you launch the application called Ketarin.exe which you can see it below in this screenshot.

After launching Ketarin you will get a screen that looks like this:

You can right click on any of the items and delete it. The right click context menu looks like this:

You add a new web application by hitting Add new application. You need either the URL or a FileHippo ID (I wrote about File Hippo here)

Once your list is set up the way you want, click the Update Now button. These are your available options:

I hit Check for updates and download. The program took off and grabbed all my applications. Some of them are password crackers and most antivirus programs will tag them as Trojans. They are in a way – they can harvest passwords but for good and not evil. But if that scares you do not download these applications! The downloads completed and my stick was ready to go.

I opened up my memory stick and saw a launcher application. I double clicked on it and was greeted with this:

When you expand all the categories there are a HELLAVA lot of applications here is the full list:

Everything but the kitchen sink! From Malware Bytes to FoxIt and back over to Gspot. I can use my jump drive to do almost anything with this kit, from recovering a system to burning a CD/DVD. If you love free software, this one is for you! Every application downloaded, I totaled 270 MB of power packed tools.

What do you have on your memory stick? Share it with us in the comments!

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New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Since reading that, I have been addicted to reading and have amassed a huge collection of literary titles and some crap, unfortunately. I have so many books, I never know what I kept and what I tossed.

So when someone asks me if they may borrow the book I was talking about last week, my answer would be, “Yeah, if you can come and find it!”

Now, I stumbled upon this small portable application called BookTomb and it not only stores all your book loving data – it also has the ability to retrieve book covers, ISBN numbers, descriptions and a bunch more from Amazon, ISBNdb and BookThing. So entering your collection into should be a snap! Let’s see how easy it is to use BookTomb.

The portable application is 2.7MB and consists of the executable and a database file. You can put them on a thumb drive or virtually anywhere. Upon launching the program, I had to modify one setting in the tools/preferences menu to allow Amazon to communicate with my database. I will show you that as I go along.

On first launch you will see this:

Next thing you should do if you want the Amazon search to work, go to Tools. Then you will see this screen:

I changed the Amazon Access Method to “via bookTome” and I choose Amazon at the bottom for “Default description service provider”. Now you are ready to enter some books!

Click on Authors or any other link on the left so that you can see the Add New Book menu option again – then hit it.

I just filled in the Title and Author. I choose Stephen King’s The Cell that I read a while back. Then, I hit the Import from Amazon button at the bottom and it brought me to this page:

I selected my book, which was the second choice and I checked the boxes next to all of the fields. If you don’t want all the information simply leave the box next to that field unchecked. Then hit the Import book button on the bottom right.

Now all the fields you chose will show up when you highlight or open your book. You can hit View all books to see everything you have added to your database. Some of the other features I like about this program include the ability to mark a book as read, search by author or title, add books to your wish list and even track your reading.

The program keeps a history of everything you modify in a book from when you added it. So if you added a book as soon as you bought it and a week later you mark it as read, all of that is recorded. You can see this by selecting a book and then choosing history like so:

This is an awesome portable application for any book aficionado! Do you have another way to catalogue your book collection?

Have you searched our directory? We have a lot of interesting posts regarding books and reading. If you can’t decide on which book to read next, let Stefan help you out by showing you the 8 best book review sites.

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The program is super small and does not require you to install anything. In other words, it’s a portable app!

I downloaded it and ran it. In about 2 minutes, I already had the program open in front of me and it looked like this.

Next up, I hit the right mouse button for my menu and checked out my choices. I then hit Load (Control + L) and picked a picture of myself. Who better to make fun of then myself, right?

Here is the image I picked. As you can see the picture is much bigger than what is on the screen by the sliders. But the app had no problems working with the portion I had on display.

I quickly moved the sliders around and hit Morph and then I started dragging my mouse around and I pulled on my nose. Oops, look at what I did!

This was fun but let’s undo it by hitting Undo and see what else I can mess around with.

You can keep them and have them displayed on the right like so:

Save them with your right-click menu and then upload them to your favorite file sharing site – then don’t forget to post the links in the comments! I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Also, don’t forget to check out other image editors we’ve previously covered, like these 10 free image editing programs for your PC.

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• How to Make Items or People Stand out in Black & White Photos (25)
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• [Google Picasa 101] – Getting Started (22)
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I find myself transferring huge amounts of data to and from my data center over the weekend. I need to transfer files on a schedule because there is no way in hell I am going to be logging onto a computer and manually setting up backups or transfers on my days off. Because bandwidth is a commodity these days, I find myself needing to know how long a transfer will take. This way, I can schedule all of my transfers and not worry about them until I verify them on Monday.

I might be a network engineer and I might be the guy who you ask what to do when your computer starts acting strange. However, I do not know how long a transfer is going to take before it starts. I don’t know how to figure it out… But now, I don’t have to!

Enter Transfer Time Calculator. Such a simple application and yet so powerful! This is a 44KB file that is fully portable. You simply download it and then run it.

You will see a screen that looks like this:

By filling in the speed of your line and the size of the file, Transfer Time Calculator will do all the math for you and show you how long it will take. Remember, this is an approximation because your line speed or the speed of the line on the other end can fluctuate. With that being said, let’s give her a try!

I simply filled in the speed of my line by typing in 100 and then selecting Megabit/Sec because my line’s speed is classified as a 100 Mbit/second line. Next, I entered 100 for the file size and then choose Giga Bytes. This will represent a 100GB file being transferred over a 100Mbit line.

Then, I hit the Calculate button near the bottom of the application and…

My results then showed that it would take approximately 2 hours and 37 minutes to transfer this 100GB file over a 100MBit line. The other side of my line is also a 100Mbits/sec private line, so this should be close to accurate if not right on point. If you are going to be using this for calculating your files being uploaded to a website or something like that, your times will be higher that reported.

You can figure out your actual upload speed by using a website such as www.dslreports.com/speedtest. We would love to hear what you think about this application and if it helps you with your daily computing activities. Do you use something similar? Maybe you have a simple formula to share with the rest of us? Either way, leave your thoughts in the comments. We won’t byte

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This 348KB download is a ZIP file that extracts to 685KB. It is a totally portable application and is very powerful and familiar to users of Photoshop. After downloading the ZIP file from the developer’s website, simply run the EXE file and you will see something similar to a Photoshop start-up screen. When it has loaded, you will be presented with a blank template, toolbars on the left and layers on the right.

People who have used graphics editors before will feel right at home.

To create a new canvas, press Control+N or choose “New” from the file menu. You can choose the dimensions before it is created.

Let’s try her out and see what she can do! I instantly opened a file by hitting File – Open

You can see that the image I have just opened is a layer, that makes this a layered graphics program just like Photoshop or Gimp. This means you can modify one layer without touching another. Next, I closed this plain, ordinary GIF file and tried to open a PSD file which is Photoshop’s native file format.

Let’s select the fill bucket, like you see in the above picture. Then, point at any blank space and fill like so…

We can undo it by pressing Control+Z. The hot keys are the same as well! Next, let’s try to add some text to a new layer. Select the Text tool from the left toolbar, it’s the button with a capital T. You can select your font and size by hitting the Choose button next to ‘Font’

Hit OK and you will see your text in a new layer:

You can turn layers on and off by checking or unchecking the box next to the layers name on the right. And also just like Photoshop, you can automate actions. In Photoshop, you can record and play back actions to make repetitive task a lot easier. Here, you can create script files with commands available in the Help section. You can then play these scripts back on an image — automating common actions like re-sizing or crazy off-the-wall things like distorting images.

Do you use Photographix or another lightweight graphics editor? If so, we would love to hear your take on it and any tips or tricks you care to share!

Click here to read more on all the articles MakeUseOf has published on portable apps.

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And who doesn’t like simple, other than my grandmother? According to their website, they aim to be a “swiss army knife” type of tool, providing access to a plethora of various free programs that can be accessed at any moment on any computer (and in a variety of ways!).

Just to name a few of the many programs included:

- Notepad: text editor
- Google Chrome: web browser
- Ccleaner: program uninstaller and registry cleaner tool
- Windirstat: hard drive usage mapper
- GIMP: images editing and manipulation program
- Format Factory: video converter
- and many more.

The software is split into three different compilations – Basic (28 softwares) , Standard (106 softwares) , and Ultimate (all 200+ softwares). It is further divided into easily identifiable categories including video, system utilities, audio, CD-DVD, file management, among many others.

Aside from running Liberkey after it’s installed on your computer, you can also install it on a portable hard drive or USB and run it straight from the device. This saves the trouble of you having to install everything on a host computer, and it provides a lot more mobility.

The Liberkey application doesn’t take up much space at all, and its size is about that of Trillian or Pidgin. If you minimize, it’ll just be a small icon in the system tray. The reason I downloaded this program was that I thought its GUI (Graphical User Interface) was very intuitive. All of the programs are categorized very concisely and to the point, making it easy for people who aren’t that computer literate to be able to access everything without getting lost.

Liberkey prefers that you register an account with them before downloading their package, but it’s free to download so you’re not required to. Even so, Liberkey constantly updates their package and adds to its program repertoire. Members who are signed up through their website are able to instantly update their Liberkey software by automatically downloading any of the new addons through the internet.

Liberkey also has a “associate file extensions” feature which allows users to launch any file whether from a directory or drive without compatibility problems.

One last thing to note is that I think Liberkey is written by a group of French programmers, as their main website (and a lot of the correspondence including forums) is in French. But don’t worry, they have an English website as well.

If you’re interested, you can check it out here. Also, if you’re interested, check out one of our very popular posts, 100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick (for Mac and Win) and view all other posts regarding apps that can fit on a thumbdrive.

Have you used Liberkey? How did you find it? Any other better alternatives to recommend? Shout out in the comments!

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I accepted my James Bond-esque task equipped only with a memory stick and a very small application called SearchMyFiles from my favorite handy dandy developer NirSoft.

SearchMyFiles is a portable improvement over the standard Windows Search option. Not only can you be stealth about your activities but it is a portable app as well. So you can throw it on a memory stick and scan to your hearts content. This will work on all Windows Operating Systems 2000 or better.

You can download the application from here. There is an installable version as well but where is the fun in that? So after downloading and running the 40kb application I saw this screen:

Wow that’s a lot of options! So I quickly configured it to do my bidding as you can see below:

I configured it to search both local hard drives, excluding the Windows directory, return all files and folders created in the last 5 days. I hit OK and was on my way… Looking over my shoulder as I went. After about 5 minutes I saw what I was looking for…

Then I hit up View – HTML Report  – Selected Items and like that I was done… I saved the HTML file to my USB Drive and I was out.

I hate being the rat but my job is my job and this tool helped me do it. Upon removing my USB drive there was no trace of the search.

Do you have a tool that you live by? Couldn’t live without? Share it with us in the comments and let us know why it is so important to you!

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Eure.ca has developed software called PackageFactory that takes your desktop application and converts it into a U3P application to run on your U3 drive. Best of all, it’s free for personal use! If you’re a developer and you want to use it on your commercial application to make a U3 compliant package, it only costs $39.95 – and I think that’s Canadian dollars. So it’s a steal at any price.

For this tutorial, I’m going to try converting Sysinternal’s autoruns.exe to a U3P application. I was going to try to make a U3P application out of PackageFactory, but I thought that might be like dividing by zero and implode the Universe. You can thank me later for not doing that.

The first step is to follow the ultra-simple instructions on PackageFactory’s interface. Applications that have such a blatantly easy to use and follow interface are wonderful. Good work here. There is a more complicated Advanced Mode to help in converting more complex program’s, yet for now let’s stick with the Wizard Mode.

Yep. It’s that simple. Your best bet is to click on the Drop EXE Here or Click to Add box. Then select the .exe file you want to convert.

I chose autoruns.exe of course and simply clicked on the Open button, which returned me to this screen:

At this point, you can edit the Program Name or add a Description if you’d like. Then, just click on the Create! arrow. PackageFactory will then convert the program and ask you where you would like to save it. Probably the best spot to save it to would be your Desktop. That’s it for creating the U3P program. No, really! Don’t tell me to shut up! Really, that’s it!

Now you just install the program on your U3 drive. If you haven’t done that before, it’s fairly similar to installing a program on your computer – probably easier even.

Open up your U3 device’s Launchpad and click on Add Programs then select Install from My Computer. Your U3 device may be different than mine or have a different type of menu, but this is what mine looks like. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Then select the U3P package you want to install from your Desktop. Follow the prompts and then test the program to make sure it works. Kazowie! Done!

Since autoruns.exe is a very simple program with just the executable file to convert, the PackageFactory Wizard works just fine. However, if you have something that requires .DLL’s or more to run, try using the Advanced Mode. It may take some practice and research to get it to work, but it can work. I’ve converted some fairly complex applications after a few tries and a little Googling and cursing in Ukrainian. Well, I assume it’s Ukrainian swear words since my wife says them a lot. Maybe it’s nonsense. She’s a little loopy after being with me for so long. I thought ‘дупа‘ was a term of affection.

Now you can really use your U3 drive for just about anything, just about anywhere and not worry about affecting someone elses computer or leaving as many tracks. Got any great little apps or neat ideas for using PackageFactory? Have you used PackageFactory for any really complex apps and got it to work? Want to learn Ukrainian swear words? Let’s hear it in the comments.

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FreeOTFE, is freeware file encryption software, which has its source code freely available. Its name comes from  ‘On The Fly Encryption’, a procedure which automatically encrypts and decrypts information at the user’s demand, without the need for interaction with the application which manages the encryption layer ‘transparently’.

The main purpose of FreeOTFE is that it lets you create so called voumes/disks which operate exactly like a normal disk, with the exception that anything written to one of them is encrypted before being stored on your computer’s hard drive. No one except you can open and view those files. In order for someone to read the files on those encrypted volumes in the future the person will need to use FreeOTFE and know the password.

First released in 2004 by Sean Dean, FreeOTFE has an easy to use interface complete with a step-by-step wizard that helps you select settings for your encrypted volume, as well as a portable mode, which means you can access your encrypted files at any computer.

How To Use FreeOTFE To Hide and Encrypt Data

Creating a new encrypted volume is very simple.

If you’re not familiar with encryption modes and their respective abbreviations, you just need to select New and then click on Next.

Next specify whether the new volume should be created as a disk image file stored on your filesystem, or take up a disk partition/entire physical disk. For beginner users it’s recommended to go with disk image file stored on your filesystem option.

In the next steps you will be asked to select a size and a password for your volume file along with some other options that you can leave on default settings.

Finally, check everything and click on the Finish button to complete the wizard. At this point you will get your encrypted volume where you can add the files. The volume file has .vol extension and stored in the location indicated durng the volume setup wizard.

When you have created your first volume, FreeOTFE will automatically mount it as a disk on your PC, and you’ll be able to copy and remove files just like another hard drive. You should find it under ‘My Computer’.

Please note that you need to format it (via right-click menu) before you can open it and move the files there for the first time.

Once the volume is formatted you can start moving the files there. When you’re done, open the FreeOTFE and select the ‘Dismount’ option to hide the disk/volume. This will remove the volume from ‘My Computer’.

After you finished working with the files and dismounted the volume, you can copy that newly created volume file to any media, a CD, a USB stick, or a memory card and carry it with you wherever you go.

Whenever you want to access or edit files on the encrypted volume you will need FreeOTFE (or similar encryption program) and a password that you provided during the volume setup wizard. First open the FreeOTFE, then click on Mount, select the encrypted volume (.vol file) and enter the password. This will mount the file as a drive and add it to ‘My Computer’ window. (Note: Make sure to dismount the volume when you are done working with it)

You can also copy a portable version of FreeOTFE (from Tools> Copy FreeOTFE to USB drive) to access the files from a computer which doesn’t have FreeOTFE or another decryption program.

When you carry those encrypted volumes on a USB drive or a CD, you also have an option to open/mount volumes in read-only mode, which means your files won’t get infected if the computer you’re working on has malware.

Here are some of the most important aspects of FreeOTFE:

• Hash algorithms: MD5, SHA-512, RIPEMD-160, Tiger and more.
• Ciphers: AES (256 bit), Twofish (256 bit), Blowfish (448 bit), Serpent (256 bit) and more.
• Cipher modes supported include XTS, LRW and CBC.
• Windows Mobile compatibility.
• Create standalone encrypted volumes or encrypt whole partitions/disks.

At the moment, the safest encryption mode is XTS, and I strongly recommend you use it instead of the others if you have very sensitive data, like social security numbers or bank account details.

The XTS proof yields strong security guarantees as long as the same key is not used to encrypt much more than 1 terabyte of data. -IEEE P1619

FreeOTFE is in many ways similar to True Crypt, which Mark O’Neil covered in detail. For more advanced users, there’s the IronKey, an USB stick built with security in mind.

I’d like to hear your experiences using encryption software and scenarios when encryption proved valuable.

You can save the extracted program on your hard drive and copy FreeOTFE afterwards to a CD using a burning application.

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• Become a Secret Steganographer: Hide and Encrypt your Files (6)
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If you’ve been a regular Make Use Of reader, I’m sure you have your Windows system configured exactly to your liking.

But what happens when you reinstall the operating system because you needed to ?

The answer is you lose all those custom settings. Sure, you can browse through our archives and enable those tweaks again or you can get used to Windows looking the way Microsoft intended it to.

Not anymore !

Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a Tweak UI application that does exactly what it’s name says it should. It is a collection of hundreds of esoteric Windows tweaks available in one application so that you don’t have to hunt for them when you really need them.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker classifies the tweaks under different categories like Personalization, System Performance, Network tweaks, User accounts, UAC and so on and presents them to the user in the simplest way possible, hiding all the gory registry editing that goes on behind the scenes.

So, suppose I’m really irritated with the time it takes Windows to kill a non-responding application and I’d like a way to make Windows kill such applications faster.

I have two ways to go about changing the default Windows behaviour. Google my heart out and find a solution by hit and miss. OR launch Ultimate Windows Tweaker (UWT).

I open up UWT, click on the System Performance category in the left sidebar and I get a number of options that I can change to improve the operating system’s performance including, lo and behold, a slider that lets me reduce the time Windows waits before killing a non-responding application.

Ultimate Windows Tweaker also includes a number of other useful and popular tweaks like changing the appearance of the start menu by adding or removing entries from it (Personalization category), turning on RSS feed discovery in IE (Internet Explorer category), disabling remote desktop sharing within the domain and network (Network Tweaks category), and so on.

The best part about this application is that it’s portable. Ultimate Windows Tweaker is a self contained executable so you can carry it with you on a thumb drive and use it as and when you want to without installing it.

I’ve found the tweaks included in UWT very useful for customizing my Windows setup and I am sure you all will also find them useful.

Do you use something different to tweak your Windows system?   If so, tell us about it.

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But today, searching through hundreds of thousands of files for a specific word in the files’ name took forever. I decided to see if there was a better way to do this so I would not have to wait for my computer to finish the search before I could have a complete list.

I once again ran into Everything on Google. This time I downloaded it. It was a portable 272KB file located here. I have tried good old Microsoft’s indexing tool once or twice in the past decade and long story short it blows big time!

I was hoping Everything was going to be a totally different story. According to what I read Everything ONLY searches through file names and that makes it very fast. But let’s actually put it through the tests.

I extracted a 589KB file from the zip file and ran it. This is what I saw:

Hmm…..everything looks pretty empty!

So I am going to try and find a group of images from my latest eBook on Photoshop. I think all the images start with Photoshop. I simply typed Photoshop and watched as my search results populated as I typed. I scrolled down a little bit past my program files from Photoshop and sure enough there were my images on my desktop in a folder called photoshop. Very nice and very fast.

How can this little app work so quickly and efficiently? I have no idea! So I opened up my task manager and looked for Everything. After the full search Everything was using around 20MB of memory. Not bad at all!  So far I am loving it. I decided to poke around their website and see what else Everything can do. I found this interesting tidbit under their FAQ’s:

How long will it take to index my files?

“Everything” only uses file and folder names and generally takes a few seconds to build its database. A fresh install of Windows XP SP2 (about 20,000 files) will take about 1 second to index. 1,000,000 files will take about 1 minute.

Everything uses RegEx (Regular Expressions) in its search bar to help you pinpoint exactly what you are looking for. Once you get the hang of it you will find it exceptionally useful in lots of places. From the program’s help file here is all the expressions that are supported and what they do:

| - A vertical bar separates alternatives. For example, gray|grey can match “gray” or “grey“.

()- Parentheses are used to define the scope and precedence of the operators (among other uses). For example, gray|grey and gr(a|e)y are equivalent patterns which both describe the set of “gray” and “grey“.

? - The question mark indicates there is zero or one of the preceding element. For example, colou?r matches both “color” and “colour“.

* - The asterisk indicates there are zero or more of the preceding element. For example, ab*c matches “ac“, “abc“, “abbc“, “abbbc“, and so on.

+ - The plus sign indicates that there is one or more of the preceding element. For example, ab+c matches “abc“, “abbc“, “abbbc“, and so on, but not “ac“.

. - Matches any single character except newlines (exactly which characters are considered newlines is flavor, character encoding, and platform specific, but it is safe to assume that the line feed character is included). Within POSIX bracket expressions, the dot character matches a literal dot. For example, a.c matches “abc“, etc., but [a.c] matches only “a“, “.“, or “c“.

[ ] - A bracket expression. Matches a single character that is contained within the brackets. For example, [abc] matches “a“, “b“, or “c“. [a-z] specifies a range which matches any lowercase letter from “a” to “z“. These forms can be mixed: [abcx-z] matches “a“, “b“, “c“, “x“, “y“, and “z“, as does [a-cx-z]

[^ ]- Matches a single character that is not contained within the brackets. For example, [^abc] matches any character other than “a“, “b“, or “c“. [^a-z] matches any single character that is not a lowercase letter from “a” to “z“. As above, literal characters and ranges can be mixed.

^ - Matches the starting position within the string. In line-based tools, it matches the starting position of any line.

$ - Matches the ending position of the string or the position just before a string-ending newline. In line-based tools, it matches the ending position of any line.

{m,n} - Matches the preceding element at least m and not more than n times. For example, a{3,5} matches only “aaa“, “aaaa“, and “aaaaa“. This is not found in a few, older instances of regular expressions.

Using these expressions I tried the following search to look for any items with AskTheAdmin in the jpg’s file name or Karl in the jpg’s file name. I am sure you can already imagine how powerful this is!

Let’s take a look at the program’s options.

On the General screen you will find the usual startup options along with some cool features like being able to run multiple instances of Everything or multiple windows of the same instance as well as hot-keys.

Everything only works on NTFS volumes so if you check the volumes tab and nothing shows up – your drives are probably not NTFS and will need to be upgraded.

The exclude option tab allows you to specify folders or files to be excluded including hidden or system files.

ETP is a feature that allows for remote searching of your local database. More information on this topic can be found here.

And HTTP offers you the ability to open up a web server on your local machine and allow queries against your local database like so:

You can open this up to the outside as well and search your PC from home without having to remote desktop in. And with some crafty FTP’ing you might be able to hand roll yourself a nice file solution.

Anyone using Everything or something similar? We would love to hear about it in the comments!

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• USB Office Showdown: Tiny USB Office vs. Portable Apps (14)
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Before I get into the nitty gritty, I want to point out that we will not be able to differentiate between a small edit and a BIG edit. We can tell if an image HAS been edited from its original file but not by how much or what.

So if you are trying to tell if Suzy O’s picture is legit you can use JpegSnoop to see if the picture has been altered or it is still in its original form (when it was taken by a digital camera). But you will not be able to tell if Suzy added a border to the image after the shot was taken if it was modified any more than that.

Am I making sense? You can see if it was edited but not how much.

Let’s take a look at the program!

First you should download the 532KB zip file containing the 1.3MB executable file from the author’s home page, Impulse Adventure.

Like I said before, it is portable and does not have to be installed. I ran it and this is what I saw:

This is not an installer, just an license agreement and a check box to automatically check for updates. I believe these settings are saved somewhere as the second time I opened JPEGsnoop it did not give me this window or options. After that you can change your update preferences within the program’s configuration.

Check the “I have read the terms” box and click OK. Then you will be show the program’s main window as you can see below:

I immediately grabbed a digital picture I had modified and opened it up with JPEGsnoop. It was a 7KB JPG file with image modifications. I got this note that said it only scans in a low res version of the image and it will be fast. You have the option to open the file as is but it will take longer. Either which way click OK and move on.

I was instantly shown my images’ details as you can see below:

There is so much information included in the final report.  The middle of the report was removed due to space limitations you can grab the whole report as a txt file here: report.

The last paragraph is what you are looking for though – It is titled “Assessment”. Here it says “Image is processed/edited”. And directly above that you can find out what program was used to edit this image. Is it full proof? Hell no! But it is better than having no scientific basis for your picture assumptions! Do you use a similar tool? Let us know your favorite JPG analyzer program in the comments.

Also maybe you want to point us to some JPG’s on the web and see if we can figure out if the images are photoshopped or original?

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Some of the features of great password managers are encryption and portability. You want your password manager to be encrypted, because that extra security can be necessary. Portability is also important, because what good is a password manager if you can’t use it everywhere? I travel a decent amount and use many different computers, so I want to always have my passwords with me.  Guessing for half an hour is never a good use of your time.

Enter KeyDb, a portable password manager.

KeyDb comes in and provides all of these features to you in a very simple and light weight program.

Installation

There is none!  KeyDb is just a 1.14 MB executable.  I wouldn’t have called it portable if it wasn’t.  This small size makes it extremely easy to take it anywhere even on your old flash drive.

Creating a Password File

KeyDb keeps your passwords in different files. You can have them all in one file or create multiple files for multiple users or purposes. Just click on the file menu and create a new password file to get started. The following window will pop up.

Once your password file is set up, start adding those passwords.

Adding Passwords

All you need to do is click on the plus symbol at the top left of the software window.  This will launch a window that will allow you to input your password information.

The software comes with a few default categories, but you can add as many as you want to keep your passwords organized.  Also, you can use the password generator to generate a very solid password if you like.

Web URLs can be used, and KeyDb can launch your default browser to go to that website, so you can quickly input your password. Notes can also be added to give you more information about the site or whatever you see fit.

Finished Product

Once you upload all of your passwords, your KeyDb will look similar to the following.

You can filter and sort your passwords to easily get to what you are looking for.

KeyDb performs as advertised.  It is dead simple and takes no time at all to get going. Also, the size (1.14 MB) and the 256 bit encryption rounds out the package.

What do you use for your password manager? Are you familiare with any other good portable password manager?

Photo Credit : Mirko Macari

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TrayIt is only about a 300k download and only about 600k installed. There’s no installer, you just download the zip and extract the contents to wherever you want to “install” it.

Since there’s no need to really install TrayIt!, it also makes a great portable app. Just unzip the contents to your portable USB drive and you’re ready to launch it. When you first launch TrayIt!, you’ll see a list of all the programs that are on your task bar.

There are a few ways minimize programs that are on the taskbar into the system tray. If you only want to minimize a program to the system tray, the quickest and easiest way to do that is to just hold the Shift key while you click the minimize button. To restore the window, you can just double-click the tray icon.

There are two ways to put a program into the system tray without minimizing it at the same time.  You can either right-click on the minimize button in on program window you want to put in the tray and select Place in System Tray, or you can select the program in the TrayIt! program list and click the Place in System Tray button.

When you place an app into the system tray in this manner, you will see it both in the taskbar as well as the system tray.  TrayIt! creates a profile for the application. You can edit the profile to change the way the application will interact with the taskbar and system tray. To edit the profile, select the application in the TrayIt! list and click the Edit Current Profile button.

You’ll see that you can perform many customizations for the application. A few of note:

• Basic tab > Startup section > Minimize window on creation / when TrayIt! is started
• More tab > Application section > Hide application from the taskbar all the time, keep tray icon only
• Advanced tab > Startup section > Do not create Tray Icon – minimize and hide window completely

These options allow you to control the way the applicaiton interacts with the taskbar and system tray when it is launched.  If you have programs that just sit in the background and don’t require any interaction, you will probably want to take advantage of some of these options.

TrayIt! also has some application options you might want to take a look at as well. To change the TrayIt! options, you can click the Modify Application Options in the TrayIt! window. Two options I like in particular are creating a tray icon for TrayIt! and using single-clicks for the tray icons.

Another important thing to mention is that when you close TrayIt! with the X in the upper right corner (like you would any other application), it still keeps running in the background. If you don’t have the task tray enabled for it, you can still get back to TrayIt! by right-clicking on the minimize button for any program you are running, and click on TrayIt! Application ….

To actually exit TrayIt!, you’ll have to click on File > Exit or click on File > Uninstall.  What’s the difference?  Exit closes TrayIt! but it maintains your settings in the Windows registry. The Uninstall option will exit TrayIt! and also remove all the options from the Windows registry. This is a useful feature if you are using TrayIt! as a portable application and you don’t want to keep the settings in the registry.

What do you think of TrayIt!? Do you use any other cool features that weren’t mentioned in the article?

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