AutoLyrix is a small cross-plattform software program that can automatically identify the song that is playing in a media player to display the lyrics and album art of it. Compatibility seems to have been of utmost importance to the developers of the software. AutoLyrix is able to detect songs in dozen of music players including Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Last.fm, XMPlay, AIMP2, Screamer Radio and provides a way to make it compatible with practically any player that is not supported. The software will automatically search the Internet for information about the current song and display the album art and...
Sixth day of the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway. We have handed out licenses to some very popular software appplications such as Newsbin Pro, MediaMonkey Gold or Kaspersky Internet Security in the last days. Today’s application is Sandboxie, a security software program that can run selected applications in a closed environment on the computer. Sandboxie is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows Server 2003 and can also be run on Windows 2000. The software developer is providing access to a free version of Sandboxie on his website which has a few limitations compared to the...
Fourth day of the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway. We already handed out Kaspersky Internet Security 2009, Newsbin Pro, Giganews Accounts and MediaMonkey Gold licenses. Today’s giveaway is Display Fusion Pro, one of the better, if not the best, multi-monitor desktop wallpaper and window management applications. Display Fusion can be downloaded as a free version from the developer’s website with limited functionality. The pro version of Display Fusion can be ordered as well on the same website. The version comparison between Display Fusion and Display Fusion Pro list the features that are only available in the Pro version including wallpaper rotation, custom...
If you need the full processing power of your computer for an application or are installing an application that requires you to close all other open programs and processes then you might like Smart Close. The software program is your one click application closer that comes in handy in the described cases. Even better is the fact that Smart Close is able to save a system snapshot which can be loaded at a later stage again. So how does it work? Let us take the usual software application installation. Many installers will ask the user to close all other running...
The Microsoft .net Framework is being used by a wide variety of software applications. Microsoft made the decision to provide the different .net Framework versions as separate installations. This effectively means that someone who installs the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 on his computer will automatically install the previous .net Framework versions as well for backward compatibility. It can happen that the uninstallation or repair of a .net Framework installation fails which can have the effect that a new installation wont succeed either. Manually removing the leftovers to be able to install the framework anew is a complex process. A far...
Microsoft Messenger variants, such as MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger or Windows Messenger, sometimes cause difficulties during uninstallation throwing error messages such as “Another version of the product is already installed”, “Your computer has a newer version of MSN Messenger than the one you are trying to install”, ““Your computer has a newer version of Windows Live Messenger than the one you are trying to install” or “The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable”. It can be quite frustrating to discover the root of the problem especially when the user wants a...
Maximizing the download rate of an Internet connection might be a good way to download a file the fastest way but it can put a strain on all other network and Internet activities in that time. A user wanting to play an online game while downloading with full speed will notice high ping rates which is not desirable. It can also lead to disconnects or temporary load errors in general. One way of dealing with this situation is to run a traffic balancer to ensure that the other activities are not affected by the downloads or uploads. Netbalancer (via To...
The Microsoft Outlook SMS Add-in adds SMS sending functionality to Microsoft Outlook 2003 and Microsoft Outlook 2007. Before you begin to rejoice thinking of all the money that you can save you should notice that the add-in only works with a cell phone connected to the computer system. That is a bit of a turn off for many users but it might still appeal to some who prefer to use a real keyboard when writing SMS. The process of sending SMS in Microsoft Outlook has been designed to resemble that of sending emails in the email client. This means that...
Sorting downloads can be a very good way to control where files will be stored on a computer system. The default option in Firefox is to save them in the standard folder which will contain all downloads no matter the size or file extension. The Save As right-click option provides an option to save the files in a different location but this requires lots of folder juggling to pick the right folder all the time. Download Sort addresses the Save As problem. It can be configured to store information about file extensions and their download directory on the local computer....
Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. People everywhere have the day off and we’re spending it with family and friends. Aside from eating turkey and then passing out in a food coma, the day is about being thankful for what we have. So, I wanted to take a moment and publicly express what I am thankful for in my own life today: I am thankful to be alive. Obviously. I am thankful to be graced with the most beautiful little being, my daughter Elyana. Sure, she brings chaos and randomity to the lives of myself and Malika, but...
You may recall a case last year involving Julie Amero, a substitute junior high school teacher in Connecticut that was arrested and threatened with a 40 year prison sentence after the computer in her classroom began to display pornographic pop-ups in front of her students. Any one with even the slightest knowledge of computers could tell you that this was completely ridiculous—especially after learning that the computer system in the school was woefully ill-equipped to handle spyware and viruses. Still, officials and the police refused to admit that they had made a mistake and pressed on with their case. Now...
Updating drivers can be a tedious job. One has to monitor the websites of the hardware manufacturers to keep up to date with new driver versions. Using a program to scan a computer system and check the driver versions against the latest drivers can help in the maintenance of the system. One free driver update software is RadarSysnc 2009. It can be downloaded freely from the developers website and does not require registration to download or update drivers on the computer system. The software was not completely free in the past which has changed with this year’s version. The process...
Extract Now was the application of choice for a long time on my computer system. It integrated itself nicely into the right-click context menu and was able to unpack almost any file or files that had been selected. It would queue up all tasks at hand and run them in the background with options to delete the source file once the operation had been finished. One of the main features was the ability to search for archives in folders. All discovered file archives would be automatically added to the queue and processed. It had some limitations though. The major limitation...
Inside Lightroom 2 Author: Richard Earney Publisher Focal Press (Elsevier) Review by Conrad J. Obregon With the introduction of Lightroom 2 (LR2), the software has evolved into a mature tool with a number of adherents. Naturally, as users have become experienced in the use of the sliders and buttons, they are looking for ways to push the software further. “Inside Lightroom 2″ is aimed at filling this need. The book includes chapters on LR2 basics; a description of the ideal computer system on which to run LR2; the new features of LR2; file management; a Develop workflow; presets; and...
Animated gifs have a bad reputation on the Internet which stems from the early days. There was a time back then when the Internet was new that animated gifs were considered a wonderful addition to many websites. Those blinking irritating websites died off long ago with only some remaining but usually abandoned by their webmasters. There are many applications out there that can turn images into animated gifs. One of those applications is Gifted Motion. The Java application runs on Linux, Windows and Macintosh operating systems. It can create animated gifs from png, jpg, gif or bmp images. The whole...
Rarst published an interesting article yesterday on his blog with the title Ketarin - keeps setup packages updated. It introduces a different concept to automatic software updaters like SUMO or our software updaters overview. Ketarin on the other hand does not keep the software on a specific computer system up to date. The difference is that Ketarin checks if a software installer has been updated on a specified location and downloads the new installer to a location defined by the user of the software. The main purpose of the software is therefor similar to the concept of those automatic updaters...
If you ever had a kid running around in a room with a computer you most likely must have noticed that the little brats seem to be fascinated by the computer lights, buttons, keyboard or mouse. They cannot stop pressing their little fingers everywhere which can lead to some undesired results like powering down a computer or opening an optical drive. Optical drives are sensible and can break easily if enough pressure is applied. CD / DVD Drive Locker puts an end to this fear by locking selected optical drives of a computer system. The software program is easy to...
I'm tired of this. This sense of permanent discomfort with the technology around me. The bugs. The compromises. The firmware upgrades. The "This will work in the next version." The "It's in our roadmap." The "Buy now and upgrade later." The patches. The new low development standards that make technology fail because it wasn't tested enough before reaching our hands. The feeling now extends to hardware: Everything is built to end up in the trash a year later, still half-baked, to make room for the next hardware revision. I'm tired of this beta culture that has spread like metastatic...
