Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

I received a tip the other day from “S” who was letting me know that Webroot is giving away free licenses for their firewall software. This is for a limited time only, and I’ve already requested several licenses of it for myself. All you have to do is fill out a form with your name, email, and so on. Within seconds of completing the registration you’ll receive a download link and product key in your email. That’s right, this $20 software is completely free, and it comes from the same company who makes the respected Spy Sweeper software.

I’m sure you’re wondering what I think of the Webroot Firewall. As you probably know it is pretty slim picking right now when it comes to free Vista firewalls. Previously we’ve taken a look at PC Tools Firewall Plus, Zonealarm, and an early release of Comodo 3. Comodo has always been my firewall of choice, but the final version isn’t due out until sometime in November.

I got Webroot installed on my machine today (big screenshot gallery at the end of this article), and the registration key that I was sent worked perfectly. The first thing that I noticed after installing it is that the interface is extremely clean and well organized. I didn’t feel overwhelmed, and most importantly it didn’t bombard me with messages to approve Internet access for my running applications. Why’s that?

From what I gather the Webroot Firewall learns from how you use the computer. It “automatically develops a baseline profile of your normal PC usage based on system variables such as CPU utilization, thread count, and others.” When there is any unusual activity going on you’ll be the first to know.

One of the other things that I like are the three configurable profiles that leave you just one-click away from changing your security settings. Maybe you want different settings when you have your computer at work as compared to home? Webroot makes that possible. You can even set it up to block websites, which might be just the thing you need when you’re at work and trying to be productive.

Because of the sheer simplicity of the program I would say that this is a great application to use. I didn’t have to configure a single thing after getting it installed, and I was never bothered with annoying popups. When Comodo makes its way out the door in final form I’ll be sure to compare all of the free Vista-compatible firewalls, but until then I say that Webroot is the best alternative. But you better get your license key today because the deal may not be going on much longer!

–Features–

• Stealth Mode Feature
• Email Protection
• Advanced Packet Filtering
• Malicious Process Blocking
• Port Monitoring and Blocking
• Custom Protection Profiles
• Lock down your PC
• File and Printer Sharing
• Comprehensive Internet Activity Log

–Screenshots–

CLICK ANY SCREENSHOT FOR FULLSIZE IMAGE

Webroot Firewall – Free for a limited time
Thanks to “S” for the tip!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on August 20, 2008 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Have you ever tried to copy a file from a CD or DVD that has been scratched? If so you might have received an error message stating that the file could not be copied because it is corrupt, but there might still be hope if you really need to access the contents.

Copy Cat 2.0 is a free application designed for recovering files from media that has been partially damaged. As long as you can see the file in Windows Explorer this program can attempt to copy it over. What makes this special is that when it comes across an unreadable area it will skip over it and try to copy the remaining portion of the file. Windows Explorer, on the other hand, will stop copying the file once it receives an error.

The great thing about the program is that it works for more than just CD’s or DVD’s. You can actually use it with hard drives, USB drives, floppy disks, and just about anything else you can store data on.

Get Copy Cat 2.0 for Windows
Note: During installation it will ask if you want to install a toolbar in Internet Explorer. You’ll probably want to uncheck the box to make sure it doesn’t.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on August 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Transferring files from one folder to another, or from computer to computer is something most people do on a regular basis. Have you ever thought about speeding up the process by using a file transfer utility? They’re similar to the download managers in your web browser, except they’re made to be used all around your computer.

The best part is that the two free programs that I mention below replace the built-in Windows file transfer manager. You can still use Windows Explorer just as you normally do, but anytime you try to copy, paste, or move files, these apps will do the dirty work for you. Not only that, but both programs will pick up where they left off, should you shutdown your computer in the middle of a transfer, or need to stop it for some reason. Heck, you can even pause the transfers and resume them later on!

–Copy Handler (Homepage)–

This is probably my favorite of the two programs this article covers. It has an insane number of options (over 60) that you customize, doesn’t require any installation, and is open source. One of the reasons that I love this program so much is that you can adjust the number of simultaneous transfers, and once that number is hit it will queue up the rest for later on.

After you download the ZIP folder and extract the contents, the first thing you’ll want to do is register the DLL. This will ensure that Copy Handler replaces the built-in transfer manager for Windows:

Then whenever you go to transfer a file you’ll be presented with an extremely compact file transfer window (left – actual size), or you can open a more detailed window full of all the stats that you crave (right – click to enlarge):

Then if you want to try and speed things up even more, or want to change how something works, just head on over to the options where there are plenty of things for you to play with:

There is one downside to this program, and it’s that it isn’t actively developed any more. The last update was provided back in October 2006, but luckily it still works great on Vista. The developer is currently looking for a sponsor so that he can continue the development on Copy Handler.

–TeraCopy (Homepage)–

This application is similar to the Copy Handler above, but I saw it on Lifehacker recently and it also piqued my interest. I gave it a whirl and found it to be much simpler than Copy Handler. It doesn’t really have anything for you to configure, and what you see below is essentially the entire application.

You’ll be notified if an error occurs while in the middle of a transfer, but TeraCopy will continue working on the other files. That way one bad file doesn’t screw up the entire batch of files being transferred.

–Overview/Benchmarks–

You’ll only notice a large speed difference with these file transfer utilities if your moving or copying many files, or really big files. To give you a quick comparison of the differences in using these I transferred 85 images over the network that totaled 114MB. Again, the differences aren’t that large, but if you’re moving around a few gigabytes of data these utilities could possibly chop a few minutes off of the transfer time.

• Copy Handler – 58 seconds
• TeraCopy – 1 minute
• Vista (with Performance Pack) – 1 minute and 3 seconds
• Vista (without Performance Pack) – 1 minute and 14 seconds

Note: Default options were used in each of the applications.

If you find yourself frequently moving large things around, these apps could be priceless to you. Of the two, I would recommend Copy Handler to anyone that is a power user, and TeraCopy for anyone looking for a simple replacement for what’s built-in to Windows.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on November 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

TechSmith has decided to offer both of their award-winning applications as free downloads! The first application is SnagIt, which is used to capture and create screenshots on your computer. The only catch is that they will give you a free license only for SnagIt 7.2.5, whereas the current version is SnagIt 8.2. One of the big drawbacks is that this version will not work properly in Windows Vista.

Here’s what you have to do to get SnagIt 7.2.5 for free:

1. Download SnagIt 7.2.5 in your language: English, German, or French.
2. Request a free license for the software.

The second application is Camtasia Studio, which is used to make and edit video screencasts. This is a $300 application, but just like with SnagIt you will not get the latest Camtasia 5 that was recently released. Instead you will get Camtasia 3, but it will satisfy the needs of most Windows users with the exception of those running Vista.

Here’s what you have to do to get Camtasia Studio 3 for free:

1. Download Camtasia Studio.
2. Request a free license for the software.

They may not be the latest versions of the applications, but that doesn’t mean they are lacking in quality. I’m sure these will be more than adequate if you don’t care about running the latest software.

[via Download Squad and Digital Inspiration]
Thanks for the tip “S”!

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Windows only
Desktop shortcuts can be extremely useful for doing common tasks like launching applications, opening commonly used folders, and pulling up your favorite websites, but few people take the time to use shortcuts for anything else. With the help of some very small programs we’re going to show you how to create supercharged shortcuts that can do more than you probably thought was possible.

What will you be able to do? Things like adjust the volume on your computer, turn your monitor off, lock your computer, disable WiFi, and much more. The shortcuts that we’ll create can be especially useful when used in conjunction with a keyboard launcher, such as Launchy.

I have two different free applications that are going to assist us in creating the advanced shortcuts, and each one weighs in under 100KB. You don’t have to install them, but one thing you will have to do is manually create the shortcuts. So the first thing we’re going to show you is how you can manually create a shortcut, and we’ll follow that up with the two applications you can use to enhance the shortcuts.

–How to Create a Desktop Shortcut–

1. Right-click on the executable of one of the applications (wizmo.exe or nircmd.exe) and click the Create Shortcut option:
   
2. Right-click on the new shortcut that was created, and choose Properties. Now what you need to do is edit the “Target” field by appending commands onto the executable. Using the Wizmo application as an example, the Target field would look like this to turn the monitor off:
   
3. Repeat these steps to create however many shortcuts you would like.

–Wizmo (Homepage)–

Wizmo is one of my favorite tools for creating advanced shortcuts because it has a wealth of features buried within it. It includes options to power down your computer, put it into standby, lock it, open/close the CD drive, enable/disable WiFi, turn the monitor off, adjust the volume, and more. Multiple commands can be used in a single shortcut making it even more useful. You can do things like mute the volume, turn off the monitor, and disable the WiFi all in one shortcut. The shortcut for this would look something like:

wizmo.exe mute=1 monoff wanlock

Additionally Wizmo has a nice feature, called graviton, that will activate the built-in screensaver, and will execute some command(s) once the user returns. For example, entering this into the shortcut:

wizmo.exe mute=1 graviton mute=0

will cause the music to be muted until the user returns to the computer. Similarly this shortcut will increase the volume to 80% when the user is away from the computer, and decrease it when the user returns:

wizmo.exe volume=80 graviton volume=20

Once you get into mixing and matching the various commands you’ll find that this will become an indispensable tool. Visit the Wizmo homepage for more commands that you can use.

Tip: If you double-click on the wizmo.exe file it will show you a list of commands available to use in the application. That’s all it does though.

–NirCmd (Homepage)–

NirCmd is actually very similar to Wizmo in that you modify shortcuts to create a powerful commands. I find Wizmo to be a bit simpler to configure, and NirCmd can’t recognize multiple commands in a single shortcut. On the flipside NirCmd has a lot more things that you can do including adjusting the window transparency of a certain application, terminating a process, modifying the registry, emptying the Recycle Bin, and dozens of other things.

Here is an example command for setting the transparency of all Internet Explorer windows to 75% (note that the 75% is calculated as 192/256, similarly 50% transparency would be 128)

nircmd.exe win trans ititle “internet explorer” 192

We’ve also shown how to create shortcuts to kill processes in the past, but you can do the same thing with this application. Here’s an example for killing off Internet Explorer:

nircmd.exe killprocess iexplore.exe

NirCmd does a lot more than I’ve ever needed, and for that reason I’ve always stuck with Wizmo. It’s always good to have options though.

–Overview–

Who would have ever thought that something as simple as a shortcut could be so handy? If you’re trying to decide which of the two apps to use I would start with Wizmo, and become acquainted with that first. Once you get that under your belt you can checkout some of the things NirCmd offers to see if it would be any more useful to you.

If you decide to give one of the apps a whirl feel free to mention in the comments some of the shortcuts you come up with.

Copyright © 2010 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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