Poke Me In The Eye

I admit it, I am an MP3 whore, I have over 33,000 MP3s. I made the big conversion to MP3s a few years ago and haven’t looked back. When I did make the change though I needed to make sure I got some great software to rip my CDs. I didn’t want to have to do the whole process more than once as I have a ton of CDs. I did a ton of research when for what software to use and I kept seeing EAC (Exact Audio Copy) being named the best. I used it and I have been extremely happy with the results.

I use EAC on the alt-present-extreme setting, which is just one step down from the best, alt-preset-insane. I would happily put my mp3’s encoded with lame against a CD and challenge someone to tell the difference, I know I have tried it and I can’t tell.

EAC has been very good to me over the years, it’s rock solid, very easy to use and free!

Get Exact Audio Copy

Way back in the day when I was working as an Accountant for a company in San Diego I had to run reports from another computer system. This was in the days before high speed internet. I had to use a modem to dial into the internet…so needless to say there wasn’t a computer “network” at all…something like that, at the time, was far too expensive. But with the corporate office in San Diego and the manufacturing in Los Angeles we had to have some sort of system to bring information from one PC to another PC…and have it be cost effective.

We used PC Anywhere. At the time it did what we needed it to do. But that was at least 10 years ago and technology has gotten better. So what is the modern solution for taking control of a PC remotely?

Log Me In is an answer to that question. I won’t get into the technical details (because I don’t know them) but I learned about this little gem while at my current job. Our employees spend time away from the office getting people set up with our software package. We need to get information from our PC’s as well as get into other peoples PC’s.

You go to the Log Me In website and register an account (it’s free!). Then you install the application on that PC. When you go home you go to the webpage and install the program on your home PC. You can now log into the PC you are away from remotely. You have full and total control…just as if you were sitting at that desktop. You can print from that machine to your own printer, you can start and run any program, you can even share files between the two via some sort of FTP type site. It’s slick, it’s easy, and it’s free.

Well…with a catch that is. Unfortunately the full functionality only lasts 30 days (or 2 hours of controlled connection, whichever happens first). But from my understanding you still retain a hell of a lot of functionality once that time has passed.

Give it a shot. Sneak the program onto a friends computer when they aren’t looking. Then, if they leave it on at night, log in from your own PC and have some fun. I’ve used it to pull files from my home PC to my work PC. I wonder…could I play Doom this way. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow!

Download Log Me In

We all have done it, deleted something that we didn’t want to delete. Sometimes we get lucky and it’s still in our recycle bin but that is not always the case. Recuva is here to save the day though.

Recuva can restore files that you have removed from your recycle bin but it doesn’t stop there. Recuva can restore files from your camera memory card or even from your MP3 player. It can also restore files that were deleted due to a virus, a bug or a system crash.

Don’t lose hope, you may me able to recover your files! Give recuva a try, it’s free so what do you have to lose?

Download Recuva here

This is the best homepage I have ever had on a computer. All you need is a free Google account and you can totally customize your home page.

What you get is a blank page with Google search on top. The cool part is you can add Google gadgets to provide information about a variety of web pages. You can have a clock, a calendar, a memo pad, your email accounts…all kinds of things.

But the best part is adding feeds to various websites. I’m not well versed on the whole RSS thing (or a lot of other clever internet thingies) so I was very happy with how easy it was to set up a bunch of stuff.

And since you can create different tabs holding different gadgets you can customize to your hearts content. For example I added a “shopping” tab with links from Fry’s, Newegg, Fatwallet, Craigslist, Woot, etc. I’ve got a “fun” tab with a couple games, random quotes, tips of the day, etc. And my main tab has email, weather, time, a calendar, and a couple other things. If you were into sports you could have a bunch of sport related tabs…you could have finance related tabs…the list goes on and on.

And it’s all free…totally integrated with Google…and more content is being added every day.

Someday Google will take over the world. Count on it!

Have you ever had a bunch of files that you wanted to rename or otherwise edit? Just the other day I was doing a major project where I was taking a bunch of static HTML pages and putting them into a database, to make the process easier in ways that wouldn’t be worth explaining I wanted to change all of these pages, over 3,000 in all to have a php extension. For the first couple hundred I was just changing them as I went and it finally broke me so I went looking for a solution.

It was then that I stumbled on Bulk Rename Utility. This program allowed me to change all 3,000+ files in a matter of seconds and literally saved me hours of work. It can do a lot more than just change the file extension as well. This is what the creators of the software have to say about it:

Bulk Rename Utility is a utility which allows you to easily rename files and directories, based upon extemely flexible criteria. Add date-stamps, replace numbers, insert strings, convert case, add auto-numbers, process folders and subfolders….plus loads more!

I am sure I haven’t even scratched the surface of what is possible with this program and I have already used it again beyond helping me for the project. It looks like it’s going to be a handy little application. And like all of our Software Of The Weeks, it’s free.

Get Bulk Rename Utility

The built in windows clipboard can get the job done but it is severely limited. There are a ton of clipboard replacement programs out there but the one that I have had the best luck with is Clipboard Recorder. Clipboard Recorder works alongside the regular Windows Clipboard and records every piece of data (both text and graphics) that you cut or copy.

With Clipboard Recorder you can do the following:

• Access to your clipboard history is almost as easy as the built-in Windows Clipboard. Clipboard Recorder provides four easy ways to select the records: Popup Window, Floating Window, Menu Window and the Main Window. You don’t need to leave your working application! The selected clipboard records will be pasted to your working application directly just as if you have pressed “Ctrl + V”!
• Supports a variety of formats. Including RTF text, HTML, CSV, Bitmap, Meta file and Embedded Object.
• Supports Transferring clipboard data between computers.
• Works seamlessly with Microsoft Office and other applications.
• Small and Highly optimized. Uses negligible resources.

If you do a lot of work on your computer, especially if you fill out a lot of forms, this program is a real life saver. Check it out.

Download Clipboard Recorder

OK, a couple of caveats here. One…I’ve written about all the freeware I use. Two…this isn’t exactly freeware. So I’m cheating a little and that’s fine. I figure that is what the world of computers and the internet is all about isn’t it?

I’ve had some troubles with my video card. It’s an NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS. I love it. It’s one of the best AGP cards available (yeah, I’m behind the times). But the problem is I’ve been having trouble updating the drivers for it. In fact I’ve been a bit concerned about several drivers for different devices for my computer.

So I did a quick search and came up with this program. First of all…it looks fantastic. The interface is very user friendly and it quickly figured out what active drivers I have on my computer and…low and behold…yes my 7800 GS driver is out of date. WOO HOO!

But…here is where the lack of freeware comes in. Unfortunately you’ve got to pay to go much further than the discovery of what is out of date. I’m guessing it’ll do some sort of automatic update download thingie for the correct driver. It would be awesome if it did. But that would cost me $30. Hmmm…nah.

However…this IS freeware. In other words if freely (and easily) told me about my out of date drivers. So now I update manually. Sure a nice button click to fix ‘em would be nice…but that isn’t free, is it?

Get Driver Detective here