TechPost

In my last post I gave a list of free software that I find extremely useful, on that list was a program called VLC. VLC stands for Video Lan Client and it is by far the best media player I have ever used. Why do I like it so much? Well, free is a great place to start, VLC is open source and has a very active development community bringing out new features on a regular basis. Codec support is hands down the best I have seen – virtually any audio or video can be played by this program, I have even used it to play dvd’s that expensive high-end dvd programs couldn’t open. VLC is also a champ when it comes to efficient cpu usage, this program can be ran on older machines (in most cases) without experiencing any problems.

VLC is cross-platform and available as a free download. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

About every six months or so I like to format my computer and install a fresh version of Windows. Six months is probably excessive for the average user but I install and uninstall a lot of software for testing reasons and Vista starts to bog down after a while. I thought some of you may be interested in what free software I install and use on all of my machines.

The List:

Pidgin- Universal instant messenger client. http://www.pidgin.im

Twhirl – Twitter client, I split my time between this and the web service. http://www.twhirl.org/

Utorrent – Excellent torrent client. http://www.utorrent.com/

Filezilla – FTP with client or server capabilities. http://filezilla-project.org/

Firefox – I believe this is the best web browser available. http://www.getfirefox.com

Notepad++ – Notepad on steroids, great for viewing and editing web code. http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

VLC – Ever had a media file that wouldn’t play? Try this lightweight yet powerful program. http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

AVG Free – Free version of AVG anti-virus. http://free.avg.com/

Picasa – Excellent way to manage and share photos. http://picasa.google.com/

Spybot Search and Destroy – Spyware removal. http://www.safer-networking.org/

Google Chrome – Alternative to IE or Firefox, Chrome is growing on me. http://www.google.com/chrome

Google Earth – Explore the planet. http://earth.google.com/

This is the meat and potatos, I also install a few other items such as iTunes and the MS Office pdf creater plug-in. If I did not have an iPhone I would not be using iTunes, I believe it is a less than stellar program (at least on Windows).

If you have any suggestions let me know in the comments.

Have you ever been at work and wanted to visit site example.com but couldn’t remember what it was called and the bookmark for it was on your home computer? Well, I have a nifty solution to keep all of your computers bookmarks and passwords synchronized. Xmarks is a free program that works with Firefox, IE7, and Safari and it keeps the browsers you use in sync on every computer you use.  If you happen to be on a public computer you can also use the service to access your bookmarks and passwords from the Xmarks website.

Half of you are probably wondering why you should hand all your passwords over to some service in the name of convenience. Well, you’re not – the password sharing is turned off by default and if you want to use it you have to create an access pin. The passwords are encrypted and transmitted for synchronization, not even Xmarks can view the data.

The Xmarks service has a few more features such as site info and smart search but I will let you dive deeper into them.

Find Xmarks on the web at http://www.xmarks.com

PS: If you are not already using Firefox I highly recommend you check it out. http://www.getfirefox.com

Microsoft has a hidden tool that few of you probably know about. This unknown program is called the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool and from the name it is fairly apparent what purpose it serves. This program is not meant to replace your anti-virus program, it is more of a companion program. The MWSRT actually runs periodically in a “quick” mode but to get a thorough scan you have to manually activate the program.

To activate the program you need to go to Start->and type “MRT” in the search field and then click “enter” on your keyboard.

If you are on Windows XP click Start->Run->type “MRT” and then click “Enter”

You will then see the following window pop-up.

Click “Next” and you will see the following window.

At this point you want to select the bubble next to “Full Scan” and then click “Next”. (You may want to wait and do this until you are about to go to bed, it can take a while.)

If everything goes well you will eventually see the following screen.

To find out more information visit the Microsoft website here.