All That Nerdy Stuff » Free Software

Freeware Review: iRinger-Free Ringtone Maker for iPhone!

Jason Ward — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:32:49 +0000

It’s no secret that the iPhone is a huge success even in its current, highly-breakable, poor-signal-if-you-hold-it-normally incarnation, and like any other popular phone, people want custom ringtones for the thing. It’s not that the built in ones are crappy–well, it’s not just that–but more that we want to have something personalized, something that says something about us. Or, at the worst, we want to blare our favorite MP3′s ad-infinitum when we receive a call. But whatever your reason might be, there’s a single truth worth being conscious of: Apple’s iTunes store will bend you over and repeatedly rape you in exchange for the privilege of using music you already bought and paid for as a ringtone. Frankly, their fees are ridiculous, and we think you should avoid them wherever possible.

Luckily, that’s very possible thanks to a free downloadable app called iRinger, which will allow you to convert almost any audio format you can throw at it to an iPhone appropriate ringtone that’ll work with any version of the device, included the much-maligned (yet celebrated) iPhone 4. There is no application to install–you simply download the executable and run it. In my tests I found the app speedy, easy to use and virus free, though as a precaution I do encourage you to always perform a virus scan on any executable file you download from absolutely anywhere before you run it. You can never be too safe, after all.

The process is pretty simple. Open the program, click “Import,” and your music will appear on the timeline. By dragging the “In” and “Out” sliders at the bottom right of the app window (it’s a small app window, you can’t miss them) you can select the portion of the song you want to use as your ringtone. When you’ve got the clip you want to use (up to 30 seconds in length, which is the maximum the iPhone supports,) simply click “Export,” browse to the file location where you want to save the ringtone, click the checkbox that says “also export to iTunes,” and click go. In about 10 seconds your new ringtone will both save to the folder you specified and add itself to iTunes, making it quick and easy both to sync to your phone and to email your ringtone to friends, family, and of course to Steve Jobs, along with a note that says “Neener-neener-neener, I still have my $1.50!” Or something like that.

Software: iRinger

Price: Free, though they do ask for a donation if you like it.

Rating: Highly recommended if you prefer an app on your PC vs a web based solution like Myxer.

Download: iRinger

Free iPhone Ringtones? Myxer is the key!

Jason Ward — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:20:40 +0000

I’ve been going about this all wrong, evidently. For months I’ve been looking for a free utility to easily create Ringtones for my iPhone 3G (no, I didn’t rush out and buy the upgrade to 3GS) out of MP3′s I already have. On several occasions I’ve found some decent guides and a lot of free software, but that was exactly the problem: I needed a lot of free software to do what I wanted to do. As far as I’ve been able to locate, no single utility exists that you can download, install and use to create Ringtones for iPhone all within a single package. Without an unacceptable level of complexity, it just wasn’t going to happen.

That’s unfortunate, but hardly a deal breaker thanks to a free service called Myxer. It’s stupidly simple: Browse your nerdy ass over to the Myxer website and find the cute little box (snipped above so you know what to look for) that asks-no, demands-that you upload your very favorite non-DRM’d MP3. If you’re a self respecting nerd of any repute, all your MP3′s are DRM-free, but I digress. Moving on, upload your file (the speed will depend on your internet connection, obviously. I have a stupidly fast connection so for me it’s seconds) and wait while the site processes it for a few seconds.

What you’ll end up with is a dialog that shows the waveform of your MP3 and a pair of handles, which you can drag to the beginning and end of the part of the song you want to clip. In my case, I wanted 30 second clips, so I just manually typed in 30 to the duration box and then dragged around my selection until I found the ideal beginning and more-or-less ideal ending. Then click next, put in your phone number, click next again, and rather than clicking for it to send the ringtone via SMS, click at the lower right where you’ll see a graphic that says something along the lines of “Click here to download a File for your iPhone”. Once you’ve downloaded the file, simply highlight the Ringtones section of iTunes, drag your file into it, then sync your phone. Voila! You’re the proud mama (or papa, if you have dangling participles) of a fresh and juicy ringtone made just for you, by you, courtesy of Myxer.

There’s not a lot else to say about the Myxer service, because it just works brilliantly. If you want an MP3 that you don’t have, I recommend visiting BeeMP3, which seems to have everything under the sun. I don’t think they’re affiliated with Myxer, but don’t quote me on that.

Cost: Free
Quality: Superb
Ease of use: Excellent, even a child with raisinets in his nose could do it.

Freeware Review: Microsoft Security Essentials Antivirus

Jason Ward — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:09:30 +0000

Microsoft has finally released its Security Essentials Antivirus software onto the world, and man, let there be rejoicing. I’m always a fan of free software, especially if it can handle an essential task well (and make no mistake, antivirus is absolutely essential) without being too intrusive. Microsoft Security Essentials is exactly this kind of software, surpassing most other freeware options while using only a fraction of the system resources others like Comodo and AVG do. As a bonus, MSSE is legal to use on any legitimate copy of Windows (therefore you should expect to have Window Genuine Advantage validate your PC’s OS).

So what exactly is Security Essentials? Well, to put it succinctly, MSSE is Microsoft’s former “Windows Live OneCare” software, minus the feature bloat. Gone are such things as online photo backup, central management of multiple copies on different computers (some people may miss this feature), preventing other programs from adding system tray icons and so on. What it does do, though, is provide a robust anti-malware package that’s very small (about an 8MB download, less than a third of alternatives such as AVG and Comodo), very light and very fast, with a small memory footprint. MSSE makes use of a derivative of the antimalware engine in MS’s Forefront security product (marketed at Enterprises…no, not the ones from Star Trek) and like you would imagine (yet dare not actually hope for) it never nags you for, well, anything. I suppose if you get a virus it’ll pop up an alert to tell you, but luckily enough I have yet to actually encounter anything malicious.

So if you’re using one of the bloated freeware packages out there or just wish you had something less intrusive on your system, I highly recommend you get your free copy of Microsoft Security Essentials. Just be sure to uninstall your other package right away!

Freeware: The Mailing List

The Web N3rd — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 07:54:38 +0000

We all know by now that these are tough times, and when tough times come along what do nerds do? We troll the internet for Freeware, of course! Probably the most successful of our (more or less) ongoing series’ here on ATNS has been our reviews of excellent free applications that anyone can use at no charge to do the kinds of things that the big boys pay big bucks for. While we’ve recently been, shall we say, a bit lax concerning our reviewing responsibilities–things are about to kick up in a serious way. We’ve been gathering the latest and greatest freeware apps to our sides, glued our butts to our chairs (well, OK, so it isn’t actual glue…) and have begun sifting through more free goodies than even Lord Voldemort could shake his rather deadly stick at.

In anticipation of the forthcoming explosion of Freeware reviews, we’ve decided that a monthly newsletter, to serve as a digest of sorts, would probably be a darn good idea. With that in mind, I bid you look to the sidebar for the simple and easy sign up form. You’ll have to check your email for the confirmation letter and click that sucker, but beyond that you should be in relatively good shape. We’ll promise not to sell your email to spammers (well, unless they offer us a really big bag of money) and in return we ask that you promise not to do terrible things to our pets. Which, let me tell you, if you harm one hair on my Nintendog’s head, you’re in for a butt kickin’!

iPhone 3G-S inbound, my wallet weeps

Jason Ward — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:32:21 +0000

Today Apple, in what appears to be a vicious pattern of flogging my wallet until it cries, introduced the new iPhone 3G-S, which will launch in just shy of a week and a half. Now don’t get me wrong, I love me some hot iPhone action and I’ve been in a perpetual state of enthrallment with my current iPhone 3G since I got it in December. Nevertheless a gurgling, hissing voice has arisen with me and several heads have turned as I’ve uttered (uncontrollably) the words “We wants it, precious! Give it to us, it’s ours!” Yes, that’s just the kind of day I’ve had, thank you very much, Mr. Jobs.

So, beyond the obvious shiny, what does the new iPhone 3G-S bring to all those patient consumers who decided to tough it out? Here’s a quick and dirty chart to show you the difference and what you can expect to pay for that difference. Note also that the chart reflects todays price drop of the existing 8GB model iPhone 3G to 99 effing dollars.

Nevertheless, even the iPhone 3G remains an amazing device that can offer you the ability to be much more productive in your daily doings, so if the price has been what’s holding you back you no longer have any excuse. Unless I’m horribly mistaken (a distinct possibility, I haven’t done the research), this officially makes iPhone 3G the cheapest non-refurb Smartphone on the market.

Device	iPhone 3G	iPhone 3G-S
Storage & Price	8GB ($99)	16GB ($199) 32GB ($299)
Features	Cut, copy, paste MMS Widescreen Keyboard Voice notes Spotlight Search	Cut, copy, paste MMS Widescreen Keyboard Voice notes Spotlight Search PLUS!!!: Faster performance (2x!) Improved Camera Video Recording Video Editing Post straight to Youtube Voice Control Compass (Digital) My Effing Envy
Camera	2MP mediocrity	3MP Video Record Video Edit Auto Focus Tap to Focus (dammit!)
Battery Life	Good	Better (I can’t bare to rub any more salt in the wound)

FreeWare Review: VisualSVN SubVersion Control Server

Jason Ward — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:59:12 +0000

So today we’re checking out something especially geeky, the VisualSVN SubVersion Control Server. Yeah, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? For most folks, this is something you’ll never, ever use. However, if you’re a person who develops, say, software-or artwork-or games, then this will be of interest to you. There’s a lot of Version Control software out there, and believe me I’ve looked at a lot of it lately. But most of it has a problem that prevents it from being accessible to the average user: most of it runs on Linux. Now, Linux software is all well and good, and there’s very little negative I’d ever say about Linux overall. However, the reality remains that for the average user-who by this point has used Windows of one flavor or another for most of their computing life-Linux just isn’t very friendly. As a rule this won’t matter because people who need version control can often afford to hire an engineer who understands Linux just fine, or they may be savvy enough to sort it out on their own. This software, indeed this review, is not for you.

Who this software is for, is the small time developer of something, whether it’s code or art or whatever, who needs version control but doesn’t have a huge budget or a lot of time to spend learning the ins and outs of Linux. This is version control that you can install on Windows in 5 minutes, have it configured in 10, and be using it in 20 (the extra 10 is because you will need to install Tortoise SVN on your client PC and reboot, then configure it to Check Out your repository). If you’re unfamiliar (and I was until a few days ago), what this software does is it runs on a server that your team then connect to via client software on their PC’s. The clients each sync to and from the server, and as changes are made to the files in your project everyone is kept up to date on the latest project files with their own local copy. When they’ve made changes, they sync back to the server and the rest of the team will get their changes next time they sync.

In addition to just keeping everyone on the same page, the server also keeps track of different versions of the files in the repository. This is useful when, for example, I’m working on a file and I screw it up but don’t realize that until I’ve already synced to the server. With the SVN server, I can go back to a previous version of that file very easily and redo my work without the mistake in tow and without having to start the file over from scratch. This saves me individually and the team collectively a boatload of time and effort that might otherwise be wasted redoing work as the result of small mistakes.

But wait…there’s more! Beyond the simple fact that your team is now saving time and effort and keeping up to date with the latest and greatest files, there’s another benefit. That benefit is simple: if the server crashes and there’s no backup…you’ve got backups of project data on every person’s PC. If you haven’t backed up your server, of course, shame on you. Bad panda! But lucky for you, the rest of the team’s PC’s save your ass. Heck, even if you’re one person, setup your home PC with an SVN server and your laptop (or work PC if you can get away with it!) with the client so you can stay synced and backed up on the go!

VisualSVN’s client software will integrate directly with Microsoft Visual Studio, though be warned: the client app is not free, only the server is (and how weird is that?). Even so, you can use any SubVersion compatible client to access the VisualSVN repositories from a client PC and sync both up and down with ease. The software further runs with such a light footprint that you can easily run it in a Virtual Machine under VMWare, MS Virtual Server, VirtualBox or any of the other tools out there for virtualization (and we’ll be covering some of these very soon). For your ease and comfort I’m including a link to the free TortoiseSVN client below, which you can use with VisualSVN at no charge.

If you’re in the market for a Version Control System for your team’s project but you don’t have a lot of cash, consider VisualSVN. It’s an excellent product that does a single job, and it does it very well. Please do remember that you need BOTH the Server and the Client below to make use of this product.

Final Judgment: Highly recommended for small development teams on a budget.

Website and Download: VisualSVN Server Download

Client and Download: TortoiseSVN Client Download

FreeWare Review: Paint Dot Net

Jason Ward — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 07:59:50 +0000

Another day comes and goes and another Freeware app begs to be reviewed and called to the forefront of somebody’s consciousness, somewhere. Today we’re going to break away from the trend we’ve followed so far in which I present you with various System Utilities (remind me to subcategory the freeware before we get too deep here). Starting today and continuing for the next few days we’re going to take a look at some free art software, and we’ll begin with what is perhaps the most commonly used and needed type: Photo Editing.

Our app today is called Paint.Net, and is a freeware application originally built to show off the power and flexibility of Microsoft’s .Net framework (back when we all thought that someday we’d be using Windows.Net). You can best think of this software as a lightweight, free Photoshop clone for your home PC. Off the top you should know a few things: First, it is not as full featured as Photoshop, but it doesn’t need to be for the average user. Second, it’s very small, clocking in at a mere 15MB download size. Last but not least you should know that while the software isn’t the end all, be all of feature completeness, it IS extendable with a plugin architecture, so the odds of finding a plugin to add commonly desired functionality are actually pretty decent.

Paint.Net offers a wealth of features. Virtually anything that your average user would need for photo editing is here: Scale, rotate, modify, select, cut, paste, and saving to multiple formats are all supported. Want to make a collage? No problem. Need to scale down your image or crop it for web use? Easy money. Want to apply a filter to make your image look a little more like an oil painting, or maybe give it an old time look with a simple Sepia filter? You can do that too. Oh and in case you were wondering, yes, the software allows you to separate numerous pieces onto separate layers and even offers an impressive array of blending modes that you can choose on a per layer basis.

Curiously though, Paint.Net does miss at least one obvious feature that I was surprised isn’t included in the default package: Drop Shadow. Luckily there is a free plugin available to add that functionality, but I do have to ask why such an obvious and commonly used tool isn’t in the box (err, installer package) straight from the start. This brings us to that all important topic: Plugins, and where the heck can I find some of my own? I’m happy to say that Paint.Net makes finding plugins quite easy, as the Help menu offers a link to the forums on their website, immediately whisking you off to a veritable cornucopia of goodies that you can use to extend your photo editing experience–again all for free–into something tailored exactly to your needs. The forums appear to be quite robust in their level of activity and most of the major plugin types are not only well represented but appear to be updated and improved on a fairly regular basis. Who’d have thunk there’d be a market for free photo editing tools?

Installing plugins is a bit tedious and not nearly as intuitive as I feel it should be for the average user. Don’t get me wrong, it’s no technical nightmare, but at the same time it’s not as easy as it ought to be. Upon downloading a plugin archive (a zip file), the user needs to extract the contents of the zip to a folder, then open the Paint.Net program files folder, locate the appropriate subfolder (Effects or FileTypes, depending on what sort of plugin you download. Some users may be confused by this), and then copy the plugins files into that folder. A simple close/open of Paint.Net will enable the plugin if all has been done right, but I can’t help but think that this should be more intuitive for the non-technical user. Something akin to the plugin installer for WinAmp might make sense.

All in all, however, Paint.Net is worth considering for the vast majority of users as an alternative to a paid application from a major vendor. It’s both robust enough for most simple home use and extendable enough to give those users who need a little more “oomph” from their image editing software a good chance of achieving what they need to. It won’t be a replacement for professional artists anytime soon, but if you happen to be a professional you shouldn’t feel bad about recommending this app to your less savvy friends and family who don’t really need the power of Photoshop, both because you’ll be saving them money in a time where it’s tight for everyone and because it’s similar enough to Photoshop that you’ll be able to give them a hand without too much hassle.

Final Judgment: An excellent free image editing application. Has some drawbacks, but for most users in a non-professional capacity it offers great features for free.

Website and Download: Paint.Net

Plugins: Paint.Net Plugin Publishing Forum

Tutorials: Paint.Net Tutorial Forum

FreeWare Review: Orb Media Server

Jason Ward — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:02:41 +0000

Today’s nugget of tasty freeware is something for, perhaps, the slightly more advanced user. Now, for a site that’s all about Nerdy Stuff, that shouldn’t present a problem for anyone reading this. Even so, a fair word of warning is in order: this one will require a little patience.

Orb Networks. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe not, but what they do primarily is provide the free Orb Media Server software. Now, in theory this is an amazingly cool piece of software, but in practice it’s actually only pretty darn cool. Yes, cool has levels.

Anyway, the software. Orb is pretty slick; what it does is fairly simple in premise: install it on your PC, configure it to point to your folders full of music and video clips, and it will stream all that media to your mobile device, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, cell phone, iPhone or pretty much anything else with a web browser. In cases where the target device doesn’t support the media in its native format Orb will transcode it to something a little more universal, notably Flash FLV format (as you’d find on YouTube or similar sites).

For mobile devices, this software is, to put it plainly, freaking awesome. Torn between the $300 iPhone 16GB and the $200 8GB models? Don’t be-get the 8GB and save yourself the $100. Add Orb to your computer at home and have access to as much storage as you can afford there, and let’s face it: for that $100 you just saved you’ll get a hell of a lot more than the 8GB extra you will from Apple. I’m currently streaming the entirety of my MP3 collection (which itself wouldn’t even fit on my 60GB regular iPod) plus a good 30ish DVD’s I ripped for the iPod. Suffice to say, my chances of getting all that content on the phone alone are well below zero.If you don’t mind spending $10, Orb even offers a nice little app on the iTunes App Store that will stream into a nice interface, but if not that’s fine-you can stream from Safari with no problems in most cases (Disclaimer: it doesn’t work for me, but it does work for the other person on my Orb account, streaming from the same server. Of course, my phone is now Jailbroken, so that may be related).

But Orb is not perfect. I’ll background this for you a little by telling you that I’m running Orb on a Quad core AMD Phenom 9600 with 4GB of DDR2 memory (PC6400), with most of my media streaming from a RAID5 array (4x320gb 7200RPM 16MB cache). When I stream videos to my Xbox 360 they look awful. This is not the fault of the 360-the same video files played natively from a USB hard drive or streamed through another app look fantastic (they’re all DivX format and some are in HD 720p) It streams the music to 360 just fine and I enjoy that functionality, but the video is simply awful. I suspect this is as a result of Orb’s default settings for transcoding, but unfortunately the software doesn’t give you any granular access into those settings to allow you to tweak them for yourself, and the defaults clearly don’t take into account a robust multicore CPU/memory system with decent GPU.

Further into Orb’s list of weaknesses is the fact that you can only add 3 users to your account, though for many people this will be no problem. For me it doesn’t really matter at all as I only have 4 people who use the server and rarely does more than person at a time access it, but if you’re looking to share your media with a lot of heavy users simultaneously then Orb might not be for you.

All in all Orb is a good, solid piece of software that just about anyone should be able to wrap their heads around, and unlike many of its contemporaries it’s fairly reliable. You’ll get your best experience on your mobile devices, but if you can get around the fact that streaming quality to a console isn’t that great you might enjoy that experience as well.

Final Judgment: Good software for streaming to a portable device with limited local storage, but has some problems with more capable devices

Website and Download: Orb Media Server

FreeWare Review: 7-Zip Archive Utility

Jason Ward — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 07:08:17 +0000

Perhaps one of the biggest needs that any computer user will have is of a utility to extract the contents of archives they download from the internet. Half the time you download something, particularly if you’re downloading free software, it’s packed up in a zip file–or occasionally some other kind of archive.

Ever since XP you can, of course, always use Windows’ built in unzip utility. But what if you need to open an archive other than a zip? What if you need to compress something that maybe you want to, say, span multiple files so you can fit it onto CD’s or DVD’s? Well then you’re kind of screwed, aren’t you? In those instances you’ve got to get yourself out there, spend a little money, and pony up for WinZip. Except, of course, you don’t.

Mr. Igor Pavlov (don’t ask about his dog, trust me) has you covered for virtually any type of archive you want to extract and pretty much any type of operation you want to do with your archives with his fantastic free software 7-Zip. Available in both 32(x86) and 64(x64, don’t ask) bit native versions for those of you who use a 64 bit version of Windows (I do). Beyond the obvious beauty of being free for all comers, business and personal alike, 7-Zip also has comes with the virtue of being a very light app. It’s tiny so it uses very little disk space and has a small memory footprint. But on top of those niceties it’s also very well featured. You downloaded a RAR file? No problem. TAR? GZ? No problem again. In fact, there are a good 25+ formats that the software supports (including 7-Zip’s own 7z format, which in many cases compresses better than Zip does), so chances are that if you can download it, 7-Zip can extract it for you. One obvious exception: 7-zip cannot extract the ACE archive format for reasons that are primarily related to licensing (see their FAQ for more info, but for most people it’ll be enough to know it’s not supported).

As if all this goodness weren’t enough though, Mr. Pavlov has also been kind enough to provide users with the ability to create virtually any kind of archive and to define the parameters of that archive’s creation. Need to back up 3 CD’s worth of data? No problem, create an archive set that breaks the archive into 650MB volumes you can easily burn onto separate CD’s (handy if you don’t have a DVD burner or you’re such a cheap-ass that you won’t waste the extra 2GB of space). Multiple size options are available by default, and better yet you can specify the size of the archive you want around whatever parameters are important to you. I’m a fan of flexibility, and this software certainly offers it up in heaps. If you’re a human with Windows and a need for a more powerful archiver than the built in Windows tool, 7-zip is worth a look, especially if you’re on a budget. And in this market, who the hell isn’t?

Final Judgment: Highly recommended, a very robust archive tool at an excellent price.

Website and Download: 7-Zip (remember it’s Dot Org, not Dot Com!)

FreeWare Review: IOBit Smart Defrag

Jason Ward — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 05:42:19 +0000

OK smartasses, you thought you had me, didn’t ya? You thought “Oh look, he forgot to post up a FreeWare review today”, didn’t ya? Yeah? Well…you’re right. I did forget. I suck! On the bright side, I did already have a plan for it, so we’ll go ahead and with that right now.

Today’s exciting Freeware pick is IOBit’s Smart Defrag software for Windows. Like virtually any defragmenting software it’s far superior to the built in Windows Defrag, but more than that I’d say it’s probably better than many of the commercial defragmenters currently on the market. As a Windows user, the need to defragment your hard drive is a simple fact of life. You either do it or you face a downward spiral of decreasing performance, slower access times for all your software and worse performance for Windows itself. Windows Vista is particularly bad about this; an untended drive can easily become 30-40% fragmented in a matter of weeks or months depending on use (though in fairness, Vista is far more resilient to fragmentation than earlier versions of Windows have been).

IOBit’s product is, without question, the most polished free defragmentation software available today. Its interface is simple and intuitive, it is updated with a frequency that very few freeware programs are, and it’s highly effective at what it does. Beyond just being an on-demand defrag tool, Smart Defrag also has a fair number of serious features. It supports scheduling so you can set your defrag to happen when it’s least intrusive to you (middle of the night? Daytime while you’re at work? Your call!). It supports Auto Defrag, which tries to keep your files from fragmenting to begin with and kicks in a defrag cycle whenever your PC is idle for 5 minutes (or longer, configurable by you). You can configure the software to run whether you’re logged in or not (requires credentials with a username and password), whether it will run at boot, etc. What’s best about all these features, though, is that they’re configurable by you.

Unlike a lot of commercial products, which features you use are configurable by you on a one by one basis. You’re forced to use pretty much nothing with this software, which makes it a real pleasure to use and more importantly, to forget you’re using. If you prefer the software only run on demand, you can do that. If you want it on in the background you can do that too. It’s your choice, and choices are always nice to have.

Final Judgment: Highly recommended, probably the best free defragmenting tool on the market

Website and Download: IOBit Smart Defrag