5 Multi Threaded Free Video Converters for Faster Conversion

If you play videos only on your computer, you don’t really need a video converter – most media players today can play almost any video format. But if you want to rip DVDs or Blu-Ray discs to your computer or you have a particularly fussy portable media player or mobile phone such as those manufactured by Apple, you will need one. If you are anything like me, you probably have several. But it’s not enough to have any video converter.

Video encoding is a very taxing job that demands power from the processor. Today, dual-core processors are standard and quad-core processors are also pretty common, thanks to Intel’s Hyper Threading technology that can execute two threads in parallel on a single core effectively turning two cores into four logical cores. Expensive processors have even more - 6 to 8 cores per die. These multi-core processors are excellent for activities like video encoding. Unfortunately, most video converters are incapable of leveraging the extra cores at their disposal. When you use such video converters, your processor is grossly underutilized often running at less than half the capacity. As a result the videos take a long time to process.

Multi-threaded video converters are capable of utilizing multi-core processors to run several threads in parallel that gets the job done quicker. If you have a multi-core processor you should be looking for multi-threaded application, otherwise the money you spent on the extra cores goes to waste. Here we have rounded up 5 brilliant video converting software that supports multiple core processors. And, yes, they are all free.

Handbrake

HandBrake is an open-source, cross-platform, multi-threaded video transcoder software application. It’s widely popular amongst film enthusiasts and is a video converter of choice for those who frequently rip DVDs. This is because HandBrake offers granular control on the video converting job allowing the user to control every parameter possible. Because of this HandBrake was considered a geek’s tool, but after recent revisions and numerous GUI updates this is no longer the case.

HandBrake supports almost all video formats, but outputs to only the best available video containers. You can output to either MP4 or MKV using either H.264 or FFmpeg (MPEG4). FLV, WMV, 3GP etc are not supported. Popularly used AVI is also not supported and for good reasons. AVI is out-dated, has many limitations and videos converted to this format is also larger in size but not better in quality than MP4 or MKV. However, the lack of choice may be disappointing for some.

TEncoder

TEncoder is another multithreaded video converter that supports a wide range video and audio codecs as well as containers that enables users to convert almost every video type to each other. Subtitles with same name as video can be hard-coded into video. You can select between multiple audio and subtitle tracks. Extracting video or audio content is possible. Other capabilities such as video edit, audio and subtitle synchronization, 2-pass encoding and deinterlacing are supported.

TEncoder can run up to 8 encoders (threads) in parallel. And if you are interested, TEncoder is also skinnable and probably the only software that allows you to adjust the color saturation and hue of the skin.

MediaCoder

MediaCoder is a vastly powerful video converter/transcoder packed with tons of features that lets you configure every step in the conversion process. It uses various open source audio and video codecs, among several proprietary codecs (such as Intel video encoder) and tools to transcode different audio/video formats and has many extra features. Many formats are supported, including MP3, Vorbis, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Windows Media Audio (WMA), WebM, RealAudio, WAV, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-2, Audio Video Interleave (AVI), Video CD and DVD-Video.

The interface is so jam-packed with features that one can get easily overwhelmed. Finding the right stuff is also quite a chore.

An interesting MediaCoder feature is CPU allocation where you can specify the cores the program should use for processing. This is similar to CPU affinity that you can assign from the task manager. (See Mz CPU Accelerator)

Sothink Free Video Converter

Sothink Free Video Converter can convert any video file to various video formats including MP4, MKV, FLV, SWF, MOV, 3GP, VOB, WebM and more. Video encoder supported are h.264, MPEG4 and Theora. The paid version supports additional formats such as HD video conversion.

You can specify bit rates, frame rates, video size, aspect ratio, and trim the start and end of the video file. Sothink Free Video Converter supports batch processing and multi-threaded operation. You can choose the number of conversion jobs to run simultaneously and the number of threads.

Freemake Video Converter

Freemake Video Converter is another multi-threaded video converter that supports large number of video formats such as AVI, MP4, WMV, MKV, MPEG, 3GP, DVD, and MP3, and device specific settings for iPod, iPhone, PSP, and Android phones. It can also upload converted videos directly to YouTube. The software accepts more than 200 input formats.

Freemake Video Converter can also utilize the Nvidia’s CUDA technology to free up CPU resources. However, since we are looking for speed here you should switch CUDA support off. This will force the software to use all available CPU cores.

Know any other video converters with multi-thread support? Tell us in the comments.

Spotflux: Free VPN With Encryption, Anti-Virus Protection and Ad Blocking

Spotflux is a new VPN service that adds something new and unique to the VPN market for consumers to choose. Aside from tunneling all traffic through their VPN servers, Spotflux will also encrypt your traffic which rules out wire-tappers and middle-man attackers from learning all your secrets. Furthermore, Spotflux employs anti-virus scanners and “millions of real-time and automated calculations to remove tracking cookies, malicious viruses, and other nasty things from your internet connection.” Spotflux protects your privacy by hiding your IP address, it protects you from malicious programs/persons who might be reading your outgoing traffic and it also protects you from Internet malware.

Spotflux is available as a desktop application for Windows and Mac. Simply install and connect - there is no account setup. The interface totally lacks complexity, save for a big green button to connect and disconnect and a smaller button at the top to bring up the Settings window. The settings dialog doesn’t contain much either - you can set the UI language, define how updates are to be installed and configure an optional proxy.

Spotflux doesn’t reveal how many servers they own, their capacity and where they are located. This might not seem unimportant for many users, but once the service gains users (it’s free, after all) these factors are going to affect every user of Spotflux. There is already a noticeable lag when surfing. This is definitely not for HD streaming, but if you just need to hide your IP and a secure connection Spotflux should fit your bill.

According to TechCrunch, the service used to be called RaptorVPN but is now rebranded as a simpler, cleaner offering. It’s not known why RaptorVPN closed shop and if the same fate awaits Spotflux, but they sure managed to convince some angle investors to cough up $1 million in seed funding.

Checkout some Spotflux alternatives.

One Year Ago: Vectorian Giotto, CouchPotato, Dolphin Text Menu and More

A hand-picked selection of articles published between April 15 and April 28 of previous years.

1 Year Ago

• 3D Sound From Ordinary Speakers
• Go800 Turns Twitter Names Into Phone Numbers

• Microsoft Image Composite Editor Now Makes Video Panorama
• Create Flash Animation Without Adobe Flash With Vectorian Giotto
• Add Extra Functions To Any Text Editors With Dolphin Text Menu
• An Incredible Portable Image and File Uploader
• MailNesia: Disposable Email Service That Automatically Clicks Activation Links
• Know What The Power Button Symbol Says
• Automatically Download Movie Torrents/NZB Of Preferred Quality With CouchPotato

2 Years Ago

• Bccthis lets you send secret emails from Outlook, Gmail
• AeroZoom turns Windows 7 Magnifier into a presentation tool
• How to remove watermark from an image or picture
• Chemitorium – 3D visualization of molecules
• YoWindow – Beautiful weather reports on desktop or screensaver
• Kylo, the web browser for big screens
• SpyBubble – Spy or eavesdrop on any mobile phone

3 Years Ago

• WirelessGet – Copy files over wireless
• Automatically update setup packages with Ketarin
• How to use twitter at work and not get caught
• How to prevent file copying, deletion and renaming?
• Pencil – A simple 2D animation software
• SyMenu – Customizable start menu and program manager for USB drives

4 Years Ago

• winPenPack - The best portable applications for your pen drive
• Pismo File Mount - Access contents of ZIP and ISO files without extracting
• How to get emails on your phone as SMS
• How to bookmark a page in PDF

How Safe Are Cell Phone Payments?

Have you ever checked your bank’s online site on your phone? Made a payment for something or tried to conduct a bank transaction? If the answer is yes, you’re not alone. The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project along with the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University are of the view that in another 8 years or so cell phones will take the spot light as the primary form of payment beating both cash and cards. Options like Google Wallet are also making their way through the market for cellular transactions. What it does is it lets users coordinate with a payment terminal through a phone. It’s still a work in progress but progress will definitely not be slow on this one.

But how safe is using one’s cell phone for payments? Setting aside the typical “lost my phone, thief swiped it” story, we’re living in a digital world which begets digital solutions i.e. you don’t need to lose possession of your phone for it to be misused. And if payments are going to become that prolific through cell phones there’s hope that solutions to existing threats can at least be tailored simultaneously.

The Root of all evil…

…and the heart of your cell phone. A best bet for a hacker to gain access to everything you don’t want to share if your phone’s Root. Once a hacker gains access he can manipulate it any which way he wants. The system permissions can be easily altered and manipulated, which means your data can be stolen quite easily. The problem is that rooted phones can be easily targeted for spyware. A spyware app could additionally be added to the phone as a system application, and then removed from the main application list so the user can’t easily get rid of it. This means a rooted phone has the ability of making third party applications invisible, rendering the invasion of your privacy invisible.

Typing in your insecurity

Keyboard apps are all the rage and add to the ease of use for many a smart phone used. What users don’t know is that a keyboard app can also act as a keylogger and store your password through your keystrokes. It’s possible that you’ve got a strong password but it’s only good as long as it stays in your head. As soon as you compromise your password it doesn’t matter if your data is heavily encrypted or if you’re using a super secure app. All you need to do is make the mistake of downloading the wrong app; even if you download the right one, there’s no guarantee your data stays safe with the source the app came from. Even if there’s no initial malicious intent, the digital world has been known to misuse personal information.

Not so strong

The Google Wallet sounds like a great idea and given that the app comes directly from Google itself it’s bound to be secure, right? If Google’s Android trouble with spyware, malware and hackers are anything to go by, users shouldn’t be so relaxed about the Google Wallet. Especially since several apps on the Android market have permission from the user to meddle with information collected and stored by other apps – apps which have nothing to do with them; what’s to say Google Wallet’s information will stay safe? This means that private information within Google’s Wallet or any other future apps for the purpose can be easily compromised as long as Google continues to give developers a relatively free reign on the Android market. It would be a different story if users could alter permissions as per their own preferences

This is a guest post by Jane Andrew , who is the author of cell phone monitoring software and keylogger technology. She provides tips, tricks and news about computer and internet security. You can also follow her on Twitter @janeandrew01 to get the latest tips about computer security.

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto

Norton Identity Safe Password Manager. Cross Browser and Cross Platform

Symantec, the company behind Norton Antivirus, has released a new password manager called Identity Safe, that aims to relieve you from the burden of remembering passwords of your online accounts and ensuring password security at the same time. If you use Norton Internet Security or Norton 360 then you already have Identity Safe installed. But now Norton Identity Safe is available as a standalone product that aims to rival tools such as 1Password, KeePass and LastPass. And unlike some of these services, Norton Identity Safe works across Windows, iOS, and Android devices. It also supports all the major browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer.

When you install Norton Identity Safe, it automatically installs plug-ins for all browsers but you may need to turn them on from your browser settings. Identity Safe can import passwords stored in Internet Explorer, and turn off the default password management in IE and Firefox. Disappointingly, it can’t import password from third-party password managers such as KeePass or LastPass. This is one drawback that might just hold back users who are already using these tools from trying out Norton Identity Safe. Nobody wants to start from scratch.

There is an option to import passwords from CSV files, but I haven’t found out if that works.

Anyways, feature-wise it stacks up pretty good against these services. Identity Safe stores all your password on the cloud that can be accessed from any device, thanks to the program’s cross-platform compatibility. The password vault itself is secured by two logins: first, you have to login to your Norton account and then use a separate password to open the vault. Norton has imposed strict restrictions on the choice of passwords. It rejects any password that doesn’t contain a mixture of uppercase and lowercase characters, numbers and symbols. The passwords is also irrecoverable.

Once you’ve overcome this hurdle and setup both your account and vault, you can start storing your usernames and password. When you open a website and enter your login credential, Identity Safe will  automatically save your login information and then fill in the login forms whenever you visit the site later. You can also manually create new Logins and organize them in folders.

Save for a browser toolbar and unobtrusive notifications, Norton Identity Safe mostly stays out of the way.

Aside from password management, Norton Identity Safe also brings safe sharing of URLs through email and social networks, as well as warn users when they try to visit infected websites.

Norton Identity Safe is available for free download until October 1, 2012.

Put Your Dropbox or Google Drive Folder Inside SkyDrive for Multiple Cloud Backup

With the recent launch of Google Drive and re-launch of Microsoft SkyDrive customers seeking for online file storage/backup solutions today have more choices than ever. However, “choice” is not the right word.

Cloud backup is not the same as social media or email. Most users don’t have the time to actively follow Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and tons of other social networking and sharing sites. Instead, we pick one or two where most of our friends and contacts are active. With email, it’s inconvenient to juggle between multiple inboxes so we stick with one. But with cloud storage, nobody is forcing you to be on Dropbox or on Google Drive alone. You can combine these services together to get lots of free storage.

You get 7GB from SkyDrive (25GB for old users), 2GB from Dropbox (upgradeable to 16GB through referrals), 5GB from Google Drive, 2GB from SpiderOak, 5GB from SugarSync, 5GB from Box, 5GB from AVG Livekive and on and on. If you do the math, there is 40GB~50GB of free storage right there.

You can keep videos on SkyDrive, documents on Google Drive, and pictures on Dropbox. However, if your requirements aren’t big, instead of spreading your files across different services you can use just one service for storage and the rest for mirror backup. If one service goes down or loses your files you can retrieve them from the others.

The easiest way to do this is to keep the sync folder of one service inside the sync folder of another service. SkyDrive with 25GB of storage can easily gobble both your Google Drive folder and Dropbox folder together. Or you can keep the Dropbox folder inside the Google Drive folder inside the SkyDrive folder. Anything you want to backup or sync goes into the Dropbox folder, which is automatically synced with Google Drive which in turn goes to your Skydrive storage. In one swoop, you created three backup copies of your files in three different locations. Backups can’t get any more secure.

How to change the sync folder

Dropbox: It’s under the Advanced section in Dropbox Preference.

Google Drive: You have to setup the sync folder when you sign in to your account. If you are already signed in, disconnect your account and reconfigure the sync folder.

SkyDrive: The sync folder is configured during installation of SkyDrive. To change the location of the folder, you have to uninstall SkyDrive and start afresh.

Facebook Offering Free Antivirus Licenses

Facebook today announced the Antivirus Marketplace that’s offering its 900 million users free downloads and six-month licenses from several antivirus companies including Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec. Aside from downloadable and installable malware protection, these five companies will also augment Facebook’s URL blacklist system to prevent malicious URLs from being shared on the network. This means that whenever you click a link on Facebook, not only will be it checked against Facebook’s blacklist, but also the blacklists provided by Microsoft, McAfee, TrendMicro, Sophos, and Symantec.

The free downloads and six-month licenses available via the Antivirus Marketplace are:

• Microsoft Security Essentials (free)
• McAfee Internet Security 2012
• Trend Micro internet security for PCs and Macs
• Sophos Anti-Virus for Mac, Home Edition
• Norton AntiVirus

Other than Microsoft Security Essentials, which is entirely free, each download is accompanied by six months of free updates, but users are limited to just one free antivirus application per Facebook account. Of course, if you have more than a couple of members in your household and all share the same PC you can each snag a 6-month license and stay protected for several years. It’s even likely that Facebook will sign-up even more antivirus companies into its marketplace.

[via Facebook]

20+ Chrome Apps for Google Drive

This is an exciting week for personal cloud storage. We saw the official release of Microsoft SkyDrive, an update from Dropbox and the long awaited Google Drive.

Google Drive was a bit disappointing. Only 5GB space for free users (we expected more) and functionality wise only little more than Google Docs. In any case, third party apps for Google Drive are coming hard and fast. Here are some of the most interesting ones available for Google Chrome right now.

HelloFax

HelloFax makes it easy to sign documents and send faxes online. Put in a fax number and HelloFax will send your document to a fax machine. If someone sends you a fax, HelloFax will forward it to your email as a PDF. Now with Google Drive integration, you can send and receive fax directly to your Google Drive account. After installing the HelloFax app, you’ll get a HelloFax folder in your Google Drive account. This folder will be automatically populated with your inbound and outbound faxes, as well as your signed documents and signature requests.

Gantter

Gantter.com is an online project scheduling application that allows you to easily save and share your project schedules with others anytime and from anywhere.

Whether you are planning a complex project like a large construction project, rolling out a new website, managing a big IT project, or simply need to manage your next home renovation project Gantter is the tool for you. Gantter even provides you a gallery of project templates to help you build your schedule in a fraction of the time. Gantter also allows you to import your Microsoft Project files. Google Drive users enjoy Gantter's seamless integration which allows you to easily save and open schedules directly to and from Google Drive.

Lucidchart

Lucidchart is an HTML5-based visual collaboration tool which allows users to collaborate and work together in real time to create flowcharts, organizational charts, website wireframes, UML designs, mind maps, software prototypes, and many other diagram types. Lucidchart features a drag-and-drop interface with hundreds of shapes to choose from. Results can be exported as image files or PDFs. Lucidchart is also one of the first web-based application to offer compatibility with Microsoft Visio.

With the new Lucidchart app for Google Drive installed, you can create, open and share Lucidchart documents as well as Microsoft Visio documents from Google Drive. Exported Lucidchart documents can be stored directly in Google Drive. You can also initiate daily or weekly backups of all of your Lucidchart documents to be stored in Google Drive.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is an online project management and crowdsourcing tool that lets you turn your Google Spreadsheet, Excel or MS Project file into an online project, complete with file attachments and threaded discussions on any row. The seamless integration with Google account allows users to open Microsoft Project and Excel files in Google Drive with Smartsheet and attach files from Google Drive to any row in Smartsheet. The service also syncs with Google Calendar and Google Contacts.

Smartsheet is not free, but 30-day trial plans are available. Paid plans start at $15.95/month.

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is one of the best online slideshow creation tool. With the latest integration with Google Drive,
you can now save and share your presentation directly from Google Drive. Google Drive users can also create new presentation using SlideRocket from within Google Drive. Whenever a Google Drive user is invited to collaborate on a presentation, it can be automatically opened for use in SlideRocket.

From within a SlideRocket presentation, users can collaborate with Google Drive users and manage presentations and applications from a single location to access documents and materials, including presentations, spreadsheets, PDFs, photos, videos and presentation resources on the web.

Pixlr Editor

Popular online image editor Pixlr, that looks a lot like Adobe Photoshop, is now available on Google Drive. This means that now you can open any image saved on your Google Drive account directly on Pixlr Editor for editing. Finished images can also be saved directly to Google Drive.

Pixlr Editor provides some fine filters including mimic HDR, glamor glow, tilt-shift, Gaussian blur, vignette, noise and lots of more. Advanced adjustments tools like Levels and Curves are available aside from basic tools like Auto levels, Hue/Saturation and Brightness/Contrast. The editor is also capable of opening PSD files, but with limited support.

Aviary

Another popular photo editor tool that recently upgraded to add support for Google Drive is Aviary. Just right click on any photo in your Google Drive and select Open With > Aviary for Google Drive. The Aviary editor will open in a new window where you can edit your pictures. When you're done, just click save and your photo will be updated in Google Drive. And because Google Drive saves previous versions of your photos, you can always revert or compare your newest version with the original photo.

WeVideo

WeVideo is an online collaborative video editing tool that enables you to create your own movies by simply dragging and dropping videos to the timeline. Once you install the WeVideo for Chrome app, you can import videos on your Google Drive account to WeVideo’s editor and then join, clip or split them, add effects, music, transitions, graphics, slides and more.

WeVideo includes more than 30 effects and 50 transitions, and much of the functionality found in Adobe Premiere, Apple Final Cut Pro X, and other desktop editors, with additional capability for collaborative editing.

WeVideo's subscription packages start with a free version that offers 1GB of workspace and limited editing and output, with premium levels up to $79.99 a month for 100GB of storage, 720p output, and priority processing, among other features.

MindMeister

MindMeister is an online collaborative mind mapping application that allows you organize brainstorming sessions with your team members over the Internet. You can plan projects, manage meetings and sketch out business plans online with partners and colleagues, all in real time.

Google Drive integration allows you to open, view and edit mind map files from Google Drive and synchronize entire maps list including folders with Google Drive. Sharing is also easy as MindMeister can access your Google contacts. Maps can be exported to Google Drive as image, text, PDF, and many other formats. You can also backup all maps to Drive in bulk.

Checkout more Google Drive apps at the Chrome Webstore.

Descriptive Camera: Point, Shoot, Read

The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera — point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene. Rather than using some kind of advanced AI that can read images, it simply passes the description task to Amazon's Mechanical Turk system, which in turn distributes the job to humans. Between 3 to 6 minutes after taking the pictures - slightly longer than a Polaroid takes to develop a picture – the Descriptive Camera spits out the description in a piece of paper.

The Amazon Mechanical Turk, for those who are unfamiliar, is a crowdsourcing Internet marketplace that enables developers (known as Requesters) to submit Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) for workers on the internet to complete, tasks that computers are unable to perform such as choosing the best among several photographs, writing product descriptions, or describing the content of an image.

The camera is powered by an embedded Linux platform (BeagleBone) and takes pictures using a USB webcam which is attached to a thermal printer for printing the output. A series of Python scripts define the interface and bring together all the different parts from capture, processing, error handling, and the printed output. The device connects to the internet via Ethernet and gets power from an external 5 volt source.

After the shutter button is pressed, the photo is sent to Mechanical Turk for processing and the camera waits for the results. A yellow LED indicates that the results are still "developing". With a HIT price of $1.25, results are returned typically within 6 minutes and sometimes as fast as 3 minutes. The thermal printer outputs the resulting text in the style of a polaroid print.

Checkout the creator’s blog for sample output from the Descriptive Camera.

[via Metafilter]

Extract Files from Windows System Restore Points with Z-VSScopy

Z-VSScopy is a free program that lets users manage the restore points that your computer has created. It allows the user to browse the content of the restore points and extract individual files and folders contained within them. This way a Windows user can bring their computer to a previously working state much more easily as they can restore just what they need.

Restore Points are implemented with VSS technology (Volume Shadow Copy Service). A Shadow Copy, also referred to as a snapshot, stores the contents of an NTFS volume at the time the snapshot is created. A Shadow Copy initially consumes very little space on the drive, because only differences to the current contents of the volume are stored. The space requirements rise when more and more files in the system are changed.

Shadow Copy folders are hidden in the Windows system and difficult to browse. Z-VSScopy introduces an easy-to-use graphical interface for VSS which helps to manage the VSS features on their system. It allows users to restore old file versions, to track changes in the system, and to delete unneeded Shadow Copies. Some Shadow Copies can also be mounted on Windows Explorer and browsed like normal files and folders.

Furthermore, Z-VSScopy tells you how much space all the system restore points are currently using and provides an easy way to limit their size on the hard drive.

Similar tool: System Restore Explorer

Opera to Discontinue Unite, Widgets and Voice

The Opera browser has three add-on platforms - Extensions, launched last year, Widgets and Unite. Today the company announced that it will retire two of the platforms in the upcoming Opera 12 release. The platforms that got the axe are Unite and Widgets. Also phased out will be speech recognition, text-to-speech and VoiceXML. Starting with Opera 12, Opera Unite and Opera Widgets will be turned off by default for new users. The two Add-on platforms will be completely removed in a later releases before the end of this year.

Over the last six years we have learned a lot from our work on Opera Widgets and Opera Unite, and when we later built the extension platform for Opera 11 we benefited significantly from this experience. Our extension technology has been a great success, with millions of monthly downloads, and so far completely dwarfing the other platforms. Recently, Opera also shipped a labs version with extension support in Opera Mobile, investigating a fully cross-platform extension environment.

Moving forward we want to focus on one high quality Add-on platform across our products, rather than spending resources on maintaining legacy systems. The know how and and technologies from Unite and Widgets are already being reused in other Opera products. An example is the recently announced UPnP support in Opera Dragonfly.

Opera Unite is a framework that allows for several web services to be hosted from the user's computer, including a web server for hosting a site, file and photo sharing, a chat room, and streaming media and more. An Opera Unite user's applications run on a domain associated with their My Opera Community account, and are accessible from any web browser. It’s a totally radical product which cannot be replaced by extensions.

Opera Unite has fairly large number of users. For instance, the most popular Unite app Media Player (which allows streaming music from the home computer over the Internet) has 4.8 million total downloads and 3,956 instances running at this very moment. Over 9000 downloads were recorded during the last week. While these numbers may look small compared to total number of Opera installer downloads, it indicates that the Unite platform is well loved and very much active.

Opera Widgets was another good platform that never received attention from Opera developers once it was released. The ability to run these widgets out of the browser was the only noteworthy upgrade to the platform. Most of the widgets in the gallery were falling out of use because the Widget API was becoming incompatible with every update of the browser.

As happens whenever a service/feature is discontinued, the decision wasn’t well received by Opera Unite and Widgets users. The decision might make sense as it will allow developers to focus on only one add-on platform – extensions, but Opera Unite and Widgets will be missed.

2 Apps to Listen and Download Music from The Hype Machine

If you are an avid listener of indie music, you must have heard of Hype Machine along with such hangouts like Jamendo, SoundCloud and BandCamp. This article is about Hype Machine.

Basically, the Hype Machine is an MP3 blog aggregator. It aggregates the most recently posted songs from a selection of about 1,500 music blogs and lists them on the website's main page. Users can search for an artist or track, and play the song directly on the site. Additionally, Hype Machine maintains a Popular List for the last three days and the previous week, both of which are determined by the number of "loves" given to each song by users.

Each song is accompanied by reviews from the blog post, along with links to the blog and links to iTunes and Amazon to buy the song. The service will also suggest new songs for you to listen.

If you hate listening to music from your browser, you’ve also got a desktop player – Hypegram. It’s a simple but functional free player for Windows that lets you search and play music from Hype Machine. You can also browse and listen to the popular and latest albums on Hype Machine or the top Twitter playlists. Logged in users get additional functionality such as the ability to “love” songs and the subscribe feature.

For downloading music, there are two ways – none of which involves Hypegram. The first one is available right on Hype Machine website. Unlike other streaming services that need to protect their tracks from unauthorized downloads, Hype Machine doesn’t have to do that. Their entire database is out in the open. Just browse through the directories categorized by artist name alphabet and artist’s name and download tracks to your heart’s content.

On the other hand, if you wish to download tracks you are listening to there is the Hype Machine Track Downloader add-on for Firefox. This extension adds a “Save Track” button next to each track that is playing on the Hype Machine player. Initially, you will see the message “Caching…” as the browser downloads the song for playback. Once the caching completes, usually a lot earlier than the song finishes playing, the download button will appear. Click on it to launch the file save window.

Move Aside Dropbox. SkyDrive Desktop App is Here With 25GB Storage

Microsoft has just released a desktop client for their cloud hosting service Skydrive. The application is available for Windows and Mac, as well as for iPhone and Windows Phone and it fully integrates the user’s Skydrive folders into their desktop computer or mobile device. Along with the application release, Microsoft has also changed the amount of free space available on Skydrive Free. Previously, users were allowed 25GB of free space on sign up. This has been reduced to 7GB. However, users who already have an account on Skydrive can keep their 25GB quota by logging into their accounts and taking the necessary actions. This offer is available only for a limited time.

Skydrive for Windows is similar in function to Dropbox. It integrates with Windows Explorer that allows you to browse files on your Skydrive account from your local hard disk. Uploading files is just a matter of copy and paste or drag and drop. Once you sign-in to Skydrive through the application, all files on your Skydrive account are automatically downloaded to your computer and both folders are kept in sync.

Individual folders on SkyDrive can even by added to Windows 7 Libraries so that they feel more like a part of the system and less like separate folders. Alternatively, you could change the target location to folders in your SkyDrive, basically treating your SkyDrive as your primary drive. You can also customize the default root of the synchronized folder (to use a different drive, for example), and this option is available during setup of the SkyDrive app.

Now here is an interesting twist: SkyDrive for Windows also includes a remote login feature that allows you to browse any files on your PC from any other internet connected computer, even if those files are not synchronized with your SkyDrive account. In order to access a remote PC you will have to provide a second factor of authentication beyond your account password. This code will be sent to your mobile phone or alternate email address when you can use to remotely access files on the PC.

Regarding the deduction in free storage, Microsoft says the decision was made because 99.94% of SkyDrive users were using less than 7GB. If you already have a SkyDrive account and using more than 4GB, your account will automatically be upgraded to 25GB without you having to take any step. New users will be limited to 7GB. Paid storage is available at a competitive pricing of $10/year for 20GB. The rates fall further as you buy more space.

The only blotch on SkyDrive at the moment is that there is no client for Android. Also SkyDrive for Windows is incompatible with Windows XP.

Post Updates to Google+ via SMS

Google has updated the post-via-SMS feature on Google+ by extending support to 41 new countries, and by doing so took the total from just 2 to a whooping 43. The 43 countries that Google selected has very low adoption of mobile broadband that can be attributed to high cost and poor coverage. India, for example, has 900 million mobile subscribers as of March 2012, but only 10-12 million of those subscribers are on 3G services. Smartphone usage in India is quite low as well with even the most optimistic reports putting the numbers at 25 million. However, all subscribers have access to cheap SMS services.

When Google+ launched in June last year, SMS features were available only in India and the US. After the expansion, Google+ SMS is available in 41 new countries:

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Benin, Cambodia, Cameroon, Congo (DRC), Cote D'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Zambia.

The Google+ SMS feature allows users to post updates to their Google+ account and also receive notification about their Google+ activity, such as comments received, using the SMS feature on their mobile phones.

To get started, add and activate your phone number on the Google+ settings page. You can also add a PIN number for added security. While actual SMS attacks are quite rare, it is technically possible for an attacker to spoof an SMS and send updates to your Google+ account that appears as though it came from you. Once you setup a PIN, include the PIN before your SMS post and circles. For example:

"A1B2C3 Will see you at the game +soccer folks" where “A1B2C3” is your PIN number.

The list of supported carriers and the phone number where the SMS needs to be sent is available on this page, and also reproduced below:

Country	Carrier	System number
Afghanistan	AWCC	2125400
Afghanistan	Etisalat	8080400
Afghanistan	Roshan	4664400
Algeria	Nedjma	+213558996400
Angola	Unitel	46645400
Bahrain	Viva	87700400
Bahrain	Zain	94004400
Benin	Moov	95650400
Cambodia	Smart	1000400
Cameroon	MTN	8741400
Cameroon	Orange	+23798008301
Congo, Democratic Republic	Vodacom	+243822063400
Congo (DRC)	Vodafone	+243822063400
Cote D'Ivoire	MTN	4442400
Cote D'Ivoire	Orange	2258500
Cote D'Ivoire	Moov	41918400
Egypt	Mobinil	34400
Ghana	MTN	1980400
Ghana	Tigo	8300
Ghana	Airtel	5400
Guinea	Orange	500000400
India	All carriers	+919222222222
Indonesia	Axis	71400
Indonesia	Hutchison	4665400
Indonesia	Indosat	367400
Indonesia	Telkomsel	4664400
Indonesia	XL Axiata	94640400
Iraq	Zain	2601400
Israel	Orange	1000400
Israel	Pelephone	10400
Jordan	Umniah	99813400
Jordan	Zain	909070400
Kazakhstan	GSM Kazakhstan	30400
Kenya	Airtel Kenya	+254786100400
Kenya	Safaricom	+254700999400
Kenya	Yu	+254754001400
Kenya	Orange	10400
Kuwait	Viva	5078400
Kuwait	Wataniya	1971400
Kuwait	Zain	898400
Kyrgystan	Megacom	46245400
Liberia	Cellcom	8400
Malawi	Airtel Zain	+265991903400
Malawi	TNM	80400
Malaysia	Digi	222350400
Malaysia	Maxis	260060400
Maldives	Dhiraagu	+9604664400
Maldives	Wataniya Maldives	4645400
Morocco	Inwi	333400
Mozambique	Vodacom	8418400
Niger	Orange	91995268
Nigeria	Airtel	+2348021600400
Nigeria	Glo	20202400
Nigeria	MTN	40700
Nigeria	Starcomms	33166400
Nigeria	Visafone	610400
Pakistan	Mobilink	2434400
Philippines	Globe Telecom	2662400
Philippines	Smart Communications	4664400
Philippines	Sun Cellular	22020400
Saudi Arabia	Mobily	611011400
Saudi Arabia	Saudi Telecom Company	88555400
Saudi Arabia	Zain	710466400
Senegal	Orange	+221774699400
Senegal	Tigo	22408400
Sierra Leone	Comium	60400
Sri Lanka	Dialog	4664400
Sri Lanka	Mobitel	89000400
Sri Lanka	Etisalat	103200400
Tanzania	Tigo	46400
Tanzania	Vodacom	+255766790400
Thailand	DTAC	42662400
Thailand	TRUE	47640400
Tunisia	Tunisiana	871222400
Tunisia	Orange	871818400
Uganda	MTN	902801400
Uganda	Orange	+ 256790791900
Uganda	Uganda Telecom	+256715887400
United States	All carriers	33669
Uzbekistan	Ucell	45400
Vietnam	Vinaphone	9666400
Zambia	Zamtel	3566400

You can also receive notification alerts about various activity on your Google+ account. These notifications can be customized at a granular level.

SMS updates and notification is not a feature exclusive to Google+ though. Facebook also supports posting of status messages and receiving updates from friends and other notifications via SMS.

Get Detailed Gmail Activity Stats with Gmail Meter

Today, Google Blogs wrote about a nifty Google Docs script contributed by a Google Docs user that provides rich statistics about how you’ve used your Gmail account over the past few week or months. Called Gmail Meter, this script scans your email inbox, retrieves key information about your emailing habits and presents them in a form that’s easy to analyze and reflect.

To start, go to docs.google.com and create a new spreadsheet. Give it a name.

Click on Tools > Script Gallery. Search for “Gmail Meter” and click the Install button.

After the script installs (it required me several tries and many minutes), you will see a new menu titled “Gmail Meter”. Open the menu and click on “Get Report”.

The script will ask you for permission to access your Gmail and Google Calendar account. Once this has been granted, you will be presented two choices – Monthly report or report based on custom dates. Choose one. Preparing a report may take some time and you will get an email once the report is ready. It took some 4 hours to prepare my report for the current year, but the wait was worth it.

I got tons of interesting stats for my account. Here is what you will see in your report.

Volume Statistics show you the number of important and starred messages, the number of people who sent you emails, and more.

Daily Traffic gives you an estimate of when you receive messages and when you send them during a given month.

Traffic Pattern lets you get a sense of your overall email activity over the past week.

Email Categories tells you how you are managing your Inbox in the form of a pie chart.

Time Before First Response shows you how long it takes you to reply, and how long it takes others to reply to you.

Word Count tells you whether you are writing long emails.

Thread Lengths help you understand whether you participate in long conversations resulting in long threads. Top Senders and Top Recipients help you identify who you communicate with more frequently.

Also see Google Account Activity

How to Get Notified When Programs Finishes Processing

Some programs require several minutes to process data. Usually anything that involves encoding and decoding requires time. File compression, video encoding/decoding, image processing take the most time to get done. Often we have to wait while these programs are processing data. We don’t exactly stare at the screen and twiddle our thumbs, instead we move to other programs that require our attention such as an unfinished Facebook game, but one way or the other, we wait.

The trouble is, there is no way of telling when a program will complete processing. Some programs calculate the approximate time remaining and some show progress bar, but we know better than to trust them. You can have fun listening to elevator music while the progress bar is progressing or replace it with a Nyan Cat, if you are fond of Internet memes. (Tip: you can use Instant Elevator Music as an audible indicator of progress bars. Music stops when progress bar reaches the end.)

If you are using Windows 7, you must have already discovered a wonderful feature. When you are copying files to your computer or downloading files from the Internet using your browser, the program’s icon in the taskbar becomes the progress bar. You can see the state of the download or the file copy job by glancing at the taskbar even when the actual program window is minimized. This might not work for all programs though.

If the program you are waiting upon uses more than the average CPU time, one way to know when the program finishes processing is to monitor the CPU usage level. If the CPU usage remains high, it indicates the program is running and processing data. If the CPU usage falls, it might indicate that the program has completed processing or stalled or waiting for your response. You can put a large CPU usage level indicator on the taskbar such as SuperbarMonitor or Taskbar Meters to make this easier.

If you don’t want to keep your eye on the taskbar at all times, there are other alternatives. Maybe you aren’t at the computer anymore and want the computer to sound an alarm when the program completes processing, or you just want the computer to shutdown upon completion without bothering you. Then you can use Marxio Timer.

Marxio Timer is an advanced task scheduler that allows you to automate tasks based on various triggers such as time and CPU load. You can have Marxio Timer monitor the CPU usage and when it falls below the predefined level, it will trigger an action. The action can be playing a sound file, displaying a text box, or shutdown/logoff/hibernate your computer. TimeToGoAppi is a similar program and more powerful than Marxio Timer.

Alternatively, you can use Tell When Done – a program specifically designed to monitor CPU usage and notify you when the program has completed processing. You run the program, click on the program window you want to monitor and press a hotkey combination. Tell When Done will start monitoring that program process and when it finds the CPU usage hitting 0%, it will alert you by sound or a message box.

CPUOff is a another freeware application that monitors the CPU load and initiates computer shutdown if the average CPU load has been found to be below a set threshold for a preset time.

Summary of Program Downloads

• Instant Elevator Music
• Nyan Cat Progress Bar
• SuperbarMonitor
• Taskbar Meters
• Marxio Timer
• TimeToGoAppi
• Tell When Done
• CPUOff

Related:

• Progress bar For Your Work Day
• Progress Bar Clock

Photo credit: BigStockPhoto

National Geographic Photo of the Day Downloader

Previously, I wrote about PictureThrill, a program that downloads pictures everyday from National Geographic and several other sites such as APOD, Bing, EPOD etc. The difference between PictureThrill and National Geographic Photo of the Day Wallpaper Changer is that aside from downloading the picture of the day for the current day, this free program can download pictures published on days gone by.

National Geographic publishes one new picture everyday as “Photo of the day”. After 24 hours the picture is taken down and sent to the archive and replaced by a new one. The archive goes all the way back to January 1, 2009.

National Geographic Photo of the Day Wallpaper Changer allows you to download each and every photo available on the archive. Simply set the start and end date, and click on the “Start” button. You can stop the download at any time. Additional pictures published during subsequent days can be added to your local archive by clicking the “Add to archive button”. Daily archive can be enabled to archive daily image automatically.

The program also functions as a wallpaper changer, as obvious from the name.

Similar tools:

• InterfaceLIFT Wallpaper Downloader
• Vladstudio Wallpaper Downloader
• Skins.be Wallpaper Downloader
• DeviantART Gallery Downloader
• Boston Globe Big Picture gallery downloader