I Love Free Software |
- Store Login Info and Protect Online Accounts with ID Vault
- Fix Window Registry and File System with Windows Repair
- Collaborative Book Writing Platform: Booktype
- Memorize Question Answers with this Free Tool: TypeAgain
- Remove Duplicate and Deleted Songs from iTunes with TuneTastic
- Improve Search Engine with Google Chrome Plugin: DuckDuckGo
- Free Office Suite for Windows and Android: Kingsoft Office
| Store Login Info and Protect Online Accounts with ID Vault Posted: 10 Jun 2012 06:30 PM PDT
ID Vault is a very powerful online accounts information protection software that you can use in order to protect login information and also credit card numbers, which once stolen can cause you a lot of grief. When credit card information ends up in the wrong hands, you could lose money very easily, since there’s practically no protection on them, this is where ID Vault can help a great deal and protect your information.
As you open up ID Vault for the first time you’ll be prompted to enter a PIN number that you will use to access the program. This PIN has to have between 4 and 8 numbers, and make sure that you remember it correctly because there’s only 4 attempts at entering it before you’re in trouble with the program, since it will think that you’re an intruder trying to break into the original owners information that’s stored in ID Vault. Adding account information into ID Vault is very easy, in fact it’s automatic. Protecting your online accounts with ID VaultAfter you’ve created the PIN number, right after that you will receive a notification where it says that you simply open up in your browser the website where you want your account protected by this online ID theft protection software, and the program will automatically pick up on what you’re doing and offer you to save the info. But after we’ve tried that in Firefox, left ID Vault running in the background while logging into Gmail, nothing happened, so we decided to try in Internet Explorer and sure enough ID Vault popped up with add account message.
Click on the Add Now option, you won’t get pretty much any kind of notification that the account was successfully added, but if you click on the tray icon of ID Vault it should be there:
Now when you open up the website where you’ve logged in, another pop up will come from the ID Vault offering you to open up the website that you’re on:
Clicking on that small pop up will open a new browser tab/window where you are automatically logged in. It’s not even necessary to open up the website in the browser, just click on the tray icon and from there you select the account that you want to access, ID Vault will open up the browser and login automatically. Free version limitations, tips and conclusionsWhat we were testing is the free version of ID Vault. Free version has all the same features that the paid version has only you are limited to:
By buying one of the paid version you can protect more of your online accounts from theft. Advice that you should follow is that you are sure that your computer is clean before you store your passwords inside ID Vault, because if you store your password and your computer is infected, you private info is still in danger of being lost. Program does what it says, and there’s a lot more features that we didn’t mention. Although we had some problems with Firefox, you can contact the support if you have any kind of problems and they’ll help you out, use it to increase your protection. Related posts:
Store Login Info and Protect Online Accounts with ID Vault was originally published at I Love Free Software |
| Fix Window Registry and File System with Windows Repair Posted: 10 Jun 2012 03:30 PM PDT
Tweaking’s Windows Repair is a free tool that you can use in order to fix your Windows machine after getting rid of a malware infection. These types of situations usually leave a lot of different errors in the system and you need to scan your registry for broken registry entries and also check Windows settings which viruses usually fiddle around with, so that they are not easily detected.
The program will scan the problems on your PC in 5 simple steps, and it’s not very complicated to use. Majority of computer users will be able to fix their computer with the help of Windows Repair. Each one of the problematic system areas like the registry, file system, important Windows tools like the firewall are very well explained what they are and what they mean, which means that you can’t make the mistake and choose the wrong thing, you’ll see that later one as we explain how Window Repair works. How to repair system with Windows RepairOn the image above you can see that there are 5 steps that you need to take in order to tune up your system with the help of Windows Repair. The 4 steps leading up to the last one, the last tab called Start Repairs are all just tips and necessary safety steps that need to be taken before you actually start repairing your PC. That’s why on step number two we have the advice to make sure that our PC is clean from viruses and other malware before attempting any kind of repairs, there are even some great tools for malware removal being offered:
Now on step 2 we are actually starting to make some strides towards repairing Windows, we are offered to fix the corrupted Windows file system by performing a disk check. For this you will need to restart your PC so make sure to save and close programs before clicking Do It:
Step 3 is basically the same as Step 2, only the files are now being verified and checked additionally. Step 4 is also not very interesting, you’re offered to create a System restore point and to backup the registry, it’s simple to do, so let’s move on the last step, which is the actual system clean up.
The list of things that Windows Repair can check for errors is very long, as you can see from the image above, here are some of them singled out:
and a lot more. Out of these mentioned the most important fixes would be Hosts file repair. The Host file is where you can determine which websites can be accessed by your system, and viruses have a nasty habit of blocking all the major antivirus servers so that you cannot visit them to download updates or additional protection. If you’ve had a virus infection and you’ve successfully cleaned your system, then you can use Windows Repair in order to fix leftover mayhem, if you’re not interested in reinstalling Windows that is. No related posts. Fix Window Registry and File System with Windows Repair was originally published at I Love Free Software |
| Collaborative Book Writing Platform: Booktype Posted: 10 Jun 2012 12:30 PM PDT
Booktype is an online platform that you can use in order to write, publish, print or create digital books which will be possible to read normally on paper or via various electronic book readers. The entire concept behind the Booktype project is to allow people to create books in an easy way, you can write them yourself or you can choose to work in teams, because Booktype offers team collaboration on a project as well.
If you visit the official website of Booktype, you’ll be given the option to have a test run of the Booktype software. Booktype is a platform, but you will need to install it on your own server in order to use it. Booktype will only provide you with the necessary installation files and of course lengthy instructions on how to install this book writing platform. Image above is the default screen of the Booktype demo. If you’re just starting out in your book writing adventures, and you’re still not a very experienced or demanding writer, then you should consider using the demo to see if this platform would be the thing that you’re looking for, here are some of the basics, like how to create a book. You can also check out Shelfster to write articles and papers online. How to start a book in BooktypeTo create a new book you need to click on the Create New Book option which you can see on the first image above, after doing that a new book creation wizard will pop up:
Here you have to enter the usual, name of your book, a short description, select what kind of license the book will have, add a cover image and finally you can choose if you want to make the book public, so that it can be found by others online and join in on its development. After you’re done, the book will appear in your account and after that the only thing that’s left is to actually write it :D.
Writing a book in BooktypeOnce that the book is created and you see the book menu that’s shown on the image above, to start editing the book, click on Edit this Book button.
You can’t have a book without a Table of contents, so naturally this is the first thing that you need to create in order to be able to start witting the book. Sections are kind of like containers, Chapters are the thing which is important to add. With a chapter added the Edit button appears, and after clicking on it the book witting can start:
There you have it, a book is started, and if you want you can invite your friends to come and join you on the project. Each one of your friends can be assigned to a certain chapter or one can write, while the other one proofreads and lays out the story. There’s a chat on the right next to the text input area so you can communicate with other members of your team in real time and give feedback to one another. Booktype is a great tool indeed, visit the main website for more information. Related posts:
Collaborative Book Writing Platform: Booktype was originally published at I Love Free Software |
| Memorize Question Answers with this Free Tool: TypeAgain Posted: 10 Jun 2012 11:00 AM PDT
TypeAgain is a simple application that you can use to memorize things. The programs uses question answers format on a text file to test how much you can remember. TypeAgain reads questions from the text files, matches them to the answers you provide and informs you whether you are right or wrong. Features
How to memorize question answers with this freeware?The program requires no installation. You can either download the zip file and unzip its contents to run the executable. For those willing to take on more of a challenge, Java source code is available for download. You can tweak the code to your liking or compile it to run the program as it is. The interface is very simple. To get started, you need to have written a text file with questions and their corresponding answers on the following line. You should skip a line between an answer and the next question.
Before you can begin testing your self, you need to provide a question answers text file for the program to use. To add a file, click on the File menu and select the Open questions file option. Once the program reads the file the question appears in the blue Question text area. Enter the answer and press Enter or click the Verify answer button. If the answer is wrong, the white background on the Answer text area turn red and displays the correct answer. If the answer is correct, the Answers text area turns green. To continue to the next question, click on Next Question. You access a list of previous used question files by selecting Open most recent questions file on the File menu.
You can close the currently open questions file by selecting the Close questions file on the File menu. If you are not very sure about your answers, you can set the program to use a less strict matching algorithm by selecting Loose matching on the Settings menu or select the Strict matching mode which matches the answer word for word but ignores sentence case. If you wish to automatically jump to the next question select the option from the Settings menu. Online help is available by clicking the help menu labelled with the "?" symbol. Pros
Cons
ConclusionTypeAgain is a tool that comes in quite handy if you wish to test just how much of what you read you can remember. No related posts. Memorize Question Answers with this Free Tool: TypeAgain was originally published at I Love Free Software |
| Remove Duplicate and Deleted Songs from iTunes with TuneTastic Posted: 10 Jun 2012 09:30 AM PDT
CopyTrans TuneTastic is an application that you can use in order to bring order to your iTunes library, remove duplicate entries, check for songs which were deleted from the hard drive, but which were not deleted from the iTunes library and also download the appropriate album artwork where it’s missing. The application is small, simple to use, it doesn’t even require installation, just download, extract, run and it will automatically cleanup your iTunes song list.
Program offers you a welcome screen when its first started, there you are offered help on how to use it, or you can start using TuneTastic right away, which is the more fun way of learning how something works, so we’re gonna select that option and get right into it. Using TuneTastic to cleanup iTunes library
Even though what you see on the image above is an exaggeration, duplicate songs can be very harmful thing, not only because then your iTunes music library will repeat the same songs while using the shuffle mode, provided of course that you have enough duplicates, but it could also cost you money. Disk space is something that’s not very cheap these days, and the only thing which duplicate entries in your iTunes library are doing is wasting your hard drive space. Depending on how big your library is, and how much duplicates it contains, you can free up a lot of space, and that way save the money that you’d normally spend on buying a new hard drive. While using TuneTastic keep in mind that this application is still in development, what we’re testing today is actually a beta release of TuneTastic and some of the features that the program will have are still not functional, for example album art retrieval.
Notice that the Toolbox option on the right side is “Coming Soon”. To do the operations which TuneTastic can do in its current states, click on the Automatic button. While using TuneTastic you need to turn off iTunes because otherwise you’ll get an error that another application is using the iTunes library, and that duplicates and broken songs cannot be fixed.
Scanning completed and we were informed that iTunes library which you can see showed a few screen shots back contains missing tracks, because we intentionally deleted 1 album, and it contains duplicate songs, because we added them and also that there are no orphan tracks. Orphan tracks is another way of saying that the song was deleted from the hard drive, but not from the iTunes library. Clicking on the small eye-looking icons next to each one of the items where problems are found will allow you to delete the duplicates, or remove tracks from the library if they were deleted from the computer.
ConclusionEven though TuneTastic is just a beta, it does a nice job and there were no errors present while we were using it. Currently the application is free, and once it’s finished it might not be anymore, so grab it while you can. No related posts. Remove Duplicate and Deleted Songs from iTunes with TuneTastic was originally published at I Love Free Software |
| Improve Search Engine with Google Chrome Plugin: DuckDuckGo Posted: 10 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT
DuckDuckGo is Google Chrome plugin that incorporates a search engine which derives information from crowd sourced sites to improve on search results from other search engines. With DuckDuckGo, you do not have to worry about your history as no user information is recorded. With no demographic profiling, DuckDuckGo is able to produce comprehensive results which are not doctored to fit a profile deduced from personal information you provided or was recorded. Features
You can check out Quixey free application search engine. How to Improve your Search Engine with this free PluginTo install the plugin click the Add To Chrome button. The browser request for authorisation to add the plugin, click Add and wait for installation to complete. To be able to use the extension, you have to restart your browser.
Open Google search engine and type text in the search text field. Click or press Enter to view search results. Just below the search textbox, DuckDuckGo results are displayed. The search phrase is appended as the search title. The search results include background information about text being searched, the search parameter official site and icon-if they exist and its Wikipedia page. Click on the see DuckDuckGo results link to visit it official homepage. Click on the more related topics link to view other closely related results.
DuckDuckGo can be removed by navigating to the Google Chrome management window and clicking the remove button. To access extensions management on Chrome, click on the settings icon, select Tools and select Extensions. Click Options to edit DuckDuckGo settings. You can check out free image search engines reviewed by us. Pros
ConsNone that I could find. VerdictDuckDuckGo is a well thought and great tool for anyone looking to make the most out of Google Search Engine. Related posts:
Improve Search Engine with Google Chrome Plugin: DuckDuckGo was originally published at I Love Free Software |
| Free Office Suite for Windows and Android: Kingsoft Office Posted: 10 Jun 2012 06:30 AM PDT
Kingsoft Office Free is an alternative to the industry standard when it comes to office suites, Microsoft Office, and it’s also an alternative to other similar free office suites that are available out there. On one hand, Kingsoft Office has certain advantages, for example there is actually an Android version of it, which you can use on your smartphones or tablets powered with Android. On the other hand, the downside of Kingsoft Office, the desktop version of it at least would be that it only offers writing, spreadsheets and presentation applications. OpenOffice and LibreOffice for example also offer database apps in their suits.
Installation of Kingsoft Office is very simple, and the download is not very large, less than 100MB, which makes it a great choice for older machines which would normally be suffocated by more heavier office applications. Program comes with samples and templates, for some apps, that you can use in your work, which is a nice touch. At the end of installation you can choose to associate office extensions like .doc, .ppt and .xls with Kingsoft Office, be careful with this option if you don’t want to use Kingsoft as your default app for these file formats. Notice that next to this free version, there are also paid ones, which are offering some more advanced options, some of which would be:
What kind of features does Kingsoft Office Suite have?Now, so that it doesn’t look as though we are only focusing on the bad, let’s talk about some of the things that you get by installing Kingsoft Office, the free version. The list of features is pretty long, so we’re just gonna single out the most interesting ones:
For those who do not need advanced features which can only be found in its commercial counterparts, Kingsoft is more than enough. The most important feature that’s necessary in every alternative office suite, document compatibility with that of Microsoft Office is there, even for the Office 2007/2010 .docx format. You can continue editing files from Office very easily. Strangely enough there is no support for the OpenOffice file format, here’s a complete list of formats which you can open, edit and save with the help of Kingsoft Office:
Kingsoft Office also offers its own file format, those would be the unknown ones that you can find on the list above. Saving in that file format is not a very wise thing though, because not many other programs support them, and if you for some reason were not able to use Kingsoft, for example if you were on another computer where a different office suite is installed, then you won’t be able to open the files and make changes. Let’s now have a close look at each one of the three apps that Kingsoft has to offer, what their advantages and disadvantages might be, and to see if they would be a decent substitute for other Office suites. Kingsoft Office Writer FreeWhen you first start the Writer portion of Kingsoft, you’ll see a very familiar scene because the interface is very similar to that of Office 2003, not very similar to the look of the newer versions of Office though, 2007 and 2010, but you can activate the newer style by clicking on the style button on the top right corner of the program and purchasing the full version of the program, since the new style is not available in the free version.
Look at the screenshot above to get a better picture of what we are talking about. You also get some grasp of the tools for file editing options that you get with the Writer. The usual toolbars are all there, and they have practically the same look and arrangement like that of Office, again similarities with Microsoft’s Office. Something that we were very anxious to test out is how the writer will handle the .docx file format. A common problem with these types of alternative office software is that even though compatibility is declared, it’s not very good, so we decided to test with a file which was created in Office 2007 and saved as .docx, and results were not perfect, but still very satisfying.
Some symbols which were present in this table are not being displayed, but that could be because of font limitations. Everything else was just fine, and we were able to continue editing the file just fine. Everything else worked just fine, the usual adding of tables, shapes, text formatting, paragraphs, we could do all of those things and much more. You can add Math equations, hyperlinks, data charts and even use various different fonts. Kingsoft Writer comes with a few of its own, and you can add new ones by adding fonts to the system. Tabs are a very nice touch, because this is something that’s not present in other software like OmegaOffice and IBM Lotus Symphony. All in all Kingsoft Writer is more than good, try it and see for yourself. Creating spreadsheets with Kingsoft SpreadsheetsThe Spreadsheets portion of the program continues with the same amazing similarities in the interface to that of Microsoft’s Excel. Here also there’s an option to upgrade to the style which mimics the style of Excel 2010, but to do that you’ll have to switch to the paid version:
First thing that has to be mentioned is the amazing selection of templates that comes with Kingsoft Spreadsheets. To access the templates you’re gonna have to click on File and then select New from template. Choose between various template types, there are Business, Education, Office and Personal template types to choose from. If you are interested in keeping a monthly budget, it’s easy with a very clean and intuitive Monthly Budget template:
Functions, the most important part of any spreadsheet application is of course present in Kingsoft Spreadsheets, and they work just like in any other office software. The same possibilities of adding shapes, images, and various other objects into your spreadsheet are present, and the ever useful tabs, for easy switching between sheets, are also found in the Spreadsheets. The transition from Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc and OpenOffice Calc should not be too drastic, overall style is the same, format compatibility is there, so what more could you ask. Kingsoft Spreadsheets Free is the perfect budget solution for creating spreadsheets, because it’s free, how much more budget can it get? Kingsoft Presentations FreeFor starters let’s just say that pretty much everything that you can do in Writer and Spreadsheets you can do in Presentation, so that I don’t repeat myself. Of course I’m not saying that you can create text documents and spreadsheets in Kingsoft Presentations, because you can’t ,we are after all talking about presentation software, which is used, go figure to create presentations. What I’m referring to is the fact that you get all the same editing options and tools, only here you use them to create presentations for school or business.
Presentation comes with a lot of different templates that you can use in your presentations, a lot more than what you get in Spreadsheets, there’s over 20 different cool templates that you can use.
Creating presentations is very simple, select between an empty file or one of the above mentioned pre-made templates, and then start adding editing the presentation so that it looks the way you want it to look. After that start adding text and images, you know the drill. The most important part of any presentation software, cool effects for text and image can be found in Kingsoft Presentation, :). You can choose between
The emphasis effects are used when you have something in your presentations that you want to point out, as the name of the effect suggests. There’s just too many options which are being offered, so try out the Presentation software yourself and see what it has to offer exactly. ConclusionIf you are looking for an alternative to expensive commercial office suits, well then Kingsoft Office is definitely a worthy substitute, if not that, it should by all means go into your consider list of software. If there were a database application offered, it would be even better, but even with just Writer, Spreadsheet and Presentation, Kingsoft Office has a lot to offer, it’s very easy to use and light on the resources, so even those with older computers can enjoy it. No related posts. Free Office Suite for Windows and Android: Kingsoft Office was originally published at I Love Free Software |
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