I Love Free Software

Create Effective and Balanced Diet Plan: Food Exchange Diet Planner
Complete PDF Suite: Advanced PDF Utilities
Free Tabla Player and Composer to Learn Tabla: Naad
Improve System Speed, Security and Stability with Booster+
Hide Desktop Icons, Windows, Wallpaper and Taskbar: trimDesk
5 Firefox Youtube to MP3 Plugins To Download YouTube Videos As MP3
Launcher Utility to Launch Programs and Documents from Tray: Gomigo
Countdown Timer to Launch or Stop Any Process: Process Timer

Create Effective and Balanced Diet Plan: Food Exchange Diet Planner

Posted: 14 Jul 2012 03:30 PM PDT

Food exchange diet planner is a free tool which helps you in designing balanced diet plan as per the food exchange scheme. The food exchange scheme holds great importance amongst the dietician and nutrition specialists. This can be attributed to the fact that it’s completely accurate. The main task of this scheme is to define different food groups along with their servings. Since the food exchange diet planner is in accordance with the food exchange scheme, hence it can find great utility with food professionals and individuals to create the meal plans.

How to create your Diet Plan?

Step 1- As you can see in the interface above, initially, you need to enter your average daily requirements in calories. In case, you are not sure then you can use the Energy calculator which calculates the energy requirements for you based on certain parameters. You would be required to fill a number of fields. The following window appears:

As you can see above, you need to fill the basic details to compute your daily energy requirements. As you can see, the Basal metabolic rate is also mentioned. Food professionals can also click on the advanced option to check how the basal metabolic rate and total energy requirements are computed. Basal metabolic rate in simple terms is generally, the amount of energy spent by humans at rest. Below is a snapshot of how such calculations are done:

There are basically 4 formulae available in this software to compute the Basal metabolic rate to help you to prepare effective diet plan namely, Harris and Bennedict (1919), Harris and Bennedict, revised (1984), Owen et al. (1986) and Mifflin et al. (1990). You can also use a different formula by clicking on the custom formula option which is also available in the drop down menu. By default the formula used is Harris and Bennedict, revised (1984).

You can also check out free calorie calculators reviewed by us.

Step 2-This step involves you to specify the percentage amount of carbohydrates, proteins and fats which constitute the macronutrients. The drop down menu offers you 4 choices:

Custom diet: You can specify the amounts yourself. This option is best suited for food professionals.
Balanced diet: This is the perfect blend of quality and the required proportion of all the nutrients.
Zone diet: this advocates consuming calories from carbohydrates, fat and protein in a balanced ratio.
High carb diet: As the name suggests, this corresponds to a diet pertaining a higher carbohydrate concentration.

For this particular diet plan, we have chosen balanced diet.

Also check out websites which let you make a free exercise schedule.

Step 3-The final step is when you need to define the servings for different food groups namely- fruits, vegetable and dairy products. Here again you have a number of choices:

Custom preferences
Balanced preferences
Mediterranean diet
Emphasis on diary products
Lots of fruits
Lots of vegetables
No dairy products

Whatever option you pick, the number of servings for each food group would be tabulated. We chose Balanced preferences.

This is what our plan looked like when we were done:

Verdict

Food exchange diet planner is a powerful tool if you wish to create a perfect diet plan for yourself. It's simple and just takes a couple of minutes. Hence there is no reason why you would not want to try it unless it is something that does not interest you at all.

Download Food Exchange Diet Planner free.

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Create Effective and Balanced Diet Plan: Food Exchange Diet Planner was originally published at I Love Free Software

Complete PDF Suite: Advanced PDF Utilities

Posted: 14 Jul 2012 02:00 PM PDT

Advanced PDF Utilities Free is a very large set of PDF tools which you can use for practically every PDF manipulation you can think of. There’s a total of 7 different PDF tools offered in the Advanced PDF Utilties Free pack, which should be more than enough to satisfy the needs of every person that handles a lot of PDF files, and who needs them either converted, cut, merged or extracted, because with Advanced PDF Utilites you can do all of those things and more.

On the image above you can see the default interface of this complete PDF suite, which can be used for a number of different PDF edits. Each one of the tools can be accessed by clicking on the upper tabs. Initial tab where you will land is the PDF Preview, which is a free PDF viewer tool, you can’t call something a complete document suite without there being a viewer app. List of other tools is as follows:

PDF Preview – View PDF documents
PDF to Image – Convert PDFs to Images
PDF to TXT – Same as above, just to textual documents
PDF Merge and Split – join or cut PDF documents
Scan to PDF / JPG to PDF – Convert scans directly to PDF documents
OCR – Optical recognition software

A very impressive list of features, and best of all, they are all rolled up into a single application, let’s see how they actually work, or if they’re here just to look at.

Similar software: Perfect PDF Reader, PDF Preview, PDF Xchange Viewer.

Convert PDF files to Images with Advanced PDF Utilties Free

Converting PDFs to images can come in handy if for example you’re unable to afford a PDF reader, but you can display images on your media player. Converting isn’t that difficult to grasp, simply load the PDF files you wish to convert to images:

Click on the Convert button on the far right and then simply wait for the application to churn out the images in the selected destination folder.

Cut and merge PDF files for Free

Splitting and merging PDF documents is very easy with Advanced PDF Utilities, again you load up the document that you wish to cut, and then set the splitting parameters, if you want the document cut after a certain number of pages, between pages or on each bookmark. On this image:

we’ve decided to split the document after each 10 pages. With this setting you can even cut a document in half, for example cutting a document each 10 pages means that a 20 page document will be cut in half. Other cutting options are also available.

Conclusion

We already talked about some of the tools from this ensemble, for example we had a review of the free OCR component before. Other tools can come in very handy, especially the Scan to PDF option for which you’ll need a scanner of course. Advanced PDF Utilities has a lot to offer, and you should really give this PDF utility a try, because the number of tools it offers is just to good to pass up, and best of all it’s free.

Complete PDF Suite: Advanced PDF Utilities was originally published at I Love Free Software

Free Tabla Player and Composer to Learn Tabla: Naad

Posted: 14 Jul 2012 12:30 PM PDT

Naad is a free Tabla player and composer useful for all those aspiring Tabla enthusiasts out there. It could be said that it's more a fun way to learn the way to play Tabla. The free Tabla composer comes with host of pre-set samples along with the option of composing your own with its interactive grid UI. You may create your own compositions which could be saved and loaded as well. The other things which this free Tabla player features are the accompaniments, real-time variety in Bols, Tempo control and variations.

Installation Process of Naad to learn Tabla

It surely is a creative application which brings the world of tabla on your system. Moreover you might think it is one of the unique ways to learn the instrument which you are so fond of. So when it comes to the installation procedure of this particular program the process is quite simple. You just need to visit the download link here and click on Show all at the bottom left of the browser window. Once you do so you would be guided to a new window asking you to select the download you want for your OS. Download takes a few minutes after which you need to run the setup process to install on your system. If you want to play piano or other instruments in your PC, you can try Sweet Little Piano, KeyMusic and 5 free software to play drums .

Using Naad to learn Tabla

Once you have the program installed on your system the next step is to launch the program. The screen which appears at the moment you launch the program you would see plain grids with three main options at the bottom. The three options are broadly defined as composition, Accompaniments, Bol Variety. They are for trying your creativity out and creating your own compositions. Clicking in the grids would give you the options to select the beats which you wish to use for your own composition which contains almost all the beats a tabla can play. Additionally there is an auto compose option using which the process of creating your compositions becomes much easier. For the beginners you may click on the options at the top and select the option named ''Play all Samples'' which plays a sample of a pre-set composition. For the experts who know all about the beats and the perfect combinations that they may need to create a particular composition it really works great.

With the option below the Tempo or Gati may change the speed of the composition that you are currently playing. Coming to the right of this option you can choose additional instruments to be played such as a Tanpura, Ghungru or a Lehra. Below this you get the option to change the time variation between each beat within the composition being played. Lastly the right side of the bottom section of the main window gives you the option to bring about a change to the Bol variety of a particular composition.

You may make changes and may even replace the original Bols with your own personalized liking. Naad also gives you the option of creating and saving different composition along with uploading from an existing composition which you might have. There are lots which you could do with this application as this can be very useful especially for those of you who wish to create compositions saved in a much easier manner. Further saved compositions could be distributed among the aspiring Tabla enthusiasts to make their learning process much simpler. In case you get lost while using the application you can always choose the help option that comes with this software. It opens up a new window where you have every detail of how you could actually use this software with ease. Now that you know all about Naad, you can use this freeware to learn Tabla.

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Free Tabla Player and Composer to Learn Tabla: Naad was originally published at I Love Free Software

Improve System Speed, Security and Stability with Booster+

Posted: 14 Jul 2012 11:00 AM PDT

Booster+ is a free system utility which comes packed with over 15 different system tools that can be used for increasing the speed, security and stability of your Windows computer system. The application is written in Java, so if you do not have the Java runtime environment you will not be able to use it, which is a shame, because there are some very useful tools hidden behind the Booster+ hood.

As you can see from the image above, the list of system tools that Booster+ has to offer is quite extensive. At the top we have the One Click Speed Up button where you can activate a complete system scan which will report back any system vulnerabilities that might cause system slowdowns. Bottom of the window contains every tool that Booster has to offer, but note that not every single one of them are Booster’s own tools. Some of the buttons will just open up the corresponding Windows OS tool, form example the Task Manager button will open up the Windows Task Manager. Here’s a short list of the more interesting system utilities which can be very useful:

Task Killer
Flush DNS Cache
Signature Verification
Fix Safely Remove Hardware Icon
Startup Programs

Even though we mentioned that a lot of the tools with which Booster+ boasts are not its own, to majority of Windows users they will be new, so they might not notice that they are actually built-in system tools which Booster+ calls upon to fix the system. Take Signature Verification tool for example, have you ever heard of it? Do you know what it does? If you have, good for you, if not, read on and find out about Signature Verification and other interesting system tools that Booster+ has to offer.

Improve system speed, stability and security with Booster+

We mentioned Signature Verification, a tool which will scan system files, compare their status, their description, file size, file signatures, in hopes of detecting malware manipulations:

Viruses have a nasty habit of changing important system files and these changes can be detected since every system file has a seal, which get’s broken in case of tampering.

Kill system tasks with Task Killer

User tasks and processes can sometimes freeze, especially on older computers. This can cause a lot of problems, mainly that the program which we’re using is no longer responsive, with Task Killer:

You can kill a task of your choosing by force. Simply type in the name of the process and then hit Kill, and you’re done.

Internet Explorer junk cleaner, DNS Flusher and more

Last but not least would be Internet Explorer Cleaner, cleaning tool which can be seen in the middle of the program window. You can clean the entire IE cache with it, cookies, files, history, everything. The DNS Flusher can clear your DNS cache which can sometimes cause problems by making some websites not to open. A lot of other tools are available and with Booster+ you can improve your computer experience with it a lot, try it, it’s free.

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Improve System Speed, Security and Stability with Booster+ was originally published at I Love Free Software

Hide Desktop Icons, Windows, Wallpaper and Taskbar: trimDesk

Posted: 14 Jul 2012 09:30 AM PDT

trimDesk is a cool, free desktop enhancement software which you could use to hide desktop icons, taskbar, desktop backgrounds or the gadgets easily. The software comes with an automated programming which quickly takes care of performing the above activities with just a few clicks in it. It is available in two options where the free version is named as the ''Lite'' and the paid version is termed as the ''Pro''. trimDesk Lite has been reviewed below which though lacks with some advanced features is quite an efficient tool. It enables you to efficiently manage desktop settings. TrimDesk is very effective for hiding your entire screen for say:

when you want to take a screenshot to put up on the web,
when you are working on something confidential or you would like to hide the entire screen of your computer at a single click so that others cannot view what you are working, or
while giving presentation on your system.

Installing trimDesk

In order to install this application you would be required to visit the download site of the Developer here. You would see the two releases of this software where in order to download the freeware you would need to scroll down and click on the Download option against the Freeware Lite version. Depending on which installation file format you click on, it would roughly take a couple of minutes after which you are ready to install it on your computer. In case you clicked on the zip file you will have to unzip it and run the trimdesk.exe file. If you are interested to try some more desktop enhancement utility, you can try XWidget, Capture.Net and Aximion 3D Desktop reviewed by us.

Using trimDesk to hide desktop icons

Once you are done installing trimDesk you will have to launch the program by clicking on the shortcut or the launch file. A new window would appear on your screen which surely looks pretty similar to an interface of a cool game which you might have played on your computer. It is pretty small in size but is sheer powerful once used. Once you move away the cursor from the program it compresses itself into a small bar on your screen.

The main screen presents you with the options which you would like to hide in one go. The options included in the list are as follows:

Icons
Gadgets
Taskbar
Desktop Wallpaper

In case you would like one or two of the above options not to be hidden when you run the program you can click on those and they would be unchecked. Below the four options mentioned above you have three keys where each represents the following:

1^st key (from the left): Clicking on this runs the software and hides all the windows, icons, wallpaper, gadgets along with the entire taskbar.
2^nd key (middle): When you click on this it will minimize all the windows which you might have opened in front of your screen.
3^rd Key (extreme right): The last key in the row represents the key to change the desktop colour.

Further to make changes to the settings you need to click on the trimDesk Configuration option which appears on the left of the window. It would open up a new window with several options on it. So here you can setup the entire functionalities, the look or skin of the software, configuration of trimDesk, and more.

Now that you know all about trimDesk, you can use this freeware to hide desktop icons, taskbar and windows.

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Hide Desktop Icons, Windows, Wallpaper and Taskbar: trimDesk was originally published at I Love Free Software

5 Firefox Youtube to MP3 Plugins To Download YouTube Videos As MP3

Posted: 14 Jul 2012 08:00 AM PDT

Here, are 5 free Firefox plugins to download YouTube videos as mp3. Downloading YouTube videos as mp3 makes it easy for you when you only want to hear the music and not watch the video. Now, you don't need to install any YouTube downloader software on your PC, as Firefox browser has multiple YouTube downloader plugins which help you to download YouTube videos in mp3 format.

In this article, we will discuss about 5 best YouTube as mp3 downloader plugins which include YouTube to MP3, YouTube MP3 Podcaster, Video2MP3 – YouTube to MP3 converter, and more.

YouTube To MP3:

YouTube To mp3

YouTube To MP3 is a free Firefox plugin to download YouTube videos as mp3 on PC. After installing the plugin, you will see a downloader button above the video player of YouTube. Click on the download button and the plugin will divert you to a new Firefox tab. Your download will then start in mp3 format on Firefox browser. YouTube to mp3 plugin allows you to download video to mp3 format in two qualities which include normal and high quality. Before downloading the video, the plugin will convert the video into mp3 which takes a while. The download will then start automatically on your Firefox browser.

YouTube MP3 Podcaster:

YouTube mp3 Podcaster

YouTube MP3 Podcaster is another free Firefox plugin to download YouTube videos in mp3 and multiple other media formats. This Firefox plugin in another one of the popular plugin in Firefox adds-on store to download YouTube videos as mp3. The plugin allows you to download YouTube videos in mp3, FLV, 3GP, and mp4 format. It gives links below the video player on YouTube page to download video in the required format. Just click on the required file format and the video will be downloaded in that format.

Convert YouTube to MP3:

Convert YouTube to mp3

Convert YouTube to MP3 is a free Firefox add-on to download YouTube videos in mp3 and other video formats. Convert YouTube to MP3 is a simple plugin that takes help of online video converter to convert YouTube videos as mp3 and other video formats. You can download the video to mp3, mp4, and FLV formats. After installing the plugin, you will see two download buttons above the video player on YouTube webpage. With convert to mp3 button, you can convert YouTube video as mp3 and then download the video as mp3. With download video button, you can download the video in mp4 and FLV format. This YouTube downloader works great on Firefox browser.

YouTube mp3:

YouTube mp3

YouTube mp3 is a free Firefox add-on to convert YouTube videos to mp3 in a simple way on Firefox. The plugin is designed specially to convert YouTube videos as mp3. The concept of the plugin is simple. The plugin provides a "download mp3" button above the video player of the YouTube webpage. Select the video, click on "download mp3" button and the plugin will divert you to a new Firefox tab. Now, click on the convert button to the convert the video to mp3. The video converter webpage will provide the download link to download converted mp3 file. Click on the download link and start downloading the video file as mp3 on your Firefox browser.

Video2MP3 – YouTube to MP3 Converter:

Video2MP3 is a free Firefox plugin to convert YouTube video into mp3 through a smart online video converter. The good part of the plugin is its good video converting speed. The plugins allows you to convert video to mp3 at a faster speed. Like all other YouTube downloader, this downloader also diverts you to a new Firefox tab with online video converter. After installing the plugin on Firefox, you will see two download button above the video player which include Mp3 download and Mp3 download HQ. You can download the mp3 in appropriate quality which you want to download and hear the video in the form of mp3 on your PC.

If you find any other good YouTube to mp3 downloader plugin for Firefox, then do let us know in comments.

You can also check out other YouTube downloader plugins for Firefox and YouTube downloader extensions for Chrome.

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5 Firefox Youtube to MP3 Plugins To Download YouTube Videos As MP3 was originally published at I Love Free Software

Launcher Utility to Launch Programs and Documents from Tray: Gomigo

Posted: 14 Jul 2012 06:30 AM PDT

Gomigo is a free combination of a document/program management software and a launcher utility which is intended for Windows users. It has an interesting way of arranging and launching of applications and files which we access frequently, and it will surely help you save time that you would normally spend going through directories and menus, searching for programs and files that you need and use every day.

What you see on the image above is Gomigo, running in the system tray, and displaying the default selection of menus. Don’t worry, you can edit, add and arrange the menus according to your taste, making it work for you. Great thing about Gomigo is that it offers launcher grouping, so you can sort elements that you store inside Gomigo into their own groups, which can run several levels deep. Adding new launchers and editing old ones is very with Gomigo, and there are several ways of how you can do it actually.

Similar software: Colibri, xWindows Dock, MadApp Launcher.

Creating file and application launchers in Gomigo

If you are only interested in creating new launchers, then you can start doing that by right clicking on the Gomigo tray icon and from there going on the Control launcher, which is the one that’s located all the way down:

In there we have options for changing the language, hide or close Gomigo, rebuild the menu list, and last but not least, the launcher that we are interested in, New element. This is the first way of how you can add a new launcher inside Gomigo main menu, or should I say to add a new menu element. With the second method of editing and organizing menu entries you can do more, and it’s more easier.

Right mouse click on a launcher will open up the menu which you can see on the image above. On that pop up menu you can either modify the launcher where made the right click, delete it, change the name or file path, or you can add a New element. Every element that you add with the help of right click >> New element will be a sub-element:

To create the main entry, like the Text Editors on the image above, you’re gonna have to open up the Control tab and create a new element from there. The same way that application launchers are placed inside the Gomigo menu you can also link to files and documents which are used every day. Simply create a New element, and instead of selecting programs, look for the documents that you need to access quickly and place them in the Gomigo menu, simple as that.

Conclusion

If you are interested in having your very own program launcher and you’re using windows then Gomigo is perfect for you. With it you will get an amazing tool which can be modified according to your wishes, with your very own apps and documents. Clean up your desktop and place everything that you’re accessing frequently inside Gomigo. This file and application launcher is small and lightweight and best of all it’s free, try it and see for yourself how useful Gomigo can be.

Launcher Utility to Launch Programs and Documents from Tray: Gomigo was originally published at I Love Free Software

Countdown Timer to Launch or Stop Any Process: Process Timer

Posted: 14 Jul 2012 05:00 AM PDT

Process Timer is a free countdown timer for processes which could act as a countdown timer for running or stopping particular programs on your system. For example if you want to schedule a download for particular software within your download manager you can schedule it as per your preferred time. It acts as a great help especially when you wish to automatically manage your programs at the time you wish them to be running or stopped. Moreover most of us are so busy that we might forget opening or closing a particular program at the time we want them to.

Installing Countdown Timer for processes

The simplicity of the software can be evident from the start itself. Once you visit the link of the developer's site here you just need to browse to the download link of the software on the page and click on it. Once you do so the download process is initiated and downloaded on your system. You need not do any more besides just clicking on the downloaded .exe file which would launch the program and make it ready to use. If you are looking for a good task manager or task killer for your PC, you can try Daphne, ProcessKO and Anvir Task Manager.

Using Countdown Timer for processes

Once you have launched Process Timer a small window would appear on the screen. The window would have several options for setting the programs to run or stop. In order to start a program you need to check the ''Run'' radio button and move on to the next option below. The next option named ''Process'' has to be browsed by clicking on Browse option beside it. Once you click on it a new window pops up asking you to locate the program on your system.

After you select the program for example a movie as in the screenshot above you would be brought back to the main screen. The next step is select the time when you wish to start the program (movie in the screenshot) along with the date. Click on Start and the process timer would be initiated. At the bottom of this you have the auto shutdown option for the windows system. You can set the time when you wish to close your system automatically. For example if you are running a process which would take time to be completed within 3 hours then you can pre-set with this program to close the system once the process gets completed. It would automatically shut down your system after 3 hours.

Similarly, if you wish to stop a particular program after a few hours you need to carry out the same process as mentioned above besides just selecting the ''Stop'' radio button at the beginning.

Further you may choose to set a few options such as suspend hotkeys or pause the script from performing by right clicking on the program icon from the taskbar. In case you wish to stop the program from functioning you just need to select the exit option from the right click option in your taskbar.

So with Process Timer on your system you need not worry at all as it takes care of all your processes which you wish to start or stop at a predefined time. It surely adds convenience to starting and running programs on your system.

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Countdown Timer to Launch or Stop Any Process: Process Timer was originally published at I Love Free Software

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