Some of the best free image viewers I posted previously have actually provided this mechanism. But JPEG Lossless Rotator is excellent for rotating many JPEG images and photos at once quickly without any quality loss. Simple, faster, and, gratefully no installation required (if you choose the portable version).

Rotate images in Windows explorer with its optionally integrated shell, or rotate the contents of a whole photo folder including its entire subfolders through its main window. Automatically rotate photos based on EXIF information, or manually to the left, right, and 180 degrees at a press of a key. Be careful though, the output overwrites the original and there is no undo operation. Copy your original images so you won't lose them.

Images and photos can be rotated losslessly as long as their width and height (number of pixels) are divisible by 16. For example, photos with size 1600x1200, 1280x960, 1024x768, 800x600, 640x480, 320x240.

A message will pop out whenever a photo cannot be rotated fully losslessly, asking your confirmation for letting the program perform some slightly cropping to the photo to be able rotating it losslessly.

JPEG Lossless Rotator -- free, for Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista.

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Do google search with keyword free image viewer and you will see thousands of results. Okay, what a great number of discoveries. But do all of them will be able to satisfy your requirement of a good image viewer? Which one suits your need best? Not every one needs a rich-features image viewer and not every one is satisfied with the so-called minimalist program.

This post is intended to help you find what is best for your need whether it is simply looking through your images or browsing and viewing with some additional benefits. Some of the free image viewers I'm mentioning here have already been so popular among users, but some are quite new in the field. One thing for sure is that each of them does have its own uniqueness which really deserves to get more publicities.

MyViewPad

It is is a free image viewer that doesn't have many features but supports a large number of image formats, including those which aren't usually supported by most image viewers. Though you can only view one photo at a time, you can see all of its information directly on the right side of the screen. All but the histogram information. This info along with some simple image editing tools such as color correction can be accessed only by right-clicking the image displayed.

MyViewPad is great particularly to know all the information an image has in one place.

Picasa

There are a lot of things I love from Picasa. It can be configured to watch changes on any specified folders, add favorite images into a single album without creating new folder in explorer, ability to backup images, adding keyword, integrated search functions, hiding images and lock them with password, export images as a HTML page with no effort...

When you click an image, it will be displayed in a single view where you can perform some basic editings like cropping, red eye removal, control lightning and color temperature, adding effects, and many more. These tools are perfect for a novice in photo editing to enhance an image quality without learning curve and also for professionals who want to perform quick fixes. I especially like how the effect options are displayed. In the the "Effects"section you can view at a quick glance of how the image will look like with each effect applied.

Picasa is excellent as both a free image viewer and manager. I often able to find duplicate images that I can't find using other image viewers. It can open JPEG, TIF, TIFF, RAW, BMP, GIF, PSD, PNG, Movies (avi, mpg, asf, wmv) and Quicktime Movies (mov). Windows and Linux versions are available.

XnView

What I love most from this one is its ability to open and view multiple images in separated tabs. This is the feature that I've never found on any other free image viewers. It is also unbelievably support more than 400 image formats!. Now that is another thing I'm pretty sure you hardly find in other similar programs even on the commercial ones. Additionally, XnView can also display video formats, many digital camera formats and more exotic formats such as Amiga IFF and Calamus.

You have various options for image viewing pleasure. In the explorer style, there are a number of layout style to change the position of each panel and many thumbnail size you can choose from. Or display an image in a single view where you can do some adjustments while providing you more flexible way to browse images such as ability to lock the zoom size.

Other options include slideshow, full screen, grouping images into categories, and display them based on your specified rating and color label. You can >integrate XnView with explorer's right-click as well.

Other things you can do are batch conversion, lossless rotation, creating panorama and simple mosaic, watermark, create web gallery and image maps, making slideshow, etc. It also has various kind of image filters, and some plugins to extend its default functionalities. There is a portable version so no installation required. It supports Windows, Linux, and Mac.

FastPictureViewer

Here you come the new player, the slimmest image viewer, yet bringing in some unique features. It is a very minimalist program since it doesn't have any of the common functions that are generally found in similar programs like editing, enhancing or grouping. It is an image viewer intended for people who want to look through a collection of photos as fast as possible while having ability to add rating on the fly. Rating? Yes, it supports Adobe XMP and Windows Vista metadata creation and update so you can label and rank each picture directly from inside the program.

Speed-browse the entire folder and its nested-subfolders without having to go to each folder by mouse wheel, adjust the zoom size then zoom images quickly with a single mouse click, rate or label and copy images at a press of a key to your designated folder. Other features that helps to gain even more speed is that it allows you to enable parallel image loading (for computers with multiple processors) and GPU hardware acceleration for high-end graphic cards.

Currently the free version of it (Home Basic Edition) only supports JPEG (.jpeg, .jpg, .jpe, .jfif, .exif) and Microsoft HD Photo (.hdp, .wdp). It works under Windows 2000 / XP / Vista.

PhotoMesa

When you open Picasa, it will thumbnail all images in the entire scanned folders in one screen. You can indeed quickly scan through all of the images simply by mouse-wheel or arrow, but if you have a very large number of folders with hundreds or more of images you may get confuse when comparing two or more folders as the place is too crowded. This is where PhotoMesa comes to the rescue.

Unlike Picasa's default setting above, and unlike other image viewers that let you to browse and view only images contained within one folder, PhotoMesa can display photos from selected folders on-the-fly. While you are browsing through a folder, it is possible to add images from other folders into the current screen. So here you will get a more focused screen than Picasa's, and a more flexible view than other similar programs.

Another unique thing is its zoomable view. It works differently with the conventional way where all images are displayed in resizable thumbnail mode. In this special view, there is a red rectangle following your cursor movement inside the thumbnail panel. Hover mouse over an image, left-click it, and the image will be zoomed with less images displayed on screen. Left-click it again until it fills up the entire panel screen, or right-click it to go back to the default view. It works just like a satellite-eye view. Moreover, a small preview of an image will be displayed on mouse-over.

However, it also has the scroll view mode in case you want to view images in the conventional way. Other features include grouping and filtering, sorting images (by date, aspect ratio, title, etc.), mark images as favorites, hide certain images from display, search function, tagging, insert metadata information, and more. It supports Windows but requires Microsoft .NET framework 1.0 or 2.0.

FastStone MaxView

There are two reasons why FastStone MaxView is perfect to replace the standard Windows image viewer: the same fast loading time and has undoubtedly much more features. Configurable magnifier, customized background color, view associated images directly in full-screen, exit application with Esc key, read EXIF information, smooth view, more flexible browsing, customizable image display behavior, and can view more image types. Another nice fact is that it is possible to access all of its functions just by moving mouse to the edge of screens and right-clicking the image.

FastStone Image Viewer

Another free image viewer from FastStone. It has all the functions of FastStone MaxView plus some additional features. I have actually had already reviewed it (Read: FastStone Image Viewer Review) some time ago. But here you are some of the many features you can have from it:

• image tagging, dual monitor, shell integration
• formats supported: jpg, jpe, jpeg, pcx, cr2 (Canon), mrw (Minolta), bmp, wmf, nef (Nikon), pef (Pentax), gif, tga, orf (Olympus), srf (Sony), tif, tiff, psd (adobe photoshop), raf (Fuji), arw (Sony), png, crw (Canon), dng (Adobe).
• some basic image editing tools and effects
• tagging capability
• eleven resampling algorithms in resizing images

The unique feature it has is that it can compare up to four selected images at once.

IrfanView

Another perfect program to replace the standard Windows image viewer. It has several advantages over FastStone MaxView: nearly all, if not all, of the functions can be accessed using hotkeys, less memory required, and has more features. There is also a large number of plugins available. IrfanView is one of the free image viewers on the web that manage to get a lot of attentions. It definitely defeats other free image viewers mentioned above in terms of memory usage.

ForceVision

This image viewer doesn't have decent features like the previous ones. What makes it worth mentioning here is that it has the minimalist yet slickest user interface, support quite a large number of image types (though not as many as MyViewPad or even XnView), zoom lock, very-easy-to-use and quite good batch conversion tool. And what makes it stands apart from the others is the number of image transition effects it has.

I don't know why, but I guess it is just because of the effect of the pleasant user interface and the transition effects so that I always find it more comfortable in viewing images using this program rather than when using its competitors above.

Which one do I use?

I use XnView to view multiple images in tabs, Picasa to manage the entire of my collection, FastStone Image Viewer to compare the result of editings to same images directly in one screen, IrfanView as my default image viewer, MyViewPad to view images along with their information, and sometimes ForceVision whenever I want to have a feeling of more comfortable in browsing my personal photos. FastPictureViewer? It's great for rating images on-the-run but expires every 90 days.

With these free programs at hand, why pay for a commercial image viewer offering same or even less features and benefits?

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How to reduce or eliminate photo noise easily? There are a large number of photo editors that are bundled with the feature to control the noise of a photo, but Noiseware promises a different thing. As a program designed specifically to handle photo noise, it is easy to use and accompanied with sophisticated yet fast noise filtering algorithm. It enables you to reduce the grainy look while keeping the detail as much as possible.

Every photo you open within this program will automatically be improved based on the default noise settings, and every tweaking or custom configuration to the image will also be automatically applied to it. You can however turn this automatic behaviour off. Even though the photo is enhanced by using the standard setting, the result looks good for nearly all of the photos I entered. But in case one becomes look too smooth like plastic, there are a set of sliders and filters to gain some real textures back.

Noiseware CE is a freeware that can only perform noise reduction to a single photo at a time. It also pops out a small nag screen each time you start the program. I usually don't like much when a freeware does this annoying thing, but Noiseware CE is too good to be thrown away from my software collection. If you like its performance, you can keep it forever or upgrade to the paid version to get more features.

Noiseware CE can open JPEG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF (24 and 48 bpp) photos, and save the result in JPEG only. It works under Windows XP/Vista.

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If you want a fast way to make ebook cover or design a software box without using Adobe Photoshop then this utility will be very helpful. It is called 3D Box Shot Maker, a freeware for Windows user that can be freely downloaded at BossEye.

Simply insert two images for the side and front cover and it will automatically create an attractive cover though you haven't configured anything yet. If you aren't satisfied with the default setting, there are several things you can do to tweak it, including the height and width of the box size, the intensity of the shadow and reflection, and other settings. You can also save your configuration as a custom preset to be re-use later on. The output can be saved as BMP, JPG, PNG and GIF.

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What if you find a remarkable program packed in a rar format that you want to notify and send to one of your friends but he doesn't have the program to open rar? There are two simple solutions for this. One, tell your friend the perfect program or send it directly to him by email. Two, convert the rar to a more friendly compressed format such as zip. By converting it to zip, your friend won't have to install a new program since the zip file opener has already been provided by default in Windows.

One of the excellent programs that is able to convert rar to zip is Tugzip, a free program having a nice GUI and lots of other functions accompanying its core function as a file compressor and extractor. In fact, it doesn't only able to convert rar to zip, but also to other formats like 7Z, BH, CAB, JAR, LZH, SQX, TAR, TBZ, TGZ, YZ1. You can convert a single or multiple files at once. Now, how to do it?

Open the Tugzip's main window, select the Tools menu, and click the Archive Converter command. In the converter's window you can add multiple archives and optionally delete the original archives when they are converted. The beautiful fact here is that you can convert various supported archive formats into one format. In other words, you can convert rar, 7z, cab, tar to zip in one go. The conversion speed is relatively fast, depending on how many archives are going to be converted.

Tugzip is a freeware and supports Windows. Note that I'm still using Tugzip v3.4 in experimenting with the conversion tool.

Read also: open rar files with free rar opener

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PixelCryptor lets you to lock (encrypt) your files using any image. You don't have to type any password, just decide which image of yours that is going to be used to encrypt the files. It is like you are using an image as a password. PixelCryptor uses the pixel data of the image for the encryption.

How it Works

• Run the app after the installation. You will be presented with four icons representing each of their commands. Select the second icon from the left to start the encryption (encode).
• Select the files and folders you want to lock. Just to remind you that the more you add the longer the encryption will be.
• Instead of typing any password, here you are using any image of your choice to lock the file. Select any image you want.
• Specify the files destination, and click Next to run the encryption. Be sure to pick the right destination as you can't cancel the process once it runs.

The Good Facts

• It is a nice idea to have an image to replace the existence of a password as it is easier to remember and, as suggested, harder to break in.
• It doesn't encode the files into the image as well. Imagine if you have to encode multiple files large in size into a picture, the result will be an obvius encrypted image as it will also have a large size.

Not So Good Facts

• The decryption needs the program. In other words, if you send the file to your friend, he or she must also have it installed.
• Need installation and can't be made portable

PixelCryptor works for Windows 2000 or better. However, NET Framework 2.0 is required to be able to run it.

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Jalapeno Keyfinder supports over 170 software titles. This free program automatically recovers all the product keys of the supported Microsoft and third party software installed in your computer. It displays the name of programs together with the license numbers in a drop-down box immediately after finishing the scanning.

What are the programs or produtcs supported? Acdsee, Nero, Ashampoo, Autocad, Call of Duty, Corel, Cyberlink, Macromedia, IsoBuster, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Windows XP and Vista, Norton, O&O DiskRecovery, Partition Magic, OmniPage, Registry Mechanic, Roxio Easy CD Creator, SnagIt, The Sims, Tune Up Utilities, Ulead Video Studio, Winamp, WinASO Registry Optimizer, Winzip, Xara, ZoneAlarm, etc.

Jalapeno Keyfinder doesn't require installation, tiny in size to download for, and is a freeware licensed program working under Windows platform. If you're curious to know whether it is a legal program to retrieve Microsoft and non Microsoft software, or why one of the serial numbers scanned isn't matched the one on the CD jewel case or the sticker, visit the FAQ page.

Find The Lost Product Key For Windows (Including Vista), Office (2007, 2003, XP), Windows Exchange Server & SQL Server

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Unlike the previous freeware which can only open and convert psd to jpg, this free program allows you to open, view, and perform some standard editing to psd files, and you aren't required to have the expensive or load the heavy Adobe Photoshop to do all of these. It even enables you to convert psd to lots of other image formats (BMP, GIF, PNG, RAW, TIFF, PCX, WMF, etc.).

The interface is divided into two simple panels: the preview screen, and the information panel where you can view some information about the image such as EXIF and IPTC. Don't try to find the configuration and editing tools inside the window because they are visible only by right-clicking the image displayed.

Several of things you can do with the configuration option:

• how should an image be rendered in the preview
• specify timeout for the slideshow view
• enable notification of read and image error together with if there is a missing plugin
• configuring hotkeys for some of the program's operation

It also lets you apply some limited editing such as brigthness, contrast, sharpen, changing image color depth, rotate, etc. Beside psd files, there are around other 79 image types supported, from the common to the rare ones, which may make you surprised when you take a look at the list. This is the program you probably demand for when you are dealing with an image format that isn't supported by most of other image viewers. It is called MyViewPad and works under Windows.

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mp3DirectCut is a freeware designed specifically for editing MP3 without the need of re-encoding, thereby there isn't any loss of audio quality in the process. Cut, copy, paste, split, volume changing, normalize, fade, record and encode directly from audio input device, remove several parts. It becomes an effficient program to do all of the editings since there is no decompression required.

Beside manage to be fast, mp3DirectCut provides keyboard shortcut and command line support as well to easily perform some of its actions. Cut a long MP3 song, or split it into multiple parts for speed sharing purpose, erase the unnecessary spaces, these and other features it offers make it a great MP3 editor program yet easy to use. Best of all, it's free. Works under Windows.

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It is relatively fast. I tried this program on eleven of my FLV files with a total size of 42.9MB , and it extracted both the audios and videos from them within.. I believe it was less than five seconds. Yes, FLV Extract can do the extraction from multiple files, too. You simply select the files, then drag and drop them into the program's window, and wait for the result in the same folder in which the original files are located.

There is no need to do any decompressing or recompressing. The files are extracted automatically in their original formats. The video is saved as AVI and audio as MP3.

FLV Extract is a free program for Windows and doesn't require installation. Just unzip and click the executable file to run it. However, you need NET Framework 2.0 to make it works.

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Having to open the big Adobe Photoshop each time some PSD files needs to simply be converted to JPG feels become more tiresome from day to day until the presence of a free program called Batch PSD to JPG. Like the name says, it can convert many files at once either files originating from the same folder or from different folders. It has ability to flatten PSD multiple layers as well.

For the files to be processed, you can preview each by right-clicking on it. Yes, you can preview only one file at a time. There is still no option letting you to open in thumbnail mode at the current version. Another thing you can do with this program is setting up JPG quality for the image output.

The conversion is relatively fast, depending upon how many files you put within to be processed. It works under Windows.

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One of the Image-Tools services, the Mobile Phones Wallpaper Generator Tool, allows you to generate wallpapers for a wide range of cell phone brands. Upload a picture to be resized, select your mobile phone brand and its series from the drop-down lists, and click the link Generate Wallpaper to complete the process.

The picture uploaded will be resized according to the phone's resolution. As an example, an image for Motorola i730 has width 130 and height 130. After the image is created, you can save it by right-clicking the image and use bluetooth or direct cable to send it to your phone.

The image formats supported are JPG, GIF or PNG file. The cell phones supported are Treo, Toshiba, Siemens, Sharp, Sanyo, Philips, Panasonic, NEC, Kyocera, LG, Danger, Alcatel, Audiovox, Trium, XE, UTStarcom, Samsung, Sony, Blackberry, Nokia, and Sagem. If your phone isn't listed in, you can contact the owner. The service is free.

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No matter you want to simply resize your pictures collection into thumbnail size or make a HTML gallery, JoJoThumb can make it done for you in a flash. The most beneficial feature from this program is probably that you can save each of your different configurations into different profiles, besides the fact that it already provides some customizable profiles if you don't want to set everything from the scratch.

There are a lot of image types that it supports: BMP, GIF, EMF, JPG, PCD, PCX, PNG, PSD, TGA, TIF, WMF and RAW-Files from Digital-Cameras (CR2, CRW, DCR, DNG, MRW, NEF, ORF, PEF, RAF, RAW, SRF). The thumbnails created from these will be in JPG format. You can freely change the dimension size and specify the image quality of the result. It is also possible to add time stamp and text.

JoJoThumb is a freeware for Windows ME, 2000, XP or Vista.

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Do these three things at a scheduled time or after a process stops for both a local or remote computer with PowerOff. Before the action is executed there are multiple things you can do such as running a warning message or certain program. The option "Force application to exit" must be used wisely since it kills all the running processes without saving any changes made in the programs terminated.

Additionaly, you can perform other tasks like automatic logoff, poweroff, standby, lock, wake on LAN, and turn monitor on or off. Optionally it can be executed as a service running in the background anytime you want.

PowerOff is a freeware built with portability in mind. No installation required. It works under Windows 95/98/Me/NT4.0/2000/XP.

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The plethora of web hosting providers may cause confusion to find a reliable one when you need to create a new site or dissatisfied with your current provider. It is good to ask for any recommendation in forums or searching in a web hosting directory, but perhaps it is better to find out who is hosting a popular site.

The most efficient way to do this is using the free service of WhoIsHostingThis. The process is simply entering the web address and within seconds you are able to see the detail of the hosting company. However, note that the result isn't 100% accurate due to several reasons. For example, the site you request has moved to another new provider very recently.

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Image Resizer.NET is one of the programs that provides a very convenient way in performing some customizations to your pictures. Besides all of the actions mentioned in the title of this post, it also allows you to add personalized text and border to the pictures and supports command line for batch processing as well.

Each function has its own options. They're separated into different panels to ease the processing. In Text Options, for example, you can specify which font type and color to use, the fill style of the color itself (linear gradient, solid, hatched), along with where the text should be positioned within the images.

There are two preview screens where the preview of the original and processed images are placed side by side. Too bad that while you can see the changes on an indivual image, there is no way provided to see the changing on all affected pictures at once. Moreover, not all changes are automatically displayed accordingly in the preview. There is a notification inside the preview screen that the processing options have changed. To view the change taking place you should click the command "Refresh Preview Image".

All image processing configurations can be saved into a profile, which is very useful if you do the same task repeatedly. After loading a profile, you can select which process to enable and disabled if you plan to keep some settings while removing others temporarily.

This program can open images in 28 image formats (Adobe Photoshop -psd- , Kodak Photocd, pcx, etc.), and save processed images in 16 image formats (emf, exif, gif, etc.). It is freeware and works under Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4), Windows XP (Service Pack 2) (32bit or 64bit Edition), Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista (32bit or 64bit Edition) with Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0 or v3.0 installed within.

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Photo2Text is a free online service letting you to change image into text (TXT) comfortably and quickly. The process involves only uploading a photo, see what your photo looks like, and download it into your computer. The converted photo also automatically gets a personal page where you and your friends are able to see it.

It offers an interesting adjustment function in which the characters used to draw the image can be managed with a slider in such a way to achieve the perfect brightness. Another important thing is that you should change the notepad fonts to courier new or lucida console and uncheck the wordwarp in case you encounter a problem in viewing the full draw.

If you find it useful and it happens that you use Firefox as your browser, it provides a Firefox add-on to integrate its service with Firefox.

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It is definitely the hassle-free program to extract images as JPG from a video file for Windows user. Pick the video, select the destination folder to save the conversion result, choose whether you want to capture images for every X frames (10 - 1000 frames) or every X seconds (1 - 20 seconds) or simply every existing frame, click the Save button and you're done.

This program, Free Video to JPG Converter, also lets you to get images from either all or only selected parts of the video. There is option to take manual captures as well.

So far I like it, though it lacks the ability to specify the quality nor the dimension size of the captured images. Unfortunately, it bundles another additional program in its installation package called Free Studio Manager. I just knew this after I installed it.

Another thing I wish the developer removed it away is the tiny dialog box that pops up every time you start this program, telling you the current version you have and reminding you to check for an update. Again, no option for removing this automatic notification.

What video formats it supports? There isn't any information about it when I browse the program's page. Where is the information? I don't know. I just don't want to crawl to every existing page to look for something that should be easily found.

However, it is indeed very easy to do the conversion task.

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There are more than 100 filters of Kodak, Cokin, and Hoya bundled inside this program. They're all free. The usage is easy, too. Load your photo, select one filter, press the button, and the result is displayed in the preview screen side by side with the original one. It is called Opanda PhotoFilter.

To help you in getting the effect needed, it also allows you to configure the density of the filter before it is applied as well as an option to activate the auto luminosity compensation. The photo in the preview screen can be zoomed, and it can be saved in jpeg, tiff, or bmp format.

Too bad you can only apply a single filter into a photo. I guess it will be more interesting and useful if it has ability to combine the filters selected. Still, this is a very good program that offers simplicity for users to know which the best filter is for a photo. Besides, it is completely free. No registration, and the small ad screen within the program can be hidden easily.

Though it is designed for Windows 98 / Me / 2000 / XP / Vista, the themes are the Mac's looks (Aqua and Panther).

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Have you ever wanted a much simpler and quicker way to control volume in Windows when you sit in fornt of your desktop? Instead of manually moving the mouse cursor to the volume slider of your multimedia player, why not customizing mouse wheel as a global controller, or using hotkey as another quicker alternative?

These are possible if you use Volumouse, a small-size and free program that doesn't need to be installed. Many interesting functions regarding the volume controlling are offered. You can simply define hotkey to decrease or increase volume. Or, use the mouse wheel under certain actions like when the mouse cursor is over the desktop or taskbar, the ALT key is hold down, the iTunes or GOM is focused, the right mouse button is hold, and many more. Each configuration can be saved as a single file.

When some of the above selected actions occurs, a volume indicator is displayed. The interface can be configured to choose whether it should be in form of vertical or horizontal trackbar, to set transparency level, size, delay, and so on. It sits in the tray area when running, but the icon can be optionally hidden.

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Too bad the popular Adobe Reader has some disadvantages that make many keep searching for the better alternatives. It may be a good PDF viewer for an advanced PDF document, but may be not for a standard one involving only texts and pictures in simple formats. For you who need the alternative, try this Sumatra PDF Portable.

Many has appreciated it as a free handheld PDF viewer that fast, small in size, free to download, and can be used in portable devices (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, CD, pocket pc, or others). The interface is very simple as you can see from the picture. It doesn't have many features, too. What you can get from it are only the standard tools that you need in reading a document (zoom, navigation, search, etc). It is understandable, then, if it is admitted as one of the fastest PDF viewers.

You need to install this software first, then you can add it into your portable devices. It requires Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista.

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There are a lot of color code pickers out there with advanced options, but this one definitely provides the most instant way to grab color code from screen. While others will let you to view the captured code in the programs's main window, Instant Eye Dropper makes you possible to save the captured code directly inside the clipboard. Does it mean you completely can't view the color being captured? No.

When you left-click and hold the icon's program in the tray, a small color preview screen is displayed. When you drag the cursor, the color and the code shown change accordingly. The code is saved automatically into the clipboard when you release the mouse button.

Changing the code format from HTML to RGB or Hex and so on is as simple as right-clicking the icon and select one from the list. In the option menu, you can decide how the code format should be pasted from the clipboard to your CSS style sheet or any other document or program, pick the pixel resolution needed, along with some other tiny configurations. It needs around 1,5MB for the resources when running.

It works under Windows NT, 2000, 2003, XP.

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There are many problems an image can have. Red eye, less sharpness, too blurry, etc. In this case, Image Analyzer doesn't only provide you instant ways to fix all occured problems in your photos, but also able to enhance the quality by supplying filters and additional plugins, which are accompanied with features to make some modifications.



Too many features to be mentioned here. I just can say that it is a great freeware. I use the excellent free Photo Filtre all this time to edit my photos, but this program has several things that Photo Filtre doesn't have. If you happen to use Photo Filtre, Image Analyzer can be a nice addition for performing some image editing tasks.

It supports Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista. There are two versions availabe to download: installer and stand-alone (zip). To have it portable simply select the second version. It contains, however, lesser features than the first.

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This is a straightforward program to change a Flash video (flv) into an AVI. Select the file you want, determine to which folder you want to save the conversion output, and press the Start button. That's all.

Free FLV to AVI Converter informs how long the conversion should last as soon as you start the operation. Knowing this information ahead right before the conversion occurs should help the user in case it takes a long time to finish while there is no time to wait that long. How fast is the conversion? 4,704KB needs around two minutes forty seconds to get finished.

The developer said that if you can only hear the audio from the converted video, then you should download XViD codec.

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Folder Size is a freeware that displays folder size column in Windows explorer. After installed, right-click the column title bar and select the Folder Size column from the list, and the size of each folder can be viewed immediately. You don't have to restart to make it works.

However, you should think twice before deciding to activate the column for a folder that has many files with huge size. The column is shown without delay, but it keeps counting the size a little bit longer. The counting, luckily, takes place only once (when the column is displayed the first time). After that it stops the calculate unless another new files or folders are added inside.

Another benefit of showing the column is that you can remove the standard Size column. Although the name is Folder Size, it also displays the file size.

Beside the column, the program also provides additional columns such as File Children, Folder Children, and All Children. The first and second shows the number of files within a folder, the second for the children folders, and the last is to let you know the total number of files and folders children inside a folder (see the screenshot).

As an additional information, it consumes more than 3MB for the resource.

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Most of you have probably already known that Windows is only able to save one item in its clipboard. What you're copying into the clipboard at present removed the previously copied item. This may not be a problematic condiition for general computer user, but for those who very frequently type or insert same texts into documents the possibility to have an extender or an advanced version of clipboard tool is probably a demand. This is where the free ClipX can play a big help for you.

ClipX can keep up to 1024 clips of texts and images, all of which can be edited or deleted. There are two ways to paste an item: by left-clicking the icon residing in the tray or pressing a customizable hotkey. After the list is shown up, select the needed item to be pasted. Very practical.

There are other helpful features, too. Resizing the width of the clipboard list, ignoring either the text or image clipboard entries, deciding how many entries should be kept (4 - 1024 entries), etc. If you need more, a number of plugins are available for free at the maker's website. The popular one is Stickies, which allows you to make some entries become permanent within its clip storage. It means they never be deleted automatically when the temporary storage reaches your defined limit.

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The regularity of running several applications to do a certain project (like designing a webpage or writing updates for blog) may sometimes become a somewhat boring task and feels so less inefficient for some people. For whatever reason that could be, if you ever need to have a way of opening multiple programs at once in one single click, try Ultimate Runner.

It lets you to list programs, files, folders, internet and email addresses, and system commands, and save the list into a file that can be optionally associated with Ultimate Runner and run later anytime. It means you are possible to create different lists for various kind of tasks or projects. The order of which item should run first, second, and so on, can be arranged alphabetically or manually edited. It also allows you to set time delay between each of the program executions.

Easy to use, pretty interface, free, and can be set to load at Windows startup. It supports Windows 2000/XP/Vista.

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The current time is displayed at the right corner of the taskbar notification area by default, while the current date can be seen by hovering mouse over the clock. What Timekeeper does is simple, actually. It enables you to display both time and date, or either one of them, on the Windows taskbar. What makes it worth to download for, as a program specifically designed for the task, it offers a lot more flexibilities in terms of how the time and date should be displayed.




You can visually adjust the font, color of the font, and add colored or transparent background. There is a set of predefined time and date formats ready to choose like whether the name of the current month should be displayed in its full name or abbreviated. You can even create your own format style from scratch easily (see the screenshot below for my own format).

You can add, remove, and/or move any element of the time and date. Custom texts and characters are also possible to be added. In short, you can do almost anything with the display style. Simple but fully customizable. Excellent. Recommended.

The system required is Windows Vista, XP Home and Professional, 2000, Me, or 98.

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The standard "open with" menu that appears when we right-click a file in Windows explorer displays a list of some of the recent applications used to open the file. When the program needed isn't on the list, we open the "open with" main window and select the program manually. The problem with the standard main window is that we can't select which ones should be displayed or hidden. This may make you a little harder and longer in finding the one actually needed if the window displays too much programs within.

OpenWithView enables you to manage the programs listed in the window, whether you want to display or remove. It doesn't need installation, and the disable/enable task is just a matter of a single click. The removal and the restoration of a program's visibility also affects the "open with" section in the right-clik menu, not just inside its main window.

It is free, portable, and supports Windows XP/2003/Vista.

Another similar program having more flexibility is Open Expert. You need to install it, however.

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It is a program that does much more than just simply placing a simple note on desktop. It lets you to create sticky notes with a customizable alarm reminder, checklists of tasks, and freehand scribble notes. These are combined with the look's personalization, the notes management, and some other configurations like hotkey associations to some of its actions. It's called hott notes.



The interface is quite pleasant by default, but you can customize some of the appearances to be more personalized such as fonts, transparency level, shadow, size, and animation effects. There are several ways to reduce the clutters if there are too many notes on desktop. Notes on desktop can be shaded to show only the title bars, arranged manually to be placed side by side, or hidden for all or selected notes only with a hotkey.

For notes that are no longer needed, you can archive or delete them. Automatic backup and auto save are offered as well to preserve the data. All the existing notes can be managed in the notes management panel, which is called Notebook. It is one of the recommended sticky notes program to be used regularly. Free and support Windows 98/ME/2000/XP.

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If you just want to know some standard ways to rename multiple files and folders in explorer, then I suggest you to read this how-to. But if you're dealing with too many of them, and you want some advanced features the standard renaming operation doesn't have, then this tool will probably satisfy you.

It is called Rename Master. A freeware enabling you to add, remove, and replace some or all characters of the name or extension. Additionaly, the case can be changed as well (lowercase, uppercase, capitalize words and sentence). The renaming operation can even be based on more criterias such as file size and date.

The preview feature lets you to know exactly how your file name will look like be before you apply any changes. The modified and original file name are displayed side by side to easily notice the differences. If you often perform the same renaming operation, all the changes you've set can be saved as a script to be reused anytime you like.

This program also allows you to integrate it to the right-click menu of explorer. However, it is portable, so there is no need to install anything to make it works.

The developer states that it should work on any Windows OS.

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Looking at the features offered, System Protect clearly positions itself as a specific program to block any attempt to make any change on files/folders/programs (no matter it is by a virus attack, other user's carelessness, or even yourself). It automatically locks the files that are important for your system stability, and optionally you can select your own files/folders/programs to be protected.

Your files will still be able to be opened by other users. They're only being protected from any possible unauthorized modification. When someone or a program tries to delete, rename, move, or modify a protected item, the action will be blocked. Depending on your setting, the user can get an automatic notification or the action is silently denied.

The program uses password to prevent unauthorized users change its configurations. And to maintain the effectiveness of its protection, there is an option to download all of its updates automatically.

This program is very good for people who want to keep their files visibility and accessibility for other users while blocking any modification so the files remain intact. It is free for personal and commercial use, and supports Windows.

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This post will show you the several methods of renaming multiple files/folders at once (only a few or even hundreds) using the built-in function of Windows. It means you never have to install anything. There is no special trick. However, you may find a way that you have never known before that it is possible to do so.

The Selection Operation

While selecting a file/folder, press the Ctrl key. It will allow you to select more than one. You can select any file/folder as long as they're located in the same place.

Or, if the files/folders happen to be located side by side vertically, use the Shift key. This method enables you to select multiple files/folders at once without having to click one by one as the first method.

Example: Click file A, then click file F using the Shift key. Result, all files between file A and F will also be automatically highlighted besides they themselves.

Another way to select several files/folders is by simply using your mouse. This method, actually, gives the same effect as the second method above. What makes it different is the efficiency. While the Shift key method is very efficient to reach other files/folder in the hidden part of the screen (the unscrolled screen), this one is the most efficient way to rename only files/folders displayed on the "shown" screen.

Example: Move your mouse cursor near the files/folders and click the right button of your mouse and hold (click the empty area, not on the files/folders). Drag it until all the files/folders selected.

I bet many of you have already known how to select the whole files/folders. Yes, squeeze the Ctrl + A combination.

Finally...

After done with your selection, now you can right-click the selected items and choose the rename command to start the renaming. Press Enter afterwards, and all of the selected ones will be automatically renamed.

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Find your files fast using keyword-based searches, index and re-indexing files in selected drives and folder in the way you want, and perform a number of useful things once you find your needed files. Those what DK Finder promises besides the claim of the creator that you'll be impressed of the searching speed. Beside file names, you can search for keywords contained within the files found.

At the first time using this program you can use the full-indexing to completely have all your files in the list. However, in updating the index it is suggested that you should use the smart re-indexing when there isn't any major change to your files. It works faster.

In performing a searching task, you're allowed to limit the result based on the file date, the number of the files found, case sensitive, and/or by excluding shortcut. You can also narrow it furthermore based on certain texts inside the file contents and/or inside the file names.

To help you from getting "ghost" files (files that still appears in the list while no longer exist in the original directory) in the searching output, you can choose to automatically verify each file found. Don't forget to also use the keyboard shortcuts to make everything done a litte bit faster.

DK Finder is a freeware and supports Windows XP/Vista/2000/2003.

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The basic concept of Folder Marker Free is to distinguish special folders from others, or give a folder a unique identifier, in form of different colors or icons.

You change a single or multiple folders from either the right-click menu or the main window of the program. Several new icons are already available, but you can use your own if they don't satisfy you. Unfortunately, you aren't allowed to apply your own icon to a folder directly from explorer, you have to open the program for this. Folder icon and color can be changed anytime, or restored to the default condition.

Folder Maker Free is licensed as freeware and supports Windows 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 or Windows Vista.

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The bad thing from the new file formats of Office 2007 (docx, dotx) is their incompatibilities with other word processors. Consequently, someone is required to have this application to open these formats. This what makes a program like Docx2RTF is created.

Docx2RTF enables you to save Office 2007 files in RTF and/or PDF. However, saving or converting is not an obligatory to be able to read these files. The pages extracted are displayed by page layout so the user can read the texts without having to do the conversion. They can be read while the extraction process is running,

If you prefer to do the conversion, note that at this time the program isn't able to extract the whole content formats (e.g. tables). Even if it can, you still won't be able to have the exact same content format when the file is converted into RTF. In this case, the cause is originally the limitation of the RTF format itself.

Realizing the facts that there are many users use Open Office, which also has incompatibility problem with other similar applications, Docx2RTF can also convert the documents created by this program (sxw, odt) into RTF and PDF.

The complete file formats it supports are:

• Office 2007 files (docx, dotx)
• Open Office files (sxw, odt)
• PDF
• HTML
• RTF
• TXT
• files stored in the PalmOS Database (pdb)
• Aportis files (prc)

Docx2RTF is free, portable, and compatible with any Windows.

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CHM Decoder provides the easiest way to convert CHM to HTML file. It involves only three steps: browse and select a CHM file, select where you want to save the output, and finally start the conversion. Optionally you can also include the menu in the conversion.

There isn't any other additional feature except the option to optionally generate the menu. However, you're possible to do convert multiple files at once using its command line. This program is probably the most practical solution for CHM conversion to HTML. It has tiny size, portable, and free. It works on Windows.

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What if you want to reveal the real password hidden behind a sequence of asterisk characters? Replace the asterisks with the real text? The most practical solution is to use Asterisk Logger.

The great thing from Asterisk Logger is that, besides being portable and tiny in size, it automatically converts the asterisks directly inside the password box without having to press any button. The password revealed is, then, recorded in the password list of the Asterisk Logger along with some additional information. If necessary, the list can be saved into text or HTML file. However, though it works fine with most password boxes, not all applications are supported. You should read the limitations to get more information about it.

Asterisk Logger is a freeware, but can only be used for non-commercial and personal only. The OS supported are Windows ME/9x/2000/XP. For Windows NT user, you can use this program properly only if you follow the written instruction (it is only a matter of downloading a piece of dll file, actually).

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