2009 Archives | AddictiveTips

Record Video And Take Photo With Your Webcam Using AvaCam

by Nakodari on May 10, 2009

Windows

So you bought a webcam that did not come with a software? Or maybe you are not satisfied with the software that came with your webcam or came pre-loaded on your computer? In case you are searching for a free software for your webcam, give Avacam a try.

Avacam is a free tool for Windows that lets you take photos, record videos (with/without audio), and lets you take burst shots. Apart from these features, it can also let you autosave the photos after every defined time interval. To begin, first click Setup, select any video device and choose the desired settings.

How To Capture High Quality Thumbnails Of Any Webpage

by Nakodari on May 10, 2009

Windows

I use Abduction add-on for Firefox to take screenshot of websites. It does the job pretty well. If I were to create a thumbnail, first I will take the screenshot of the web page and then resize it using IrfanView. It is a pretty straightforward process, but the problem arises in the image quality. When you are resizing the 900px screenshot into 150px or 100px thumbnail, won’t it effect the overall quality? Obviously, it will.

Web Page Thumbnail is a free tool for Windows that let’s you take high quality thumbnails of any web page. Just enter the website URL using the build-in browser and it will load up the site instantly, you can then browse to any page who’s thumbnail you want to create.

How To Mass Download Multiple Files In One Go

by Nakodari on May 10, 2009

Windows

Are you a network administrator or a computer geek who wants to download hundreds or thousands of different files at one go? Mass Download is a free tool for Windows that lets you download multiple files instantly. It has been specifically build to use multiple threads, so that it can download the files even faster than most download managers.

To begin, first create a new text document, add all URLs in it(one URL per line), and save it.

Text Editing Assistant Helps In Writing/Editing Any Text Document

by Nakodari on May 09, 2009

Windows

XBList Brings Xbox Live Friends And Activity To Your Desktop

by Nakodari on May 08, 2009

Windows

If you own an Xbox or Xbox 360, then this tip is for you. XbList brings your Xbox Live friends to the desktop in a buddy-list format(same format as Live Messenger). It also updates your friend’s activity right on your desktop and shows both Gamer pictures and Gamer cards. You must have an Xbox Live account to use this software. This tool is for those gamers who spend more time on their computers. Since you cannot stick to the Xbox console 24/7, this software makes perfect sense. Read More

Find Cheap Apartments For Rent In USA With RentJungle

by Nakodari on May 08, 2009

Internet
Web

If you are one of those readers residing in US, then this tip is for you. With recession people are ditching their homes for apartments. Apartments that are both comfortable, safe, and big enough to accommodate the family members. Since the whole trend is moving towards apartments, where will you find the cheapest apartments for rent in US?

RentJungle helps you find the cheapest apartments in all states of US. All you have to do is search for your city or state and it will show all apartments for sale there. You can also browse apartments by City, State, or College/University on the site’s homepage.

Once you visit the site, you will find an embedded Google Maps with all cities marked on it. Click on any city and it will zoom inside that city. It will then further show all apartments and their exact locations in the city. This helps in finding the apartments that are for sale in the exact location of your choice. Apart from it, you get a better perspective as a whole.

How To Create An Avatar From YouTube Video Online

by Nakodari on May 08, 2009

Internet
Web

Recently a lot of services are popping up that lets user create an avatar from their own photos. But have you ever thought about making an avatar from a YouTube video?

While playing with Alpoy, I discovered that it can create an avatar(both static and animated) from YouTube videos. There are 3 simple steps, Collect, Design, and Manage. To begin, first click Collect tab, then select the source(YouTube), finally enter the URL of your favorite video and hit Load. You can also select the avatar from the list of pre-defined sizes or add a custom size.

LinkExaminer Scans Website For Broken Links, Duplicate Content, And Missing SEO

by Nakodari on May 07, 2009

If you are a webmaster then you will know how important is SEO, internal linking, using no-follow in some circumstances, etc. If you have broken links or duplicate contents, then it will dramatically effect your website listing on popular search engines, such as, Google and Yahoo. There are various SEO tools that allow you to check for broken links, duplicate content, missing keywords, and more. But these tools are too complicated to use and some are too expensive to afford, while others are not perfectly accurate.

AnalogX LinkExaminer is a free webmaster tool for Windows that allow you to examine all links in your website or blog. It is a powerful tool that shows the following information about every link, HTTP Code, HTTP Message, Internal, Robots.txt, NoFollow, Dynamic, Relative, SEO(Missing Keywords), Title, Depth, In/Out, Last Modified, Link Type, Duration, and Similarity(Duplicate content).

How To Repair/Recover Corrupt Microsoft Word And Excel Files

by Nakodari on May 07, 2009

Windows

Your Microsoft Office Word 2007/2010 documents or Excel 2007/2010 spreadsheets could get corrupted due to various reasons, two of the most common being data transfer error and hard disk crash. Once your documents get corrupted, it becomes quite difficult to recover them. Try opening a corrupt Microsoft document and you will receive an error that data is corrupt, which does not help us in any way. There are two ways to recover Word and Excel files, the first method is to buy an expensive recovery suite(which I would not recommend), and the second method, is below. To recover Word 2007 documents we will use Damaged docx2txt. To recover Excel 2007 spreadsheets we will use Corrupt xlsx2csv. Both tools have been developed by S2 Services and are FREE. We will discuss both of them in details below. Read More

Upload And Share Any Type Of File On Twitter With FileSocial

by Nakodari on May 06, 2009

Internet
Web

Sharing photos and videos on twitter is easy. But when it comes to sharing compressed files, music, etc, you will first have to upload it to a file host, make the URL short, and then share it on Twitter. Well, not anymore.

FileSocial is a free service that let’s you upload and share an type of files on Twitter. Just sign in with your Twitter account, select the file and it’s description and hit Upload. The maximum limit is 20MB/file and formats such as pdf, jpg, doc, txt, zip, rar, mov, avi and mp3 are also supported.

How To Batch Convert And Compress PNG Image Files

by Nakodari on May 06, 2009

Windows

Last year we covered an online service called Smush.It that can optimize and compress any uploaded image. The process was rather time consuming, first you needed to upload multiple images and then after processing it will give you an archived file which you can download. But not everyone is connected to internet 24/7. Isn’t there any desktop software to do the same thing, but more quicker?

PNGGauntlet is a free tool for Windows that can convert any image format to PNG format and also compress/optimize the PNG image. Since most webmasters use PNG as their format of choice, it is an invaluable tool. Just add the images, select the Compression strategy, and click Optimize.

Note: For maximum compression, leave the compression strategy as default(Xtreme).

ForiSearch – Search Images And Videos In Foreign Languages

by Nakodari on May 06, 2009

Internet
Web

View Complete EXIF Metadata Information Of Any JPEG Image Online

by Nakodari on May 06, 2009

Internet
Web

In my earlier post today, I wrote about removing metadata from photos. But what if you want to do the exact opposite, read complete EXIF metadata information of a JPEG image. GeoSetter is one tool for Windows through which you can edit, add, or delete metadata. But wouldn’t it better if there was an online alternative which can give you complete details about an uploaded photo? There are two online tools which I have found very useful, Online EXIF Viewer and Camera Summary.

Both services let you view hidden information of any photo and also reveals the thumbnail hidden in every image. Keep in mind that although both services does the same job, they are different the way JPEG images are submitted. In Online EXIF Viewer you can only submit URL of a JPEG image while in Camera Summary you can upload the JPEG image from your desktop.

Online EXIF Viewer

Online EXIF Viewer is a perfect online tool which can give you complete information of an image, apart from the basic information and the EXIF data, it also shows other useful and in-depth data. Just enter the URL of the JPEG image and it will instantly extract the details.

How To Perform Benchmark Test On Your Hard Disk, USB Drive, And CD/DVD Rom

by Nakodari on May 05, 2009

Windows

Have you ever wondered why your transfer speed is so slow when copying the files from an external hard disk, USB, or CD/DVD Drive? There could be a possibility that it is not working properly, recently, my old USB was given problems while reading and writing files. The best way to determine would be to perform a benchmark test. Another reason to perform a benchmark test would be to check whether the device you bought actually works like the way your manufacturer calm. I have found two tools that would help, HD Speed and HD Tune.

HD Speed

HD Speed is a free portable tool for Windows that can perform a quick benchmark test on any drive and is only 73Kb in size. Just select the drive from the list and hit Start.

How To Strip/Remove Metadata From JPEG And PNG Images

by Nakodari on May 05, 2009

Windows

Suppose you want to upload your picture to a public profile, but don’t want to risk your privacy, what will you do? All photos have a metadata that contain broad information, such as, date taken, time taken, camera model, original photo thumbnail, and in some cases even GeoData. Such details, along with many other details in the metadata can risk your privacy, and to protect it you will have to remove the metadata from the image.

Note: Only remove the metadata from your own photos, if you remove the metadata from the photos taken by someone else, then it is a clear violation of rules laid down by DMCA. Removing metadata is not always a good idea, since such information can come handy in cases where you want to organize the photos by it’s location, date, camera model, etc.

JPEG & PNG Stripper is a free portable tool for Windows that can strip all photos(in JPEG and PNG formats) of their metadata. Just drag your photos to the main window of this app and it will automatically begin the process of removing the metadata.

Watch Live Public Webcams From All Around The World For Free

by Nakodari on May 05, 2009

Internet
Web

Listen To Thousands Of Radio Stations And Download Music With Nexus Radio

by Nakodari on May 04, 2009

Windows

Nexus Radio is a free music application that lets you search, listen, and download millions of songs from various sources. Apart from it, you can listen to thousands of radio stations which have been pre-filled inside this app. These radio stations have been categories according to their music genres.

To listen to a radio station, click the Stations tab on top and select All Stations. From the left sidebar choose your favorite genre and then select the stations from the main window. In total, you will find more than 8000 stations.