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Previously, we have covered some very useful tools for quickly searching through files and folder by defining certain criteria and specifying parameters, such as UltraFileSearch and SearchMyFiles, and applications that allow you to search and delete duplicate files and folder on your system, like NoDupe. Today, we have a portable tool for you, called LookDisk that combines both these functions and allows you to search duplicate files, files and folder using filters, such as file size, date and attributes, search for text in any file including PDF, displays the disk overview and search within multiple archive formats. More on LookDisk after the break.

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Many PDF documents contain a lot of imagery, including snapshots of graphs, company logos, demonstrative images, etc. While reading a PDF document with images can be useful, it can also have an overwhelming effect on the eyes, as e-book reading can be more stressful than reading from the conventional paper. Furthermore, flashy PDF images can also be irritating as they can distract the reader from concentrating on the document. Pdf-No-Img is a handy tool that creates a an image-less version of PDF documents to allow users to read them without images. It is not a PDF viewer, but rather, it makes it possible to view PDF documents without images. When you open a PDF document with Pdf-No-Img, it replaces the imagery with gray boxes. This helps the reader to focus on the text and to avoid getting distracted by graphical content.

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Skype offers one of the best video call, audio call and chat services in the current communication client market. You can also use Skype for screen sharing and sending files to your contacts (personally, I hate Skype file transfer). Apart from these built-in features, plugins and third party applications extend the usefulness of Skype to another level by providing you with more tools that integrate with Skype. Do check out some of the awesome features and tools to supercharge your Skype experience. Due to these extended capabilities, Skype has a utility not only in homes and personal interaction, but also in educational and professional environment. Athtek Skype Recorder is one such third party application that allows users to automatically record audio from every incoming and outgoing Skype call. Read on to find out more about Athtek Skype Recorder.

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For many users, it becomes necessary to not just delete confidential files permanently, but to shred them to avoid file recovery. While there are a number of handy file shredding applications for Windows, Zer0 is perhaps the most minimalist of them all. It is a user friendly file shredder, which can delete files securely to make them unrecoverable. It provides a convenient drag and drop utility and allows instantly shredding files in a single click. Zer0′s high level security algorithm makes it impossible to recover deleted files by conventional recovery tools, and the deletion process itself is lightning fast. During testing, we spcified a 573MB file for deletion with Zer0, and it was deleted in a split second. The tool makes use of multiple system cores, and hence, provides maximum efficiency, without hanging the application.

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Although Windows 7 has Aero Snap feature to quickly adjust two opened application windows on the screen, it doesn’t automatically move them when you drag an application window. This compels users to use third-party application windows adjustment utilities such as Asus Multiframe Utility, Windy,  WinSplit Revolution etc., to quickly arrange opened windows on screen. Desktop Slider is built to slide opened windows across the screen, allowing you to not only focus on currently active window but also snap them to screen borders. What makes it unique from other application window managers is its ability to create infinite workspaces; you select the window and drag it across the screen to start working on other applications. You can view all open windows or select only active one using a hotkey combination. Moreover, it also let you hide the application windows; using the slider feature, you can keep selected application windows at required side of the screen and focus on only important ones.

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Graphs are a great way to simplify all those difficult-to-understand statistics. A graph is used mostly when two or more values that are taken under different conditions, or information about the same subject in different points in time needs to be represented in a visual form. For a common man, comparison of numbers and percentages become a lot easier to understand and analyze when it is displayed in graph or chart form. For instance, if you are trying to analyze the financial data of a company before buying its shares, the balance sheets and cash flow statements are sure to confuse you. However, if the same data is plotted in a graph, it will be a lot easier for you to understand how the company has been performing financially. StatTrends is a portable application for creating interactive charts and graphs. More on StatTrends after the jump.

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There are a lot of people, including me, who like to keep their music organized and well-tagged. Tagging the music helps you in easily searching for the required track, no matter which audio player you are using. Even though it has great usefulness, Microsoft hasn’t given a lot of options to users in this regard. Tagging files is a lengthy process of opening each file individually and editing the correct information for every track separately. The main reason that most people avoid tagging their music collection is the amount of time and effort it takes to do it. TigoTago is a tag editor that takes care of this problem and provides you with an easier and less time-consuming method to batch edit the tags of your media files. More on TigoTago after the jump.

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Virtual Machine software like VirtualBox, Virtual PC, Parallels, VMware etc, provide the utility of not only running multiple virtual environments on the host system, but also allow creating and configuring the machines as per the requirements. The Virtual Machine software are designed keeping high-end usage requirements in mind, and therefore, such applications are authorized to gain complete control over all the installed hardware and software components. While machine virtualization utilities are widely used to run disk images of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux distributions, they don’t allow converting the physical into a virtual machine in order to use the entire system on other platforms in a virtual environment. Today, we look at the the simplest way to convert the local machine to virtual machine, and then configure and run it on other systems using virtualization software.

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Encoding Decoding is an encryption software, which provides a dead simple mechanism for encoding files, i.e., by dragging them to the applications interface and entering a password for them. This easy to use application makes it possible to quickly secure your important files, to protect them from unauthorized access. Furthermore, it does not replace the input file, but rather, creates a more secure version of it. The only thing that you may have to be concerned with is to remember the password, in order to gain access to protected files. Encoding Decoding (application) can be used to encrypt any kind of file, including pictures, code files, Excel sheets and other MS Office documents, PDF files, etc.

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Changing file icons through changing the theme is always risky, since it might modify some important files which can result in some system file getting corrupted. Icons allow you to differentiate file types and applications from each other by giving you a different visual for every application. If you are one of those people who regularly change their themes and icon packs, but are not satisfied with some of the icons, give Thumbico a try. It is a portable application that lets you view thumbnails of any file, image, document, video or application in your computer, and extract their icons. You can use it to experiment with icons using features like resizing and converting to use the ones that fit both your mood and the application. Keep reading to find out more about Thumbico.

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Since the release of Windows 8 developer’s preview, there has been a debate among users regarding the utility of the Metro UI and its elements. For those users who did not like the Metro UI, tweaks such as the Windows 8 Start Menu Toggle were introduced shortly after the pre-beta release of Windows 8. However, it appears that it is not the Metro UI itself, but the start menu of the said interface, that has mostly annoyed users. Metro Cheat is a portable application, which allows you to acquire the Windows 7 style classic start menu, while keeping other Metro features intact (e.g.,  the new Task Manager, Explorer Ribbon and Metro Apps). Before using this tweak, please make sure that UAC (User Account Control) is disabled, as the application will not be able to auto start if UAC is even partially enabled.

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