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There are various applications out there that enable you to extract music or other audio from video files. Swiftturn Free Sound Extractor is a prime example of such apps, which, at the same time, also lets you convert the extracted audio file into a number of popular formats, including MP3, AAC, WMA, OGG, WAV and FLAC etc. The wizard-based conversion process is very simple, and sports an easy-on-the-eyes UI design. Some of the key features of this tool include support for 250+ input formats (including MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV, DAT, DIVX, MPG, VOB, DV and FLV), numerous presets for audio conversion and batch conversion of files.

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Windows 7 comes with a power scheme switcher option containing three plans by default (High Performance, Balanced and Power Saver), but it only allows you to switch between two power plans from its notification icon. This can be a major hindrance for people who continually find the need to switch between all three. Applications like previously reviewed Power Plan Assistant have pretty much taken care of this nuisance. However, various third-party solutions keep on adding new features to the mix. Easy Power Plan Switcher is another similar, open source program that is extremely light and sits in the Windows system tray for easy access to all default battery power schemes, plus a few custom schemes. This small utility definitely does a big job for laptop users looking for a way to manage battery life. More to follow.

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PDF, or Portable Document Format, is an open standard for document exchange. It is used for sending formatted documents and have the other party receive them exactly as intended by the sender. The author of a PDF document has the option to restrict the level of control a receiver has on the document. Today, we have two applications from PDFMate, called Free PDF Merger and Free PDF Converter, which allow you to easily merge two or more PDF documents into one, and convert a PDF document to multiple EPUB, Text, Image, HTML or SWF respectively. More on these applications after the break.

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An NTFS Junction Point is a feature of the NTFS file system, which allows users to create a Symbolic Link to a directory that then functions as an alias to that location. To read more about what Symbolic Links, Hard Links and Junction Points are and how they work, head on over to this article. In this post, we will be introducing you to an application for Windows called JunctionMaster, a small shell extension that allows you to move and link to a folder with one click from within the right-click menu. That is, move a folder while retaining its original path. Whenever you move a folder using this extension, it creates a hard link to the new location in its original place. This allows the users to access files from their original location after they are, let’s say, moved to another partition to free space on the original one.

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With so many things to do in a day, one needs to be reminded of all the pending tasks. Consider yourself in a situation where you have set up a lunch meeting with your friend or someone important for your business, but because of getting caught up in some other work, you forget about the lunch. Sometimes, random thoughts cross our mind during the most absurd moments. For instance, while working on some important task, you suddenly remember that you had to make a phone call. Previously reviewed Remindeo is a web application that allows you to schedule, manage and sync tasks without having to download anything on the PC or portable/ handheld device. Today, we have another desktop reminder for you called Concenturio, which allows you to create single or recurring tasks, as well as set notifications for selected pending ones.

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Many of us are waiting for technology smart enough to let us download a car, but in the meanwhile, we’ll have to settle with taking pictures and printing them or scanning our old photographs to preserve them beyond their physical existence. For most people who own a scanner, its use is limited to scanning items. Scanners are, however, smarter than that. More specifically, scanning or image reading applications are much smarter. OCR To Word is one such application. The application lets you extract text from a scanned image, subsequently giving you the option to save the extracted text as either a MS Word document or a text file. It does not connect directly with your scanner so you don’t have to worry about your model being supported or not. The utility can communicate with your scanner via the default scanning application and can scan and import an image, which is then converted to text.

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TIFF or Tagged Image File Format is a file format which is used for storing image used by both amateur and professional photographers. The ability of TIFF (.tiff, .tif) format to save multiple images into one makes it different from other image formats. Although the default Windows Image and fax viewer allows you to view multipage TIFF files, it does not allow you to manipulate the image. Multiff is an application for Windows that allows you to perform multiple editing tasks on a TIFF file, including page split, combine TIFFs, image page extraction, deletion & insertion, image page replacement and more. Moreover, you can convert images into PDF, JPG, DCX, AVI and ICO formats. Keep reading past the break to find out more about Multiff.

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LeFeed is an intelligent web application that lets you view your Facebook feed in a unique way; it learns what kind of content you like as you browse Facebook, and suggests what it believes would interest you. After you log in to LeFeed via Facebook, it starts analyzing your interests, your friends’ interests and your usage statistics, allowing you to see important updates first. Additionally, it recommends new content and subjects to you. With it, you can view your feeds in a more organized manner, with less clutter, as content is arranged into different categories, such as photos, status updates, videos, links and more. You can also like/dislike posts, update your status on Facebook directly from LeFeed and filter posts by different categories.

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Gone are the days when we would stuff up our hard drives with thousands of images and copy them to USB flash drive if we had to show them to our family and friends. Now, people just upload the images to an online image uploading/ sharing website and give the recipients a link to the album. There are certainly numerous online photo sharing services available out there, which allow users to upload pictures, such as Flickr, Minus, Instagram, Imgur, Photobucket etc., but OpenPhoto is a unique, open-source photo sharing service that lets you use your Dropbox storage for not only sharing photo, but also uploading and organizing photo albums in an efficient manner. The uploaded images can be saved to OpenPhoto servers or synced with your Dropbox, Box.net or Amazon S3 accounts. It lets you easily toggle the privacy settings between Public and Private, change the License type of uploaded images, and share images with a particular group. That’s not all; the web service also has a simple-to-use iOS client for on-the-go gallery management, and an Android app in the pipeline.

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You may already know that Windows does not show you the complete path of a folder or file, and if you need the complete path, you need to click the Windows Explorer address bar or open folder/file properties to copy the complete path. Wouldn’t it be better if you could copy the complete path of folder and file from right-click context menu? Copy Path to Clipboard provides you with just that. It is an application for Windows that allows you to not only copy the Full Path and the Filename, but also Relative Path, URL Path, Parent Folder Path and the UNC Path of selected files and folders, all from the Windows right-click context menu. Additionally, it lets you copy the path of multiple files and folders at a time to Windows clipboard, so that you paste folders/files names along with their source paths in any text editor. More on Copy Path to Clipboard after the break.

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SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform that allows collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio recordings by both amateur and professional artists. The SoundCloud service only has a web portal, and you need to open your browser every time you want to access the music. Previously, we covered applications for downloading music from SoundCloud, including SoundCloud Downloader and a user script called SoundCloud Super +2. However, we haven’t seen a promising application that allows users to access SoundCloud without opening their browser. CloudDeck is a third party Adobe AIR based application that allows you to login to your SoundCloud account and access the musical database right from your desktop. You can search for music, create playlists, bookmark songs to playlist, download it if the uploader has enabled it etc. Keep reading to find out more about CloudDeck.

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Windows Registry is a database that is used to store the configuration settings of Windows native system utilities and user applications. It includes default settings for the operating system components and information related to hardware connected to the computer. Back in January, we covered an application for Windows called RegFromApp, which let users monitor the changes made to registry by any selected application. However, it did not provide you any kind of option to check and compare the changes made to Windows Registry. RegMerge is an application for Windows that allows you to compare one or more Windows registry (REG) files with current values in Windows Registry. This may come helpful in situations where you need to compare the changes between exported registry keys and current registry keys to decide whether the exported registry hives are to be restored or not. Additionally, it provides you with an option to merge all the selected changed registry keys into Windows registry.

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