Archive for: Free
With an increasing number of people already shifting to Windows 7, numerous bug fixes, tips, tools, and utilities are being found/made. Today, we are going to go over some utilities which work with Windows 7 as well as Windows Vista. Readers who use either system will surely benefit from all of these. Also take a look at some Useful Windows 7 Applications which we posted in the past.
1- Fix Internet Explorer
This utility is fixes the crashes of Internet Explorer and ensures smooth browsing operations. The utility comes compressed in a small ZIP archive of which the contents you can simply extract and use. Make sure to close all open Internet Explorer windows before running the utility.
Fix IE Utility can be downloaded from here and has been tested on Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8.
2- Prevent Deletion Of Important Files
Novice users have more than once deleted important system files. The deletion of these files corrupts the operating system and the only viable solution to solve the corruption is the reinstallation of the operating system. Of course the best cure is prevention, hence this utility. Prevent (version 1.0) is a freeware application which runs on all Windows.
This freeware prevents cutting, pasting, copying, deleting, copy to, move to, send to, and renaming functions. Installing Prevent on your system means that your files will never be tampered with, especially not your system files.
Prevent can be enable/disabled by assigning it hotkeys which smoothens functionality.
3- Ultimate Windows Tweaker
Ultimate Windows Tweaker is an unbelievably small (~345 KB) utility which does not require any installation whatsoever. Despite its minuscule size, it has over 150 tweaks i.e. ways to enhance the performance of your Windows.
The Windows Tweaker can be downloaded directly from here. Any Windows user will surely find this utility to be extremely beneficial; the improved system performance will be clearly noticeable.
4- Windows Access Panel
Windows Access Panel is your one stop to access all important aspects of your Windows. Here is how the panel looks like:
To access the objects/utilities listed in the panel, one would need to access the Control Panel first and then be able to adjust/modify the settings. However, with the help of the Access Panel, all you do is click on the relevant icon to be taken directly to the settings you want to change.
The icons listed in the screenshot of Access Panel pasted above show only few of the 48 programs of which the shortcuts are available on the panel. Displaying them makes access all the more easier for the user.
We all like to customize our desktops to reflect our tastes. We do this by putting a picture of our favorite bands as the wallpaper, using our favorite color as the operating system color scheme, and with the newest softwares available we can even dock our favorite programs fancily right on our desktops.
Custom icons are another great way to make using computers fun. Having a mini T-Rex where the Recycle Bin should be is one example of custom icons. For people who use custom icons and change from one set of icons to the next rather frequently, 365icon is surely a mouthwatering delight. They provide some of the highest quality free icons available on the internet.
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I have to admit, I’m a wordpress theme hunter myself since I run some blogs based on it. Getting a new theme is always refreshing, for me and for the readers. Not often but yes, I do it randomly. If you’ve been to Smashing Downloads earlier, you might have noticed a change =). Anyway, for past couple of weeks or so I’ve been saving / bookmarking new wordpress themes that I didn’t confronted earlier. They’re high quality for sure so to save people some time, I’ve combined a list of 14 wordpress themes and I hope you like them.
Also, if you want more, I’ve complied 13 Awesome Collections of Free Wordpress Themes in the past. Do check that one out as well.
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Free Website Templates (HTML based) are always great for inspiration and valuable for people who don’t know much on coding a personal website. There are numerous websites which offer free website templates, downloadable and easy to edit via Frontpage, dreamweaver and many other popular softwares. Basically, all you need to do is, add in your content and upload it to your website, nothing much required. Related, I previously posted 13 Awesome Collections Of Free Wordpress Themes that you should check out if you’re into wordpress, I’m sure you’ll find a theme of your liking. Also do subscribe to our feeds for regular updates.
1- OSWD (Open Source Web Design)
Open Source Web Design is a site to download free web design templates and share yours with others. With currently over 2080 free designs! it’s a must check out.
2- Open Designs
The Open Design Community is a hub for open source website designers from around the world providing thousands of XHTML and CSS based free web design templates available for download. They’re offering over 1360 designs to choose from at the moment.
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An excellent website called “Texture Vault” is something you need to bookmark if you’re (usually) downloading royalty free textures and backgrounds. As they call it, it’s a “Market place for Royalty free textures”. A brilliant thing about Texture vault is that you can choose from hundreds of quality texture backgrounds and images. There are some options, depending on your quality needs:
1- You can either download a texture for free but it will be of Medium quality, suitalbe for websites, blogs and low resolution print designs, with dimensions as 600×400 (px) and the following print Size:
- @72DPI = 8.33in x 5.56in
- @150DPI = 4in x 2.67in
- @300DPI = 2in x 1.33in
2- The high quality which will cost you $2 per image, suitable for website backgrounds, print designs etc, Dimensions: 1800×1200 (px), print size:
@72DPI = 25in x 16.67in
@150DPI = 12in x 8in
@300DPI = 6in x 4in
- @72DPI = 25in x 16.67in
- @150DPI = 12in x 8in
- @300DPI = 6in x 4in
3- And the maximum quality, costing you $4 per image, suitable for high resolution print designs, posters etc Dimensions: 3072 x 2048 (px) and print size:
- @72DPI = 42.67in x 28.44in
- @150DPI = 20.48in x 13.65in
- @300DPI = 10.24in x 6.83in
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Deviant Art, launched in August 2007, as we know is one of the best websites for designers, artists and people who love likewise stuff. According to Wikipedia,
“As of May 2009 the site consists of over 10 million members, over 81 million submissions, and receives around 105,000 submissions per day.The domain deviantart.com attracted at least 36 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.”
Which means, it can be a good fit for your business if you can create a portfolio there. Now you can! Deviant Art now has a feature where you can configure your very own Portfolio in minutes, design and submit your work there and give it a chance for a potential person to review it easily.
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If you work with macromedia flash to create funny animations or serious presentations, you have to check out MegaSWF. It’s a great website which lets you upload SWF files up to 10 megabytes in size. You will instantly receive a hash link to use to view your uploaded Flash file. The interface is sweet, no techies required, just choose file, select size, enter the “Anti-spam” answer and click upload.
Though, there are certain options, if you are uploading a file anonymously, you can upload a 10 MB SWF file but you won’t be able to add description, no hot-linking, no flash-networking & it will display 1 advertisement. If you are registered (Free), you don’t recieve much options there except be able to add description to the video. Though, if you buy their pro hosting feature, you’ll be able to do all that and get around 20 GB of space. Pricing: $5 per month, $27.50 for 6 months, or $49.99 for one year (save $10!)
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I’ve always love free Wordpress themes, why? because they do compare to all those premium ones, all you need to do is, tweak them a bit to your liking and viola~ – You have something terrific. I’ve seen some nifty stuff out there in the past and loved every bit of it. Here are some awesome collection of wordpress themes that you cannot miss. These combined are over hundreds of free wordpress themes which you can use on your blogs without paying a single penny.
1- 21 Mindblowing Premium-Like Free Wordpress Themes
2- 85 Beautiful Free Wordpress Themes
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RapidShare is becoming more and more popular for sharing files. These files can be huge in size, keeping in mind, users are now preferring good Download Managers for Rapidshare so they can download without any interruption. Here, I’ve put up a list of 5 of the Best RapidShare Download Managers that can get the job done.
JDownloader:
JDownloader is a great download manager for rapidshare that also works with MegaUpload and a few more sites. You can queue up the files that you are looking to download and it will download in the background without any hassle. Though, It requires java runtime enviroment (jre/jdk) 1.5 or higher so you should check the version that you’re running here and update accordingly. Also, it runs fine on Windows, Linux and Mac.
Download JDownloader
Raptor:
Raptor comes with a user-friendly interface and can download / schedule your files from Rapidshare easily. All you need to do is click on Jobs, Add download, Add the rapidshare download links, choose the folder where to save those files and you’re done. It does requires Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 for it to work.
Also, I would like to mention that it’s default language is Russian but you can change it to english easily. Refer to the screenshot below.
Download Raptor
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There are a lot of softwares out there that let you convert different file extensions, whether it be Flash, Movies, Data, Text, Mp3 songs or videos. Most of these softwares don’t work, some you have to pay for, some you don’t like and the game goes on. So why not use something that you don’t have to download or install, something that can do the job just the way you want it, without any hassle? That’s when the web based video converters show their superiority.
These web based video converters are very handy and you will not believe that some of these single websites actually convert almost anything that you can think of. Some are focused on one thing and are good at it while others are providing a multi-tasked service. I’ve compiled a list of 5 of the best web based converters to make your job easier.
1- Media Convert
It’s a free online service that lets you convert text, video and audio files to almost any kind of format that you want them to. The website may look a bit complicated but there is no Rocket Science involved. Just click Browse, choose the file, select input format and output format, submit the form and you’re done. Another plus point of Media Convert is that it when you select the file, it automatically detects the format and prompts only for the output format which makes it more easy.
2- ZamZar
Zamzar is one of the best web-based file conversion tool that lets you convert nearly any format to nearly any format you like. All you need to do is select the files or files you want to convert and it will give you the formats that are available that you can convert to. Next step is to enter your email address where you want to receive those converted files and click convert. That’s it, check your email in the next 30 seconds and you’ll have a link with your converted file. It’s that simple and fast.
3- Vixy.net
Vixy.net is another great web based FLV converter that lets you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube’s videos,etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file easily. Just enter the youtube video Url in it’s URL bar, select the converion format and click Start and it will do the job. They also have a desktop that has the same look as Vixy.net’s website but it contain Ads that you might not wanna go for.
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