Green Complex » Free Software

Freeware FTP Server

Jason Green — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:00:49 +0000

Filezilla FTP Server

If Filezilla is a good FTP Client, then what is a good FTP Server? I owened a copy of serv-U FTP and BulletProof FTP servers, but I’ve switched to the Freeware FTP server by Filezilla because it’s updated more often and has more features.

Remote Administration is one of the great features. Despite administrating the server on the local machine, the interface can also be used to administrate remote servers. But you will most likely want to administrate on your local server. In this case enter 127.0.0.1 as server address. For the server port, you have to enter the same port number you specified during installation for the admin port. (default: 14147)

This means you can share folders and add / remove users from anywhere in the world. This is accomplished by having the server split into two parts, the server daemon , and the interface are separate apps. This insures the server uses the minimum amount of system resources. If your looking to share files across the internet the old school way, or need to access your private files between home and work, FTP is a solid time tested solution.

Download link : http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type=server

Guide to setting up the server: Coming soon!

P.S. Sorry for the downtime, server move completed! The new server is faster and I’m very excited to get things moving again!

Filezilla FTP Client

Jason Green — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:20:28 +0000

With so many FTP clients to choose from, finding the ‘right’ one can be a daunting task.

Filezilla

I’ve tried so many, from CuteFTP, FireFTP and even used Windows Explorer for FTPing, and I’ve found that FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client with lots of handy features. It supports resume on both downloads and uploads, timeout detection, firewall support, SOCKS4/5 and HTTP1.1 support, SSL, SFTP and more, all with an intuitive drag and drop interface.

Some Stand-out Features from typical FTP software

Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)
Cross-platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X and more
IPv6 support
Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB
Tabbed user interface
Drag & drop support
Configurable transfer speed limits
Filename filters
Directory comparison
Remote file editing
Synchronized directory browsing
Remote file search

Download it here

Screenshots:

Best Defrag Utility

Jason Green — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:30:46 +0000

Hey, just bringing another software review, this time it’s a defrag utility called Mydefrag.

MyDefrag Logo

In the context of administering computers, defragmentation is a process that reduces the amount of fragmentation in file systems. It does this by physically organizing the contents of the disk to store the pieces of each file close together and contiguously. MyDefrag was formally called JkDefrag (Named after the creator, Jeroen Kessles), which is still available in a portable version here.

MyDefrag is fully functional freeware, no cost, no time limit, no advertisements.

I like MyDefrag because it is so well designed. It’s based on the standard defragmentation API by Microsoft, a system library that is included in Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista, 2008, and Win7. Most defragmenters are based on this API, including the free defragmenter that comes with Windows and many commercial defragmenters. Basically all MyDefrag does is send “move this file to that location” commands to the API. The API is part of the operating system and can safely move almost any file on the disk, without risk and while the computer is in full use.

Mydefrag attempts to move all your data to the front of the drive, it’s a known fact the the front of the drive can be up to 200 times faster than the end! My Defrag also organizes files into different zones, like directories, Windows files, files used while booting, regular files, and rarely used files. Frequently accessed files are placed at the beginning of the harddisk, and files that are commonly used together are placed in close proximity to each other. This results in a dramatic speed increase, and is in fact more important than defragmentation. The program comes with scripts with a zone organization suitable for most users, power users can customize the zones through scripts.

Sorting the files on your disk can give you even more speed. There are several sorting strategies to choose from. Most of them will take a lot of data shuffling, taking a lot of time for MyDefrag to complete, and therefore should only be used occasionally.

Features:

Intelligent design.
User scripts for different configurations.
Can be ran from Scheduled Tasks, Network Scripts (Active Directory for example) or even run as a screensaver.
64 bit support for enhanced performance.
Good for novices as well as experts.

MyDefrag is fully functional freeware, no cost, no time limit, no advertisements. The MyDefrag site is http://www.MyDefrag.com/.

A NOTE ABOUT DEFRAGGING: Defragmentation and optimization will not only make a hard drive faster, butit can also lengthen it’s life span, because the disk will have less work to do and therefore have less wear and tear. Also, it will refresh and strengthen the magnetic data on the harddisk by simply reading the (weakened) data and rewriting it fresh. However, defragmenting and optimizing is work, so excessive defragmenting and optimizing can actually cause more wear and tear than it prevents.

Download:

http://www.mydefrag.com/Manual-DownloadAndInstall.html

Screenshots:

Hard Drive Usage Statistics

Jason Green — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:00:53 +0000

This is an app that’s useful for people with a LOT of information on their system, or if you need to work on someone else’s computer and they had no idea where they were saving everything. (Or maybe they don’t want you to know *wink wink*)

WinDirStat is a disk usage stats viewer and cleanup tool with many handy features like:

Directory list, Treemap and Extension list views so you can view your files the way you want
Coupling. Select an item in the directory list: The treemap highlights it; and vice versa
Zooming
Built-in cleanup actions including Open, Show Properties, Delete
Works with network drives and UNC paths
‘Create disk usage report’ option
Language can be set to Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, German, English, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Russian
ANSI and Unicode: The ANSI and Unicode versions of WinDirStat are both included with the launcher automatically launching the correct version depending on the operating system

You can grab a portable copy here: http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/windirstat_portable
Or the original with Installer here: http://blog.windirstat.info/

New WinDirStat Logo

Dubaron Disk Utility

Jason Green — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:08:02 +0000

Dubaron is a software company that makes Freeware, Open source libraries, &
Commercial libraries. I still can’t believe they just give this away!

Dubaron: Incredible Disk Utility Software!

Dubaron Diskimage is the ultimate tool to backup and restore partitions, entire harddisks, usb keys, floppy drives and (read-only) optical media (CDs & DVDs). Ok, so it’s not Norton Ghost, nor was is planned to be, you can’t deploy a large number of corporate pcs with it from a server. (That’s a different app) But it CAN dump a raw disc or drive to a file on your PC that you can clone to another drive.

Usage examples

Calculate MD5 sum of an file or iso
Backup and restore USB keys
Dump cd’s to iso
Hexedit files, floppies and disks
View partition information
Backup and restore data on non-native partitions
Search in file or disk for textual or binary data
Clone a harddisk
Copy contents of one partition to another

Best CD Ripper

Jason Green — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:00:30 +0000

Why use VBR MP3s? Well unlike regular lower bit-rate codecs, LAME can use VBR to provides the best Sound Quality to space ratio, and WinLAME makes the process as easy as 1 2 3. I use WinLame to rip CDs and convert them into VBR MP3s on the fly.

winLAME MP3 + CD Ripper

Lame is a Codec, and WinLAME is a GUI for that codec. It’s a superior codec than most and best of all it’s completely FREE. You can grab the latest version over at http://winlame.sourceforge.net/ Give it a spin, it’s open source and contains NO SPYWARE or Adware.
I ♥ winLAME, and I think you will too. It’s way better than using Windows Media Player, but easier than Exact Audio Copy.

Web Dev Without the Web

Jason Green — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 11:30:41 +0000

Web Dev Without the Web: Or how to create your own local server for building and testing websites.

XAMPP - Rocks!

The nice guys over at Apache Friends have made it easy to get your own webserver up in no time! Just goto http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html and grab the file you need for your type of computer (Windows, Linux, or even Mac) and run 1 application that fires up a real Perl/PHP environment,MySQL Database, and Apache HTTP daemon ALL IN ONE!

Requirements and features

XAMPP requires only one exe file to be downloaded and run, and little or no configuration of the various components that make up the web server is required. XAMPP is regularly updated to incorporate the latest releases of Apache/MySQL/PHPand Perl. It also comes with a number of other modules including OpenSSL and phpMyAdmin.

Installing XAMPP takes less time than installing each of its components separately. Self-contained, multiple instances of XAMPP can exist on a single computer, and any given instance can be copied from one computer to another.

It is offered in both a full, standard version and a smaller version (known as XAMPP Lite). Add-on extension modules also are available for free.

What’s it for?

Officially, XAMPP’s designers intended it for use only as a development tool, to allow website designers and programmers to test their work on their own computers without any access to the Internet. To make this as easy as possible, many important security features are disabled by default. In practice, however, XAMPP is sometimes used to actually serve web pages on the web. A special tool is provided to password-protect the most important parts of the package.

XAMPP also provides support for creating and editing databases in MySQL and SQLite among others.

GRAB IT HERE:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp/

Process Monitor v2.8

Jason Green — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:40:20 +0000

Filemon and Regmon have been replace by a new application called Process Monitor, which combines the two and adds many new features.

Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity.

It combines two legacy Sysinternals apps, Filemon and Regmon, and adds these features:

rich and non-destructive filtering
comprehensive event properties such session IDs and user names
reliable process information
full thread stacks with integrated symbol support for each operation
simultaneous logging to a file, and much more.

Its uniquely powerful features will make Process Monitor a core utility in your system troubleshooting and malware hunting toolkit.

In case you’re new to filemon and regmon, what this app can do for you is watch what a program does on your computer. You start Process Monitor first, (No installation needed) and then proceed to set up filters. The easiest way to get started is to drag the sniper scope icon to any other programs window. Clear the current view by pressing Ctrl-X. Then Process Monitor will show you every file that your application that you have filtered, reads/writes/creates/deletes, as well as every touch it makes to the registry. You can see this would be very helpful if saw, you wanted to know exactly what your application was doing at any given time.

The Program Process Monitor was recently updated November 3rd 2009, and you can download it here for free:

http://green.cx/procmon

Or Run it Live from the web anytime, by going to start -> Run -> “http://green.cx/procmon.exe” (Without quotes) and pressing ok.

If you’re on Vista or Windows7 just press the Windows key + r to bring up the run box.

The direct Download link is: http://green.cx/procmon.exe

AnvirTASK Free Portable Edition

Notepad++

Jason Green — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:24:51 +0000

Ok If you haven’t heard, Notepad++ is basically the end-all editor for writing code, FAST.While it’s not a true IDE for writing full scale applications like Java’s NETBeans, Visual Studio, Dreamweaver, etc., it’s makes life so much easier for those of us who only need to do editing, quick code-revision, editing, and even as just a syntax highlighter.

It Supports all these computer languages:

C	C++	Java	C#	XML	HTML
PHP	CSS	makefile	ASCII art (.nfo)	doxygen	ini file
batch file	Javascript	ASP	VB/VBS	SQL	Objective-C
RC resource file	Pascal	Perl	Python	Lua	TeX
TCL	Assembler	Ruby	Lisp	Scheme	Properties
Diff	Smalltalk	Postscript	VHDL	Ada	Caml
AutoIt	KiXtart	Matlab	Verilog	Haskell	InnoSetup
CMake	YAML

It also supports FTP, Themes, Macros, and a LOT more!! When Installing it even asks if you want to install it to a Thumb drive to make it portable!!

Clone Mode, for example lets you open the SAME document twice, so you can edit the Top of a file on the left pane, and the bottom on the right pane, and what changes in one pane, also changes in the other. I know of NO OTHER EDITING APPLICATION that does this! (See Screenshot)

Multi View Clone Mode

Well go give it a try, it even comes with Themes you should check out too, that change the colors of the Syntax highlighting to make it look like anything from a Green screen terminal to a neon or neo gothic l33t script editor.

It’s great for those tweaks to your website here and there, I mean, I have used it ALOT on this very site!

Download it here: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

And some juicy Screenshots!:

Jason's Notepad++

Gallery3 Vs ZenPhoto

AnvirTASK Free Portable Edition

Jason Green — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:56:31 +0000

Anvir Task Manager Free

Security analysis of processes, startup programs and Windows services basic
Startup monitor: alerts on new startups, block undesired startup programs
Check files on VirusTotal.com with 30+ antivirus engines
Startup manager: manage all programs running on startup including services and Internet Explorer toolbars
Save HijackThis log with additional info

Increase PC performance

Delayed startup: speed up Windows startup process
Limit the CPU usage of processes that eat a lot of CPU
Save changed priority of processes
Optimize memory usage
Suspend / resume processes and threads, free process memory
Run programs as services on Windows startup before user login
Windows enhancements

Tweaker that gives direct access to hundreds of XP / Vista settings including settings that cannot be accessed in Windows at all without editing the registry directly
Drive’s free space as a colored horizontal bar in Windows “My Computer” (Vista style icons on Windows XP)
Click on title of any application:
hide window to system tray
make window semi-transparent
pin window ‘always on top’
change window size to 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768
change priority of the process
List of recently used folders in “Open”/”Save” dialogs
Minimize windows to system tray and save taskbar space limited
Quick access to last launched programs and last opened folders in system tray
System Monitoring

Monitor processes, services, Internet connections, CPU, disk, memory, DLLs, drivers, locked files, windows
Icons and tooltips in tray for CPU, memory, network, disk load, HDD temperature, and battery
2 icons of 5
View download speed, upload speed, amount of transfered data per network connection and per process limited
Find locked files and DLL
Log of processes start and stop
Graph of processor, memory and disk activity for each process and for computer