Instant Fundas

MKVcleaver is a GUI (Graphical User Interface) frontend to the command line tool MkvToolNix designed to extract data from MKV files. Matroska or MKV is a multimedia container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside a single file, complete with menu systems similar to that of DVDs. MKVcleaver allows you to extract these tracks - video, audio, subtitles, chapters etc. that contain in an MKV file.

Sometime back Google Chrome began providing additional information when the browser could not connect to a website. Aside for the typical Chrome message “Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to site.com”, Chrome would occasionally offer a helpful message such as “Other users are also experiencing difficulties connecting to this site, so you may have to wait a few minutes”, indicating the website server is really down.

Although not used that often, PDF documents can be used as a replacement for Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. This has the advantage of not requiring a platform dependent program for the presentation to run. PowerPoint presentations are also often shared as PDF files. The drawback of such a conversion is that any extra effects present on the original file is lost.

YouTube Thumbs is an extension for Chrome that displays preview of a YouTube video when you hover the mouse pointer over it. The extension grabs thumbnails of the video at different play times – thumbnails that YouTube automatically generates for each uploaded video – then cycles the thumbnails over and over again with a small delay between each thumbnail image, creating an animated preview of the video. This is how it looks like.

A live CD or live DVD is one that contains a complete, functioning and operational operating system that can be run straight off the CD without installing on a hard disk drive first. Because a live CD typically does not alter any operating system or files on the hard drive, they are often used as a medium to carry system repair and data recovery. Nearly every flavor of Linux distributions is available in the live CD/DVD format for new users to test drive.

The giveaway contest for Sailfish VPN - a new VPN service provider based on US - that we organized last week had come to an end on Dec 24. As promised we are giving away 10 accounts of the said VPN service which are valid for 3 months with unlimited bandwidth. The winners are:

WinX DVD Author is an easy to use DVD authoring tool to create and burn DVD from popular video file formats including AVI, MP4, DivX, WMV, Xvid, RM, MOV, and more. Videos can be clipped, cropped or trimmed during authoring. In addition, the software automatically creates DVD menus, splits long videos into chapters, adds background music and burns them to DVD using the built-in video disc burner which is fully compatible with DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, DVD DL+R, DVD DL+/-RW.

Unless you have a faulty cable or live in a poor wireless signal area, all Internet connection problems can be tracked down to a few key areas in your system. So if Internet is not working on your laptop or you are experiencing connection issues like slow speeds, unstable connection etc. you just have to look at those areas. This you can do by either manually inspecting each area one at a time, or fire up some automated repair utility such as Complete Internet Repair.

Google Docs can be used for conducting surveys and polls. The survey can be embedded on your website or the link to the survey can be shared directly with the persons you are surveying using email, Facebook, Twitter or any other mean. There are several services that let you conduct polls, but using Google Docs for your surveying needs has certain advantages.

Online video sharing site Vimeo, recently launched Vimeo Video School , a freely accessible section of the site that teaches you the nuts and bolts of moviemaking. The site caries thousands of videos touching various topics like editing, sound recording and composition and targeted towards beginners and more advanced video makers alike.

YouTube’s embedded player has received a new feature that lets you add videos to a special queue for later viewing. When you come across an interesting video embedded on some page that you want to watch but don’t have time to watch it then, click on the ‘Watch Later’ link that appears on the video. Later, just go to YouTube.com and all the videos you have marked for watching later will be waiting for you on the homepage.

Last week, without any public announcement, Microsoft quietly pulled the plug on the Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program, the tool that checks the legitimacy of Microsoft Office installation on user machines before allowing to update or install Office templates and add-ins.

PDFrizator is a freeware tool that lets you assemble a collection of images and convert it into a PDF file. But PDFrizator is not your usual PDF creation tool because you are able to include within the file creative page transition effects, page advance time, and even a background music. The final result is a sleek auto-playing presentation.

Windows 7 has a useful feature called “VHD Boot” that lets you boot your entire Windows out of a Virtual Hard Disk file, as those used with Virtual PC or VMware. The machine is booted physically from this VHD file which is mounted as a virtual disk but used as a normal hard disk drive allowing you to install programs, create and save new files.

Returnil Virtual System Pro 2011 is a major update to the system protection software which was first mentioned on Instant Fundas more than a year ago. The software employs virtualization technology to protect the computer from unwanted changes made by unauthorized persons or malware by caching all changes made to the system on a virtual storage disk instead of the actual partition. That was when we reviewed the software last. The new 2011 version of the software, instead of caching the changes, virtualizes the entire operating system and discards it when the computer is rebooted.

Internet security software publisher ESET is running a contest on YouTube: Make a 15 second silent video promoting online safety, an ad basically. upload it to YouTube and submit it to ESET to register your participation. Each participant will receive a free license key for NOD32 Antivirus or ESET Cyber Security for Mac. The grand winner will get to fly to New York to see the winning entry in ESET ad space in Times Square. This is a good opportunity to get your creative juices flowing.

Warning: Based on their failure to deliver on promises, I suggest all people looking to signup for Sailfish VPN to look elsewhere. Here are some good alternatives: Hostizzle , Cyberghost , HideIPVPN . Sailfish VPN is a new entrant to the VPN market that allows Internet users to surf the web anonymously and securely. VPN services are being increasingly used to hide user identity, bypass Internet censorship, and access websites that are blocked in certain countries and regions. One good example is Hulu, which is available only in the US. Similarly, Spotify, BBC iPlayer, Pandora are region locked to specific geographical location.

The Internet is ruthless. Two years ago when George Bush had a shoe thrown at him, the unintentionally funny video became a huge Internet hit and resulted in several games where the player either assumed the role of Bush or the attacker with an unlimited supply of shoes. The financial crisis also saw a spate of new games like The Bailout Game or Bailout: The Golden Parachute . The BP Oil Spill incident gave folks another opportunity at fun and released Crisis in the Gulf , where players could use submarines and bombs to keep oil from reaching the surface of the water.

Google added a new type of notification to their search results that helps people know when a site may have been hacked. A site that has been compromised and altered by a third party may be used for spreading spam and malware or exploited for carrying out phishing attacks. These notification, along with malware notices that Google has been providing for years, will help people avoid the affected sites and keep out of harm’s way. According to a report published in Zone-H in May, about 95,000 sites were defaced in April 2010 and that number keeps increasing every month.

eXtra Buttons is freeware software that allows you to add up to 9 additional buttons to the title bar of each window. These buttons adds several useful options like minimize to tray, keep on top, send to background and others that eases window management. The buttons, whose order can be adjusted by the user, appear next to the minimize/maximize buttons on the right of each window.

Google has launched a new educational web application called Body Browser that lets people explore the human body like you explore the world on Google Earth. Body Browser lets you zoom, scroll, and search for every muscle, gland, bone, or organ in our body. But before you click on that link, here is a warning: Google Body Browser probably won't load in your browser, because it runs on WebGL which isn’t supported by many browsers at this moment. For now, you have to use either Chrome 9 Beta, Chrome 9 Dev Channel, Chrome Canary Build or Firefox 4 beta. In Chrome 8 (stable) you have to enable WebGL from the about:flags page.

The final build of the Opera 11 browser has just been released, the Norwegian company announced in a blog post . News about the upcoming version of the least liked browser (which is quite a mystery) was announced in October . Since then several alpha and beta builds were released periodically for testing including three RC builds plus the final in just two days - an urgency we are all familiar with (early this year Opera had pushed out 5 RC builds for version 10.5 in just two days!).

Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook are mighty useful for sharing links and stories with each other. During the explosive growth stage of Twitter several aggregator sites like Tweetmeme and Topsy, to name a few, sprang up allowing people to discover the latest news stories that are actively circulating on the micro-blogging network. These sites were a runaway success and soon Twitter established itself as the fastest outlet for breaking news.

Just like Windows system restore allows you to restore the state of your computer to a date in the past, Google has added a new feature that lets you restore your list of contacts to previous state.

Google has just introduced a new feature that allows users to grant other users limited access to their Gmail account, so that the delegated user can read, send, and delete messages on the owner’s behalf. This feature was originally available to Google Apps customers, which are usually business organization and people who have assistants who read and reply to emails on their behalf. This has been now rolled out to all Gmail users.

MakeMKV is a one-click solution to convert DVD and Blu-Ray video to the open standard MKV format that you can play on any video player. MakeMKV converts video clips into MKV files while retaining all video information in the original source files. Additionally MakeMKV can instantly stream decrypted video without intermediate conversion to wide range of players. But the strongest feature that makes MakeMKV stand apart from the crowd of other DVD rippers is the speed at which it operates.

Finally an FTP program that doesn’t make me want to throw up. Cyberduck, the popular FTP client for Mac, has just released a Windows version that has exactly the same set of features as found on its Mac counterpart. As the first beta of Cyberduck, a software with dashing looks and terrific set of features, lands on Windows existing FTP programs for the Windows platform were struck with a wave of inferiority complex and panic. Cyberduck is poised to replace not only each and everyone of them but also standalone clients for Google Docs, Amazon S3 storage and a number of such web services that users might be using.

The Google Chrome Store is attracting millions of users since the store opened a few days ago. You probably have visited too and installed handful of new apps to try out, and soon discovered that your new tab page is now home to dozens of apps. If you would like an alternative way to launch and manage installed Chrome Apps without making the new tab page a mess, check out AppJump .

If you thought Wikileaks is being operated out of a memory stick from a dinky cold basement by some sleep-deprived programmers ready to abandon their hideout at moment’s notice, think again. Recently pictures of the supposedly secret headquarters surfaced through a number of news sources – pictures that will blow your socks off. A headquarter located in a cave 100 feet below the ground in a former Cold War nuclear bunker futuristically redesigned to look like a set out of a James Bond movie.

Avanquest PowerDesk 8 Professional is an alternative file manager that provides an advanced and expert way to organize and manage the files, digital photos, MP3s and web images on your PC. With far more features and functions than the standard Windows file manager or other file management software, PowerDesk 8 Pro gives you the tools to search, edit, delete, copy, move, sort, zip, label, view, convert and more.

Recently Facebook introduced a new layout for the profile page with some changes. The new page highlights important information about you and prominently displays your friends. While making the switch to the new layout the user is told that the change is permanent and that they will not be able to return back to the old layout. This is not entirely true.

Google quietly added an interesting advanced search feature that lets users sort results by reading skill level. When you click on the "advanced search" link next to a Google search box, you're now presented with an additional option to sort by "reading level". The options available under this filter include "annotate results with reading levels," "show only basic results," "show only intermediate results," and "show only advanced results."

Here is a quick heads up for an ongoing promotion on Facebook by Digitary Software. The software on offer is MacX iPod DVD Ripper – a DVD to iPod converting application for both Windows and Mac OSX. The software can convert DVD to MPEG-4, H.264/MPEG-4, MOV, MP3 file, which is fully compatible with iPod nano, iPod touch 4, iPod classic with excellent output quality and super high conversion speed. This iPod DVD Ripper has specific decoder/encoder parameters to optimize the output audio and video quality for DVD to iPod conversion.

Around this time every year, Google releases what is known as Google Zeitgeist that showcases the top searched queries on Google search and the fastest rising and falling trend for the year gone by. This time Google has revamped the presentation with an interactive timescale, thanks to HTML5.

A novel way to protect important files on your hard disk is to prevent them from getting deleted accidentally. This can be done in an NTFS partition by setting appropriate access permission to that file or folder. This article will show you how to do that.

Thunderbird Conversations is a new extension from the Mozilla team which brings Gmail-like conversation view to the Thunderbird inbox. Once installed, the open source email client loads entire threads of conversation in the reading panel when clicking an email thread. Just like Gmail’s conversation view, unread messages are expanded and those that are previously read remain collapsed.

Weather Desktop Background Changer is a very original and innovative weather program that rotates wallpaper on the desktop according to the changing weather. The program is straightforward – simply type your location and press Enter. Optionally, you can choose the metric (Celsius/Fahrenheit) and update interval. The program can be minimized to the system tray from where it does the work.

MailVU is a free service that enables users to record and send video messages that can be viewed only for a set number of times, or viewed within a certain number of days as decided by the sender. For instance, if the sender wants the video to be viewed only once, the videos becomes unavailable after it has been clicked (and played) once.

YouTube, the most visited video sharing site has several nifty tricks that remain mostly unknown because they aren’t highlighted anywhere on the website. But if you are willing to probe around a little, they are easy to discover. That’s why I call these tricks ‘stupid’. In any case, if you do watch videos online on YouTube, you must know them.

Early this week NASA announced that they will be holding a press conference on a major astrobiology finding “that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” The announcement sparked off wild speculation about discovery of life or at least signs of it on the remote planets. But the truth is much closer home. In fact, it is on this very planet we live on.

Read-it-later, as it is commonly called, is when you bookmark pages you want to read later, but instead of actually bookmarking them and cluttering your bookmarks with “read-once” pages you sent them to a different location which is set apart from the browser’s bookmarking system. Such a feature is usually not present in any browser. It is implemented using browser extensions.

Domain name provider EveryDNS has pulled the plug on Wikileaks citing reasons that the DDoS attack the site was attracting was taking strain on the system and the DNS service had to be terminated to protect half a million sites that EveryDNS has to serve. Typing Wikileaks.org in the browser’s address bar currently leads to nowhere.

Downloading embedded flash games to your computer so that they can be played offline is an easy process and can be accomplished in a number of different ways. One way is to look into the page’s source code and get the direct link to the game file, which is usually an SWF file, and download the file from the file server. Another way is to let the game load in your browser and then get the file from the browser’s temporary cache. Yet another way to download a flash game is through an online tool File2HD.

I reviewed CleverPrint last July. It is a printing application that enables users to control how and what they want to print. You can read my original review , or the publisher’s description below:

Trustware BufferZone is an Internet sandboxing software that employs a preventative and proactive approach to keep users safe from various Internet threats. It can be used alongside your regular Antivirus software and helps strengthen your computer’s defenses against malware by complementing the reactionary method used by traditional anti-virus programs.

NASA has sent out a curious press release announcing that it will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2 – i.e. today - to discuss an astrobiology finding “that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” The news conference will be held at the NASA Headquarters auditorium at 300 E St. SW, in Washington and will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website at http://www.nasa.gov .

The first beta of Lightworks, the open source professional-grade video editing tool, has just been released by its parent company EditShare. The company had announced plans to open source the software back in April 2010 (we covered that in October).

Firefox 4 UI Fixer is an addon for Firefox 4 that lets you make some interesting changes to the browser, particularly revert some of the modification that the Mozilla team introduced with version 4. Firefox 4 UI Fixer allows users to:

Utilizing your email account’s disk space as file storage is not a new idea (remember Gmail drive?), but using it as an online file synchronization and file sharing service definitely is. SharedSafe is a new program, currently in beta, that converts all free space in your email account into a secure file storage location which you can use to store, share and sync your personal files online. All you need is an email account that supports IMAP.

The Windows 7 Explorer toolbar is decidedly bare – there are no buttons to Copy, Paste, Delete, Cut, Paste and do a bunch of others tasks, as was present in previous versions of Windows. For keyboard addicts it doesn’t matter. But for regular users it meant extra work with the mouse buttons. This tutorial teaches you how to add these buttons to Windows 7 Explorer toolbar.