·:[ E-Musings On Web Stuff ]:·
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Sorry for the delay in getting this column. Too much Christmas Cheer sort of wiped me out. I spent most of Boxing Day attempting to recover my equilibrium. As over the weekend evil companions plied with me too much (in hindsight anyway) dangerous liqueur. Now riding a ground swell of nostalgia, I have Bonnie Tyler’s Greatest Hits rocking around along in the background. But on to the free software for this last week of 2005.

Do you often despair at Windows Explorer’s fixed single pane view? If you do but are feeling a bit Scrooge-like. And don’t want to pay for the pleasure. You may want to checkout the free Turbo Navigator 1.47. This Windows Explorer replacement works with Windows 2000/XP/2003 and offers two panels. Its like using Explorer on steroids. With a few extras. I especially liked the instant disk space usage graph that slides out when you click the driver letter icon at the top of a panel. You can toggle between brief (file/folder names) and full (file/folder name, size, modified date/time and attributes) views. But you can’t customize the display to also view file extensions. You have to sort using the View > Sort by Extension command. This is clunky when compared even to Explorer where you can sort on multiple columns. (Tip: Right click between column headers to view a selectable pop-out list.)

But barring a few issues like this, overall Turbo Navigator is a powerful replacement. I find its Disk monitor especially handy when installing new programs. Or when performing disk-intensive file activity. Disk Monitor displays total drive size, bytes used, bytes free and data transfer rate. And if you are wondering why I need an external disk activity monitor. It’s because I recently accidently bent then broke the connector pins for the system power LED, disk activity LED and system reset while installing a new DVD writer.

There’s also a built in Media player that unfortunately only works with the CD/DVD-ROM drive. Yet despite adding .MP3 and .WAV files to the media types list I was unable to play in Turbo Navigator. But I was able to use the included Media Player to play audio CDs. There’s also a built-in file viewer that supports RTF, TXT, binary and hexadecimal files. However instead of displaying this information in a pop-up, the viewer overlays the existing twin-tab view. And its quite easy to accidentally terminate the Navigator when all you are really trying to do was close the Viewer. But Turbo Navigator remains an excellent Windows Explorer replacement. Download a copy from Last Freeware Version web site.

Octopus 3.11 is another free multi-threaded download client that works for both HTTP and FTP downloads. Octopus includes Proxy support. As well as site authorization. By default FTP transfers are done in passive mode (similar to a web browser). But this can be disabled. There’s also a download log for each job. However it seems this log is only available as long as the application is active. Close it and you also close out the log file. Interestingly, compared to other multi-threaded download clients where each segment’s saved with a proprietary extension, Octopus saves each thread with the original file’s extension.

The most exciting thing to happen this week is the release of IrfanView 3.98. This version, which requires its own companion 3.98_plugins file. Offers lots of tweaks and updates. And if you, like my son, have been wondering how the developer manages to release this fantastic program for free and still make ends meet. You need to stay alert during the Install process. IrfanView now includes (sponsored?) links to download and install the Google Toolbar and Google Desktop Search. Besides the usual bug fixes and tweaks. Other improvements to this excellent graphics processing application include extending the Thumbnail feature to include all sub-folders. The sideshow now supports alpha-blending effects. AFPL Ghostscript is also supported allowing IrfanView to display PS, EPS and PDF files. New image effects like Sepia and Raindrops have been added. And the JPEG format support has been improved to support lossless DPI. Actually the best way to find out how much better this utility has become is to download and install a copy for yourself.

The best BitTorrent download client, uTorrent, just got better. The new µTorrent 1.3.1 Beta Build 377 is significantly faster at downloading torrent files. Even where there are tracker problems. And the built-in RSS support has been improved as well. More information in the Changelog. Don’t delay: download a copy for your self today. You can also update the application from Help > Check for new version.

I have been meaning to write about Pando. This cool new free file transfer service lets you transfer any number of files to another Pando user. As long as the file size in under 1 GB. Transfers are handled through Pando.

Unfortunately, visiting the default Pando web site will not get you direct download access to the client. Nor will you be able to register to use the service. Instead, you’ll have to resort to some sneaky tricks. Begin by downloading a copy of the Pando client software via Fileforum. Then on install choose to register. This will open the service’s Registration from in your web browser. The process requires that your contact email ID is validated. So make sure to use a real ID instead of a fake All in all it took me under a minute to register. And just under 3 minutes to transfer a 2 MB file via my CDMA 112 kbps connection.

The Pando new file notification is emailed to the recepient. Who then has to either open their copy of Pando. Or if they still haven’t “got it” the notification message includes a handy download link. So happy Pandoing!

And in case we don’t meet again this month, Happy Holidays and a Happy New 2006. Stay Safe!

I nearly didn’t write this week’s column Not from a lack of topics but just general holiday ennui. That has a lot to do with too much excellently rich Christmas plum cake. Heavy it is. And for every slice I eat beckons me closer to the Land Of Nod.

But for those readers quite enamored by the power of P2P, you may want to watch out. According to such data I chanced across today, Big Brother is alive and watching what you do. The BayTSP service quietly scans all known P2P networks, web sites, Torrent search engines, over 65,000 news groups, public FTP sites, the IRC (Internet Relay Chat) network and auction sites for keywords indicating possibly pirated content.

So contrary to popular reporting its not the RIAA that snooping. But BayTSP spiders diligently collecting content and reporting back to their master. The surveillance runs 24×7. Of course BayTSP’s web site is suitably corporate and doesn’t offer any statistics. But if you sniff around you will learn that in November 2005, The Interpreter was the most popular movie (downloaded 50,336 times) followed by The Skeleton Key (47,348). And the most pirated software was SUSE Linux 9 (78,159) followed by Adobe Acrobat 7 (43,803). The data collated indicates the peak download times, the average shared files per user and the methods used to share/transfer files.

But that’s not going to slow down Torrents. Because the pirated content being exchanged is just the visible part of the iceberg. Below the water line is software being downloaded legally. BitTorrent is the best protocol to share popular files like full Operating System (OS) versions, patches and updates without a need for high-end servers able to sustain high traffic for really long periods.

Opera Software, who include a stripped down and experimental Torrent client, in their browser, no longer seem to experience total download site collapse when a new version is released. By embracing Torrents as a transfer protocol they have successfully shifted the traffic from their server to users sharing a complete version.

Meanwhile Microsoft hasn’t been sitting pretty. And no they haven’t rolled out a BitTorrent client. Microsoft Research has released SNARF (Social Network and Relationship Finder) designed as a mail management add-in for Outlook users overwhelmed by messages. SNARF offers a quick overview on unread messages, sorted by importance. The contacts whom you frequently correspond with are listed higher than the one offs. However I’m not sure how effective this approach is for those in sales and marketing. Because its possible that a new business lead hasn’t contacted you before. But SNARF will list their message below your colleagues who send you jokes and other typical intra-office junk.

If you use Outlook 2000/XP/2003 there’s a crude form of the SNARF UI built-in. Change your messages displayed view to be sorted by author. SNARF goes a bit further and can in the same window display unread messages sorted by author.

Although I much prefer Mail Alert; a free Outlook add-in that displays a semi-transparent, and quite non-intrusive desktop alert about the message. Details displayed include the sender, subject and the beginning of the message. You can choose to directly delete a message or reply to it immediately. Oh, and did I mention why I really like it? You guessed it: 100% free! So if you too use Outlook (not Outlook Express) download and integrate a copy immediately. Mail Alert supports Unicode support and Windows XP themes. And clicking Reply and Forward will implicitly mark the message as read.

Last week I also downloaded the IE Tab Firefox extension that offers access to the Internet Explorer rendering engine from within Firefox. All you have to do is open a new blank tab (after you have installed the Extension and restarted Firefox). Then click the Firefox icon in the status bar to switch to IE.

Of course, use with care because while handy, this extension isn’t 100% pure IE and remains a bit buggy (even as the developer keeps making improvements). But with IE Tab you can access hitherto-forbidden ActiveX controls from within Firefox. The recently released IE Tab 1.0.7 Beta 1 resolves several bugs and adds new improved menus. I first came across this extension while attempting to find a solution to run an ActiveX-powered RootKit scanner from within Firefox as I no longer use Internet Explorer for anything. Firefox with IE Tab installed can also be used to access Windows Update.

There’s also a new Maxthon 1.5.1 Build 39 version available in Standard and Combo editions. This upgrade can also be downloaded via the integrated component update feature. Besides bug fixes other improves are improved Popup blocking, and improved Start page with links to blog posts about Maxthon development and an ability to “Pin to start page” items selected from subscribed feeds in the RSS side bar. Actually the start page is a neat link maximizer that just happens to include posts from the new Maxthon Blog.

I often wonder why Maxthon updates seem to be based around AvantBrowser updates! The latter in comparison is a very shoddy, nay crappy tool. Stay posted for news and download links for an early Beta of the under-development Maxthon 2.0 in the making. I just hope this new version doesn’t require Internet Explorer 7. Because the Maxthon chief developer is cosying up to Microsoft. The company’s is participating in the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2006, Las Vegas, as an official Microsoft partner with its own booth.

There’s also a new Gaim 2.0.0 Beta 1. This is an exceedingly unfinished version with so many bugs that it managed to crash my computer (no mean feat). I had a devil of a time cleaning out its very last remnants, before re-installing GTK and finally Gaim 1.5.

Pretty good post don’t you think for someone not planning on writing one :p Stay Safe and there will be more next time.