Loading speed is one of the parameters of search engine's algorithm to rank websites. It is also a factor that makes your website's visitor re-visit your website. There are webmaster tools that allows you monitor to measure your website loading performance and one of them is Speed Monitor. It is a portable application that can continuously track the loading speed of websites. The check interval can be adjusted and it summarize the speed averages by the last 10, 100, and 1000 tries. You can also view the graph report of your website's performance for the last 100 measured times. You can start by adding one or multiple websites to the application by clicking on a new row and enter the website address or IP. Each row corresponds to one website or page.
If you need to reset the data you can do so by clicking the Clear Data button at the bottom of the grid. You can also temporarily suspend the monitoring by hitting Disable Fetching button. To view the performance in graph report format, click the Chart button at the end of a website's row.
The default frequency is 60 seconds which means that the program will download each page every minute. Here are the complete features of Speed Monitor.
-Multiple websites -Minimizes to tray -Editable frequency -Last 1/10/100/1000 averages -Enable/disable switch -If a website is unreachable, time turns red (and reads -1) -Automatic saving/loading of URLs -Charts of the last 100 measured times -Drag-and-drop for URLs -Easy data reset
Speed Monitor works on Windows operating system. I tested it on Windows 7 x86.
Sometimes we only need the audio from a medial file such as flv, avi, mp4 and etc. On such requirement we need audio extractor like the Gik Soft Free Audio Extractor. The key strength of this application over other similar software is it allows you to extract/convert either the entire or just parts of your the media file. Its usage is pretty straightforward, just add a media file by clicking the file button and then choose an audio format to convert it into. If you just want to convert some parts of the media, you can do so by simply clicking a start point on the audio graph and click the "set start point" button. Move the slider to the desired end point and then click on the "set end point". When your done, hit Save to start the conversion process.
Without selecting a start and endpoint will automatically extract the entire media file to the desired audio format. Free Audio Extractor supports the following media files as input: FLV, MP4, AVI, WMV, ASF, MOV, MP3, WMA, M4A, AAC, WAV, MP2. It can convert/extract media file to Save to Mp3, Wma, Ogg, & Flac formats. It works on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Testing was done on Windows 7 32-bit system.
As a developer, sometimes there are situation that you have updated the wrong version of a program. To incorporate the changes you have made on the earlier version to the correct version, you have to compare the two and insert the difference to the correct program file. Doing it manually is a tedious task specially if you have already modified a lot of codes. To make it easier and automatic KDiff3 is here to help. KDiff3 is a free program that allows you to compare and merge difference of two or three text source files. It shows the difference line by line and character by character. Its usage is simple, just launch the application to specify files or folders (not more than 3) which you want to compare and merge. When your done setting the options, click OK to view the changes.
KDiff3 opens each file in separate window. Same color indicates no changes otherwise it indicates code difference. If you want to automatically merge the files, you can do so under Merge menu where there are multiple ways in which files can be merged together. You can also configure several options of the application such as color, font, comparison and merge settings and etc.
KDiff3 works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. I tested it under Windows Vista.
Don't want that scroll bars on your Chrome browser? No problem, just install No Chrome extension to make it disappear. No Chrome is a Chrome extension that get rids of the scroll bars. This extension is useful for users who want to enhance the visibility of their browser to view more of the webpage and less of the browser interface. This is more pleasing on computers with small screens such as netbook. It also hides the scroll bars during full screen mode (F11 key). Once you install this extension, it will immediately remove the scroll bars. Uninstalling it will make the scroll bars reappear.
Hard drives comes cheap nowadays so it is common to have multiple storage in one computer. The problem with having multiple drives is the pain of organizing files. Sometimes searching the most updated file can be tedious if you have multiple folder with the same names across all your hard disks. Fortunately there are synchronization tools such as Synkron that make sure you have the same version of file on multiple folders. Synkron is a portable app that allows you to configure your synchronisations in detail. It can automatically synchronize multiple folders at once, analyse folders before sync, restore overwritten or deleted files, plan synchronisations and much more.
Its usage is simple. Each synchronization job is called Tab. To add new job, just click the New tab, and specify the two folders you want to sync. You can have as many sync folder as you want, just add New tab for each job. Click Analyse to analyse the difference between the two folder. If you decide to sync them, hit the Sync button. (Please see above screenshot)
You can also schedule the sync job by clicking the Schedule toolbar button. Click Add to setup a new schedule, tick all the sync job you want to perform, and then set the interval of the sync schedule by Sync times or Synchronise periodically. (Please see above screenshot)
Synkron can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Testing was done on Windows 7 x64 system.
While most mobile phones and gadgets are now supporting mobile internet access, there are places and time that internet is not available and your only options are to printout the web site you wanna read or download the web pages so you can access them offline. Fresh WebSuction was designed for such function, it can download any web pages for viewing offline and saving you some internet connection fees. Once your done with the installation, run the app to add website to download. Click the New button and provide a Project name and the URL Address of the website or the web page. Click either OK to save the project or Run Now to start downloading the web pages on the URL you provided.
All downloaded files is displayed in the project contents sidebar during and after the downloads have finished. The browser tab is where you can view the web page. It is also possible to view online web pages here, just type the URL on the address bar similar to a regular browser. You can also configure some options like Internet Connection Settings, default filename, download directory and etc.
Fresh WebSuction is compatible with Windows operation system. I tested it under Windows 7 32-bit.
I have several websites that are remotely hosted offshore. One of them get hacked constantly by some punk who wants to bash his hacking skill. What he/she always do is change my default html page to his own page so everyone who visit my sites will see it. I have already reported the same incident several times to my server provider but to no avail. Since I have no control over the security of the website (because it is remotely hosted), I decided to monitor it myself. But visiting the site regularly to check if something change is tedious and waste of time. Fortunately I found about FTP Guard. As it name implies, it guards FTP servers by performing automated and manual monitoring of the content of a selected remote directory. FTP Guard can detect any changes on the FTP folder such as deletion, modification, and addition of directory items.
The first time you use it, you need to setup at least 1 FTP connection. Simply click the "+" icon under connection summary. You need to provide the connection name, host server & port, username, password, remote directory and other details to allow the software to connect to the FTP server you want to be monitored. The free version of FTP Guard only supports 1 connection, so if you need to monitor more than one you have to buy the commercial version. It works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Testing was done on Windows 7 x86 system.
