Joe Tech » Software

Santa Was Dancing In My House

Joe Tech — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:33:18 +0000

It’s almost Christmas, but I didn’t have to wait to see Santa. In fact, he brought his elves to my house to dance. Well, at least that’s what I was able to make a video of thanks to today’s review of ReelDoozy, a pretty unique iPhone app.

What’s All This About?

ReelDoozy is an iPhone app that uses green screen technology to let you super-impose fun video they provide on top of your own video. The result is a video of, say, your own house with Santa dancing around in your living room. This green screen technology has been used for years in the television and film industry but lately, it’s turning up in all sorts of fun apps like this, thanks to the processing power and video capabilities of today’s smart phone line-up.

ReelDoozy Features And Improvement

When the app is fired up, the first thing to do in order to make a video is select a foreground video. This is the video of Santa, or whatever else you choose, that will be super-imposed atop your own video. There are four short clips starring Santa and his elves that are free to use. For most, these will be fine to play with, but the app offers six additional foreground video collections that can be unlocked for an in-app purchase of 99 cents per collection. While playing, I decided to buy the Dancing Pack to aid in the making of my review video below.

After selecting a foreground video, you select a background video or create one on the fly. So far, it’s been pretty basic stuff I had expected from the app, but the next step was a nice touch. With both the foreground and background videos selected, you can choose where to position the foreground subject and even pinch-zoom to re-size him. Better still, you’re given slider controls to adjust the brightness and contrast of the foreground video and can choose to use the foreground audio, the background, or a mix of both. Of course, this stuff is almost necessary if you want the final video to look good at all. I would have really enjoyed some kind of path selection to allow me to move Santa with the floor if my background video moves too much, but it might be a bit much to ask of a free app.

While I’m being greedy, I’d love some more selection in video packs. The dancing and humor scenes are fun, but I’d love the option for a couple scenes in which Santa is placing presents under the tree or filling a stocking. I’ll gladly throw down another buck for that.

Video of Santa Dancing

Sometimes the best part of a review is playing with fun stuff, so I tried to be a little creative and come up with my own videos with Santa and the elves and here’s the result.

Conclusions

When I first saw the press release for this, I thought it looked like a neat way to show the kids that Santa had actually been there. After installing and playing around, I realized it was pretty fun for those of us without kids, too. The price is always right when it’s free, and even the in-app purchase options were well within reason. The one stand-out problem with this app is that is freezes on me when finalizing a video. The video does save, though, so this is a minor inconvenience. In the end, ReelDoozy is a lot of free holiday fun, leaving you little reason to not check it out. If you try it out, I really want to see what videos you come up with, so share the links in the comment section below.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Can Your Smartphone Really Help Keep You Safe?

Joe Tech — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 05:31:47 +0000

Bipper AS, a Norwegian tech company best known for Bipper, a parental control smartphone program, have come out with a new application that has already seen considerable European success: bSafe. The application allows you to immediately send out an S.O.S. if you find yourself in trouble while out walking at night. It does this by sending text messages and phone calls to a predetermined list of “Guardians” who function as your emergency contact and who are given a map of your exact location. This information can then, presumably, be passed on to the police.

The bSafe application, which available globally this week for both Android and iPhone users, has already hit select European markets. It has seen impressive success there, garnering media publicity and surpassing two of the most popular apps in the world – Angry Birds and Facebook – in recent downloads.

bSafe has proven that it can be successful, then. But can it actually keep you safe while walking at night? Can it give your phone a security feature besides a basic reverse phone lookup? Is it worth having as a last-ditch, security precaution?

The short answer, it would seem, is no. If you’re truly in a dangerous situation, calling 9-1-1 is probably easier and it is certainly more effective. Most cell phones allow you to program 9-1-1 into one of the speed dial options (usually “9″) and a police dispatcher can figure out your location even if you don’t provide one. Having a text sent to your best friend saying that you’re in trouble is simply not going to give you the same rapidity of response. Think about it; in this hypothetical situation, your friend will likely try calling you back first, just to make sure that you truly need their help. It is probably only if they don’t get an answer that they’ll call 9-1-1. Getting the bSafe app, then, can take away valuable time if you do find yourself in an emergency.

But the application does have some intriguing uses and possibilities, albeit not those that it originally intended. For example, it allows you to go into “Risk Mode”, which tracks your exact location by GPS and can then send that route to a designated computer. For people who want to go for a run and then see their route sitting on the screen when they get back, bSafe is an appealing application. Furthermore, the app’s general mapping and navigation software is accurate, fast, and easy to use.

So I might find myself downloading bSafe in the near future. But I certainly don’t plan to send out any S.O.S.’s – whether or not I find myself in a dangerous situation.

This guest post is by Nancy Evans. She is a freelance writer that specializes in tech and business.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Elmedia Player Pro Review And Giveaway

Joe Tech — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 10:00:56 +0000

Online video accounts for an astounding percentage of the internet’s traffic. YouTube, alone, sees about 48 hours of new video uploaded every minute and about three billion video views per day. Still, we find ourselves often looking to third party applications to handle video tasks our base operating systems don’t do – or at least not well enough. A good example of this is downloading video from sources such as YouTube.

Today, I spent some time with the Elmedia Player software and tried many of the features offered in the free version as well as the PRO.

Notable Elmedia Player Features

The free version of the Elmedia Player leaves out most of my favorite features, but that’s to be expected. I found, however, that even the free version is very well polished with a lot of options and advantages over most of the free video tools I see. Here’s a list of most of what you find in the free version:

- Support for many video types (FLV, SWF, XAP (Silverlight), RM and RV (Real), AVI, MOV, MP4, WMV, DIVX)
- HTML5 video support
- Zoom in and zoom out options for SWF and EXE (or APP) files
- Growl and browsers integration
- iTunes-like playlists and star ratings

The PRO version, offered for only $19.95 on Eltima Software’s web site, hones in on a few key features that the product is really designed for and delivers in those areas. While this software isn’t littered with too much fluff, there are a few extras that don’t seem entirely necessary (like video ratings). Regardless, they’re not in the way and, more importantly, they didn’t distract Eltima from doing a good job with the core features. Some of the PRO features include:

- Download Video – even RTMP streams
- Full-screen mode
- “Always on top” mode
- Make a screenshot of the current frame
- Convert file into series of images

Of course, downloading video from a wide variety of sources is the feature I’d pay for, but the screen shot and “Always on top” features will also come in pretty handy. Less needed, but great on occasion, will be the option that lets you take a series of images – I’m thinking animated GIFs here.

Hands On Testing

After installing the software, my first test (as seen in the image at the beginning of this review) was to head to YouTube and try to download one of my review videos. In the past, I’ve used plug-ins to download a video, but Elmedia Player takes a different approach. You paste the URL to a web page into the software and it loads the page like a browser. When it does this, it looks for any videos or links to them in the page’s content and makes a list for you to select from. I first downloaded just the video that I was after, but then I tried the “Download all” option which grabbed everything in site.

Tip: You may need to start playing the video in the preview page before it will appear in the list to download.

Once a video is grabbed, it’s listed under the Downloaded section, where you can pull up everything from just today or broaden the listing. The organization extends in a different way to the file folder structure behind the scenes as well. Here, a folder is created that is named after the page you downloaded from.

While this software’s core features are not that unlike some free browser plugins on the surface, the extra video formats it supports can be invaluable. Additionally, some of the browser plugins I’ve used in the past can be sporadic in their reliability. I haven’t used this software long enough to be certain it will stand up to the many challenges I have in store for it, but so far, everything indicates that it likely will. Finally, one thing that Elmedia Player will not do that the browser plugins do all too often is cease to become useful after I upgrade to the latest browser version or switch from one to another. Being browser-independent has its advantages.

Conclusions

Cons: The only con it that it’s not free – well, it is free, but the best and really useful features are in the PRO version. Pros: This is well-built software with some thoughtful extras, the price is low enough to barely be a factor, and it doesn’t care what browser you have or version. Want 15% off? No problem. Just use the coupon code JOE-TECH-PROMO when you purchase.

Don’t Have 20 Bucks? Win It Here!

That’s right. Even if you’re just a little interested, I have been given not one, but two PRO upgrade codes to give out to lucky winners. Just follow the entry instructions below and come back here next week to see if you’ve won! Entering is as simple as clicking the “Do it” link, following any instructions, and then clicking the “I did this” button. If you’re already subscribed to JoeTech.com via email or you already follow me on Twitter, you can skip right to the “I did this” button for those entries. Good luck!

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Trick Or Tracker Tracks Your Kids On Halloween

Joe Tech — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 17:18:55 +0000

Last Halloween, a friend’s kids wandered off in search of candy before the younger children and adults were ready. Their mom knew they were going, but finding them later had me a little worried. On top of that, it’s a lot less fun finding kids in a crowded mess of people in the dark than just taking the little ones door to door for candy. This is where Trick or Tracker would have come in handy.

Trick or Tracker’s main objective is to allow the parent to know where the child is when that child is old enough to go out door to door on his or her own. That may be the core focus of the program, but it has some pretty cool features to round the whole thing out.

- Locate a trick-or-treater with the touch of a single button on the parent’s smartphone.
- Messages can be sent to the child’s phone using a special code that is picked up and responded to via pre-set coordinates.
- The child’s phone will have a special “Where Am I?” button, and the parent’s phone will have a corresponding “Where’s My Kid?” button.
- Parents can program their phone to receive messages at regular intervals revealing exactly where their child is.

I imagine most parents would want the peace of mind that the instant location checking can offer, but the feature that intrigues me even more is the notifications based on pre-set coordinates. From the sound of it, you can be alerted if the child wanders off too far or into an area you don’t want them in. This is a great feature that I can see my sister using with her kids.

Only the child’s phone must be an Android OS phone. For the parent, any Google maps-loaded phone (including iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows Phone 7) will work using a simple manual process that the developer identifies in the FAQs on their web site. I’d love to see the child app available for the iPhone, too, but I’m guessing hurdles exist with regards to a developer’s ability to access certain data on the phone.

Priced at $4.99, it’s not exactly necessary if you’ll be walking with your child every step this Halloween, but if they’ll be out on their own this year, Trick or Tracker seems like a pretty good way to give your child a little freedom without being completely in the dark.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Download And Install IOS 5 Early

Joe Tech — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 04:37:08 +0000

Apple has been teasing us for a long time with IOS5 and they’re just about to release it, but if you’re like me, you want to get your hands on it early. Everyone wants to try the latest and greatest first, but there’s another advantage to diving in early. If you’ve ever tried to update your IOS on the release day, you’ve surely realized the painful wait for the software to download as millions of other people try at the same time. Grabbing this early release should eliminate that problem as well. Warning: Back up before you begin! This kind of update can be riddled with unexpected problems, so be prepared for anything.

Here’s all you have to do to update early:

(edit 1: I added a new first step, to first install iTunes 10.5 Beta 7 or higher)
(edit 2: Plug directly into the computer – don’t use a USB extension cable as this can slow the backup/restore down a LOT)
(edit 3: Want the official release now? Download the latest iPhone ISPW and repeat steps 2 and then 5-7 below – 8 id needed)

1. Install iTunes 10.5 beta 7 or higher (Win 32, Win 64, or MAC OS X)
2. Sync your device and run a backup.
3. Download the file you need from the list below. It’s around 800MB, so it’ll take a while.
iPhone 4 (GSM)
iPhone 4 (CDMA)
iPhone 3GS
iPad 2 (Wi-Fi)
iPad 2 (Wi-Fi + 3G GSM)
iPad 2 (Wi-Fi + 3G CDMA)
iPad 1 (All)
iPod touch (3G)
iPod touch (4G)

4. Extract the file you downloaded. I suggest using 7Zip if you’re on a PC. Find it at Download.com
5. Hold down SHIFT (or “Option” on a MAC) and click “Restore” in iTunes
6. A file selection box should open up. Choose the ISPW file that you extracted from the DMG file you downloaded.
7. iTunes will wipe your device and install IOS5. That’s OK.
8. After the install, it should ask if you want to restore from a backup. Say YES and choose your backup from Step 1.

Thanks to this guide for the tips.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Simplify Usenet Downloads With Binverse And Win A Premium Account

Joe Tech — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 05:35:54 +0000

Most people have heard of Napster and perhaps you’ve even heard of Limewire and other peer-to-peer file sharing networks. What doesn’t get as much press is the fact that peer-to-peer networks were and are used for perfectly legal file sharing as well. And file transfers can be pretty fast. The problem with sharing files on these networks is that someone on the other end has to be online and sharing that file, and if they decide to shut down for the night, you’re just out of luck. The alternative is Usenet and software like Binverse.com.

With software from Binverse, anyone can connect easily to newsgroups on Usenet and download files from servers. You know, the computers that stay on all night, even if John in Massachusetts has a big test tomorrow and needs to go to bed. Perhaps, I should take a step back, though, and introduce Usenet to the uninitiated.

What Is Usenet?

Because it hasn’t had the same media attention as some of the peer-to-peer networks, you may be wondering, “What is Usenet?” Usenet doesn’t have a hip name like Limewire or Napster because it’s been around far longer, like 15+ years longer. Binverse has a pretty decent explanation of Usenet.

Usenet is a global network of servers hosting discussion groups called “newsgroups”. Each discussion group is dedicated to a specific topic. Members post and download messages to newsgroups just like many other forms of Internet discussion groups.

Unlike traditional Internet discussion groups, newsgroups allow members to post and download messages containing discussions or messages with attached files such as pictures, videos, or any other type of file.

About Binverse

If you’re not exploring Usenet newsgroups already, you’ll want to get up and running quickly. Sadly, that’s easier said than done with newsgroups. There’s way too many to sift through and once you’ve found a file you’d like to download, it’s split across sometimes hundreds of messages. If you wanted to download a 3GB file, for example, you would need to download each part from all of the 200 or more messages, put them all back together, unzip the files, etc. This is where Binverse comes in. The software dumbs down the process while offering some pretty handy tools. In the previous example, Binverse would download, rebuild, unzip, and organize everything for me. I’ve spent about a week downloading files with Binverse and I’ve come up with a some of my favorite features.

Power Search
Earlier, I mentioned that there are far too many news groups to be able to sift through them all. With Binverse, you can search through all of their news groups for what you seek. Better still, if you have found better results in certain news groups, you can limit to just those. In the screen shot I used for this post, you can see some adult files that were a result of my search. With the search customization, I can filter those out to more quickly get to the content I’m looking for. To make it even faster, you can sort the search results, too.

File Genius
File Genius is pretty awesome. There are newsreaders that are designed to help you read newsgroups and do a fair job of putting attachments back together for you and downloading. When I downloaded the first few files, without File Genius, it felt familiar. Then I tried with File Genius and I found that it did a much better job. On top of showing me all the included files, it gave me a single download button and when it was done, it extracted my files neatly into a folder named after the archive. I never sat around wishing for File Genius, but now that I’ve used it, I wouldn’t want to download from Usenet without it. It’s just plain convenient. On the other side of the coin, I had a hard time dealing with how Binverse stored files that I downloaded without File Genius. They were sorted based on the news group name. For some people, that might be convenient, but for my downloads, it just made things hard to find.

Previews
With Binverse, you can preview photo, audio, or video files directly in the newsreader. Photos don’t take all that long to download, but videos can be another story. With the preview feature, you can get a sneak peek at part of the video long before downloading the whole thing. Anything that saves me time is a blessing.

Speed
It can be pretty frustrating to recognize the need for a file, find it online, and then spend three days downloading it. I’ve used BitComet pretty regularly in the past to download torrents and would often find that I had to wait days for the last 5% of a file or it would just download slow through the whole file. With Usenet, download speeds are only limited by the server and your own connection speed. Unlike other newsgroup services, Binverse doesn’t seem to throttle the speed at all.

Privacy
You don’t always want people to know your business and what you’re downloading. Binverse protects your privacy by offering free SSL encryption with every account. It’s more secure from prying eyes, and even though ISPs say they don’t throttle your account for heavy downloading, a lot of them do. Let them guess if you’re downloading files or just watching Hulu.

For all that’s offered, the pricing is pretty decent and the service and software are bundled, making this the easiest Usenet solution I’ve found.

Win A Binverse Account

I mentioned pricing, but you have a pretty good chance of winning a Premium Binverse account right here in a couple easy steps. To try the service, Binverse gave me an account with unlimited features and a 50 GB cap. I can take as long as I want to eat up that 50GB and the three additional accounts they’re letting me give away are the same as mine. I’ve downloaded a lot in the last week and I still have 37 GB left for high speed downloads.

All you have to do to enter is share this post on Facebook. To let me know about your entry, you can add me on Facebook and tag me in your post or you can just send me a link to your post. As long as I can see it, it’ll count. I’ll pick three winners via a random draw on Friday, October 14, 2011 at 8:00 AM MST.

Here’s the fine print we all know and love: I must be aware of your entry for it to count. Only one entry per person for this contest. Nobody in my immediate family can enter (sorry Dad). Winners will be contacted via Facebook and will have to provide an email address to get an account set up. I reserve the right to disqualify any entries from Facebook accounts I deem to be fake.

Enter now and with any luck, you’ll be oohing and aahing at File Genius next weekend.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

5 Ways To Geek Up The 4th Of July

Joe Tech — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:30:11 +0000

4th of July is still a week away, but everyone’s already making plans. A few minutes ago, I heard fireworks going off outside. It’s definitely that time of year. On July 4th, America’s Independence Day, families and friends will get together in back yards, parks, and roof tops to BBQ, party, and watch the dazzling fireworks displays. This year, take your celebration to a whole new level with some geeky tech additions.

Swashbuckling BBQ Sword

Sure, you could just be normal and manage your meat on the BBQ with tongs or a skewer, but who wants to be normal? Handle those dogs like a pro with the BBQ sword from Think Geek. You can wear an eye patch if you want, but remember to take it off before the fireworks show.
$24.99

Patriotic Headphones

Show up with these US flag headphones on and nobody will ever doubt your patriotism. Go the extra mile and have some patriotic music read to go for anyone who asks what you’re listening to.
$39.90

Build A Fireworks Launch Center

Adam at Addictornics wanted to safely launch fireworks from a distance, but he didn’t just phone this one in. With some time and patience, you can create an awesome fireworks launch pad like his. Just don’t forget the launch codes.

Microcontroller Rocket/Firework Launcher from Adam on Vimeo.

DIY

Indoor Fireworks

If someone in your family is sick, you don’t like crowds, it’s raining, or you simply want to stay in on the 4th, you can still enjoy a fireworks show in your own living room. This fireworks projector from Sega Toys creates a simulated fireworks show without all the smoke. It’s not the same as the real thing, but you’ll have the best seat.
$173

July 4th iPhone Apps

There are tons of iPhone and Android apps to help you get into the patriotic spirit, keep mosquitoes away, and find awesome yet simple BBQ recipes. A fun little app that can help keep the kids from asking “when are the fireworks?” for two hours before the show is the I Love Fireworks app. You just tap the screen to make fireworks appear.
$0.99

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

How To Remove And Uninstall Antimalware Doctor

Joe Tech — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 04:32:51 +0000

Yesterday, my wife called to tell me something was wrong with her computer. I told her to shut it off and I’d look when I got home. What I found when I got home was software called Antimalware Doctor reporting fake trojans and slowing down her whole computer. My wife had called because she was immediately suspicious, but so many are easily tricked by software like this that looks credible.

What Is Antimalware Doctor?

Over the years, the threat of getting a virus or trojan on your computer went from rare to pretty damn scary. The fear of a virus is how software like this works. It disguises itself as legitimate ant-virus software, pretending to help. It will pop up and appear to scan for and then find various threats on your computer. The goal is to make you believe that there is a threat so imminent that you should act right away. I’ve written about scare tactics like this before because they seem to work. You think you have a virus and need to take care of it right away, so you take the suggested action, which leads you to spending money on this horrible software. It’s like finding a burglar in you home, dressed like a cop, and taking him out to dinner to thank him because he says he scared away some burglars.

Not only does the software pretend to scan and find things, but it is horribly annoying, popping up fake warnings every time you do anything that it thinks might be steps to remove it. Every time I opened the Control Panel, for example, something similar to the image above would appear. Each time, I just used the ALT + F4 key combination to make it go away.

Antimalware Doctor Removal

Programs like this rely on you being stuck with them, so they often do whatever it takes to get installed on your computer and stay there. Usually, you’re enticed into downloading some seemingly harmless software and Antimalware Doctor is bundled with it and installs secretly. Because of this, just uninstalling from your Control Panel will not do the trick. You have to be just as diligent in the removal of this rogue software as the jerks who set it loose on your computer were.

To start, you’ll need to find out where the program is running from. I found its location with the following steps:
1. Press the CTRL, ALT, and DELETE keys at the same time. Then View the Task Manager.
2. In the Task Manager, click the Applications tab and find the Antimalware Doctor application.
3. Right-click on the Antimalware Doctor application in the list and click “Go to Porcess”
4. In the process list, right-click on the process (it should be highlighted) and click “Open File Location”

In the folder with it were two additional files, enemies-names.txt and local.ini. enemies-names.txt contained a list of “offending” software and cookie threats and local.ini contained a bunch of program settings.

Most malware will have another background process that watches for anything trying to remove it. Usually, if you remove the malware executable, it will revive the file from another location immediately. To fool this logic, I opened it in Notepad++ and simply changed the binary contents so that the executable name and location would remain in tact while breaking the program. To do this, I simply added a bunch of random characters a couple lines into the file. In our case, the file was db70virstup.exe. I was not able to save the file until I closed the running process, so I closed it and then saved the file quickly.

The program also sets up some registry keys. You can really mess up your computer if you change the wrong stuff in your registry, but if you’re careful and know what you’re editing, you should be OK. To view and edit registry keys, go to the Start menu and type “regedit” in the search field and hit ENTER. Once in the registry editor, head to HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Antimalware Doctor Inc -> Antimalware Doctor. There, you can see all the registry keys it added, but you really want to just delete the whole HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Antimalware Doctor Inc tree.

After removing the registry keys, just delete the folder that the files were found in and you should be all set.

Additional Information

The steps taken above worked for me, but they may not completely remove the software from your computer. Other guides like the one from wiki-security.com have different methods of detection and removal and sometimes even list additional files and/or registry keys to remove.

I don’t remove software threats for a living, nor do I edit my registry often. Any steps listed above are taken at you own risk.

If I missed something or you have questions, just use the comment form below and I’ll be sure to respond.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

General Files Provides Advanced File Searching

Joe Tech — Mon, 30 May 2011 14:00:42 +0000

Although the following is a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product reviewed.

There are a lot of online sources to help you find files online, but many of them are limited to only a few upload sites and don’t remove old links. Others put really annoying sponsored links up that look like regular results to get you to click on a paid link. This week, I was asked to review a file sharing search site called General-Files.com. It promises a cleaner search of more files with a bunch of features.

Finding and Downloading Files

There’s not really a lot to finding files to download online. Generally, you search and something will come up. The problem I’ve had in the past is that I’ll search Google and half of the results are other file search sites that generate a fake hit for sponsored links. In this case, however, I skip Google and head to General-Files.com and search for my file. The search is pretty quick and returns just what I’m looking for in most cases. Some people will use sites like this to download movies for free, which can be illegal in some cases. Others will visit hoping to download free music, which comes with the same legal concern. This is not the case all of the time, though. Many artists will share their music online for free and it’s perfectly legal. I often use a site like this to find fonts, clip art, a viral video or image, or any number of things. The possibilities are virtually endless as this site includes results not only from Uploading, MegaUpload, RapidShare and many others, but it also returns direct links to files from around the web.

In addition to searching for what you know you want, you can also choose from their lists of Most Downloaded, Most Commented and Most Rated, as well as Hot Files and the Latest uploads. Just use common sense when you download random files. Finally, when you’re ready to download a file you can click right out to the site that hosts the file and begin your download one file at a time, or you can queue them up to download all at once.

Additional Features

For those who want to be more involved in the social process, you can vote for files on a five-star scale, comment on files, and even report some of the less savory content out there. You can also send a Good Report to indicate that the file is generally good, virus free, or erotic in nature. Reporting bad content warns others against downloading it and comments and votes help guide the “Most” and “Hot” lists mentioned above. It’s the same concept as liking and commenting on Facebook posts. And speaking of liking on Facebook, each file’s details page includes a Like button so you can help others find it, too.

One of the features I nearly overlooked is the Alert option. Alerts are turning up everywhere these days. From Facebook push notifications on your iPhone to Google searches, alerts are a popular way to find out right away when something happens. On General-Files.com, you can set a search alert to let you know via email when someone uploads a file matching your search criteria. This feature will be invaluable when you’re searching for a hard-to-find file.

General Conclusions

With any file hosting site or search, you need be aware of what you’re downloading. General-Files is a little more helpful in this regard when the reporting features are used. The clean, ad-free and fast search along with compiled lists and alerts make this file search stand out heads above the others I’ve come across. It’s in my bookmarks and should have a place in yours if you find yourself searching for files often.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

uCoz – A Website That Builds Websites

Joe Tech — Fri, 27 May 2011 02:03:17 +0000

Although the following is a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product reviewed.

One of the most complicated things to do for the first time is build a web site. Most people don’t even know what the HTML acronym stands for, much less how to turn hundreds or thousands of lines of HTML into a web site. And let’s be honest. Your first web site is usually hideous just like mine was. One way around this is to hire a website developer to create your site. An alternative for those without a huge web development budget is a site like the free website maker reviewed here.

(viewing a photo in my new site’s photo gallery)

How uCoz.com Works

The idea behind uCoz is pretty simple. They provide a web site that helps you create your own website online. From choosing a site name and design template to installing and configuring even the small details of what they call site modules, the whole process is done without the need for any real skill, an HTML book, Photoshop, or even a paid hosting account because uCoz hosts the site for free.

(one of the many configuration panels)

When you build a website, you’ll get a control panel, and this is where all the magic happens. From the control panel, you can change basic site settings, languages and wording, and add, edit, and remove pages as well as view stats on individual pages. Becoming familiar with how everything works in the control panel is the first order of business that you should attend to. This was pretty easy with help along the way, but there were a couple areas that took a little longer to comprehend. In general, most processes were easy to follow and accomplish, but there is a lot to play with.

The uCoz.com Web Top

The part that surprised me a little was the uCoz Web Top. The Web Top is a web interface that looks and acts remarkably like Windows. With everything from background configuration and even its own programs, the Web Top is your gateway to your websites. This is because they let you have more than just one free site. At first glance, the Web Top looked like a very over-done way of providing simple access to your multiple sites, but after playing, I realized that it offers a lot more than that. It has games, which I think is fun but counter-productive. More importantly, it has applications built right in. Beyond the simple Calculator and Task Manager are much more useful applications like the code development program and Pixlr, the image editor with lots of great features.

(creating images is easy with the Pixlr image editor)

I develop complex websites all day long in PHP and the tools I use the most are Photoshop for design and Zend for code editing. The offering of similar tools from within the Web Top makes this a much more viable web development and hosting platform for those with a little more skill and creativity.

Features and Modules

After you’ve created a basic web site you can add and configure a number of site sections or modules such as forums, photo galleries, a guest book, online games, a blog, polls, classified ads, and files. Each module is pretty configurable and most of them include user interaction like being able to give a photo anywhere from one to five stars. The sites also allow for user registration so that users can log in to interact. Behind the scenes, as an admin, you can block users, set up groups and permissions, and the list really does go on.

One of the cooler features I came across was the use of content tokens. A simple token I used was for an image. I uploaded an image to use with content and the system generated a token $IMAGE1$ for displaying the image. I copied that token to the spot in content where I wanted the image to appear and it showed up there. A more useful example was the widget token that was created when I generated a Twitter widget. I then just used the token in the same way I had used the image token and the Twitter feed widget appeared in the site.

Conclusions

uCoz.com looks great, but hides some really cool features behind your user login. I had no idea about Web Top until I was already using it. Other than the occasional broken image in the interface, everything was very intuitive and I had a basic site with some fun features up pretty quickly. The only area I felt needed some attention is the selection of templates. There’s a few nice templates to choose from (and you can modify any of them or make your own), but the selection is pretty slim. The non-commercial limitation is the only thing that should scare away those looking for a site on a shoe-string budget, but for a personal site, I don’t know of a better free solution. If you need a personal site, this should be your first stop.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.