Naveen’s Blog

I got the free serial from a promotion campaign run by TechSmith for SnagIt screen capturing and image editing software few months ago and I really liked it. It stops working after one year and I have started looking for an alternative free software for it. Today, I am able to find a free alternative for it. Photoscape is a free photo editing software with amazing features like batch editing of multiple photos, screen capturing, color picker, merging multiple photos to single one, GIF animation, adding text and images to photos, and normal photo editing software features like auto contrast, black & white, cropping and resizing. It has features like SnagIt and I think it is a free alternative to SnagIt, a $39.95 commercial product. I like Photoscape’s video help.

See more screenshots of the software here: http://www.photoscape.org/ps/main/screenshot.php

Go to Photoscape and download it.

written by Naveen

Ever wanted to have your Linux look like Vista? Everybody likes the aero glass effects of Vista. Now, you can get the same effect in Linux too. Get Vixta! Vixta is a Fedora-based Linux distribution with a custom KDE-based interface, which looks and feels like Vista. Look at the screen shots and sure you will love it.

Vixta Homepage: http://www.vixta.org/
Download Here: On SourceForge (708 MB ISO)

written by Naveen

Here is a good news! Now, you can get DivX Pro serial key for free from DivX site. Don’t know why they are offering it for free. Go to http://www.divx.com/dff/. You can also download Mac version by clicking on the “Mac” link on the top right corner. Clear instructions are given on the site. During the installation, enter your email address to receive the serial key for it.

What is DivX®?
“A simple question like “What is DivX?” probably deserves a simple answer, so here it is: DivX is a digital media format like MP3 for video. DivX technology compresses video to a fraction of its original size for efficient storage on your hard drive and easy sharing online.

DivX is a common media language that delivers a pure digital experience, powering a whole range of video services and products that all work together. From video creation tools like Dr. DivX and the DivX Converter to media playback applications like the DivX Player and the DivX Web Player, DivX delivers a seamless PC video experience. Thanks to the DivX Certified Program, it also frees digital video from the PC allowing you to easily transfer any DivX video to a DivX certified device like a DVD player or portable video player so you can watch it on the living room TV, on your morning commute or almost anywhere else you can imagine.”

Update: The offer is no longer valid.

written by Naveen

What is SnagIt?

Showing someone exactly what you see on your screen is sometimes the quickest and clearest way to communicate. With SnagIt, you can select anything on your screen – an area, image, article, Web page, or error message – and capture it. Then, save the screen capture to a file, send it to SnagIt’s editor to add professional effects, share it by e-mail, or drop it into PowerPoint®, Word®, or another favorite application.

With SnagIt built-in editor, you can convert the images into lot of formats – PNG, GIF, ICO, PDF, TIF, etc. You can also merge the images, resize them, trim, rotate, put watermark, and add boarder or a caption. Read more about SnagIt on TechSmith.

SnagIt is offering free software key for the version 7.2.5. Though it is a little bit old version, it has all the features except few.

Get the SnagIt 7.2.5 by clicking here. Get the Key here.

written by Naveen

JAlbum is an easy-to-use album creator for your digital images. It comes with lots of skins and you can also download extra skins from the JAlbum website. It supports 31 languages. It has an in-built smart FTP to upload your photos directly to the website. Your host does not need to support php, mysql or any advanced features. It runs nicely with thumbnails, photos, and simple HTML files.

JAlbum creates index pages with thumbnails and slide shows from the images supplied. You can choose the folder or drag and drop the photos onto the software, choose the skin, press “Make Album”, and you are done with the sleek online photo album. You can add watermark, apply the filters, add logos to images, rotate them, and add borders. It also has a feature of “smart upload” that only uploads newly added files whenever you add some more photos to your old album. Moreover it’s a free software.

Some of its features:

» Ease of use. Just drag and drop an image folder and press “Make album”.
» Flexibility. While many competitors offer some degree of customization through user interface controls or simple templates, JAlbum allows you to generate virtually any imaginable album look as it allows the album designer to use any HTML mixed with JAlbum variables and interpreted java to define the album look.
» Works anywhere. With JAlbum you generate static HTML web albums so there is no need for extra software to view albums, not on the server side either (just a plain web server). You can put an album on a CD-ROM too if you wish.
» Runs anywhere. JAlbum is made in the Java programming language so it runs not only on Windows machines, but also on Macintosh OS X and Unix systems like Linux (That’s the “J” in “JAlbum”). Being a Java program it needs a VM (Virtual Machine) that adopts its code for each machine. I recommend Java 1.5 (or “Java5″) from www.java.com

Watch the sample album I have created with JAlbum at Geocities: http://www.geocities.com/naveenkumarmt/ It looks pretty nice…isn’t it?

Get JAlbum here: http://jalbum.net/download/

Have a look at the screenshots: http://jalbum.net/screenshots.jsp

Tutorials can be found here: http://jalbum.net/tutorials.jsp

For screenshots…Read Rest of the Post

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written by Naveen

Do you download videos from Google Video or YouTube? I do. But, they will be in FLV (Flash Video) format. You might have read my post “Online YouTube Video Downloader”. It’s a way to get the direct download link for YouTube videos. Google Video offers download option for some files (Google Video Player compatible). Use VideoDownloader extension for Firefox to get the download link for Google videos. Both ways, you will get only FLV files.

Here comes the problem. If you want to watch that movie in Windows Media Player, you have to convert it to MPEG or AVI format. Though there are variety of commercial versions of software, I use FFmpeg, an open source free software. You have to download FFmpeg window binaries along with a GUI front end to convert it. It is somewhat time consuming and I will explain about converting FLV files to other media formats in another post.

I have tested freely available FLV players and Wimpy FLV Player seems to be the best one. There is no need of installation. It is a 2.44MB stand alone player. It also supports drag and drop. It is available for both Mac and Windows.

Download it here: http://www.wimpyplayer.com/products/wimpy_standalone_flv_player.html

written by Naveen