Tools | Navigate the Internet Unknown

Aug 13

Audacity Free Audio Editing Software

For those who don’t have the money nor the time to invest in an expensive audio editing software, there is a free alternative.

Audacity

This is a great little tool. You can open a MP3 or WAVE file and be able to fine tune and listen to the audio in its entirety. Once you have identified a portion of the audio where there are too much white noise, or even unwanted voices, you can highlight that portion and do a View->selection. This allows you to zoom on in to the area of the selected audio. Then you can select and delete out the unwanted extra noise.

You can do a pretty good audio editing with this free tool. Then once you become good enough, you can graduate into something with better functionalities. But for simple audio editing, this is a wonderful tool!

By the way, this tool works under Windows and MAC.

Audacity

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Jul 30

The Jing Project Free Camtasia tool

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Are you looking for a free tool to create Camtasia videos? SWF? Image capture?

Well, you are in luck. There is a free tool called, The Jing Project, available that does just that. It’s created by the same people who created the Camtasia tool - which is Techsmith.

With this tool, you can create SWF file, which is a Flash format and capturing images. Most of the time, these SWF types of files are embedded inside an html page. It is streaming video meant for the web.

Also, as part of The Jing Project, you are getting a free 2Gb storage in screencast.com. What could be better than that?

Check their FAQ for more information.

There’s also the Camtasia version 3.0, which was free. Techsmith offerred it free last year for a limited time. I don’t think you can get it free anymore as you would have to request an activation key from Techsmith. But I could be wrong.

I have a copy of both tools. I have done screen captures with Camtasia 3 and like it. You can essentially use both tools to do screen capture or just capture the audio stream that is being played on your PC.

Actually, there is another free alternative, called CamStudio. I have not used it at all even though I do have a copy. I heard that there were issues when the SWF is played in FireFox browser. I have also heard that there is a fix for FireFox.

But with Jing, I don’t think you even need to consider CamStudio.

Everybody in the internet marketing world is adding video to their offerings. And video sharing sites such as YouTube attact millions of visitors. Think traffic, think conversion… There are possibilities.

The Jing Project is a good alternative - it’s FREE! Go grab a copy…

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Jul 03

FREE Zip Utility

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Below is a wonderful little zip utility that I have been using at home and at work. It’s called 7 Zip by 7-zip.org. It’s open source - FREE!

7 zip

The main feature that I like is the fact that it shows up when I right clicked on a zip file, it allows me to unzip to a folder or in the current folder location. And it can also open the archive inside a GUI.

It can handle reading of a lot of different archive formats like ZIP, RAR, ISO, and ARJ.

Listed below are some of the main features:

High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression
Supported formats:
- Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
- Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, MSI, WIM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS
For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip
Strong AES-256 encryption in 7z and ZIP formats
Self-extracting capability for 7z format
Integration with Windows Shell
Powerful File Manager
Powerful command line version
Plugin for FAR Manager
Localizations for 69 languages

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Jul 03

Mounting ISO Files in Windows XP

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If you ever need to mount ISO files in the Windows environment, including 2000 and XP, try the utility tools below:

This is a Windows app that needs you to follow a three simple steps for it to run correctly.

1) Download and unzip the file. Detailed instructions in readme.txt file.

2) Copy the VCdRom.sys file to c:\windows\system32\drivers folder

3) Run VCdControlTool.exe executable.

From this application, you can mount and unmount the virtual drive.

Virtual CD Control Panel

And below is another nice program to have. It comes with a Windows installer, so there is no need to copy and follow directions. Just install and run it. It runs as a Windows Trays application. You right click on the application’s icon and choose Virtual CD/DVD drive, then select the option available, and then Mount. In there you can browse and select the ISO file to mount as CD drive.

After you are done, you can go unmount the drive. Really nice. You can configure to have multiple virtual drives too!

Magic Disc

The above two applications are worth a look if you are looking to mount ISO files in Windows. They are FREE! I have used both applications in Windows XP without any issues.

Have you used other utility programs that are good? Please share in the comments… Thanks.

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