Keep Your PC Clean With Wise Disk Cleaner

Some computer users say that there is not really a need to run disk cleaners like the popularCCleaner or the lesser known FixBee regularly on a system thanks to Terabyte-large hard drives. And while that may be true in some cases, it may not be true for all. Users with Solid State Drives built-in their computer for instance will have a couple hundred Gigabytes tops on that drive available, which can get filled rather quickly with games, large applications, or media.

Wise Disk Cleaner is a free program for the Windows operating system that PC users can make use of to remove unnecessary files from their system that take up disk space. The program uses a clean interface that is divided into three tabs at the top.

The Common Cleaner tab resembles CCleaner’s functionality. It is basically a list of locations where temporary files or files that leave traces are saved in. A click on a group opens up a detailed selection list. You find the usual file locations listed here, from web browsing cookies and history information to temporary file locations that Windows uses automatically.

The list is nowhere near as comprehensive as that of CCleaner, but it covers many major locations. It needs to be mentioned that only Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome are covered by the cleaner.

The Advanced Cleaner basically searches select hard drives for temporary file types, invalid shortcuts and empty files, and offers to remove them.  It is possible to add custom file extensions here to have them included in the cleanup automatically from that moment on.

Wise Disk Cleaner offers to run these two cleanup modes manually or on schedule. It is for instance possible to run an automatic cleanup once per week.

The Slimming System options offers interesting options to cut down on the size of the Windows installation folder. Here it is possible to remove components that you may not use at all. This includes Windows Help files, language packs, or the Windows Installer Baseline Cache which usually has quite a large file size.

On a one month old installation of Windows 7, the slimming system option offered to free up 1.3 Gigabyte of disk space.

The program settings offer some interesting options. You can first add folders here that you want emptied regularly. Whatever is in that folder, will be cleaned by the program when you run it. You can furthermore add folders to the list of exclusions, so that they are not targeted by the cleaner at all, and have the program create a one-click shortcut on your system to run cleanups manually with a click on that shortcut. Non-SSD users can furthermore enable secure deletion here to make the data unrecoverable after deletion.

Closing Words

Slimming System feels like a genuine feature, especially since it usually frees up more disk space than the other cleaning options. This feature sets it apart from other cleaners that do not offer it.  Please note that you can download a portable version of the PC cleaner by clicking on the Alternate Download link on the program website.

How To Prioritize File Downloads In uTorrent

When you load a torrent with multiple files into the uTorrent Bittorrent client, you will notice that uTorrent by default will not prioritize any file in particular. While that may not be an issue most of the time, especially not if the torrent is well seeded. There are however situations where you may want to prioritize files in the program, for instance when you download a media file that you want to preview this way. You could do that by downloading the beginning of the first file right at the start, to preview the media file that way.

Another reason for downloading files in priority is if you want to have them available at the very earliest moment. Instead of download files left and right without order, you might want to download files one by one instead so that you have the complete file on your hard drive. This may be important for accessing as soon as possible, but also if you fear that the original seeder might shut down the seeding. Instead of being left with incomplete files, you would have at least some finished files on your computer.

The Bittorrent client uTorrent offers several configuration options, some automatic, some manual, that you can use to prioritize file downloads in the client.

Probably the biggest option that you have at your disposal are only available manually, unfortunately. You can highlight specific files in a torrent and change their priority. The client by default supports the three priority ratings high, normal and low, which you can increase to 15 with a click on Options > Preferences > UI Settings > Use fine grained file priorities.

The second option, still manual, is the Prioritize by file order option that you see in the screenshot above. This basically prioritizes downloads based on the order of files in the file listing. If you select all files, uTorrent will try and complete the first file before it jumps to the second, then third, and so on. There is unfortunately no option to automate this setting in uTorrent.

Open the preferences again, and select Advanced this time. Here you find several advanced configuration options. Locate bt.prio_first_last_piece here and set its value to true. This is an automatic setting that makes uTorrent prioritize the first and last piece of a file over everything else. Keep in mind that this does not necessarily mean that the whole file will be prioritized. It is mainly there to provide users with a way to preview media files as soon as possible.

4 Options To Find Great Free Domain Names

So you have decided to create a new website, be it a personal blog, a website for a local sports club, or a new web service that you are about to launch. The only thing missing is a domain name, preferably short and up to the point. But no matter how hard you think about it, you do not come up with a fitting name that is still available. The following four options may aid you in finding next-to perfect domain names for your projects.

1. Expiring Domain Names

It is first necessary to distinguish between expiring and dropped domain names. Expiring domain names are still registered by someone, who has not yet paid the yearly fee to keep in possession of the domain name in question. Dropped domain names have expired already.

Lots of services are available on the Internet that auction off or sell dropped or expiring domain names. Here are a few places to get you started.

• Namejet – Pretty big site that offers detailed search options to find the domains you are looking from. From entering a term that you want included to filtering out domain names by extension, category, and the maximum number of characters.
• Godaddy Auctions – Auctions for sites expiring at one of the largest domain registrars in the world. Filters are pretty good, and you get additional information like traffic information or valuations.
• Just Dropped – Offers to display results from multiple registrars, again with extensive options to filter the results listing.

Expiring domains can be a great option if all suitable domain names have been registered already. While you still need to be lucky to find a suitable one here, it offers a chance to get a great domain name for a small price. Keep in mind though that you should background check the domain name before making an offer. This includes finding out what was offered on the domain before, and whether the webmaster or a SEO agency ran campaigns that may have got it penalized in the search engines.

2. Domain Name Suggestion Tools

These online tools generate domain names based on terms that you enter. Some may let you add prefixes, suffixes or other optional terms as well.

• DomainsBot – Enter a main word and synonyms and wait for the results listing to be populated with options. The service can search Sedo and Godaddy for you, or only display domain names that you can register right away. Additional options include selecting TLD extensions, using prefixes and suffixes, different languages, and specifying the domain length.
• Domainit – Enter one or multiple keywords, select domain extensions, the maximum length, and whether you want the service to add its own suggestions to the resulting domain names.
• Ubersearch – Enter a search term or phrase and get suggestions displayed on the same page. You do not have as many options as the other two services offer, but it is pretty fast and displays the availability right away on the screen.

3.  Buy a domain name

If a domain name is not available, you can try and contact the current owner to broker a deal. This obviously won’t work for domain names like Google, Amazon or Microsoft, but may work for domain names not in the possession of large organizations.

Instead of contacting the owner directly, you may also try your luck at sites where you can buy domain names and web projects directly.

• Flippa – Probably the biggest site of its kind. On Flippa, you find domain names and web projects. Most websites on offer are sold in auctions, while you may find some listed for buy it now prices or no price at all (which means you must negotiate). The popularity of the site means that many sites will be priced on the high-side of things. Not broker-high, but still pretty high.
• Namepros – A webmaster community forum with a strong focus on domain names. You can buy domain names here, get appraisals and domain related news.
• Sedo – A domain market for domains without content and web projects. It is one of the most respected marketplace in this vertical, and often pretty expensive.

4. Get Personal Recommendations

You can ask friends, family and co-workers for suggestions, and while that may sometimes result in you finding a great domain name that you did not think about before, you more often than not won’t. Recommendations can however come in other forms.

• Picky Domains – For a fee of $50 you can ask users on the site to provide you with domain name suggestions. The winning user gets part of the money, while the site operators get some of it as well. It is important to use a good description and enter keywords that you find suitable for the site. You can furthermore select domain extensions, the maximum length and other factors.
• Squad Help A similar service with more pricing options and fees on top of it.  Service begins at $50 plus a fee of $39. You can take a look at active naming contests, which usually receive more than 100 entries.

Closing Words

Finding a suitable domain name for a new project can be a time-consuming task, especially if you want it to be perfect, and not just suitable for the project. One thing that I often do is to get a list of about five suitable free domain names, and ask close (webmaster) friends to pick their favorites. It is still up to you though to make a decision in the end.

Are you using different tolls or web services to find free domain names?

Siren is a flexible freeware file renamer for Windows

If your digital camera is only creating photos like CIMG0282.jpg you may feel the desire to rename those photos once they have been transferred to the PC for easier recognition in the future. While you could place them into properly named directories, you’d end up with the photo names being displayed in some occasions.

When it comes to renaming files you have the professional tools like Bulk Rename Utility which may seem complicated to use at first (check the screenshot), or simpler programs like ReNamer which do not offer that many features but are easier to use because of this.

Siren sits somewhere in the middle. The developer of the file renaming software is currently working on version 3, which has recently been released as a Release Candidate. When you start the portable application after downloading and unpacking it on your system, you will see an interface that looks like the one on the screenshot below.

You use the left sidebar to browser to a folder containing files that you want to rename, and make a selection here with the checkboxes. You can select all files automatically, or select files. If you want, you can also load all files residing in subdirectories into the current root folder (virtually) to process them as well.

If you know your way around the program, you can simply type a new format into the expression field and watch the new name field to check up on the new file name. Every change you make to the format is reflected here right after you hit the return key. If you are new to the program, you have two options to get used to it.

You can first click on the blue button next to the expression field to see a list of all supported variables. Next to standard variables like the file name or extension, are file specific variables like audio or video tags, Exif information when it comes to photos, and even system environment variables like the home directory.

The second option that you have is to use the built-in wizard, the second button in that row, for a visualized process. Here you see the current and new name at the top, and renaming options below that. Everything that you select here is reflected automatically on the same page so that you can verify the new name before you close the wizard.

You have got the option to replace the existing files with the new names, or create copies of the files instead. Siren is a sophisticated file renamer for Windows that leaves little to be desired. If you are currently looking for a renamer, I suggest you try it out. It is compatible with all recent – and not so recent – versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Turn Avi Videos Into Animated Gifs

Animated gifs were fairly popular in the beginning days of the Internet, as webmasters tried to spruce up their websites with an assortment of blinking annoying animations. That time has passed though, and you find animated gifs on today’s Internet more on “fun-sites” or forums.

If you are a regular on one of those forums or websites, you may have considered creating your own animated gifs to publish them on those sites. Instead of using a professional solution like Photoshop or Gimp for that, you can use a much easier to handle tool like openAviToGif for that purpose. While it may not offer the versatility that some of you need, it is one of the easiest solutions when it comes to creating animated gifs from avi files.

You need to download the latest version of the portable program and the codec pack that is offered on the project website. Just extract all contents into the same directory and start the program afterwards. If everything works out correctly, the program should open without error messages.

If you do not have the video available as avi, you need to convert it first into avi format. Free programs that you can use for that purpose are Miro Video Converter, meGUI or even the popularmedia player VLC.

Once you have at least one avi file you can load them into the program from the File menu or the Add files button. Both open a file browser that you can use to add your avi files. Keep in mind though that animated gifs should not be larger than a few Megabytes tops if you want to upload them to the Internet.

Before you click on the convert button, you need to define the output directory and modify parameters as you see fit. The following options are provided:

• Select an output resolution.
• Process every x frames
• Delay between frames
• Loop the animated gif infinitely
• The number of threads
• The maximum colors

If the video is large, you may want to process only a select amount of video frames. There is unfortunately no option to select a specific part of the video that you want turned into an animated gif. For that, I’d suggest you give the free open source video editor VirtualDub a try.

Closing Words

OpenAviToGif is a handy program if you have the tools at hand to convert and cut videos to make them work with the program.