Internet Freebies That Everybody Should Have

Hello and welcome!

It's been well over a year since I posted anything new on this blog site, since October 2011 to be more precise, that's almost two years.  So what have I been up to you may ask.
Briefly I have been concentrating more on my 'Trail Trekking' blog site, and writing a couple of books, then I got myself a job which effectively took up most of my time and left me with just the weekends and the occasional evening to do my own thing.  For this reason I was forced to focus on my main goal - 'Trail Trekking'.  However I'm back now, but for how long I cannot say, it depends on what the near-future has in store for me.
Fortunately I have got loads of new stuff to tell you about, which I will split over the next few posts, so please read on.

Firstly, 'Trail Trekking' involves taking lots of photographs but as my main camera was a 9 megapixel model the resulting images were pretty large and it wasn't uncommon to end up with images that were a few megabytes in size so I went on the lookout for something that would reduce their size without sacrificing too much quality.  I eventually found what I was after in 'PhotoScape'.

PhotoScape in action

PhotoScape

This is a totally free (of course) basic photo editor that I use all the time.  It allows me to do everything I need to do to my photographs; such as downsizing them, adding text, darkening, lightening, and the usual expected features such as cropping, adding frames, and red-eye removal to name a few.  The interface is extremely easy to deal with and the basic functions can soon be picked up to allow you to do whatever you need to do to your images quickly and efficiently.

If you are looking for a program to get a fast overview of you photos and images with simple ways to optimize them? Than PhotoScape is for you! The tool offers the beginner everything they need to organize and edit their digital images.  Other than the viewer, PhotoScape has functions to clone, crop, sharpen and decolour as well as settings for contrast, levels, vignetting and many other image parameters. Several templates allow to easily arrange photos on a page which can then be saved as a final image or be printed on paper. Photoscape also includes capabilities for red-eye removal, batch editing (file names and image settings), converting camera RAW files, taking screenshots and generating GIFs, where several individual images can be combined to an animated GIF.

Developed by MOOII Tech, Korea.  The basic concept of PhotoScape is 'easy and fun', so that allows users to easily edit photographs taken from their digital cameras or even mobile phones.  PhotoScape provides a simple user interface to perform common photo enhancements including color adjustment, cutting, resizing, printing and GIF animation.  However PhotoScape operates only in Microsoft Windows systems and is not available in Mac or Linux systems. Its default languages are English and Korean, with additional language packages available for download.
Version 3.6 is the current stable release. However, older versions are still available for the sake of Windows 98 and Me users. It is distributed free of charge for all users including commercial bodies.

PhotoScape can be downloaded totally free from a number of locations but to save you time I've included a link here.

Secondly, for the Audio-heads out there here's a good one for you.

Audacity doing its thing

Audacity

Another freebie that I wouldn't be without.  Audacity allows me to record voice-overs for my 'Trail Trekking' slideshow videos, it also allows real-time recording from any audio source whether internal or external (imagine the possibilities when listening to streamed music or videos), then it gives me many options to allow me to enhance the recorded audio; such as amplify it, de-click it, delete sections (such as when I mess up with my voice-over recordings - washing machine spinning in the background for example) so I don't have to start all over again, I can just remove the bit or bits that are wrong.  It has almost all the functions you can expect from a quality audio editor, and of course it's free.

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. The interface is translated into many languages.  You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP2, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more! See the complete list of features.

Audacity is free software, developed by a group of volunteers and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Free software is not just free of cost (like "free beer"). It is free as in freedom (like "free speech"). Free software gives you the freedom to use a program, study how it works, improve it and share it with others. For more information, visit the Free Software Foundation.

Programs like Audacity are also called open source software, because their source code is available for anyone to study or use. There are thousands of other free and open source programs, including the Firefox web browser, the OpenOffice.org office suite and entire Linux-based operating systems such as Ubuntu.

Download 'Audacity' here.

Other free stuff I've learned about include:
Any Video Converter
Speedbit Video Downloader
K-lite Codec Pack
PDF Creator
SpeedFan
OpenOffice
Spotify

I'll tell you about a couple of them in my next post.

Thanks!

Fully featured registry cleaner absolutely FREE

Hi folks!

Here's another excellent freebie for your PC, 'AML free registry cleaner'.

I'm sure we all get those 'I'm fed up of waiting for this damn computer!' moments, you know the times when your PC is on a go-slow and there seems to be nothing you can do about it but to wait, and wait, and wait until eventually it sorts itself out and you finally get the file, program or web page you're after.  I know, it used to be a regular thing with my old PC but not any more.

This is thanks to 'AML' who's free registry cleaner is excellent and very efficient.  What am I waffling on about?  Of course not all of you will be aware of registry issues with your computer so let me explain; please forgive me if what I'm about to go into is not 100% accurate, it's just a brief explanation of what registry is about in my opinion.  So it may be slightly inaccurate but does briefly tell those who do not know what they are up against, of course you computer pros out there will no doubt have your own explanations which are most probably much more accurate than mine.

Here's my brief - perhaps mis-informed explanation.



'AML free registry cleaner' - disc cleanup app in action

 Although you may not be aware of it, your computer keeps a log of everything you do on it.  Somewhere in its system it records everything you do and logs each individual activity, however slight, in its memory somewhere.  Don't ask me where, I haven't got a clue!  Your PC then goes through all these logs when you try to do something and also records what you do once again.  All these log files and temporary files that your computer saves are what slows down the system sometimes to the point of a virtual stand still.  This applies to programs or software you use, the initial boot process, internet browsing; everything! 

It can be likened to searching through a thousand receipts to find the one you need for whatever reason.  That would certainly take you some time wouldn't it?  Your PC has the same problem.  Why not just save the most important receipts and throw away the rest?  You would then be able to find the one you want much more quickly and with no effort.  That's what a registry cleaner does; it goes through all the 'receipts' if you like on your computer and throws away what's not needed.  You can if you want choose which PC 'receipts' you would like to keep, but I tend not to bother and get rid of them all.

You could go and pay out silly money for a decent registry cleaner and some anti-virus packages do have one thrown in as part of the deal.  But why go and pay for one that doesn't do any better job than this one you can get for free?  Search for 'free registry cleaner' in Google and chances are you'll get a somewhat limited 'trial' version or something that's useless and totally unefficient.

'AML free registry cleaner' has it all and also has a few bonus tools thrown in with it.  You also get access to online tutorials telling you about its features and how to use them. 

So leave the debit or credit card where it is and click one of the links to download 'AML' for free.  Go for it, you'll love it!

http://www.amltools.com/

After more free stuff?
Email me at mediabandit@ymail.com and tell me what you would like me to find next.

Get the first 'Media Bandit' tutorial ebook

The 1st 'Media Bandit' tutorial is available now.  It is an interactive ebook that guides you through the whole process of downloading videos, converting them and extracting the audio etc.  Laid out in step-by-step instructions where I take you by the hand and guide you through the lot.

In 'The Media Bandit Book of Free Vids & Audio' I show you where and how to get all the FREE software required to complete the whole process and of course how to use that software.  With this tutorial ebook at hand you will be able to download all the videos you like to your hard-drive absolutely free, you will be able to add a codec that will enable 'Windows Media Player' to play video formats that it does not do normally by default, you will be able to convert your downloaded videos to any other video format you like so as to make DVDs for example; what's more if you just want the audio part of the video (the soundtrack) this tutorial will show you how to extract that from the video also to use as a stand alone audio file such as MP3 or WAV for example.

'The Media Bandit Book of Free Vids & Audio' is available from 'PayLoadz' or on 'Amazon Kindle', and will be available from my own site at 'Stanton Publishing' soon.  I have tried to price it reasonably low so that anyone can afford it, plus tagging a high price to an ebook about getting FREE stuff would be defeating the object don't you think?

I have also recorded some video tutorials to go with 'The Media Bandit Book of Free Vids & Audio' and you can find a glimpse of them now on 'YouTube', just look or subscribe to my 'YouTube' account 'PREnterprisesUK'.  There's only a few of the video tutorials uploaded at the moment but I may upload some more soon, we'll see how it goes.

Not all the video tutorials will be available for free on 'YouTube' as I plan to sell them as an accompaniment to 'The Media Bandit Book of Free Vids & Audio' or as an extra but rest assured I will price them very reasonably.  You can get a glimpse of what's to come by looking on 'YouTube' but for now here is the first one for your viewing pleasure, please excuse the breathing into the mic as I'm still getting used to using it.

Get the ebook tutorial by clicking any of the links below and please feel free to comment on and share the 'YouTube' vids.

Thanks!
'Media Bandit'

http://store.payloadz.com/go?id=947456
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005F50FM8

Free antivirus - get 'avast'

Recently panic set in when I received notification that my anti-virus software was about to expire and I couldn't afford to pay the renewal price. So I trawled the net to find a free anti-virus that I could at least use for the trial period. There are plenty of these and they are all pretty good and good value; you get a free trial version and then on expiry of the trial period you are prompted to get out your debit or credit card to pay for their service.



'Avast' free anti-virus

 So imagine my surprise when I found an anti-virus that was completely free forever, use it free for as long as you like and no payment ever - unless of course you want to upgrade to a more thorough version.

So what is it called?  It's 'avast', a totally free-for-as-long-as-you-like anti-virus that works extremely well.  Avast works quietly in the background and sorts out any virus issues for you, it even upgrades itself automatically whilst you are net connected, just showing you a little pop-up to let you know that an upgrade has taken place.

Verdict!  Highly recommended!

Get 'avast' free by clicking here, download the free version and get it installed.

Excellent!