We have talked about number of utility softwares in our previous posts. Here we talk of another software which is one of the popular ones in its category – WinX DVD Ripper. We also have free licensed versions of Winx DVD Ripper Platinum to distribute among our readers.

Win X DVD Ripper is one of the few tools which are light and at the same time pack in features at par with most of the leading softwares in the category. WinX DVD Ripper can rip your DVD s to a number of formats including AVI, MOV, FLV, WMV, MPEG, MP4, 3GP. It also has the ability to rip files directly to the formats supported by different hardware devices such as Sony PSP, Apple iPhone(iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4), iPod, iPad, iTouch, Apple TV, Zune, etc.

The makers of the software, Digiarty Software, also claim their ripping solution to be the fastest in the market taking around 5 minutes for ripping as well as backing up the original DVD. It also supports ripping of numerous encrypted DVDs.

It also supports various editing feature

Some of the key features :

• Continuously update to support the latest DVD copy protections. With free life-time upgrades, you can convert and backup any new DVDs at any time
• Decrypt & copy DVD to PC with 100% original video, audio and subtitles within only 5 minutes
• Multi-core CPU supported, which makes your conversion process much faster
• All video/audio parameters are adjustable for users to optimize video quality
• Trim any segment of DVD to convert
• Crop the frame size of movie image, cut off unwanted area to feature a highlight, crop DVD video to remove the black bars, and freely adjust the video size to fill variety of portable devices screen

Check out more features here WinX DVD Ripper

Rules for obtaining free licensed copy :

There are 3 simple rules for you to obtain a free copy.

• Follow us on twitter and retweet this post @tech_reviews
• Like us on facebook : techreviews facebook and share this link on your facebook so your friends can get a free copy as well.
• Subscribe to our RSS feed : RSS feed

Once you have followed these steps, drop a line the comments section (be sure to use your real email while commenting, so we can send the license to that email) with the link to your tweet which mentions this post and your facebook user name.

Once you download the software and follow the mentioned conditions we will send you the license key on your for the full version of the product.

This is a first come first receive offer. So the first 20 users who participate will get the license for free. Also, there will be more offers in near future, so subscribing to our feeds and following us on twitter/facebook will help you get more free goodies.

Download page

There are times when you want to send SMS to a friend but you can not send using your mobile. What to do? Just use your regular email account to send SMS to your friend’s mobile number using the SMS gateway addresses.

To send the SMS , enter the gateway address in the sender’s email id box similar to as you would send an email to someone. Then compose your message and send it as a normal email.

Very shortly the SMS will be delivered to the recipient.

The SMS gateway listing is as follows :

Enter the 10 digit mobile phone number for the person you are sending a message to in front of the appropriate address (e.g:8888888888@vmobl.com)

The list of gateway addresses can be found in following links :

List of SMS gateways (wiki)

List of Gateways

SMTP email

NOTE: The carrier may charge the recipient for the SMS. So the process might not be free totally. Take care of the fact.

[via: howtogeek]

For a lot of time, the one of the most popular bitorrent download manager was available for only one major  platform that is Windows. The mac version being released some time back, uTorrent is now available for all three major platforms with this new release for Linux.

uTorrent is one of the most popular bittorrent clients and isextremely powerful and light. The demand for its release for linux has been for long. This new release for linux is definitely please many.

But this new launch is only the uTorrent server without an UI for linux. This is only the alpha version being released and UI may come in the future. Ofcourse, without an UI one’s activities may be restricted a bit but still all is not disappointing from any view. One can do a lot of things without having a uTorrent UI too.

UTorrent has a feature called WebUI. This feature is an alternate control for the client mode allowing control from anywhere in the world through the web. μTorrent sets up a server on your computer which you can access from any other computer if you have your computer’s IP address. WebUI provides all the features of a regular client UI but is accessible through a browser.

The new linux version is this WebUI based. Thus, you can start uTorrent in your system, have it running in background and connect it through a browser and then manage your torrents as normal.

Talking of uTorrent, the version 3 of uTorrent has generated much excitement and speculation among users. Version 3 is set to integrate 3 new core technologies changing your uTorrent experience for good.

• The first new technology is uTorrent web. This service allows you to access your uTorrent interface from anywhere without worrying of firewalls and NATs. Once you configures a username and password, you can log into web.utorrent.com and manage your utorrent downloads from anywhere. You can even stream media files from your computer and hence see them anywhere.
• Another function is torrent sharing. It has simplified the process of torrent usage for beginners. With the new ‘Send Torrent’ feature, you will be taken to a page from where you can download a version of μTorrent which comes prepackaged with the torrent file you chose. You can then share this link with anyone and he’ll be able to directly download the torrent. If the client is not installed then utorrent is installed and download is started else the download is started automatically.
• Another feature is addition of Griffin – apps framework. This provides a light framework for apps for uTorrent using html.

Other changes which may be noticed are change in the icons and look or uTorrent providing a sleeker look. Along with UDP support, further changes have been made in priotiy setting features of uTorrent.

These new changes in uTorrent seem quite promising and will probably strengthen the popularity of uTorrent as one of the best bittorrent clients available.

Google maps is a feature of google which is probably among one of the most popular services of google. Google maps are so commonly used for navigation and directions, that it is probably the leading map service. It is equally popular on different platforms. Google street view is another feature of google maps which is usually used to see the already captured image of the address or the area around. Now you can navigate and look at direction from one address to another with a series of street views. This automated navigation through street view is  a nice modfication of existing service which is indeed useful.

Here, you put your source and destination addresses. Usually Google maps gives you text directions and highlighted directions on the maps, here you see a autoated navigation system which takes you through a street view as if you are actually charting through the city in real. It is like the service stitches the street views of the location which fall in the path from source to destination addresses. Thus you navigate through different street views to your destination.

You can also select the speed of transition from one street view frame to another. It also gives you the road name as it navigates through the street view, so you are aware of what different streets look like which you are actually going to take.

Although, as expected this service is not perfect. The transition between 1 street view frame to another is not seamless and you sometimes notice a stark change in two frames. Also the fact that street view images taken by google of different places is at different times of the year, so it sometimes seems odd to see the change in street view frames. But the concept is nice and further work on it might lead it to become a nice utility feature where one can navigate through a video like street view navigation to reach the destination.

Here is the link to the page : http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/streetview/streetview_directions.html

Every one has had to make presentations at some point and some have to make it in everyday professional life. Use of images improves your presentation a great deal and you can see some of the beautiful presentation for the use of images. Resources for getting images to be used in a presentation pose some difficulties for people. Here I have gathered some of the resources which you could use to obtain images for a powerpoint presentation.

Some of the resources are free and some are paid resources.

(The numbers for the listing does not signify any ranking or order)

1. Google Images

This is the most used site by users all over to search for images. Although it takes effort to find high quality images suiting your needs but with the enormous repository of images one gets a lot of options. It is free of cost which is a huge advantage. But you must ask for copyright from image owners.

2. Dreamstime

It is also a great website for searching through your required images. The site hosts more than 9 mn images. You can opt for different categories of images. You can get free images which are royalty free. Other than that you can also get high resolution images which you can get through paid credits. You can also download collections of royalty free images.

3. Flickr

One of the best resources for high quality images for all purposes. The images are posted by users all over and you can also find real life images. The quality of images here is amazing. You must ask the owners for copyright ownership. Most of times you will receive the permission to use the images.

4. stock.xchng

With images more than 350000 with more than 30000 photographers, this an amazing site used by numerous users as a source of image usages. You can also share your photos with people. Also you have option of chatting with other users to get a required image. It has a great images to be used in a presentation which can really change the outlook of your presentation.

5. Photosbank

This is a site which makes your image search extremely easy and the account registration is an very simple process. I suggest you use this site as a resource if you are unable to find image of your choice from other mentioned sites but definitely worth a look.

6. Free Digital Photos

This site hosts numerous photos and you do not need any account to download photos. The site design is quite nice and the image search is also quite simplified.  Just navigate to the required photos and download them.

7. Openphoto

It is a good resource for high quality images. the site has a strict policy of hosting only high quality images. Thus you can choose from high quality images.

8. MorgueFile

MorgueFile is also a popular site which lets you use images without any registration and lets you use the images without special permissions.

It also has an online classroom teaching photography tips and tricks for users. It does not pose licensing problems and is an easy site to obtain image for use.

9. Photorack

It is also a nice collection of images categorized like a forum. The photos are organized according to the category, so it is easier to look for your required photos. Surprising is that the site does not have a search feature.

10. FreePixels

Although the images are not as much as you would find on other sites but the images are of high quality. It is a nice resource to look for high resolution images.

Although there are more great sites to add to the list, but this is a good number of resources to check into for your required image, I will shortly update the list with more stock image websites.

You do not use google toolbar and you have to go to google website everytime you need to search something. Use an easier way, perform google search in firefox address bar. You can alter one of the setting to activate this feature.

Here is how to do it :

1. Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar and press Enter.

2. You will see a message about voiding Warranty displays. If you do not wish this message to appear again uncheck the box in front of Show this warning next time.

3. Click on I’ll be careful, I promise! button.

4. In the Filter box, enter keyword.URL

5. To edit the value of the keyword.URL setting, double click text in Value column.

6. To perform a search in Google using the address bar, enter the following into the edit box on the Enter string value dialog box

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=

This is a simple method which you could use. It could be used for other search engines too. You just need they keyword.URL value for other search engines.

Music is one of the areas where the web has thrown up tremendous opportunities. Among them, one is internet radio. Don’t have songs on your disk or the local fm station not playing good enough songs, switch to online intern radio stations. Do not want to stick to 1 station, use the internet radio station portals.

These internet radio portals usually have thousands of radio stations listed which are categorised and grouped on various parameters. So you have radio station listing based on different music categories, sports, news, regions etc. Most of these portals support popular players such as winamp, media player, vlc player etc to play the music files. Along with that they also have their own player which negates any requirement of dektop player. Although there are softwares which serve the same purpose as the internet radio portals but I prefer to use the portals. Here is a small list of such portals which you could use to listen :

SHOUTcast :

It is one of the most popular portals for internet radio stations. With more than 40,000 stations to pick from, the site boasts of wide variety of stations. The different genres suit people with different music choices. Along with support to different 3rd party players, the in built player which can be loaded as a bottom bar in the browser window or a pop up window is also quite useful. The website also provides a useful -phone app but an android app is still in the making.

Pandora

Pandora is another popular portal where you can search by artist name or song name. It uses the Music Genome Project andhas collection of some of the oldest and rarest songs too. You can even create your station upto 100 in number on the site. It is available only in Us region for now.

Slacker

slacker is also another popular online radio station portal. It has a huge variety of genres to listen from. It has been widely appreciated by the users and is countries like US, it used by many daily. It is possible to select artists and create your own stations. It is not available in all the regions.

Spinner

Spiiner is another extremely popular portal. It is a mix of music portal and an online radio station portal. It has stored music from numerous different artists and you can easily listen to ones of your choice. It has free p3 downloadables. It also has latest releases to listen to. It has somewhat of a limited radio functionality as the number of radio stations are not huge. IT hosts around 350-400 radio stations which as compared to Shoutcast is extremely low. Nonethless a good site to browse through and listen to music.

Last.fm

It is a hugely popular music portal cum social interaction cum online radio portal. Yu can search for your music by typing in the artist name and listen to your favourite music. It also gives you some free music downloads. It also hosts  number of radio stations to pick from. Apart from the traditional music and radio website, it is also popular for social interaction. If you use media player or itunes, it syncs your playlist through the cloud and you can listen to it from anywhere. Also it matches your music preferences with other people and lets you connect with them.

Live 365

It is dedicated internet radio portal boasting of more than 6000 radio stations which are run by real people rather than computers. It has some really popular stations going and gives you a lot to choose from. You can also float your own radio station.

Deezer

Deezer is a popular french platform. Although it has music in English as well but it is hugely popular for it collection of french music. It has various precustomised radio stations to listen to. Also along with that it has playlists defined and you can create you own playlist based on your preferences.

RadioTime

This is quite good portal for radio stations as it not only provides you with radio stations with music but also radio stations with talk. You can browse by location, by music, by all talk, sports etc. Within each category you can further specify your search. It offers a directory of 10000 worldwide FM radio stations to choose from. a great feature ad unique factor of the site is that it lets you search for you local FM station (usually most of local FM stations stream online) It is otherwise not easy to have a range of local FM stations at one place.

Music Platforms but not Radio Portals

Playlist.com

It is not a radio portal but a good place to listen to your favourite music. You can create different playlists for different occasions or different moods. You can further share these playlists on your social network using facebook, twitter etc. You can also listen to predesigned playlists. You can also listen to playlists of other people. The site has had tough times with record labels but it has come through for good and is a nice platform to create ready playlists for you to listen

Finetune

Finetune is also another portal which is different in itself. Here you type an artist’s name and they create a playlist of related songs for you to listen to. You can also explore the Finetune community- browse artists, users, playlists and more. It also allows you to listen to professionally managed playlists spanning todays most popular terrestrial radio formats

StreamPad

Streampad is an internet audio player than can be used to listen to music from anywhere where you can access the internet. Users can listen to music from their own computer remotely through a web browser, listen to concerts from an archive, create playlists, listen to music from the internet and see what friends using Streampad are listening to.

Odeo

Launched as a podcast directory, ODeo has evolved to include further features. Odeo now features millions of syndicated audio and video episodes aggregated from over 500,000 channels. It allows users to create profile pages, subscribe to preferred channels, and create playlists.

Grooveshark

It has thousands of songs to listen to. It is quite popular among users for its collection of songs, ability to create playlists, sharing of tunes on the web. You can pick one song to listen to and at the same time que in more song to listen further. It has quickly become one of the most visited music portals and hosts a tremendous collection of music.

I might have missed out a few, but definitely there are some more. It seems to be a growing industry and definitely we will see more features and better functionality from the sites in the coming future.

Updating hardware drivers has been a time consuming task. Many users rely on Windows updates to update all the hardware drivers. But, in truth Windows updates does not update every hardware drivers. Now you can easily scan you system for the need of updation of any hardware driver by just 1 click and also then forward you to the driver updation/download page.

Ma-config.com scans your system and find which hardware components need driver updates. When you visit the site, to start the scan click on the button ‘Run the Detection‘.

Next the site will prompt you to download the software. It needs to be downloaded only once, the first time you visit the site. The software is completely safe and verisign approved. Click ‘Manual Install’ to install the software. Once downloaded install the program.

After installation, start the software. The softwareconnects with the ma-config website to scan your system and create a summary of you computer’s hardware.

To check for drivers updates, click the ‘Find the drivers‘ button. Then click the ‘Find‘ button to start driver scan.

Next page asks you for the operating system for the drivers and other setting options. Once you have selected the required options. The page then shows you the hardware components which require driver updates. Click on download button next to the mentioned drivers. The site forwards you to touslesdrivers.com where you can read driver specifications before downloading them from manufacturer’s official site.

The steps to be taken to complete the process of updation are quite lengthy but still it is a nice service where you get all the driver listings in the same place.

Tired of never ending invites from people to install facebook app. Would you want to permanently block all these apps which deface your wall by asking you to add these apps. A simple privacy setting could help you block these apps forever as displayed by Digital Inspiration.

Many people use facebook only to connect to family and friends and have no intention of using any of the facebook apps. In fact, the apps are irritating to them. If you are one of those, this certain setting could help you easily block the apps forever. This will make your profile inaccessible to all the apps. It disable the whole apps platform for your profile.

To alter this setting, log in to the facebook account. move to Privacy Settings. Under ‘Edit your settings’ go to Applications and websites section. Choose the option you see to turn off the all the apps.

A video to easily follow the steps :

[via: Digital inspiration]

You usually observe different trends on twitter. But still you are not sure of location based trends. Here is a way to get a broad idea of trends based on different geographic regions. It is a rough but easy way to see which countries, cities or regions and trending what.

Trendsmap is a real-time mapping of Twitter trends across the world. It provides you with a google map like toggling map of the world with different twitter trends mentioned across different regions on the map. This lets you easily identify the global twitter trends. It allows you to see what the global, collective mass of humanity are discussing right now.

To get started move/zoom around the map and click on topics for additional information. You can move to a certain location to see the twitter trends of the region. You can even zoom further to pin point on a specific region. You can also click on any city name to go to a local page.

Clicking on a trend gives you a small window on the right which lets you see all the tweets concerning the topic. You can also use the search feature  to view trending topics or cities directly.

You can also view graphs, and important links or news headlines regarding the topic under consideration.

Trendsmap currently processes around 5 million tweets per day. It has over 500 cities from around the world which have their own page on the site.

An interesting innovation worth checking out.