Convert FLV, MPEG4, QuickTime Mov, 3GP, MP4, VOB (DVD), H.263, WMV/ASF, OGM or MKV to AVI

Damn, all these years I've been using online converters like Zamzar to change from FLV/MP4 to AVI.

Despite their usefulness and ease of use, it kinda sucked having upload limitations and no real way of making sure that your video will be converted properly and quickly.

Not to mention the angst once you finally finish uploading the video and find out "format not supported".

Note: This post is a general information post and includes no details on how to install or use the mentioned programs/plugins.

This guy was certainly angry when that happened to him!

In comes AviDemux, an awesome little free program that'll solve all your problems and impotency!

Its a bit tricky to use at first, but it's a lot quicker than most video conversion programs which need to recompress the whole file which takes bloody long.

Better yet, you don't even need to install it. Just download the zip file and away you go. There's also an installer in case you're lazy.

There is an alternative way doing the same thing using VirtualDub, but I found more trouble than its worth.

Firstly, grab the latest copy of DShowInputDriver and throw it into the . This will allow VirtualDub to load files which use the DirectShow filter on your computer.

The problem is that you have to force it to use that plugin every time you want to load the video. I use VirtualDub for all my video editing purposes, but this is too clunky for my liking.

Sources

• aviDemux
• Directshow Input Driver
• Thread about converting videos

Download certain files from ZIP/RAR/etc archive files

If you're after a particular file from a big archive but don't want to download the whole thing, you can still download it as long as you get some special software.

I've found 2 ways of doing it but I don't see myself using it very often.

LoudScout

First is to use LoadScout. It is a standalone program that lets you paste in the URL of the archive and it'll display its contents.

Select the files you want to download and let it work its magic.

LoadScout 3.0 interface

The interface is a bit old but it still works well.
I didn't particularly like the sorting it used for the file list nor the way it displayed the download progress.

ArchView

My preferred choice was the Archview addon for Firefox.

It had a slightly nicer user interface, but I didn't like the way it automatically assumed I wanted to explore every archive I clicked on.

ArchView addon for Firefox

I tried ArchView in a separate installation of Firefox, so it didn't affect the way I normally download archive files.

If you've got a better method, I'm happy to try it out!

Facebook: Post RSS feeds to your Page wall (not personal wall)

I haven't had much luck with finding information about this, but somehow I stumbled upon a little site called TwitterFeed.

Surprisingly, the site wasn't just about Twitter (ugh) and it provided a very simple yet helpful service; read off an RSS feed and post it to various social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Statusnet, Ping.fm and Hellotxt.

Whats better is that it actually supports posting to your business/organisation page, rather than just your personal page.

Unfortunately there is no "about us" page of some sort on TwitterFeed, so I had to sign up to see what it was all about.

Very simple to use

• Create a new feed (enter in name and URL)
• You can configure how often it updates and how many posts to make from each update, post suffix/prefix and also filter out keywords.
• Each feed is configured independantly, so you can choose which social network that a feed is directed to.
• (Facebook) Upon entering your account details, you can then selected which page it displays on, but only if you have admin rights on the page.

That's all!

Win7: Stop grouping of taskbar items when dragging with 7 Taskbar Tweaker

The Windows 7 superbar is great, minus a few exceptions.

I kinda hate the fact that sorting of taskbar items are grouped by application. Although you can sort within the same group, its not usually helpful.

Also, I prefer to have the right click as it used to be instead of the stupid jump menu. To get it to show up normally, I'd have to hold Shift and then right click.

Luckily some clever chap called RaMMicHaeL created a funky little program that does just that and a bit more.

You can also disable aero peek (if you don't like it) and change the behaviour when you drop files into the taskbar.

Screenshot of the options dialog.

It works in both 32 and 64 bit flavours and has worked wonderfully for me for over a year now without any bugs.

[ Download page ]

Synaptics Touchpad with Multi-touch

I stumbled upon this thread when looking for a way to improve Synergy+. Since my Dell XPS m1330 also uses a Synaptics touchpad, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give it a go.

Alot of forum posts linked back to the HP's FTP site for a file named "sp47815.exe" which contained the v15.0.9.0 drivers. Everytime I tried to download from there, it would give me an empty file.

So I searched online for ages for "sp47815.exe" but found nothing.

I gave up and tried v14.0.3 from Synaptics' official site. Did it work? Nope.

Eventually I stumbled upon this thread on LaptopVideo2Go. Thinking that the latest version would just work, I downloaded the first one I saw and tried it out. Nope, didn't work.

The only one which worked for me was the previously suggested v15.0.9.0 driver.

• Download the drivers from LaptopVideo2Go.
• Uninstall your old Synaptic driver.
• Reboot.
• Extract and install the v15.0.9.0 driver.
• Reboot.
• Once its loaded, it'll ask you to configure to your liking but the majority of the features are already enabled.
• If you accidently closed it and want to configure it, go to your "Mouse" preferences in the control panel.

Can't get much easier than that!

Sources

• New HP Touchpad Driver that Unlocks Multi-Touch on older Touchpad
• Software & Driver Downloads HP Mini 210-1000SA PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English)
• Synaptics drivers page
• Latest Synaptics Touchpad drivers (LaptopVideo2Go forums)
  

How to make an ISO from a CD/DVD

I was asked today how to install something from CD... on a netbook which had no DVD drive. Tricky!

It's tricky tricky tricky tricky tricky!

What you need:

• A computer that can read
• Daemon Tools Lite (that's all really)

On the computer with a DVD drive:

First you have to create an image of the disc you want to use.

• Install Daemon Tools (remember to untick all that adware crap)
• Right click the system tray icon and select "Disc Imaging..."
• 
• Choose a place to save it.
• 
• Hit start!

On the computer without a DVD drive:

• Install Daemon Tools. You can start doing this while the other computer is busy creating the image. Remember to untick all that adware crap!
• Right click the system tray icon and select "Mount'n'Drive Manager"
• 
• Copy the file over to this computer using a USB drive or over the network.
• Right click on the virtual drive and select "Mount"
• 
• Select the file you copied.
• Now you can use the virtual drive like a normal CD/DVD rom.

Create a bootable USB drive (or CD) with portable Windows

Something I like to use is GetDataBack to retrieve data off harddrives once the partitions are mangled. For a rescue disk, it is extremely useful if it does not modify any data on the damaged harddrive, causing loss of data.

The bootable USB is a great way of testing and keeping your rescue disk up to date without having to waste CDs.

Need:

• Boot capable USB drive with 256mb or more (find out if it is boot-capable later)
• Latest Bart PE Builder (v3.1.10a at time of writing)
• Intel Matrix Storage Manager for AHCI support aka Intel Rapid Storage Technology (optional, but recommended for newer computers to avoid "STOP 0x0000007B: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE")

 

• Windows XP (x86) installed or on a virtual machine
• A 32bit copy of either Windows XP with SP2+ or Windows 2003 (does not work with x64) install disk
• Windows 2003 SP1 (A hefty 329mb package, but you only need 2 files. Apparently its illegal to distribute them individually)

Notes before starting

BartPE will only work for Windows XP (x86). I don't know the nitty gritty details to why this is, but it is stated on the website "Bart's builder does not support Windows 64-bit editions".

For this purpose, I used an old 2gb Kingston Data Traveller which had more than enough space for what I was doing.

Some people use the HP Drive Key Boot Utility to make their USB drive bootable, but I've found the utility to be confusing and the fact it didn't actually test if the USB was bootable was a deal-breaker.

While searching the net for information, a lot of threads discuss what could go wrong but the majority of the time it is the USB drive you're using. Not all USB drives can be used to boot your computer.

USB Boot capability also depends on the type of motherboard you're using. For this tutorial, I'll assume that you're bright enough to know how to set up your BIOS to load off a USB.

You'll figure out if your USB drive/pen is compatible later on when its time to copy the boot image over. For now, we'll prepare the portable executable.

Creating the image

Most of the hard work is done for you by BartPE. Actually, all of the hard work is done already.

On your working copy of Windows XP, extract BartPE into a path without spaces, preferably something like "c:\pebuilder" to avoid problems later on.

Extract the Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers to "C:\pebuilder\drivers\SCSIAdapter\Intel_IMSM".

Start up "pebuilder.exe" and select the path of your Windows install disk.

Click on "Plugins" to install, enable, configure or disable any extra programs you want on the boot image.

Under "Media Output", select "None" for as we're going to do a little extra work to the image before using it.

Note: if you wish to boot from CD, then just select "Burn to CD/DVD" and you're done. The rest of this tutorial wont be relevant to you.

Settings used. There's not much to it.

Click "Build" to create your boot image. The new files should be spat out to "C:\pebuilder\BartPE". You can now close the program.

Preparing the USB drive

The instructions are from "pe2usb.txt" but a bit more detailed.

Setting up pe2usb:

• Extract the Windows 2003 Service Pack 1 files.
• To do that, type in the command prompt:

WindowsServer2003-...whatever.exe -x

• Select "C:\win2003sp1".
• Create the folder "C:\pebuilder\srsp1".
• Copy the file "C:\win2003sp1\i386\setupldr.bin" to "C:\pebuilder\srsp1".
• In the command prompt, type:

expand c:\win2003sp1\i386\ramdisk.sy_ C:\pebuilder\srsp1\ramdisk.sys

• Feel free to remove the folder "C:\win2003sp1".

Making the USB bootable:

Open up your command prompt and go to "C:\pebuilder".

If your USB drive has not been made bootable yet (or if you're not sure), now is a good time to back up its contents as you're going to format it.

Assuming that your USB drive is X:, format it by typing in:

pe2usb.cmd -f X:

The pe2usb command will format your drive to make it bootable and check that it is working.

If your USB drive is already bootable, then you can omit the "-f" flag and type:

pe2usb.cmd X:

The command pe2usb will also copy the boot image over to your USB drive. Once complete, your USB drive is now ready for bootin'! A basic image will only be about 155mb in size.

Problem encountered

First problem was that the 2 USB drives I tried were not boot capable. I tried a 4gb NEC drive and a 2gb Sanyo USB pen.

Second was that I forgot to install AHCI drivers for the PC I was working with. That was solved here.

The last problem was this:

The file ramdisk.sys is corrupted. Press any key to continue.

For me, it was because I copied the "ramdisk.sy_" file and renamed it into "ramdisk.sys" without inflating it first. The actual file has to be expanded before you can use it in your image.

That was almost as much fail as this guy.

Sources

Useful sources for USB drive booting:

• Hiren's Boot CD tute shows you how to create a bootable CD for Hiren's BootCD
• This page shows how you can load Win98 MS-DOS using a USB drive (God knows why you'd want to do that)
• Lots of other alternatives here with clear instructions.

Mobile Phone Development: Detailed list of phone capabilities and technical specifications

Creating a mobile phone application (or mobile friendly website) can be an absolute pain in the ass. Each phone has a slight variation in what it does and does not support.

There is a handy database for mobile phone (or as the yankees call them, "cell phone") specifications called WURFL.

The configuration file they provide lets you know capabilities of a phone such as what HTML support, CSS, Ajax, display size and color depth, image/audio/video formats supported, storage method, streaming support, MMS, J2ME and Flash/PDF support.

Not to mention the basics such as manufacturer name, model, keyboard type, operating system and wireless capabilities.

The documentation page is a bit difficult to find, but linked here (mainly for my own reference).

Be warned, it is a comprehensive list so it takes quite some time to process it. You should not be accessing it on a per view basis.

[ WURFL site ]

Fake SMTP "Server" for Developers

I've always wanted a nice fake SMTP server for testing outbound emails, without actually having to run a full fledged SMTP server and wait for my email to be delivered to test the message.

SMTP Server For Developers is a nifty little program by Antix Software that does just that. You set your SMPT server to be the address of the computer running it and it'll log all SMPT requests.

The requests are stored in an EML file that email clients can open, such as Thunderbird and Outlook.

There is no installation required, so just run it when needed. It needs the .NET framework to be installed (not sure which version), so I presume it'll work with MONO as well.

It also minimises to tray so it wont bother you during testing.

Software Update Checker

One day I was curious to see if someone had a good implementation of an idea I had.
Something that checks all the software on my computer to see if it is up to date, and provided some sort of mechanism to update things easily.

Well, its been done already and pretty well at that!

FileHippo have a pretty good software database already and their software seems pretty accurate!
http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker

Give it a go. Its a tiny download if you use the standalone.
No installation required.