Freewares / Free Softwares 04 Feb 10

Smereka

Smereka is a personal freeform database and a Personal information manager. It can help organize data in an hierarchical and searchable database. Yes, we could use "Word" to store data, but, we all know how cumbersome it can be to launch the massive "Office" software to view just a paragraph or two of the text. Smereka stores files and notes in a single file - Smereka database. The details get indexed on the fly, yes, you can search for them immediately after adding them to the database. The hierarchical system of item storage of "Smereka" facilitates sorting out the items in a tree-like structure. The items can be moved, copied from branch to branch, or icons assigned. As soon as a tree item is clicked the stored info is displayed on the screen, and in most of the cases you would not need an external program. And, more importantly, you can share the Smereka database too - your peers can receive it a single file and instantly browse all the content, search or export the information to disk.

If you have admin rights on your PC you can download the 2.9 MB Smereka v1.1.1 (10 January 2010 at http://yp.lviv.ua/smereka/download/smereka_setup.exe

Otherwise, the 2.7 MB self-extracting archive (limited functionality) can be downloaded at http://yp.lviv.ua/smereka/download/smereka_archive.exe

DiskSmartView

DiskSmartView can retrieve the S.M.A.R.T information (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) from IDE/SATA disks to help assess whether there's a problem in the disk drive. This information would include the disk model/firmware/ serial number, cylinders/heads, power-on hours (POH), internal temperature, disk errors rate, and in particular the count on the number of reallocated sectors which can give an idea when the drive is likely to crash! DiskSmartView doesn't require any installation process or additional dll files, simply run the executable file - DiskSmartView.exe. You can save all S.M.A.R.T information and attributes retrieved from your IDE disks to HTML/ text/ xml/csv file (Ctrl+S) or copy them onto the clipboard (Ctrl+C) and paste them to Excel or other spreadsheet.

The mere 39 KB DiskSmartView v1.02 (14 Jan 2010) can be downloaded at http://snipurl.com/disksmartview  (If you have a problem with the link, please let me know)

To know more about how to analyze the S.M.A.R.T information you could browse S.M.A.R.T page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T

The developers affirm that DiskSmartView is clean and does not contain any form of malware (spyware, viruses, trojans).

CCleaner

This is the current version of CCleaner mentioned in this column more than two years ago. It is a system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool, its features include clean up of details lodged in browsers - removes details of temporary files, history, cookies, autocomplete form history, and index.dat. of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari; and Windows - Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files. CCleaner can also perform the role of registry cleaner as well - can remove unused and old entries, including File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons, Invalid Shortcuts and more; and Third-party applications: Removes temp files and recent file lists (MRUs) from many apps including Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, Microsoft Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and. CCleaner has a comprehensive backup feature too.

The 3.20 MB CCleaner v2.28 (28 January 2010), affirmed by its developers as 100% Spyware free, can be downloaded at http://download.piriform.com/ccsetup227.exe

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Please suggest me a safe, good YouTube ripper.

You could try Youtube Downloader HD to download videos from YouTube files and save them to your local computer. The videos can be converted to avi video format or to mp4 (compatible with iPod, iPhone).
The 3 MB utililty can be downloaded at http://www.youtubedownloaderhd.com/download.html

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QUOTE TO MULL OVER

In human life there is constant change of fortune; and it is
unreasonable to expect an exemption from the common fate. Life
itself decays, and all things are daily changing.

Plutarch
(46-120, Greek essayist, biographer)