Text Twist

Text Twist: "

Text Twist is a very popular online game that is offered on many different websites. Two of the most popular versions of the Text Twist game are offered on Yahoo and MSN Games with the MSN game only playable in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Text Twist is a word game where the player has to form words from the letters that are provided in each stage. The amount of words that can be created are displayed on the side so that the player knows the amount of words with a specific letter count.

The Yahoo Text Twist game for instance is a six letter word game where the player has to form words with three to six letters. The game will either fill out one of the blank possibilities or inform the player that the word that was formed does not exist.

Text Twist is therefore a game that can be used to learn the English language. The time limit forces the player to act quickly. The player advances a level in Text Twist if at least one six word letter was formed. It is game over if that is not achieved.

Check out the Yahoo games page or the Msn games page to play a game of Text Twist online.

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Scite Open Source Text Editor

Scite Open Source Text Editor: "

Scite is an Open Source text editor for Windows and Linux. It supports many of the features of popular editors like Notepad++ and can therefor be seen as an alternative to those programs, at least on the Windows operating system. Scite can open multiple text files at once which are displayed in tabs in its interface.

It supports code highlighting and other coding related features to make it as easy as possible to work with programming languages. It supports a large variety of programming languages from C++ over php to Hypertext, batch and Assembler.

One interesting feature of Scite is the ability to compile or run source files directly from within its interface if the programming environment is installed on the computer system. The output is directly shown in the editor’s output pane.

Console commands are available as well for users who prefer to work from the command line. They can be used to perform different commands like replacing text in files, searching for phrases, opening a document or to load a previously saved session.

Windows users can download a related program from the same developer called Filerx which adds project management and macros to the Open Source text editor. Scite is available for download at the developer’s website. The program is fully portable and compatible with Windows XP and newer Microsoft operating systems.

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Windows Product Key Finder

Windows Product Key Finder: "

There may come a time where a user needs to retrieve the product key from an installed operating system. A possible scenario is for instance the desire to install the operating system on a new computer system. The only way to retrieve the Windows product key is to use a software program that can display the product key if the product box that listed the key is no longer available.

Win Key Finder is but one of the many programs that can display product keys in Windows. It supports all Microsoft operating systems from Windows 98 on including the latest release Windows 7. It furthermore supports Microsoft Office.

The portable software program displays the Windows version, product key, product ID, installed service packs, owner and organization upon startup.

The product key can be copied, saved, printed or encrypted. Another option is to modify the OEM information and to check the activation status of the operating system.

The menu on the left links to displaying product keys for other supported Microsoft products.

WinKeyFinder supports both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system and is one of the fastest most comfortable options to display the operating system’s product key.

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How To Download Vevo Videos From Youtube [Download]

How To Download Vevo Videos From Youtube [Download]: "

The Realplayer is not held in very high regards by most users who have happened to come in contact with the player. This might change however with the discovery that the free version of RealPlayer SP is capable of downloading Vevo videos from Youtube (and maybe even Vevo itself but this has not been tried by the author of this article because of country filters).

Realplayer offers another benefit besides being the only viable solution to download Vevo videos from Youtube at this point: It is available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh which means that most users who want to download videos from Vevo can use Realplayer to do so.

Realplayer SP can be downloaded for free at the RealPlayer website. The website will redirect the user automatically to a country specific website upon connection from where a localized version of Realplayer can be downloaded.

Realplayer can only be installed if the user enters a username and password during the installation. The option to display a download this video button next to videos is provided in the options during installation. This will display the button next to videos at Youtube so that these videos can be downloaded.

How to download Vevo videos with Realplayer SP:

Click on File in the menu bar after launching RealPlayer SP. Select New > New Web Browser from the menu. You can alternatively launch one of the supported external web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google Chrome).

Open the Youtube website and start looking for videos. A search for popular artists like Lady Gaga will display lots of videos that are now powered by Vevo.

Move the mouse cursor in the video once the video starts playing to display the Download this video button. This will open the RealPlayer downloader which will instantly start to download the Vevo video.

RealPlayer SP is currently the only free program that is available for Linux, Windows and Macintosh computer systems that can download Vevo videos. It is therefor a recommended program for users who want to download Vevo videos. It might even work with other videos that use the same form of protection like Vevo. (Thanks Erik for the tip).

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Youtube HD Transfer

Youtube HD Transfer: "

Youtube video downloaders come in all sizes and shapes. Some are browser plugins that make it very comfortable to download individual videos, others are websites that accept Youtube urls and create a download for the user out of them or third party applications that differ in functionality. Most tech-savvy users will probably agree that a software to download Youtube videos should have a minimum feature set that includes a built in search option, video previews, batch downloads and video quality selectors.

Youtube HD Transfer offers all of those features and then some. The tabbed based program can be used to download single Youtube urls that are pasted into the program or to search Youtube and pick the videos to download from those search results.

The search provides access to several filters to return specific results. Those filters include duration, upload date and category filters, returning only high definition videos, searching for the exact phrase. Sort options are also provided in the search interface.

The Youtube downloader will display related videos in a sidebar which can also be selected for download.

A double-click on a search result will send that video to the download tab which is then automatically filled with information about the video.

The available video qualities that are hosted on Youtube are displayed on that page as well. All available qualities can be selected and a click on the download button will send the video download to the download queue.

The download begins automatically and it is possible to continue using the video downloader in the meantime.

A click on the preview button sends the video to the preview tab where it can be played directly in the application.

Youtube HD Transfer is an excellent program. The developers should consider adding options to add multiple videos to the queue and to provide more search results to the user. The search results are currently limited to 20 results it seems with no apparent option to increase them.

Youtube HD Transfer can be downloaded from the developer’s website. It requires elevated privileges to run.

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Increase Firefox Address Bar Font Size

Increase Firefox Address Bar Font Size: "

Most web browsers have some features to change the layout of the web browser and some elements on the websites that get loaded. This includes changing the font sizes of the pages that are visited which is very helpful for users who prefer or require the font sizes of the websites to be bigger. What’s not changing are on the other hand the web browser controls including the address bar of the web browser. Users who have difficulties reading text in the normal font size on websites will surely have troubles reading the text in the address bar of the web browser as well.

Firefox users now have an option to increase the Firefox address bar font size; The Firefox add-on Make Address Bar Font Size Bigger changes the default text size of the address bar making it bigger so that it becomes easier to read for users with troubles reading the normal address bar text.

The text size of the address bar text increases quite a bit after the installation of the add-on, probably two or even three times the original size. This on the other hand means that there is less space to display address bar text in the Firefox address bar which usually is only a problem for long urls.

Make Address Bar Font Size Bigger can be downloaded directly from the Mozilla Firefox add-on repository. It is compatible with all Firefox 3.5+ releases.

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DVD Burning Software ImgBurn Updated. Turns Adware

DVD Burning Software ImgBurn Updated. Turns Adware: "

Ever since we discovered the DVD burning software ImgBurn we never looked back and used it for all our CD and DVD burning tasks as it came really close to the perfect program for that.

ImgBurn was recently updated by the developer. The new version is available at the developer’s websites. Regular users of ImgBurn will notice some changes besides the updates to the program itself.

There are two adware related entries that might get installed during the installation of the DVD burning software if the user is not carefully selecting the options.

The program tries to place a Uniblue shortcut on the desktop and to install the Ask Toolbar. Both of which can be unselected so that they are not installed.

More problematic than those choices are three new entries in the Tools menu of the burning software that also lead to the Uniblue website.

These options do however not reduce the value of ImgBurn itself. The developer has fixed more than a dozen bugs in the new version and added or changed dozens of other features as well. Most of these new features and updates are under the hood and will likely not be recognized by most users.

The latest version of the DVD burning software ImgBurn can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

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Integrate Youtube, DailyMotion And Soapbox Into Windows Media Center

Integrate Youtube, DailyMotion And Soapbox Into Windows Media Center: "

Windows Media Center can be extended with plugins to add new features or services to the entertainment software. The MacroTube plugin for Windows Media Center integrates the three popular online video services Youtube, Dailymotion and MSN Soapbox into the program.

The developer provides a 32-bit and 64-bit version of the program so that both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system are supported.

The new video services are installed in the Extras section of Windows Media Center. Selecting Extras and then MacroTube displays the three video services that are currently integrated.

A search is provided that can be used to search for specific videos on the site. The videos can then be sorted by rating, views or relevancy. Selecting a video will load it in Windows Media Center.

All the usual controls are also available during playback. The process is straightforward, robust and very responsive.

Windows Media Center users can download the 32-bit or 64-bit edition of the Macrotube plugin from the forum post where the plugin was announced. (via Into Windows)

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Free Web Proxy Checker

Free Web Proxy Checker: "

If you work with anonymous web proxies you will encounter proxies that are not working at that time. That is a big problem if a huge amount of proxies are needed on a regular basis. It is possible to check them all manually which would however take a long time.

Proxy Checkers on the other hand can automate the process so that the proxies can be verified in a fraction of the site that a manual process would take.

The Free Web Proxy Checker has been specifically designed to test so called web proxies. A web proxy usually consists of a form on a website that a user can use to access another website from. This is different from standard proxy servers that need to be added to a program’s proxy settings before they can be used.

The web proxy checker has lots of settings of which most are not needed for basic verifications.

All that is basically needed is to paste a list of web proxy urls into the application’s interface. The program will test the proxies against the Gmail website to see if it is displayed correctly. This can be changed to any other website if necessary.

A click on the Start button will initiate the web proxy scan. Good proxies will be saved in the goodprox.txt file while bad proxies in the badprox.txt file.

Advanced users can tweak many different settings in the program from simultaneous threads over timeouts and retries to whitelist or blacklist specific countries, changing user agents and running a distribution web server.

Feature Overview of Free Web Proxy Checker

Check SOCKS4/SOCKS5/HTTP/HTTPS proxies with and without authentication.
Format of proxies with authentication: proxy_user:proxy_pass@proxy_host:proxy_port.
Format of proxies without authentication: proxy_host:proxy_port
Check for connect to the specified host:port.
Check for URL.
Load and combine proxies without checking.
Multithreaded.
Handle redirects.
Download proxy lists from the web.
Customizable User Agent.
Customizable HTTP Headers (Accept, Accept-Encoding).
Built-in proxy distribution web server.
Proxy country detection.
RBL (DNSBL) check.

Free Web Proxy Checker can be directly downloaded from the developer’s website

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