MaximumPC 2006 04

APRIL 2006 MA XIMUMPC 35

Softy

Awards

Softy

Awards

WinDirStat

Install this utility and you’ll never need

Windows Explorer again

Ever wonder what exactly consumes all that

space on your hard drives? Don’t bother

launching Windows Explorer—you’ll only fi nd

frustration as you repeatedly expand and

collapse one directory after the next. Install

WinDirStat instead. This awesome utility will

read your entire directory tree and present its

fi ndings in three supremely useful views: a

directory list, an extension list, and the most

revealing of all—a treemap.

In the treemap view, each directory is

represented by a cluster of colored rectangles

proportionate to the space on the disk those

directories consume. Smaller rectangles

within the larger ones represent individual

fi les. Large fi les and directories jump out at

you instantly.

It took WinDirStat all of 30 seconds to reveal that temporary Internet files—

nearly all of them WMA files—are wasting 4.3GB of space on this hard drive.

Steganos LockNote

Free, secure, and damned-easy to use

Encryption is only effective when it actually gets used. And to get used,

you have to make it easy. Folks, it doesn’t get any easier than Steganos’

LockNote. LockNote, a kind of encrypted Notepad -analog, let’s you eas-

ily create text notes that are protected with 256-bit AES encryption. With a

strong password, you’d need a stadium full of Opterons and years to crack

the security. The app itself doesn’t even need to be installed, simply clicking

on the .exe opens a Notepad- like interface. You can also drag your existing

Notepad fi les onto the app and LockNote will create a new encrypted fi le from it. We’re already stor-

ing our enemies list in a LockNote fi le at work, knowing that our HR department can’t get at it.

Keep your secret notes a secret with Steganos’ free

LockNote!

Videora Conversion Tools

These video-transcoding tools are both brilliant and effortless

We’ve encountered numerous tools for video transcoding, but

none that are more complete or easier to use than the one-

two punch of Videora and Videora Converter. The developers

call their concept ITVCasting: Use Videora 2.0 and its built-in

BitTorrent client to fi nd and download video from the Internet,

and then load these fi les—or any other video clips stored on

your hard drive—into Videora Converter. The program will

then transcode them to the appropriate format and automati-

cally transfer them to an attached player. Converters are avail-

able for the Xbox 360, Tivo, PSP, and Video iPod. It works

with RSS feeds, too.

Although its default profiles work great, Videora Converter

gives you absolute control over every aspect of the video-

transcoding process.

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