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Hide Folders – Free Software to Hide Sensitive Data

vtech — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:29:15 +0000

Previously, I wrote about how-to tutorial on locking files and folders in USB stick. This post is in a way related but it's more on the folders and files on our computer instead of on removable drives.

Hide Folders is a useful application when it comes to hiding folders with sensitive data. By hiding folders using this application, the affected files is nowhere to be seen. It cannot be accessed, searched, viewed or even deleted.

If you try to add folder which has system files, it will generate a warning that notifies protecting these folders could be dangerous. This application, however, is not supported on FAT32 and also on home editions of Windows.

Hide Folders List of Features:

Works perfectly on Windows XP and Vista
Supports FAT32, NTFS and FAT file system
Securely hide folders with your sensitive data
Password protection - folders can be unhidden only if the right password is keyed in
Unlimited number of folders can be hidden
Hidden folders can not be uncovered by deinstalling the program
Folders are hidden even in Windows safe mode
Intuitive interface
Fast loading and user-friendly application

Download Link

Hide Folders

[tags]Hide Folders, hide files, freeware, windows xp, windows vista, hide sensitive data [/tags]

Lock, Hide and Encrypt Folders and Files in USB Sticks

vtech — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:20:11 +0000

USB stick is no doubt a little piece of item yet enormously important in term of our productivity in the digital age. It is getting cheaper and cheaper while its capacity is inversely proportional. Because of its small size, we always carry the USB stick along wherever we go especially in office. There is however one thing that has been our primary concern ever since it was first introduced; data protection.

We sure have some sensitive documents or private data that are not meant for anybody else. So what happen when the USB drive slips out pocket or perhaps we have misplaced it somewhere? We need to make sure that our data are safely protected.

SafeHouse Explorer allows us to protect our sensitive data from being seen when it falls in the wrong hand. It protects data on removable drives, portable media, memory cards and even iPod by hiding, locking and encrypting them. It means, your documents, spreadsheets, photos, videos are completely protected!

It's very easy to use it. Simply drag and drop files in the application and it will hide, encrypt or lock the file and of course it comes with several configurations for us to choose from.

You may ask, how is strong is the encryption and how good the protection system is? Rest assured, your data are in safe protection, thanks to the strong 128-bit advanced encryption used in SafeHouse Explorer.

No installation needed, you run it right away from your USB stick. SafeHouse Explorer is indeed a very good tool for hiding and encrypting data from others.

Download Link

Download SafeHouse Explorer

[tags]free utilities, lock USB files, hide USB files, encrypt USB folder, freeware, free application[/tags]

BootRacer – Check Your Windows Startup Speed

vtech — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:53:00 +0000

I stumbled upon a small Windows utility that allows you to check Windows startup speed. Well, it doesn't improve anything but it tells you how good your Windows loading is. Basically you just get BootRacer installed on your computer and click on the Race It button when the main window appears. Set up your options and restart your computer.

Your computer performance is great if the boot time is less than one minute. BootRacer will install itself as a service and will start checking the processor load during startup and will stop when it detects low activity on the computer.

BootRacer features include:

Easy to install and to use
Able to detect Time to Logon and Total Time to Desktop
Checks your boot speed at every boot automatically
Logs all results to own event log. You can check events using Windows Event Viewer
Uses minimum of your computer resources
Free for non-commercial use
Calculates the Best Boot Time

If you don't have standard Windows shell, BootRacer might end up displaying boot time inaccurately.

Download Links

BootRacer

Erase Data Permanently Off Computer with Hard Drive Eraser

vtech — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 12:14:32 +0000

Do you think when you empty the Recycle Bin, everything is gone for good? Well that is not necessarily the case. When you delete data from hard drive, only references related to the data are removed, the data still reside in your hard disk ready to be retrieved by several applications which capable of performing this particular task.

If you have sensitive data that you don't want others to look at or to try digging deep inside your computer, Hard Drive Eraser can really save your day. It is a free program, purposely built to completely remove data from the hard drive partitions.

Hard drive Eraser works both in Windows XP and Windows Vista operating system; supports FAT32, NTFS and FAT file systems. It is capable of erasing the whole physical hard drives or individual partitions, of course except the primary partition. Basically, it overwrites the data with junk binary data making it impossible to recover the original data from the hard drive.

Technically, Hard Drive Eraser uses four algorithms to erase the data, the first one just writes zeros and is the simplest among the four. The second “DOD 5220-22.M” is the default one which overwrites data in three phases with random values. Third one complies with the US Army specification for deletion and the last one Peter Guttman method which overwrites data in 35 passes (much slow slower though).

Hard Drive Eraser is a free program (did I mention it?) for Windows XP and Vista licensed under GPL,

Download Link

[tags]Freeware, hard drive eraser[/tags]

Convert and View Image for FREE with XnView

vtech — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:22:28 +0000

When we talk about software they can always be categorized into 3 types; first that shows great potential, second that are already great and final one that are just hopeless. XnView belongs to second category which means it is really amazing!

XnView is a freeware that allows you to convert and view graphical files (pictures). It supports of more than 400 file formats and it also provides basic photo editing options like crop, watermark, color etc.

Screenshots

Some of the Features

It supports 400 formats of files
Explorer-like feature for searching images
User friendly GUI
Rename batches of files
Slideshow with effects
supports 44 languages
Support most of Operating Systems (i.e. Windows, Mac OS X, Linux open-source OS)
Special effects like blur and adjust colors

The best part is it offers a lot more than you can expect in just 5 MB did I mention previously, it is completely free to use. If you use slow computer you can still enjoy it as it doesn't hog you system resources

XnView - Download Here

Flickr Downloader: Download Bulk Images Quickly From Flickr

vtech — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 11:26:10 +0000

Flickr is definitely the best online photo management and sharing application on the net; allowing people to upload, edit, manage, map and even keep in touch with friends and family. While it seems to give the best features to maximize our great experiences in its website, it lacks of 1 feature that we occasionally look for; Bulk Images Download.

While it must be a good reason why it keeps the feature from being implemented (we know that!), people start to find alternatives to grab all the pictures all at once.

Flickr Downloader is an amazing free software that allows you to download series of photos from Flickr easily. You can download photos by Flickr username, group name or tags on the fly by using this little software. It even lets you create your own slideshows from the images that can be used on a website or as a screensaver. So no more whining!

[tags]flickr application, flickr downloader, download bulk images[/tags]

Wikipedia is now available offline in DVD

vtech — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:41:50 +0000

Wikipedia is one of the top most visited websites when it comes to finding facts or things that we are not familiar with. Whether you work on you assignment or finding additional materials for your presentation, Wikipedia seems to be a must destination to these people. It is safe to say virtually everything that comes up in our mind can be discovered by browsing through the large repository of information in Wikipedia.

Wouldn't it be nice if these information can be made to be available offline? So no more hassles of getting our computers connected to internet especially to those who live in remote areas with dial up connection.

The Wikimedia Foundation has taken great initiative to release an offline Wikipedia for Schools selection which carries articles on more than 5500 topics which can be burned to a DVD for offline reading.

Please note that the ‘Wikipedia for Schools’ version is only recommended for students of age 7 to 18 as it contains topics relevant to their education. We hope to see more versions of "offline wikipedia" targeted at different group of people and background of education.

Anyway, Wikipedia for Schools which is roughly 3GB in size can be downloaded via BitTorrent.

[tags]offline wikipedia, DVD[/tags]