Post useful programs/utilities that are not just eye candy but are actually useful for some applicable task.

Try to avoid obvious ones such as Media Player Classic.

To start the ball rolling, an excellent music player that automatically fades the end of tracks into the next - good for casual listening or small discos. You can download Apollo here.



As you can see, the interface is not necessarily the prettiest thing in the world, but all the important information is displayed in a clear manner. The sound reproduction is also very good, the program aims to decode mp3s at the highest quality possible (for any given bitrate of course). However, you can read more of its function on the about page of the website.

I like foobar better. The interface is as simple but it has a way bigger community and plugin support.

ZScreen: http://code.google.com/p/zscreen/
This is pretty much the most useful program you'll have on your computer. Ask strager~
It let's you do a shitload of stuff, such as press a key to take, save and upload a screenshot (entire screen, window or cropshot), and it puts the url in your clipboard in less than 5 seconds. Same for files (file hosting sites), and blocks of text (text pasting sites). There's a huge lists of hosts you can use for any of these features, and it's all very customizable.
It also has other features such as text translation, on-screen color picker, etc.


AMIP: http://amip.tools-for.net/wiki/amip/download
It's a plugin that works with winamp, foobar, itunes, and most popular media players

There's two features of it I mainly use (there are couple others too but I don't really use them)
One let's you do this:
Now Playing: 13862. 16bit - Skyline [MP3-320kbps] (00:37 of 05:17)
you can customize it to display any information you want.

And it also has quickjump. You pretty much hit your hotkey and it opens this window:
And you can type anything and it will instant update the list


Launchy: http://www.launchy.net/
Just like quicksilver for Macs, this let's you type the name of any program and open it.
You can get rid of all your desktop icons or any other launcher you have. You can pretty much launch everything just by typing it's name. It takes a lot of getting used to, because you'll often go to your desktop, but once it becomes a habbit, this is amazing.


As an extra, I'd like to add notepad++, but not so much for the program itself.
It has couple features that have a lot of potential if you know how to use it correctly.
One of them is the macro record button. You can do something once and let n++ repeat it as many times as you want for you.
Also, Find & Replace supports Regex, which is extremely powerful when you know how to use it.
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/regExpList.php
Quickly read through these examples if you want to see what it could be used for:
http://markantoniou.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... sions.html

Switch Sound Converter is probably the best audio converter that I've used, and it's free:
http://www.nch.com.au/switch/



It'll handle virtually any audio format and spit out any other format with little hassle. There is an upgraded version, though this is entirely optional, and it doesn't constantly remind you of how awesome the upgraded version is and why you should buy it. In other words, it's a nice little program for quickly converting any audio files that works quite well.

Subject should probably include an operating system else this could get a bit mixed up. Let's assume windows. This is my standard loadout i always keep on a flash drive in my pocket:

[google:05285]Bitvise Tunnelier[/google:05285] - similar to winscp but more reliable and using ssh performance patches for high-latency network transfers.
[google:05285]CCleaner[/google:05285] - the first app to run on any pc i encounter that isn't my own, to bring it into a state of order.
[google:05285]clamwin[/google:05285] - open source on-demand virus scanner. no resident process.
[google:05285]HeidiSQL[/google:05285] - best mysql client for windows by far.
[google:05285]Intype[/google:05285] - simple and small text editor (still in some early alpha stage, but haven't found anything this clean/usable for windows yet).
[google:05285]Opera[/google:05285] - web browser, mail client, rss reader, irc client, usenet client in under 10mb.
[google:05285]putty[/google:05285] - high performance low bulk terminal emulator
[google:05285]µTorrent[/google:05285] - the only torrent client you should ever be considering.
+1 for foobar

[google:05285]Google Picasa[/google:05285] - don't use it for library management, but has the best image viewer i've seen to date. kicks windows preview in the ass.

+1 for CCleaner
I'd said Daemon Tools for mounting .iso files and the like.
ImgBurn for burning CD's.

Randy96 wrote:

I'd said Daemon Tools for mounting .iso files and the like.

Daemon appears to be incompatible in terms of shell integration on my X58 based system. For this I prefer Virtual CloneDrive.

peppy wrote:

[google:0c6ae]Google Picasa[/google:0c6ae] - don't use it for library management, but has the best image viewer i've seen to date. kicks windows preview in the ass.

The most lightweight image viewer I've seen (and use) is

IrfanView: http://www.irfanview.com/
It is mainly known for it's batch conversion, which is useful and is filled with all kind of options.
It's very fast and supports all types of format, including FLVs and other stuff too. It also has plugins support if you want more features. Even has some very basic image editing tools. Oh and with all these features, you might think it's bloated, but I use it as default image viewer and it STILL opens faster than windows imageviewer.

Also, just like zscreen, it's filled with options for powerusers to tweak it and get it the way they want it to be

I love threads like this. <3 *downloads new programs since he is a supportergot and had never heard of them*

Credits to -SiN- who linked these two to me :3

links removed

And yeah, also cccleaner, daemontools, and foobar..

AllChars emulates the compose key as I love it in Linux.
Win2VNC is my weird VNC client which makes my laptop function as a portable second monitor.
PuTTY Tray is PuTTY with added features such as automatic URLification and put-in-system-tray stuff.
ImgBurn is the best ISO burner I've used.
grep and sed I couldn't live without.

I'll post more when I have time~

I just love MediaMonkey. I tried several mediaplayers, but this thing does everything!

+ 1 for Launchy (it's really useful and handy, it handles folders and files too) and Irfanview

Also:
Pidgin: most of you should know about it, it's a multi-protocol chat client. You can also log more than one account at once. (I hate Windows Live <.<)
MalAware: If you don't feel like having a whole malware scanner in your USB stick, this is cool: it runs a really quick scan to detect suspicious behaviour in the computer and tells you if there are any.
Aerosnap: If you're still using Windows XP/Vista, but you think that the Win7 Aerosnap is handy, just get this.
CDBurnerXP: if you want a simple and light application to burn CDs, this one works great.

EDIT: i forgot this one
Multiple Image Resizer .net: Useful tool to make quick edits (recompress, add borders...) to multiple images.

lots of good stuff here
+1 for:
foobar
PuTTY
Bitvise Tunnelier assuming it's even better than winscp
ImgBurn
CCleaner
ZScreen

Also I'd recommend:
Exact Audio Copy - cd ripping
dBpoweramp - my favorite audio converter
Virtual CloneDrive - it seems simpler than daemon tools and i like it better

Utilities:
Sandboxie - Runs target program in a shell; I use it as a complete virus/malware scanner replacement along with IDA pro.
Wippien - Free hamachi alternative which is IM-based.
Windows Ultimate Boot CD - Great for opening registry hives externally.
Process Explorer - beats taskmanager.
Autoruns - Shows what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login.

Development utilities:
Kdiff3 - My favorite file comparer.
APIMonitor - Monitor api calls from any dll from any program with good filter support.
Resharper - for c# programmers.
CodeRush - for c++ programmers.

You see, the only thing that bugs me with these threads is that it slowly turns into "yay let's post every single program we have" instead of obscure useful utilities.

Soon, people will be posting Firefox, Photoshop and other programs everyone knows and have
I did see couple great stuff from peppy, strager and intermezzo though.

SUPER - Converts videos and music to any format you could think of. The interface is terrible and getting to the download link is like going through a maze, but there aren't really any decent (free) alternatives out there.

ComicRack - I've seen too many faggots read comics/manga in programs like Windows Photo Viewer. ComicRack lets you organize your comics into libraries, opens all kinds of archives without having to unpack them, and has lots of features to make reading comics on your PC as painless as possible.

KeePass Password Safe - Generates secure passwords and stores them in an encrypted database. It's open source, and fully portable. Don't forget to keep a backup of your database somewhere, though.

Mozilla Weave - Technically not a program, but still deserves mentioning. Encrypts your passwords, bookmarks etc. and uploads them to Mozilla's servers (or your own, if you'd prefer that). Keeps your Firefox/Fennec installations perfectly synced on various computers and operating systems, and you'll never have to worry about losing/reentering your passwords. Probably the best Firefox add-on out there next to Adblock Plus.

Loginer wrote:

KeePass Password Safe - Generates secure passwords and stores them in an encrypted database. It's open source, and fully portable. Don't forget to keep a backup of your database somewhere, though.

Use a passphrase.

Intermezzo wrote:

Resharper - for c# programmers.

<3 refactoring with Resharper.

For people who read a lot of webcomics:
Comical:
http://lifehacker.com/5473655/comical-d ... onvenience

I honestly love LH's hive fives, here's the one for password security
http://lifehacker.com/5042616/five-best ... d-managers

And yes, I love weave. Back in 0.3-0.5, it had a lot of issues, but it seems to be runnings almost perfectly now.

strager wrote:

Loginer wrote:

KeePass Password Safe - Generates secure passwords and stores them in an encrypted database. It's open source, and fully portable. Don't forget to keep a backup of your database somewhere, though.

Use a passphrase.

Simply using a long password isn't sufficient, you also need to use different passwords on different sites to be safe (don't tell me it's a non-issue; my dad had his password phished a few months ago, and lost his Gmail account, accounts on various poker sites and $200. Took a week to reclaim everything). Small variations like "verylongpasswordosu" and "verylongpasswordebay" won't pose any significant hinder to potential attackers, especially not if there's money involved.

You could try to memorize tons of unique passphrases for different sites, but why bother when you can let KeePass take care of it, and give you passwords with better entropy to boot? Besides, combine KeePass with Weave and you won't even have to worry about bringing the program with you.

/me steals lolginer's flash drives.

Are you fucking serious? You need a password to open the database, I thought that much was self-explanatory.

And just for the record, I don't actually have it on a flash drive myself.

strager wrote:

/me steals lolginer's flash drives.

Even there, you'd still need another password to open the program.
And I'm not sure if it was this program, but I remember one that would delete the database if you missed the password x number of time. Of course, you'd have a backup of that database somewhere safe.


Here's couple more, for downloading/updating programs.

Ninite: http://ninite.com/
Great for when you install a fresh windows, to download and install all you're main application quickly.
It has a great list which keeps getting updated (you can suggest stuff too).

ZeuApp: http://blog.zeusoft.net/zeuapp
Similar to the previous one, this one is a portal application filled with Opensource application download link.
Good to have on your flashdrive for when you setup friends computers. Also has an amazing list of applications.

FileHippo Update Checker: http://www.filehippo.com/updatechecker/
I like running this every once in a while. Checks the version of all the programs you have installed and compares it to their own database and let's you download the newer versions of the apps you need.

Honestly though, more programs need seemless automatic updates, like osu! or steam. Doesn't seem like that hard of a thing to implement.