UltraExplorer Manages Your Files On the Go

Windows only: Windows Explorer alternative UltraExplorer offers dual pane and tabbed browsing, plus a handy "Drop Stack" staging area where you can drag files to temporarily park them, for easy batch operations. Command line lovers will like the Command Line box at the bottom of the UltraExplorer window; you can even set the command prompt to stay synced to whatever folder you are browsing. You can make UltraExplorer portable after its initial installation, too--copy the files from the /APPS/ directory in the installation folder to your USB drive to do so. For other file management options check out our Five Best Alternative File Managers. UltraExplorer is a free download for Windows only.

UltraExplorer [via The Portable Freeware Collection]

Explorer++ Improves On Windows Explorer

Windows only: Alpha file manager Explorer++ is a promising free alternative to Windows Explorer that offers features it sorely lacks, like tabbed browsing, secure file deletion, file merging and splitting, instant command line access, and keyboard shortcuts. Explorer++ is still in alpha and may not be ready for full-time use the way Xplorer 2 is, but it's still a simple, functional, and free app worth keeping an eye on. If you're sick of Windows Explorer's paucity of features, shareware TotalCommander is our readers' pick for best alternative file manager; you can also power up Windows Explorer itself with free add-ons. Explorer++ is a free download for Windows only.

Explorer++ [via gHacks]

Replace Windows Explorer with Xplorer2

Let's face it: for advanced file manipulation, Windows File Explorer stinks. But like Firefox is a must-have replacement for Internet Explorer, a file manager called Xplorer2 blows Windows Explorer out of the water for anyone who browses multiple folders, copies, pastes, moves and searches the PC filesystem frequently.

Using Xplorer2's tabbed, dual pane interface, keyboard shortcuts and killer advanced features, you're in total control of your PC's files. Let's take a look.

Download and install Xplorer2

The "lite" version of Xplorer2 has a few features disabled, but it's far from limited; it's free for personal or academic use. A license for the pro version costs a reasonable $30, and there's a full 30-day trial to check out pro features. For the purposes of this article, we'll stick to the free Xplorer Lite (where locked "pro" features are denoted by a "[P]" in the menus.)

Download Xplorer2 Lite from here and launch it. The self-contained program is even thumb drive-friendly.

Triple threat interface

First thing you'll notice off the bat is that Xplorer2 displays file listings from two folders at once in one window. This makes a lot of sense, since a lot of the time you're copy or moving files between folders. Also, in the far left pane, there's an easy-to-navigate directory tree of your computer, as shown (click to enlarge).

To quickly switch between the two open folder panes, hit the Tab key. The active pane will have a white background, the inactive will be in beige. To turn on or off the directory tree pane, from the View menu, check or uncheck "Show Tree."

Tabbed Exploring

If the dual pane view wasn't enough, you can also open up sets of folders you work with frequently in tabs. From the File menu, choose "New Tab" or simply hit Ctrl+Ins to open a new tab. Move between tabs with your keyboard with Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right arrow.

You can even rename a tab for easy visual reference. Just right-click on it and choose rename.

Bookmark folders and files

Much like Firefox, in Xplorer2 you can bookmark folders and assign keywords to open them quickly. To add a folder you frequent to your bookmarks, from the Bookmarks menu choose "Add Current." To organize your bookmarks, hit the "Organize" Bookmarks menu item, which will bring up something like this:

To bookmark a file, add its name to the end of the bookmark path. Then, when the bookmark is chosen, the folder will open with that particular file selected. (For instance, when I hit my "todo" bookmark, todo.txt is selected and I can hit Enter to open it.)

FTP folders

The eagle-eyed will notice an FTP server in my bookmarks, pictured above. You can open folders on a remote server via FTP in Xplorer2, which makes copying files back and forth from your web or home server inside the tabbed interface a snap.

Security alert: Xplorer2 only supports plain FTP (not encrypted), and you're required to put your password in the bookmark itself. The format is ftp://you:password@yourserver.com. This isn't the most secure way to FTP, so proceed with caution.

Filter your files

Xplorer2 makes it dead easy to work with sets of files. You can use a filter to select all the files that start with G or end in .png. Simply type your filter into Xplorer2's address bar (like "*.txt") or from the Mark menu, choose "Select Group." From there you can copy, move or otherwise manipulate the set of files.

Keyboard shortcuts

Xplorer2 has a very extensive set of mature keyboard shortcuts. First, it's got incremental search and select for a directory listing. Just type the first few letters of a file or folder name and Xplorer2 will instantly move down and select it in the list. Hold down the shift key to do incremental search by file extension (like Shift+tx will take you to the first .txt file in the list.)

To copy files between open folders, use F5. To navigate to a particular drive letter, use Ctrl+Shift+Letter (like Ctrl+Shift+C) to go the drive's root.

Lifehacker reader Ludwig summarized his favorite Xplorer2 keyboard shortcuts in a grid that makes a nice cheat sheet.

Split and merge files

If you've got a multi-gigabyte file - like a video or disk image - you want to transport on a series of smaller capacity CD-R's or thumb drives, Xplorer2 can split the file into small parts and reassemble them later. To do so, from the Actions menu choose "Split" and select the file part sizes. To put the file back together, select all the parts (make sure they're sorted by name so they're in the right join order!) and from the Actions menu, choose Join.

RTFM

We've barely scratched the surface of what Xplorer2 can do here, so if you're looking for ways to streamline common file manipulation actions you have to do on a regular basis, be sure to give the Xplorer2 manual a look-see, which is available as a separate download.

Alternatives to Xplorer2

Finally, Xplorer2 might not be everyone's cup of tea. Lifehacker readers have also recommended UltraExplorer, TotalCommander and CubicExplorer for replacing Windows Explorer.

What are your biggest Explorer gripes, or Xplorer2 tricks? Tell the world in the comments. —Gina Trapani

USniff Offers Fast, Multi-Site Torrent Searches

If you're after torrent downloads, chances are you're searching Piratebay, IsoHunt, Mininova, and possibly a few others. Why not save yourself time and effort and search them all in one place?

USniff provides a nicely styled web 2.0 interface for multi-site torrent searches and allows you to query up to eight sites simultaneously. Results load extremely quickly, and I was pleased to see that they sort by number of seeds by default.

It's ajax, so filtering and re-sorting your results is almost instant. The design is totally clean so far, there's not even a single banner ad in sight. You'll still have to click through to the actual tracker, of course, to grab the actual torrents. USniff doesn't host anything...blah blah blah...insert usual torrent search engine disclaimer here.

For anyone looking for multiple options to download that new Ubuntu release (since you're all using torrents for purely legal downloads, of course!), take a gander at USniff.

Quick Media Converter converts media... quickly

Quick Media Converter is a Windows utility that will let you convert practically any audio or video file from one format to another. MPEG to H.264? No problem. WAV to OGG? Sure, why not.

Now let's get something out of the way here. Quick Media Converter is basically just a fancy front end for the open source, command line FFmpeg media encoder. But it's a really useful front end. The utility offers you two interfaces: an easy mode and an expert mode. In easy mode, you can choose from a number of predefiined formats. So just select the media files you want to convert, and click the Audio, Quicktime, WMV, DiVX, Xbox, PS3, or Wii button to create a file optimized for your system of choice.

In Expert mode, you have much more control over the code choices and settings. For example, in easy mode, there's no way to convert a FLAC file to OGG. But you can do that in expert mode.

The program also includes a bundled copy of CamStudio for making screencapturs which you can then convert to other formats using Quick Media Converter. In a nutshell, Quick Media Converter doesn't do anything that MediaCoder doesn't. But if you're looking for an even easier to use alternative, this program might be worth a look.

Drive a robot in Australia over the web

BP Australia has commissioned an online game where you get to drive robots around an obstacle course. Make no mistake, these are real robots. Actually they are modified versions of the Surveyor SRV-1 vehicles that are popular with research labs, and schools everywhere.

Go to the website, get in queue and pray for no clouds. These babies are solar powered, so you'll have to try to get in while its day time in Australia. The entire set is built in miniature, so you feel like you're driving a tank around a city.

Replace your taskbar with tabs (and lose screen real estate)

Tabs are the greatest thing since sliced bread. Firefox, Opera, and even Internet Explorer allow you to open multiple browser windows without seeing thousands of icons in your taskbar. But have you ever wished you could use tabs for everything?

That's what WinTabber is for -- kind of. It doesn't let you add tabs to tab-free programs like your favorite photo editor or multimedia program. Instead, it lets you load applications into the WinTabber environment and navigate between applications as tabs.

In one way, this make sense. Most programs have toolbars located at the top of the screen. So that's where you spend the most time scrolling your mouse around. Why move to the bottom of the page to switch between applications? The problem is that WinTabber has a fairly hefty toolbar of its own. When you install it, you'll notice it eats up a sizeable chunk of space on your screen.

Of course, you could always just move your taskbar to the top of your screen to get a similar effect. Or you could use the default Gnome environment in Linux. WinTabber is Windows only.

Vyew My PC easy online desktop sharing for anyone

Vyew My PC is a flash-based instant desktop sharing product with a lot of fun features.

Basically, go to the Vyew My PC web page and click start sharing my desktop. You will be given a unique, unguessable URL. You can then share that URL with anyone you'd like to share your desktop with. There are some features you need an account to use, but the basics are usable by anyone.

You can upload files to be shown on the Vyew My PC desktop, use the whiteboard features, chat and with registration, use audio/video features. You cannot however, view anything outside the Vyew My PC desktop area. So, if you want to switch to a new window and show a web page you are viewing, it's not going to show up unless you take screenshots and present those.

It moves smoothly and all the features seem to work. Now, I didn't go in and have a full-fledged sales presentation to a CEO or anything but I did show a powerpoint to two of my friends who logged in from two seperate locations.

My main concern was about security. Showing a powerpoint to my friends is quite a bit different than important company information. So, this is what I found out; the packet data for your session is not encrypted but the URLs seem to be unique enough that someone wouldn't just stumble into your meeting without being invited. SSL encryption is not offered publicly but could be a possibility for some clients.


The privacy policy is similar to one you would find on Google Docs as far as information shared during meetings.

The application is not open source but it can be used for free and enterprises can can license the technology and run it on their own infrastructure.

The only negative? Other users could manipulate the information I was presenting by using some of the whiteboard tools. I suppose if you were sharing with more mature people that could be a positive because they could add information if needed.

Adeona: An open source laptop tracker

Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there's no need to rely on a single third party. What's more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner's choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.

Adeona is designed to use the Open Source OpenDHT distributed storage service to store location updates sent by a small software client installed on an owner's laptop. The client continually monitors the current location of the laptop, gathering information (such as IP addresses and local network topology) that can be used to identify its current location. The client then uses strong cryptographic mechanisms to not only encrypt the location data, but also ensure that the ciphertexts stored within OpenDHT are anonymous and unlinkable. At the same time, it is easy for an owner to retrieve location information.

Free file format conversion tool

Formats, formats, formats…. We're awash in multimedia content: images, audio, video. Do you have the right tools to deal with all of the different file formats? In other words, if you download "X", can you look at it, listen to it, or play it? How about putting it on your iPod, iPhone, or PSP? Not necessarily—you may need to convert that file to a different format.

Format Factory is a free media converter that can convert just about anything into just about anything else. Along with file conversions, the authors say that you can use this tool to repair broken audio and video files, as well as reducing their sizes. You can also tweak picture files, flipping and rotating images. Ripping DVDs for backup or archival purposes is supported too.

The authors are working to make this tool available to as many folks as possible. It is currently available in over a dozen languages, but if you're fluent in one that they haven't localized for yet, they're eager for you to give them a hand with that as well.

Format Factory is a Windows application.

Download Format Factory