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All My Apps: The Easy Way To Install Software on Your PC or Mac

Steven Finch — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:02:26 +0000

Allmyapps makes software installation a breeze. No matter how many applications you need, 1 click is all you need to have all your favorite applications installed on your PC. Allmyapps also keeps your applications safe! Would you need to reinstall your system, Allmyapps takes care of reinstalling all your favorite applications in the blink of an eye.

With Allmyapps, installing software applications has become so easy that you’ll soon find yourself installing a lot of great new applications! Be prepared to enjoy your computer like never before! Allmyapps provides some great application ideas that I have never even heard of, but I’m sure they can make me a lot more product, but on the other side there are a lot of time killers out there!

Blitter: Free Twitter Icons by Icon Shock

Steven Finch — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:05:10 +0000

The team over at Iconshock and HongKiat have released a new Twitter icon set called Blitter.

Download Blitter (256×256, 512×512), PNG format

Download Blitter source Ilustrator .AI format

Download Blitter full set (Icons + source)

Arthemia: Best Free Wordpress Magazine Style Theme

Dean Sherwin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:56:30 +0000

“Come on now Dean. Ryan was nice enough to share it with you. The least you can do is share it with the loyal Crenk readers!” – said the little angel on my shoulder.

“Feck ‘em! Sure can’t they find it themselves, boy? Arrr ark ark ark” said the little devil on my opposing shoulder. (For some reason he’s an Irish pirate). I flicked him away… I hate pirates.

Okay, so I’m going to share with you guys the great WP theme that a colleague of mine directed me to for my new blog. This theme incorporates the minimalistic feel while still having all the functionality of a highly strung WP theme packed with plug ins.

Her name is Arthemia.

As you can see from the screenshot below she’s a beaut. Great menu bar across the top, followed by a headline section with a scrolling ‘Featured’ slot to the right. Below this there is a categories bar with cool animation when you hover your cursor over a category.

Then, below all of this magic we have the posting area with a sidebar to the right. Amidst all of this there are two premium ad placements; one square in the sidebar and another to the right of the title.

It’s available for free (although there is a slightly pimped out premium version available) right here. Seriously, for any WP user who has been finding it difficult to locate the right theme for their blog that says “I don’t take myself too seriously, but my blog? That I do.” – it has to be Arthemia.

Let us know your thoughts and opinions about the theme in the comments!

Top Sites for Free eBooks

Steven Finch — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:21:06 +0000

eBooks are becoming more and more popular these days and Crenk just wanted to let you know the best places on the web to find eBooks.

eBook Search Engines

www.pdfgeni.com
www.pdf-search-engine.com
www.data-sheet.net

Scribd.com

Scribd is basically the YouTube of documents. They have a great library of free ebooks to choose from.

Free Ebooks For Your iPod, PDA, Smartphone, Blackberry etc.

www.gutenberg.org
www.manybooks.net
www.feedbooks.com
www.booksinmyphone.com

Free Tech eBooks

www.freecomputerbooks.com
www.freetechbooks.com

Free Old Bottle Crowns Icons Set

Steven Finch — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:39:01 +0000

Six Revisions presents to you a free icon set consisting of 20 social media icons such as Digg, Stumble Upon, Delicious, and Twitter called Old Bottle Crowns Icon Set created by Dawghouse Design Studio for you Six Revisions readers.

The theme is worn-and-torn, so it’ll look great on grunge, vintage, classic-themed web designs. This set contains 20 200px x 200px PNG files that you can easily resize and edit for your website design.

Download

Grab the Old Bottle Crowns Icon Set as a ZIP archive below.

old-bottle-crowns-icon-set.zip (ZIP, 2.3MB)

Licensing

The above works featured here are licensed under the Creative Commons license and can be used for personal and/or commercial purposes.

The Creative Commons license requires you to “attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor”. Our attribution specification: you don’t need to attribute the work to us (though you’re more then welcome to, and we will definitely appreciate it).

How to Download from Megavideo

Dean Sherwin — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:29:36 +0000

Many sites such as MegaVideo, Vreel and other offer the ability to watch some of our favourite TV shows and Movies. However, does that time limit put in place by Megavideo bother you? Or how about just wanting to watch it on your iPod? So why not download the videos? Oh yeah, they charge you for that.

Well, here at Crenk we have a quick, easy and FREE way to download videos from sites like Megavideo.

1. Get the video’s URL. Most players offer this next to the embed code for the video etc… or in the address bar in the browser. In Megavideo it’s one of the options along the bottom of the screen.

2. Go to www.clipnabber.com .

3. Enter the space provided at Clip Nabber. Press ‘Nab It!”

4. Then (required for Megavideo only), go back to the video page and right click outside of the video and view the page’s source. Or, click edit in the Browser’s menu and select to view it there. Select all of the code and paste it into the HTML box that appeared in ClipNabber.

5. Press ‘Nab It!” again.

6. Click on the link to download the video.

Now chances are that Clip Nabber has given you a .FLV video which can only be played in Real Player. To convert this into an .mp4 or .avi, use this video converter.

Now you can put the video on your iPod.

AVG Version 9: Free AntiVirus Coming October 15th

Steven Finch — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:37:28 +0000

AVG 9 is nearly here! AVG 9 antivirus is coming on October the 15th with great enhancements such as speed, performance and it also minimizes the impact on your system resources.

The new AVG is install process has been streamlined, with developers reducing the number of tedious, finger-numbing mouse clicks from 22 to 11.

Grisoft says scanning speeds have been increased by as much as 50% and that version 9 also reduces Windows boot lag by 10 to 15%. The firewall is more intuitive and has been made less intrusive — another small but welcome change.

The paid versions are available now through the AVG web site, and we’ve been told that the much-loved free version will be good to go in ten days.

If you’re a believer in free antivirus, your preferred version will be up for grabs on October 15th. Keep your browser tuned to free.avg.com — that’s where the download will appear when it goes live.

Fast, Simple and Free: New Google Chrome Themes from Artists

Steven Finch — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:57:18 +0000

Nearly exactly a month after launch Google has announced more cool themes for Chrome. This release is based upon prominent artists which include Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Karim Rashid, Jonathan Adler, Oscar de la Renta, Anita Kunz, Tom Sachs, Kate Spade, Donna Karan, Kid Robot, Casey Reas, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Graves, Todd Oldham, Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Mariah Carey (and that’s just to name a few!).

For a behind-the-scenes look at one illustrator’s unique creative process, check out the Google Chrome Blog. And for a preview of these themes, here’s a video flipbook we’ve compiled to showcase some of the artistry behind this project:

My favourite:

iCyte – Capture Web Pages and Store Them Online

Dean Sherwin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:30:20 +0000

iCyte is a tool that allows you to capture web pages and highlight text on them and then save them to your account. It comes in the form of an ad-on for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox and it is available here.

It works by saving the webpage and its formatting into a file (or Cyte) which you can then add tags and notes too. When you need to retrieve the file you can open up iCyte in the sidebar of your browser and see all of the Cytes you’ve stored so far.

I found this tool to be especially useful for research and taking notes without printing off dozens of pages. The ability to separate your Cytes into different ‘projects’ makes it easy to use, as does the search function.

For anyone who engages in high amounts of research or just likes a little bit of order among their saved web pages – Cyte is for you.

TeamViewer – Free Remote Access to Computers

Dean Sherwin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:18:45 +0000

One of the most common problems for customer support agents who take calls from customers with malfunctioning computers is not actually the technical problem, but the person who is complaining about it. The fact is that the person who rings customer support for advice will not be a technical expert and as such it will be difficult to guide them through the process of fixing the problem.

Team Viewer is a new piece of software that allows customer support to cut out the middle man completely. Basically, it allows customer support agents access to a customer’s computer to fix any problem. Not only this, but it’s incredibly easy to use. I tested it using my laptop and an older laptop that I have lying around for such tests like when I reviewed the first ever Warcraft game on WireNinja. I found it really easy to gain access with the installation only taking five minutes. Also, the customer’s computer (i.e. my old laptop) didn’t need to download any software; I just had to accept a small .exe file.

All you need is the users IP address and once you exchange an auto-generated password to allow access to the computer then you’ll have access to their machine via a window half the scale of theirs monitor. It looks just like it does on their end as you can see from the screenshot. Using this screen, you can easily fix a problem with little or no need to consult with the customer.

This program has other applications such as for office workers who need remote access to their computer. However, its main function is for customer support.

What’s more is it’s free and is available here.

Swaggle: Send Group Text Messages with Predefined Groups

Dean Sherwin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:46:18 +0000

Despite all the apps, iPhones, e-mail, IM etc… The best way to organise something is with a text. Why? Because not everyone is on call at the same time or checks their e-mails regularly. But they do have their mobile phone with them 95% of the time. So, a group message it is. Say you want to organise a get together with friends, or an office party simply send them all a quick text using Swaggle.

Swaggle is an online service that lets you send pre defined groups text messages. You can have as many groups as you like and sending them all texts is free. All you have to do is log into Swaggle.mobi and select which group you want to contact; family, gym, work, school, friends etc…

This is way handier than doing it on your mobile where it will cost you and take a long time to select the desired contacts in your phonebook; especially if there are over ten people working in your office!

Twitter Logos: Free Twitter Badges, Logos and Images for your Site or Blog

Dean Sherwin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:53:48 +0000

Many of us have blogs, websites or at least a profile or two on a few social networking sites, right? And many of us are also on twitter. So instead of just posting a link saying “hey, follow me”, you could have a cool, professional looking twitter logo or cartoon for people to click on to go to your Twitter profile.

TwitterLogos.com is a collection of free twitter logos submitted by hundreds of graphic designers for our disposal. On the homepage you can see all the latest posts. Most of them are really good. You have the well-known chubby bird but I also found some new faces…or beaks such as a kind of pelican bird, a cheerleading bird and randomly enough, a can of twitter beer.

When you have found the series that you like, simply click on it and download the file. There will be instructions on how to use the Twitter badges in the .zip file.

These are easy to insert into blogging platforms such as Wordpress or into text for a profile on Facebook, MySpace etc…

Mac OS X Server v 10.6 Snow Leopard Available as Free Trial Direct from Apple

Steven Finch — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:25:01 +0000

Apple is currently offering corporations Mac OS X Server v.10.6 “Snow Leopard” for a free trial.

Mac OS X Server v.10.6 “Snow Leopard” has everything you need to deliver standards-based workgroup and Internet services, providing an ideal solution for education, small businesses, and large enterprises. The amazing features in Snow Leopard Server make it easy to share contacts and calendars, collaborate on projects, access information remotely, create and distribute podcasts, and more.

Snow Leopard Server offers countless behind-the-scenes features, which greatly reduce IT time and effort, improve compatibility in mixed environments, enhance support for iPhone and iPod touch users, and boost the already robust security of Mac OS X Server. With a full 64-bit operating system, Mac OS X Server is designed to maximize the computing potential of today’s Xserve and Mac Pro systems and dramatically increases the total number of simultaneous system processes, threads, and network connections that the server can utilize. Designed to handle the most demanding server operations, Snow Leopard Server is up to twice as fast as its predecessor.

All you need to do to receive your copy is fill out the form located here. You must be a USA citizen however.

Voddler: Free Movies and TV Streaming Service

Steven Finch — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:36:55 +0000

Voddler is a new video startup that launch back in private beta back in July 2009. Currently it is rumoured that only 1,500 people have access to the site, so we wanted to run through the service for everyone else.

Voddler won’t be launched officially until sometime this fall, and then only in the Nordic countries for starters. The agenda is to go global, though.

Voddler aims to do for movies and TV series what Spotify is doing for music. Although in private beta Voddler already seems to be getting a lot of buzz in Scandinavia, so we hope to let everyone else know about it.

Voddler is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, Voddler will also be providing a Linux-based box with a pre-installed client that you can easily connect to your TV to get that home cinema feel.

Here below is a screenshot of the latest design of the landing page, designed to work best on widescreen televisions.

Movies are of course a lot more bandwidth-intensive than music. How well Voddler works for you will depend on your Internet connection. To get 1080p HD quality you should have an 8 Mbit/s connection, for 720p HD quality you should have a 5 Mbit/s connection, and for DVD quality you should have a 2.5 Mbit/s connection. Contrast this with Spotify which only has to deal with music streaming and therefore works just fine with a mere 256 kbit/s connection.

Picok: Create Your Own Personalised Start Page from This Open Source Software

Steven Finch — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:24:27 +0000

Picok stands for Personal Information Cockpit. It’s an open source software package, aimed at enabling users to build their personal information dashboards. The interface is very similar to Netvibes and Pageflakes, in which allows users to loaded their own content into small draggable boxes.

There are a quite few standard portlets shipped with Picok, but since it is an open system, maintainers of picok installations can easily create portlets of their own.

Picok is written in PHP 5, uses the Yahoo User Interface Library and Zend Framework Components and supports MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM Lotus Notes and is ready to be integrated into your corporate intranet, website or community platform as well.

If you want to see a screenshot of Picok you can check it out here.

BlueVoda : A Great Website Builder for FREE

Dean — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:07:22 +0000

Ever fancied building a website but wouldn’t know the first thing about design or hosting. Now, there is a FREE website tool that will allow you to do it – BlueVoda. I downloaded BlueVoda expecting another knockoff that the minute you start it up it will be asking for your credit card number so you can upgrade or only giving you access to some of the features – I was wrong.

You get the whole shebang for free. The file itself is only 4Mb and you’ll have it installed and started up in under twenty minutes. Within an 20 minutes of using the software I had a homepage made up with a video player, banner, text and images all working well together.

It’s incredibly simple to use. All the tools are along the top and to the left. If you want to say… insert a flash application all you do is click on the button with the ‘flash’ icon, select where on the webpage you want it to be, adjust the size and then just click to position it there. What’s more, everything is interchangeable. When building a small website to try out the software, I felt more like I was playing with Lego blocks because you can just drag and drop things until you have it looking the way to want it to.

Other features include inserting in-line frames, galleries, lines, page breaks, Windows Media Players and literally hundreds of other features.

Then, all you do is copy and paste the HTML to your server, upload the files you used like images etc… and you’re up and running! There are tons of articles on the BlueVoda website to show you how to use the software and how to get your site on the internet.

For anyone looking to build a basic personal or business website this is the one for you. It’s simple to use, fast, effective and free. I can hardly think of a bad aspect (except maybe those annoying monthly e-mails you get from BlueVoda asking if everything is going okay or do you need hosting services). 8/10

Seat Hound – Ticket Price Comparison Site

Dean — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:25:34 +0000

Ever been dying to go to a concert, football match or F1 Grand Prix but the most plausible thing happened and you went to buy the tickets two seconds too late. Despair and anger (mostly towards yourself). The only chance you stand now is going on a mission to hunt down someone who has tickets (that may or may not be genuine) and pay two weeks wages for them.

Fear not – seathound.com has the answer. It’s a pretty basic idea and that’s why I love it. Ask any businessman/entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that tackling everyday, well-known problems is the way to make millions in this world.

Seat Hound will locate dozens of tickets for sale. Some are on eBay, others are on independent ticket sales sites – but who cares where you get them? The point is that you’re going!

I typed in ‘U2’ to check it out. I was greeted by dozens of search results from their upcoming gig in Croke Park here in Dublin to events as far away as October in Phoenix. The guys at Seat Hound have clearly done their work. Even small artists that you wouldn’t hear of everyday are listed. This is a great service that I fully intend to use – a lot!

It also saves you money as it displays the ticket prices right next to one another so you can get the best one. Seat Hound will also be so kind as to tell you where the ticket is in relation to the stage, pitch or track etc…. so you won’t need to bring the binoculars.

One bad thing that I will say about it however (and I really am nit picking here) is that it is US focused. While you can still find gigs all over the world – the homepage is dominated by the stripes and the stars. A UK or European version wouldn’t go amiss. 9/10

CancelAds: Subscribe to Blogs and Sites to Get Them Ad-Free

Steven Finch — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 11:40:30 +0000

For a long time now a lot of people have been using Adblock firefox extension, however when people use this tool publishers lose their key source of income. Svetlana at Profy thinks that she may have found the key to unlock this issue, CancelAds.com. CancelAds is a very basic idea in which allows publishers to signup and add their sites to the service. Users are then able to signup and choose which sites they want to see without ads, in which they can pay a small subscription fee to view the sites without ads. Publishers have the ability to control the price of subscriptions and this is a very simple way for sites to add a new revenue source.

However, is CancelAds really a new revenue stream or is it just taking revenues away from advertising and just redistributing it. The idea of CancelAds is a good one, however practically im not too sure if it will take off, as users will only be likely to purchase a subscription for a major site in which have high quality content. Thus, this product isnt for the masses, it just for the high end publishers.

Talon: Free Screen Capture Tool

Steven Finch — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:22:00 +0000

Aviary has just launched Screen Capture Talon that can let you capture any webpage from any browser, by simply putting Aviary.com/ in front of the URL. You can capture a page at different resolutions or to only capture a portion of the page as well.

After capturing the page, you can edit it, add simple markup to it and save it to your desktop.

Adobe Air Apps: Adobe Air Marketplace

Steven Finch — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:06:16 +0000

Adobe Air is quite a new platform but it has been quickly getting an amazing name for itself. Adobe have their own marketplace (which received an overhaul recently) of applications but there aer a few new marketplace popping up. One of these new marketplaces is AdobeAirApps.com.

AdobeAirApps is a very simply marketplace that showcases the newest and greatest Adobe Air applications. AdobeAirApps reviews these applications and then just provides a basic screenshot, then finally allows users to comment and rate the applications. The site is very new and im looking forward to seeing them build this up over time. Im not a huge fan of the design, but im sure once the site starts making some revenues then it will get updated quite quickly.

Iconza: Top Quality Free Customizable Icon Sets For Your Website or Blog

Steven Finch — Thu, 28 May 2009 09:00:02 +0000

Have you ever wanted top quality customizable icons for your blog or site but cant really afford it? Well here is the solution, Iconza. Iconza is a new application that allows you to customise icons just the way you want them. It is completely free and very easy to use with a great interface.

Iconza lets you customise the colours of your icons, backgrounds, sizes and then lets you easily download them all for free. So if you are in the need of some top quality free icons for your site or blog then head over to Iconza.

Imagination: Free Fully Customizable Wordpress Theme

Steven Finch — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:39:50 +0000

Imagination is a Fully Customizable WordPress Theme and comes pre-loaded with 9 different site-wide styles to choose from, with just a click.

Moreover, You can customize the style according to your mood, occasion or preferences. Use your imagination to create a unique look of your blog/website anytime you want. Imagination theme is free to use and distribute. Feel free to share this theme with anyone and everyone.

Polaris: Google Analytics Adobe Air Application Free

Steven Finch — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:41:27 +0000

Since the launch of Adobe Air we have seen a huge amount of very slick desktop based applications launched and Polaris joins this group. Polaris is a free AIR based application which allows users to manage one website profile on Google Analytics.

The dashboard gives you nice overview of total visits, pageviews and other useful metrics. Other than that, Polaris has 7 different individual reports: Visit Overview, Map Overlay, Traffic Sources, Referring Sites, Top Content, Keywords, and Goal Value.

For those who are managing multiple profiles, the upgrade to the full version is $15/year. Both the free and the full version will get regular free updates with new functionality and features.

Visual Studio 10 Beta Free Download

Steven Finch — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:23:53 +0000

Microsoft has announced the availability of Visual Studio 2010 beta for public download. VS 2010 was made available to MSDN and TechNet users few days back and its now available for public download. Both MSDN/TechNet subscribers and the public are able to test VS 2010 Professional, Team Suite, Team Foundation Server and the .Net Framework 4.

Currently there has been no announcement of the shipping date of the final version but it will probably be int he final quarter of this year. Visual Studio 2010 ships in with lots of new features and changes. You can check out the complete list of changes here. VS 2010 also features better support for Silverlight and the Windows Presentation Foundation.

If you are interested in testing the new VS 2010 and .Net framework 4, then you can download them here.

Microsoft MyPhone Syncs Your Phone and Computer for Free

Steven Finch — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:34:25 +0000

If you are currently using a smartphone and running Windows Mobile 6 or higher, then it is time to head over to MyPhone. MyPhone is Microsoft’s new OTA backup system and it is now open in beta. You receive 200MB worth of free storage, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it should be fine for emails, contact and calendars.

If your phone is already synced with an Exchange server then MyPhone isnt going to be able to work for you. Unlike most Microsoft products the price is free so why not head over and test it out!