The Red Ferret Journal

T.E.D. – Torrent Episode Downloader – is a free program for TV junkies who need to keep up to date with their favourite programs. Missed an episode? No problem, just fire up TED, add the show and it will automatically hunt out and download the Torrent file so you can play catch up viewer later on. Marvellous.

TV-Browser is a free web browser based Electric Program Guide (EPG) which comes with all the smarts you need to track and manage your television viewing from day to day and month to month. To say it’s chock full of features is an understatement, from reminders to favourites to ratings and multi-lingual support. The only slight problem is the interface which feels as if it was born back when 8–bit was the state of the art. You almost expect the thing to go beep every so often.

Anyhoo, design is a very subjective matter as we all know, and that aside, there’s no doubt that this is just about the best free EPG out there at the moment. It installs your local/national channels faultlessly, offers a lovely set of customisations and really comes across as very useful indeed. Oh and it supports plugins too as the icing on the cake. If you’re feeling the need to take more control of your PVR viewing experience, then this software is definitely something you should download.

Hid.im turns your .torrent files into a ‘regular PNG image’. Why? So people can find and use your file but it’s hidden away from search engines and stuff. It’s a cool idea although there’s a file size limit of 250 KB currently, so you’re not going to be sharing anything multimedia that’s for sure. There’s also a Firefox extension to make the conversion process easy peasy. Fully open source and worth a look.

PeerBlock is a little piece of software that you run in parallel with your torrent software that stops it connecting to peers in suspect IP addresses. It’s not just for safer peer-to-peer downloading, you can also use it to prevent your PC from accessing ad-servers, or a range of addresses belonging to entire countries. The software doesn’t guarantee anonymity or protection or anything like that but as some band once said, it’s just another brick in the wall. [Via Freeware Genius]

PeerBlock blocks “known bad” computers from accessing yours, and vice versa. Depending on the lists you have it set up to use, you can block governments, corporations, machines flagged for anti-p2p activites, even entire countries! Whether you’re sharing files with Bittorrent or just surfing the web, PeerBlock can help protect you from the bad guys.

Tags: freeware, peerblock, p2p+ip+protector

Dropresize is a fab little freeware tool which adds drag and drop simplicity to resizing photos and image files. Just fire it up (no install needed), set it to watch a folder of your choice and every time you drag or copy an image into that folder it will automatically be resized to the dimensions and quality you set. This could revolutionise your life if you do a lot of photo forwarding by email or embed images in things like websites, newsletters and such. A veritable keeper.

PC Decrapifier is one awesome bit of freeware which removes multiple programs from your Windows Vista or XP computer all in one go. You know what that means? Yes, you don’t have to sit there in Control Panel laboriously clicking on each program you want to remove. It’s a superb uninstaller in other words.

The only hassle is when it fails to trap the program uninstalls that require a re-start, but it’s a small price to pay for this kind of convenience. Definitely one of the most useful tools ever (especially if you spend your life reviewing software eh?)

Rapid Typing Tutor is a free program designed to help you type faster and more accurately to impress friends, family and the occasional passing stranger. Mavis Beacon is the one to beat here of course, but she costs money.

The interface for this program is certainly cute, with a fish tank motif, but I’m not sure how much it adds to the value of the tuition. And the music kinda sucks. Still, this is definitely a worthwhile option to consider if you’re looking to improve your speeds and are reluctant to hand out cold hard cash.

One of the big hassles with upgrading the Firefox web browser if you’ve got a bunch of add-ons installed is finding out which ones work and which don’t. Which is where this free new Add-on Compatibility Reporter should come in real handy.

By using this tool to rate your plugins as working/not working, you’re helping the whole community to learn which ones need updating, which is a good thing all round. You also encourage the developers to get cracking with an update so your fave browser can once again do its proper job. It also works the other way round, so add-ons that are working but marked as incompatible can be correctly identified through your testing. Win:Win.

The free Minimalist Gmail addon for Firefox strips out all the unnecessary clutter in the Gmail interface and leaves you with beautiful symmetry and no cruft. It’s totally configurable, you select what stays and what goes, and it doesn’t seem to have any impact on the workings of the inbox at all. I’ve got it set on a majorly bare bones version with just the search bar showing and it works great. Definitely a keeper!

I find this a little hard to believe, but Samsung have announced a Universal Printer Driver that will work with every Samsung printer ever made, as well as any laser printer or multi-function unit that uses PCL6 or PostScript languages. It’s a free 26MB download and it runs on everything between Windows 2K to Vista including Server ‘03 and ‘08, 32 and 64 bit. The only reason I’m skeptical is well, the download page only seems to work with IE and not Firefox, but that may just be me. [Story via Akihabara News, photo via Flickr].

The Samsung Universal Print Driver enables you to print to any Samsung device without having to install a driver for every networked printer. It is also compatible with any printer or multi-function printer (MFP) that utilizes PCL6 or PostScript languages, meaning a wide range of devices from different manufacturers can be accessed on the single driver.

Tags: freeware, universal+printer+driver, samsung