ABBYY FineReader Online for free OCR!

The Boreham Library uses ABBYY FineReader software for OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to convert text in pictures into text that computers can use as real text.

MakeUseOf has a post about ABBYY FineReader Online.

Features:

• Online image text extraction tool.
• Lets you process 50 pages a day for free.
• Supported input image formats: BMP, PCX, DCX, JPEG/JPEG, PNG and TIFF/TIF.
• Supported output file formats: Microsoft Word, Excel, RTF, and TXT and PDF.
• The file must not be larger than 10 MB.
• Multilingual recognition: Russian, English, German and French.
• Simple and clutter free design.

Ext2 IFS For Windows and Linux

Ext2 IFS For Windows “provides Windows NT4.0/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 with full access to Linux Ext2 volumes (read access and write access). This may be useful if you have installed both Windows and Linux as a dual boot environment on your computer.”

Web2PDF: ‘Save as PDF’ Button

MakeUseOf has a post on Web2PDF which creates a Java widget for a ‘Save as PDF’ Button for Your Blog.

“Web2PDF is free HTML to PDF conversion service for your website. Enable your website/blog readers to instantly print desired articles to PDF files. It also includes a monitoring service that lets publishers keep track of which and how many times articles were printed to PDF.”

Web2PDF ‘HowTo’:

• 1. Sign up and start with setting the Conversion Options for your “Save page as PDF” button.
• 2. Choose paper orientation for the printed PDF: Portrait or Landscape.
• 3. Specify paper margins: in inches (Top, Bottom, Left, Right)
• 4. Get JavaScript code: Generate JavaScript code and copy & paste it to the place where you want “Save page as PDF” button to appear. Code should be placed within the … tags of the template page.

WebSiteZip Packer packs it in

WebSiteZip Packer is a free HTML to Executable file, Ebook Compiler, E-book Publisher, Ebook Creator/Generator Software “which will help you to turn a single HTML page or a group of pages into a solid executable file (.exe) with an integrated HTML browser. Ideal for e-books, product catalogs, site demos, manuals, and searchable information distribution.”

These are possible uses of WebSiteZip Packer:

• Use it to produce and distribute e-books;

• Let the visitors of your web site download the identical exe-version of the site for offline work;

• Create convenient offline presentations and catalogs;

• Create guides and manuals for your software products;

• Use it for any purpose where you need a solid executable file with an integrated HTML browser instead of piles of separate files and folders which are usual attributes of HTML pages.
  

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website is a Digital Inspiration post with practical instructions on how to handle RSS feeds, videos, audio, photos and slideshows, web albums, events from Google Calendar, very large photos, charts and graphs, animated gifs and screencasts, chat functions, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheet data, PDF files, Flash (SWF or FLV files), LinkedIn profile, Google Maps, another webpage, Windows Media or QuickTime movies, other fonts, and FriendFeed lifestreams.

Whew!

MP3Gain and easyMP3Gain raise the volume

Rolling along, listening to your music… and you hit that one really low-volume song you have, so you have to turn up the volume — and then hastily reduce it again for the next song.  Ever wonder if there’s a solution?

A search on SourceForge.net turned up MP3Gain, which raises the volume of MP3 files that turned out to be too low for your use.

Also here is easyMP3Gain, a front-end for MP3Gain, to make it even easier to use.

With both of these, you can raise the volume of those individual MP3s to something like that of everything else you have.

How to convert PowerPoint to DVD for free

Freewaregenius has a post on How to convert PowerPoint to DVD for free.

There is not a single free application that will accomplish this; however there are three “routes” illustrated below that you could take to achieve PowerPoint to DVD conversion using all free apps.

Lifehacker’s Five Best Media Converters

Lifehacker has a group of its Five Best Media Converters.

We’ve all been there: you’ve downloaded an episode of your favorite TV show to watch on your commute or stream to your living room, but the file you downloaded isn’t supported on the device you want to use it with. Once a significant obstacle to enjoying your media anywhere, this problem is easily solved by any number of free media converters. On Wednesday we asked you to share your favorite media converters, and today we’re back with the five most popular answers.”

Gizmo’s – Best Free MP3 Tag Editor

Best Free MP3 Tag Editors reviewed by Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert

“MP3 has become the most common audio format for playback, storage and transfer of music. If we need to playback MP3 files with their tag information shown correctly, a good MP3 tag editor will be helpful.

In this category, both standalone and built-in MP3 tag editors are reviewed based on three basic needs which include:

• Support basic tags, embedded cover arts and lyrics.
• Rename files using tag information, and edit tags using file names.
• Lookup online databases and save tags into MP3 files.”

Automen: a small video converter

freewaregenius has a post onAutomen: a small yet brilliant video converter which “is a free GUI for Mencoder that can perform video conversions across multiple formats and encoders. It supports XviD (for AVI encoding), FLV, X264 (MP4 for Ipod/PSP/PS3), WMV, MPEG4, MPEG2, and Huffyuv and is designed to be simple and straightforward for quick video conversion.”

ToyCon ICO converter to create icons

ToyCon: drag and drop image to ICO converter

freewaregenius has a post on ToyCon which “is a free drag and drop image to icon converter that converts JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP and TGA images to ICO as well as ICO to PNG. It supports the creation of a full range of icon size formats within the ICO file including the new Vista .ICO format which supports 256×256 resolution icons in PNG compression.”

PowerPoint to YouTube with Windows Movie Maker

AbsolutePPT has a post on how to convertPowerPoint to YouTube with Windows Movie Maker.

This is a step by step tutorial with screen shots.

DVDx freeware from labDV lets you convert DVDs for your computer

DVDx freeware from labDV lets you convert DVDs for use on your computer.

This is freeware, but donations are accepted.  Please use this ONLY for your own DVDs and convenience, and respect copyright law.

DVDx copies DVD movie to VCD, SVCD, DivX, AVI or WMV in one step.

DVDx has been designed as a simple and intuitive program especially for unexperimented users.

DVDx produces high quality MPEG and AVI movies and advanced features provides smart settings for experimented users.

DVDx Ultra Edition can copy protected movies while standard version can’t. If you’re allowed to copy commercial or protected movies, we strongly recommend you the Ultra Edition.

Kindle Hacks: Reading PDFs on Kindle and Converting documents for free

No sooner does new tech come out, than people start figuring out ways to make it better… whether or not the manufacturer intended it to happen.

For example: the Amazon Kindle ebook reader has been “hacked” for more performance.  One such blog is Kindle Hacks with info on how to use other file formats and more.

Use at your own risk, as usual.

EncryptOnClick to keep data safe

EncryptOnClick “is a very simple to use program that lets you securely encrypt and decrypt files. EncryptOnClick is like hiring your own highly experienced data security guard who ensures the files you want to keep safe and out of view from others stay that way. The program is very simple to use and features military grade 256-bit AES encryption that is fully compatible with WinZip 9. Not only are your files encrypted, but they are also compressed. This reduces the size of the file, which is very useful if you are emailing and transmitting your encrypted files. The encrypted files can also be decrypted with WinZip 9. A comprehensive help file is included, although you won’t need to read it.”

Considered the simplest of encryption freeware.

For Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003 Server.

FormatFactory media file converter

FormatFactory “is a multifunctional media converter that supports video conversion from/to MP4/3GP/MPG/AVI/WMV/FLV/SWF and audio formats MP3/WMA/MMF/AMR/OGG/M4A/WAV, JPG/BMP/PNG/TIF/ICO. MP4 files support iPod/iPhone/PSP/BlackBerry format.Version 1.48 adds “all to MP2″ method, “5.1 Stereo” conversion option, “Source Audio Channel Select” conversion option…”

For Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista.

PDFCreator lets you make your own PDF files

pdfforge.org has PDFCreator, an open source freeware program to create PDF format files from almost any Windows application.

Key Features:

• Create PDFs from any program that is able to print
• Security: Encrypt PDFs and protect them from being opened, printed etc.
• Send generated files via eMail
• Create more than just PDFs: PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, PCX, PS, EPS
• AutoSave files to folders and filenames based on Tags like Username, Computername, Date, Time etc.
• Merge multiple files into one PDF
• Easy Install: Just say what you want and everything is installed
• Terminal Server: PDFCreator also runs on Terminal Servers without problems
• And the best: PDFCreator is free, even for commercial use! It is Open Source and released under the Terms of the GNU General Public License.

Picture2icon converts pictures to tiny icons

Picture2icon “is a wonderful tool for converting images or digital photos in to Windows icons. Easy Picture2Icon make it possible to use any graphical editor to produce icons. Because Easy Picture2Icon has the ability to convert digital pictures in the formats BMP, GIF, JPEG, JPG and PNG to Windows icons (ICO). Easy Picture2Icon has support for making transparent icons and the user can choose which color to make transparent. With this picture to icon converter it is possible to make icon files that contain multiple icons of different sizes in the right timing.”

Images formats that can be converted to Windows icons (.ico files) are:
BMP, Bitmap
GIF, Graphics Interchange Format
JPEG, JPG, Joint Photographic Experts Group
PNG, Portable Network Graphics

For Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista.

Convert your avatar or logo into an icon!

DVD Flick creates your own DVDs

DVD Flick is freeware which “aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom audio tracks, subtitles as well as a menu for easier navigation.”

Features

• Burn near any video file to DVD
• Support for over 45 file formats
• Support for over 60 video codecs
• Support for over 40 audio codecs
• Easily add a menu
• Add your own subtitles
• Easy to use interface
• Burn your project to disc after encoding
• Completely free without any adware, spyware or limitations

MakeInstantPlayer Converts Videos to Executables

Featured Windows Download: MakeInstantPlayer Converts Videos to Executables.

Lifehacker reviews MakeInstantPlayer, which converts any video file into an executable file along with the player and codecs to play it (that last part about the player and codecs is really important!).

It is intended to solve the problem of people who just don’t have the right software or whatever to play something you want to show them.

Freeware.  Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista.