Reencoding files to work on a portable device is the fine art of suffering through a gigantic pain in the ass. As every player supports different codecs, framerates, dimensions and bitrates, you either take a crash course in media encoding or get a tool to do it all for you.

Dan Cunningham’s EncodeHD will take that blob of pr0n videos and rejigger them into the right format for BlackBerries, iPods, consoles, iPhones and more. There’s not much control over the process, but only tightwads are going to cry over some banding in the blacks on a screen the size of a postage stamp.

Image courtesy of Dcunningham.net

If you’re a power user, you need to drop what you’re doing and grab a copy of Device Remover right this very instant.

Check its features:

• See all device drivers, even for hidden devices.
• Operating driver backup.
• Install/uninstall devices.
• Control device startup or enabled/disabled status.
• Remove drivers for unplugged or missing devices.
• Identify and troubleshoot problem device drivers.
• View full device ID information for any selected device.

The Windows device manager is a complete wuss when placed next to Device Remover. You want this program.

Does device manager give you THIS sort of info? No, readers, it does not.

Look, I know what you’re thinking when you read that headline. Play nice.

Image courtesy of Tribler

Security outfit Panda is offering free copies of its beta anti-virus program that they’ve dubbed Cloud Antivirus. Rather than caching definitions from a single remote server (like most AV programs), Cloud AV uses infection telemetry gathered from every other PC running the application. The end result is that virus identification and removal should happen much faster than with traditional anti-virus.

This sort of technology first reared its head when the University of Michigan developed a technology called CloudAV in August of last year. During our initial interview with the UM researchers, they outlined several reasons why cloud virus detection is a superior approach:

• The cloud aggregates the detection results of many anti-virus engines; a feat that would be improbable, if not impossible, on a client system.
• The cloud offers enough resources to provide virtual behavioral analysis.
• The client buys reduced disk and CPU usage at the cost of increased network utilization.
• The burden of application maintenance is completely removed from the client side.

While not all of these goals have been realized with Panda’s implementation, their Cloud Antivirus touches on the important final three.

The best part? It only uses 16 megs of RAM.

No, not the VoIP protocol, but Smart Installer Pack! This interactive front-end hooks directly to download servers to grab and install over twenty different popular applications at the user’s discretion.

Winamp? Firefox? Flash? Java? Avira? WinRAR? Codecs? Yeah, SIP can do that. Stop the vast majority of your post-format downloading in its tracks! You pick the program, it grabs the download, you install the app.

What could be easier?

Image courtesy of SIP

You know what BitTorrent does: It crushes your router’s will to live and opens connections to people all over the globe. But did you know that every version of Windows since Windows XP SP2 will only let you open 10 of those connections? You can see how this might be a problem when more than 10 people can seed a file to you, and that ignores the connections established for your peers.

Lucky for you and your aspirations for downloading Ubuntu (what, piracy? noooo…), there is a fix. Enter Half-open Limit fix. This here program will bump that limit up to the recommended 100, and it’ll work for any version of Windows currently in service, beta or otherwise.

Image courtesy of Half-open.com

To anyone who rocked LvlLord’s TCP/IP patcher, take note: There’s a new sheriff in town.

I know many of you swear by music to be productive at work and at home, and I am definitely one of those people. Let’s face it, though, lugging about a bundle of CDs or even the svelte profile of an MP3 player isn’t terribly efficient in this everything’s-already-on-the-internet era, so why not your music too?

Enter Sockso, the swank little app that will bring your music to any browser of your choosing. Run the app, index your music, forward the port on your router, create your login, and take the address on the UI to work. The program has many more advanced options, but it sure is hard to beat five simple steps that brings your music to you… Anywhere.

Image courtesy of Instantfundas.com

You’ve heard about Ubuntu, you’ve probably seen it evangelized as the first consumer-friendly Linux distro, and you’re probably curious what all the fuss is about. It’s also pretty likely that you’re not willing to tamper with your system by giving dual booting a whirl, and I bet you’re definitely not willing to abandon Windows entirely in favor of Linux. Lucky for you, there’s a quirky solution to every one of those problems in the form of Portable Ubuntu.

Portable Ubuntu uses a suite of Linux tools to put Ubuntu’s applications and much of its functionality right on your Windows desktop. This is not the full Linux experience, but it’s a good taste of what Linux and Linux’s tools are like. You can get a look at the command line, all the applications, and its configuration panels. In essence, you get a good 90% of the real deal without any of the hassle. So what are you waiting for? Give it a try. You actually have nothing to lose.

If you like what you see, you can download and burn Ubuntu which boots from CD/DVD and gives you the full experience without installing a thing. Still convinced? You can install Ubuntu to the hard drive from within the bootable session, and I promise it will play nicely with Windows.

At the end of this here post you’ll find a download for the incredible Nirsoft Installer. This convenient package contains over 140 neat applications that will help you Swiss Army your way through port connections, password recovery, temporary file management, creating BSODs (what) and more! So if you’re one of those geeks that must have piles of convenient utilities to remedy a disaster that might happen on the 32nd day of Ocvember in the year 20xx, this is definitely for you.

Great googly moogly. This list is wtfbig.

Download: Here

Alright, so UBitMenu doesn’t completely kill Ribbon, but it does restore a vast majority of the functionality in the form of the Office 2003 UI that so many love.

This plugin is what convinced me to switch to Office 2007, so perhaps there are others who need the same kick in the pants.

Image courtesy of UBit.ch

Anyone looking to get their guinea pig on will be pleased to learn that the release candidate for Windows Vista SP2 has been dumped into the public space by Microsoft.

The addition of select new features joins a host of bug fixes that are being prepared for the final release:

• SP2 contains Blue tooth 2.1 feature pack supporting the most recent specification for Blue tooth technology
• Ability to record data on Blu-Ray media,
• Adds Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration to Windows Vista SP2,
• exFAT file system now supports UTC timestamps, which enables correct file synchronization across time zones.
• SP2 provides support for new form factors, such as ICCD/CCID. new form factor support –example USB form factor as opposed to PCMCIA).
• Support for the new VIA 64-bit CPU

As a note, SP2 requires that the system be prepared with SP1 prior to installation.

Download: x86-32
Download: x86-64
Download: ISO Image
Download: Patch for WUAU update

Vista Services Optimizer is another robust tweaking utility for Windows Vista. The program pops Vista’s hood and gives the user access to all sorts of tweaks buried deep within the heart of the Windows registry. While the program is primarily oriented towards disabling or modifying services, there are many other performance boosters on tap as well.