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What to do About Pesky Toolbars?

Toolbars are the source of so many problems that users complain about for their computers. Here is the lowdown on what toolbars are all about and what you can do about them.

What are toolbars?

When you use your internet browser, do you notice that the size of the pages keeps on reducing and there are half a dozen search boxes on top? Toolbars are a simple bar below your browser’s address bar which contains a search bar and a bunch of icons for downloads functions and links to other websites. Depending on what kind of websites you visit, you will have anywhere from one to a dozen toolbars on your browser.

The search bar offers custom search engines. You can type in search terms on them and get results just as you do on Google, Yahoo or Bing. The icons placed by their side allow you to download things like MP3, screen savers, wallpapers etc.

Where do they come from?

Toolbars can be installed on to your browser from a variety of courses. The most common source is free download sites that you go to for downloading things. You may have been to a site that gives you a free photo editing service or maybe even dating service. These sites automatically install toolbars inside Internet explorer or Firefox.

Toolbars can also come from software that you install on your computer. Many a time, when a website gives you software for free, you are asked whether to install custom toolbar. Although, you don’t require it, you may forget or ignore to uncheck the boxes. This leads to many of the toolbars that magically appear without you even knowing about them.

Why they are bad?

The most visible trouble with toolbars is that they drastically reduce the screen space to view web pages. They make you scroll more than usual just to read content. Another bad thing that happens to your browsers is that they get really slow as there are more and more toolbars. Not only that they take ages to just start and even slow the computer down while the browser is running.

The worst part of toolbars however, is that they often contain links to malware. They download all kinds of viruses, spyware, and key loggers etc., which can track your private data and use them for malicious purposes. Needless to say, unless you know that you want a toolbar from a trusted source, it has no place on your browser.

How to remove them?

If you use Internet explorer, toolbars come installed as separate applications. Use your preferred uninstaller to do this. You can use Revo Uninstaller to complete remove all traces of toolbars as well as other software. If you don’t want to install yet another application, try Iobit Uninstaller, which is a simple executable that you can run even from flash drive.

If you use Mozilla Firefox, toolbars typically are installed as extensions. You can go to the extensions section and then remove them from there. The best solution is to not let toolbars be installed on your PC in the first place. Install an add-on like WOT for both Firefox and Google Chrome. It will give you a warning when you visit a suspicious website.

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Tapin Radio – A web based player

Tapin Radio To Tune In And Record From Radio Stations

Carrying out work over the internet could be an isolated experience regardless of the variety of entertainment available on it. Sometimes you might want a program performing in the background particularly when you are in hurry to complete your work and cannot participate in online games and chatting. Tapin Radio enables you to stay tuned and entertained through radio while you are working.

Tapin Radio is a web based radio player, which enables you to stay tuned to numerous radio stations across the world. This application is available in both installer and portable version. Radio enthusiast can choose their preferred station and this application can immediately update on startup.

This facilitates the majority of audio formats such as wma, ogg, aac, vorbis and mp3. Users can choose and change between their preferred channels easily.  They are able to add radio channels to their favorite list. The selection menu would make browsing for channel more trustworthy as users can type in a station name or category name or choose from the list of different categories. Another attribute that will actually make the web radio popular is its capability to record. Users can also record talks and songs from it.

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Convert Audio Files To Different Formats Using iTunes

How To Convert Audio Files To Different Formats Using iTunes

iTunes is basically a music jukebox that organizes and plays digital music as well as videos on your PC. It can easily handle several tasks related to digital media such as burning CD, syncing digital media files with your iPhone or iPod, purchasing videos and music online etc. It also lets you enjoy movies, videos, music and television shows right on your PC or Mac.

You may save your media collection in the iTunes library and browse any digital media instantly, anytime you wish. Moreover, iTunes also has an ability of converting audio files to different formats. Different users might have various different reasons for converting audio files.

  • User might have AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) files on iTunes which might not be compatible with the Zune media player which is capable of playing MP3 but not AAC files.
  • User might need to email a WAV file to a client but the file seems to be too big and he/she has to convert it to AAC file in order to reduce its size.
  • User needs to set a downloaded song as a soundtrack to his/her music video and he/she is unable to import the song even by editing the program as it does not support AAC or MP3.
  • User wishes to remove the Digital Rights Management (DRM) from an AAC audio file that he/she had purchased from iTunes store.

 

There are numerous other programs which convert audio files to different formats but majority of them are quite complicated and expensive. On the contrary, iTunes is fast, easy to use and above all, free. You need to follow the below mentioned steps for converting audio files to different formats using iTunes.

  • Click on “Start” button to display the Start Menu on your PC. Select “iTunes” to launch the application. Incase of Mac, you will find it in “Applications” folder.
  • Within iTunes application, go to “Preferences” to open the “Preferences” Window. Go to “Importing Options” screen. Based on the iTunes version that you use, the location of “Importing options” might differ.  
  • For instance, in older iTunes versions, there is a separate orange icon within the “Preferences” Window for importing. In the newer iTunes versions, importing options are hidden in the form of a nested tab “Importing” within the section “Advanced”.
  • Select the format you wish to convert the audio files to. Note that, iTunes can covert from/ to various formats including MP3, WAV, AIFF, AAC and Apple Lossless.
  • For instance, if you wish to convert an AAC audio file to MP3 so that you can listen to the song on your non-iPhone/ iPod music player, you need to select “MP3”. You are also allowed to select the bitrate quality which is set to 128 kbps by default and is good enough for any average person. You may select a higher bitrate value if you wish.
  • Exit the “Preferences” Window. Now, you need to go to the iTunes library and find your song(s) that you wish to convert. If you wish to select multiple songs, you may hold down the “Apple” (“Alt” incase of Windows) or “Shift” key while you make the selection.
  • Go to the Advanced menu and select the option “Convert Selection to..”. Alternatively right-click on any of the songs which you have selected and choose the respective option from the right-click context menu.
  • You will notice an orange colored spinning ball within the source window of iTunes once the conversion process starts. You may click on the spinning ball to view the progress.
  • The time taken for conversion will differ depending on type of conversion, number of songs selected and your computer speed. If you want to speed up, you may close other applications running on your PC to accelerate the conversion process.
  • Once the coversion process is over, iTunes will notify you with a chime. A similar chime sound is played by iTunes when it finishes burning a CD.

  • Incase any of the songs selected for conversion was bought from iTunes store and is not in the iTunes plus format, iTunes will show an error message notifying you that the file is protected and can’t be converted to a different format.
  • To resolve this issue, you simply need to burn such song(s) onto an audio CD and import them back to iTunes.
  • There are some applications such as Hymn which are capable of removing DRM protection from the songs which are bought from iTunes store. However, Apple disables such songs with DRM being altered.
  • Once the selected songs have been converted to the desired format, you may search for the files in iTunes Library. There will be two versions of every song that you have converted. One will be the original file and the other one, the converted version.
  • You may as well delete the old version if you wish to keep only the newly converted one. The easiest way to distinguish between to old and new version is by checking the “Date Modified”. The song with the latest date is the one that you have converted.
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Check Out This Free Conversion Tool for Converting MP4 To MP3 Format

Check Out This Free Conversion Tool for Converting MP4 To MP3 Format

You might have come across several occasions when you weren’t able to play a favorite song on your multimedia player just because it was encoded in MPEG-4 (MP4) format and your player is able to play only MP3 format. But, now you have a free conversion tool “Convert MP4 to MP3” which has ability to extract audio data from any MP4 video file and convert it to MP3 format.

Not just MPEG4, this freeware also supports several other video formats including DivX, AVI, Xvid, Quicktime video(.mov), FLV(flash video), VOB video, DVD video etc. and produces high-quality MP3 audio output.

Convert MP4 to MP3 offer a user friendly interface which is pretty simple to use. You simply need to add MP4 files which you wish to convert to MP3 format and hit the “Convert” button. Also, after the conversion process of over, you may click on the button “Play MP3” and play the converted MP3 audio.

This tool works with most Windows Operating Systems and can be easily downloaded from the link Here.

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Using Merge MP3 To Merge Multiple Sound Files Into One Sound File

Using Merge MP3 To Merge Multiple Sound Files Into One Sound File

The Merge MP3 is pretty interesting software with which you can merge numerous audio files into one soundtrack. For example, the ripped CD tracks merged into one file. You can also mix multiple sections of sound book. Merge MP3 software is a free application to download and use.

You can drag and drop several audio or MP3 files into the sound playlist and eight also allows to adjust playlist order. It allows you to take preview of the audio files after that you combine them all only in a one MP3 file together with ID3 meta-data and APIC images. Merge MP3 provides the facility to merge several audio files at a time and it does not have any limitations on size and length.

Following are some beneficial features of Merge MP3:

  • You can sort the audio files by filename or size or date/time.
  • You may write tags like ID3v2 and ID3v1 within the compound MP3 file.
  • The useful function of writing the VBR can be utilized when you are combining the files among dissimilar bit rates.
  • You can use ID3 tag from one of the merging files, with which you can write the target file.
  • It displays the full information of the merging MP3 files along with MPEG header data and ID3v1, ID3v2 information.
  • You may look at MP3 file embedded images.
  • You can choose to play the audio file from the merging list.
  • This software is simple to install and can be installed on any directory.
  • Extremely sensitive interface along with quick merge rate.
  • Absolutely free to download.
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Learn New Vocabularies In English With A Free Website And Tool Verbalearn

Learn New Vocabularies In English With A Free Website And Tool Verbalearn

These days there are lots of web sites which are mainly constructed for helping non-native speakers, kids, students, young professionals and working adults with their language skills. Referring these websites helps such people improve their English language . For learning English effectively, various activities such as quizzes, games, songs, chat rooms and tests are conducted by the websites like WordReady, Yappr, and LearnEnglish and so on.

While learning English, you must acquire new vocabulary as it is a key factor of this language. A free source named as VerbaLearn is mainly dedicated for students to improve vocabulary. So, now they can prepare themselves for ACT, SAT or GRE tests and also they can learn to develop their command on English very easily.

With many great features VerbaLearn offers you a dictionary learning enjoyment which is quite infectious. A short quiz based on meaning of words is not just a test for vocabulary power, besides it also words transfers the wrong words to a Study List.  You can save your time with the personalized StudyList, making your study more focused and well-organized.

As soon as you create a personalized Study List, you can use study tools provided by VerbaLearn to assign all the words to memory. Using Review Online tool, you can check out online the specifics about special words and their examples. A feature to listen the StudyList words in an MP3 while being offline is pretty appealing to young adults.

You can now instantly download the customized words list by means of any podcast aggregator, for example iTunes. After downloading you may transfer them toward an iPod or MP3 or mobile phones, and can enjoy the learning.

A special function is provided with which you can review all the words or a word list which is displayed on your homepage. You can use this function for a quick revision and to make sure that you have already learned these words.

This package is real cool and effective features VerbaLearn are something which the parents, students and teachers can check out to enhance their vocabulary.

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Check Out Panopreter – A Text-To-Speech Converter

Check Out Panopreter – A Text-To-Speech Converter

Ministers and Company CEOs normally present several lengthy speeches which are important but quite boring.  Sometimes you might feel too tired to sit in front of the PC and read these speeches line by line. Instead of straining your eyes to read these speeches, you may simply convert these reading materials to audio files and listen to them while lying on your sofa and having your favorite espresso coffee. 

Panopreter is an excellent tool that efficiently converts these boring yet important reading materials to audio files.  Panopreter has ability to convert word documents, text files and .htm format web pages to audio files. It supports various different languages including English, Spanish, French, Germen, Chinese, Japanese and Italian.

Panopreter consumes just 3.57MB of your hard disk space and can be downloaded from the Panopreter website. It is available for download in three different user interface languages like English, Spanish and Chinese. It is compatible only with Windows Operating Systems like Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Panopreter comes with an easy-to-use interface where in all the features are offered within a single interface. You need to simply click the button “Add” in order to add a document for conversion. It allows you to adjust reading speed and audio volume as per your preference. You may read out the words that you have typed in a document by going to its instant speak mode.

After conversion, Panopreter allows you to save the audio files into MP3 and wave formats. This tiny tool works with Microsoft text-to-speech voices (SAPI 5.x). You are also allowed to add various other voices to Panopreter. Apart from converting text to audio files, you can also use Panopreter as a language learning utility in order to enhance your listening ability.

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Free MP4, WMA, MP3, AAC Search With Google

Free MP4, WMA, MP3, AAC Search With Google

Google is the most common term among internet users. No matter whom you are and what you are looking for, this search engine helps you get the results faster than even lightening. Google not only helps users to search for information but also files and other useful documents. Some of the most searched files or documents include music, torrents, books, lyrics, proxies, videos and other files.

The best deal for music lovers is that it helps you search for MP4s, MP3s, AACs, OGCs, WMAs and other formats of music files. These files uploaded and shared by a number of users are always available for downloading by searching for them through Google.

There are numerous ways to search for something you want, but what does matter is the precision with which the search is done, i.e. getting exactly what you require. The same applies when you want to search for a particular song or music album. Most of the searching techniques involve Google’s advanced searching operations. These operators can also be used to get direct links to download the required song.

 

The best way to search for a music file with maximum precision is given below

  • Open the Google homepage
  • Type in your query in the format: “index of” [ mp3, aac, wma, wav, mp4 (format of the required audio file)] [ song, artist, album or singer name] or

Index.of [mp3, aac, mp4, wav, ogg (format of the required audio file)] [singer, album, artist or song name] or

“parent directory” [aac, wav, mp3, wma, mp4 (format of the required audio file)] [ singer, artist, album or song name] – html – download links

You can fill in either the song name or artist name or the name of the album to have precise results of your search query. This format helps the operators to filter the results and provide you with the best possible search results, e.g. index of / mp3 / Rihana.

 

On giving the above query, you will get all the results related to songs sung by Rihana and all of them will be in MP3 format. Click on any of the result and you will be directed to the website having the downloading link.

Once you obtain an audio file you were looking for, just right click on the link and then select “Save Target”. This will start downloading the required song on to your system. Thus in a very simple process you can get the desired song using your favorite search engine.

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Free Video Editor To Cut, Crop, Filter And Encode Videos

Avidemux is video authoring software which has a wide variety of features and benefits. The advertisements which are so common with other free software do not find a place in this application so that you can crop your video without any difficulties.

Avidemux is open source software with GNU license and hence you don’t have to worry about trial versions and charged support. The application is very easy to use with audio and video files. The supported formats for video include MPEG, VCD, H.263/4, AVI, FLV and various others. Supported audio formats are AAC, WAV, MP3 and a few more.

For cropping a video file you only have to choose the section and press the delete button. For encoding a video, you can take the clip from a drop down list, select an output format, save the file and you are done. Various tools help you to do proper advancing and rewinding, so that you can select your start and stop positions effortlessly.

Advanced options are also available with Avidemux. A generic decoder and post processing tools are bundled with the program. User defined filters are another attractive feature available with this application. Avidemux should appeal to all types of users for their multimedia authoring requirements.

[ Download Avidemux ]

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How To Make Creative Zen MP3 Player On MAC or MAC OS Compatible

Making your Mac OS compatible with your Creative Zen MP3 Player

A common problem with the Creative Labs Zen MP3 players is that they do not have any firmware support for the Mac OSs. This is a huge problem with users who have Mac systems and have bought Creative Zen players. However, the good news is that there are several other options available that will enable you to access and manage the Zen player using your Mac PC, and this article will tell you about these in sufficient detail.

The bad news is that, although the Creative Labs discussion forum, and their FAQ page lists these as solutions to the Mac-incompatibility problem, the manufacturers do not take any responsibility for any malfunction/problem that might arise due to the use of these third-party applications with your Zen player. However, since you do not have any other option – here is the list of packages that will help you out.

First, you can download the software called XNJB, created by Richard Low – an open source designer. XNJB is free and works fine almost all of the MAC OS X versions. Furthermore, this application is absolutely free, and if you have the designing bug in you, then you can add to it, as it is also open source.

The next option is to use the iTunes Zen plugin, which is also a freeware, and enables your in-house iTunes to support all Zen players. However, many users have reported snags with this problem – and it will be well advised to go for XNJB, if you do not have any other issues regarding the download.

Both of the above programs have been around for quite some time, and have been fairly well received by Mac users. Hence, you could try out both one-by-one and retain the one that suits you the most. XNJB’s interface is also quite similar to that of iTunes – so you will not have a tough time settling in.