2 Nifty Programs

I’m back after what seems like forever.. Took a while to settle into the new place and also to bring all my gear back from hall.. let’s hope that I’ll get a place in hostel for next sem and soon..

Feel like sharing some stuff today so I decided to upload some files. 2 actually.. these 2 programs are small but definitely useful, so just thought I’d share them.

First up, we have Hamachi. I’m not too sure about what’s with the name, but it’s a nifty little program that helps A LOT with those who wish to play multiplayer games.. What so special about it? Well you see, for a start, most games, if not all games, that are able to be played multiplayer will NOT allow you use the same cd key when you play over the internet.. almost any game from CounterStrike to Command & Conquer will not allow that. You can only use the same cd key when you’re playing within a Local Area Network aka LAN. So what’s the next best thing when you want to play a game with some friends? 1) Go to a LAN shop 2) bring your notebooks together and crash somebody’s home or 3) Get Hamachi. Back to the question, what so special about Hamachi? Well, Hamachi creates a ‘Virtual Lan’ over any number of computers that have connection to the internet. So I can be at home and you can be at your home but using Hamachi with our internet connection, it creates a virtual LAN, so now, the game sees our 2 computers as being in a common LAN. Tadaa! So now using Hamachi, everyone can be at home and still play a multiplayer game over the internet if for SOME REASON, you happen to not have different cd keys.. I shan’t go into that part.

Get Hamachi here.

Next in line, we have Star Downloader. Yes, another cheesy name, but it’s good. As the name suggests, it’s a downloader. Similar to the more common ones like Get Right etc.. It allows you to resume downloads but at the same time, it also allows you to do abit more than that. Every website on the Net which hosts files for download, anything from download.com to a sneaky underground site that lets you download mp3s, these sites all limit the amount of bandwidth that ONE download can use. Well, at least most sites do that.. one good way to check, is the next time you download something, check and see if the download speed shown, is what you paid your ISP for.. For example for a user on a 1mbps Singnet internet connection, this calculates to approx 122kbytes/sec. So if he’s not getting anything close to 120, then there’s most prob a limit on that particular website. Most site administrators limit the bandwidth per download to allow a ‘fair use’ of the site’s bandwidth. So that if for example, 100 people want a file from the site at the same time, the bandwidth is SHARED and everyone’s download will begin, just at a slower rate, rather than waiting in queue for your turn to download something. So what so special about Star Downloader? This little program detects when you want to download something and it then splits the file, to a number of parts. For example, it splits a 100Mb video to 10 parts and then it requests the bandwidth from the site accordingly for each smaller part. So if the site limits users to a max bandwidth of 10kbytes/sec for downloading, when you use Star Downloader, it downloads your video file at 10 x 10kbytes/sec, which is 100kbytes/sec. Another way to look at it would be that the program ‘sucks’ bandwidth from the site you’re downloading from.. So there you have it.. now you can go download that HUGE 10Gb file from the site that only offers you 50kbytes/sec.. but be warned.. since it’s birth, more and more sites are beginning to put a restriction on such ‘bandwidth sucking’ programs.. so it might NOT work on all sites. But still, it’s such a small and unobtrusive program that keeping it around will do more good than harm. =)

Get Star Downloader here.

There you have it, 2 nifty little programs that should keep you happy. Leave me a comment if the files/link don’t work.. or if you find any better stuff!

And it’s July.. New quote of the month. =) well I actually take personal offence in this one. Haha!

Quote of the Month.. Utter despair.. heh..