9 Amazing Software Mashups - Killer Free Apps that Work Better Together
Posted 05/21/09 at 12:00:00 PM by Alex Castle and Norman Chan
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The Magic Folder + uTorrent = Instant Sorting and Organization of Your Downloads
If you're like us, you probably keep all of your web downloads cluttered in one communal download folder, whether it's direct downloads with Firefox or legal downloads with Bittorrent. Eventually, your downloads folder grows to several gigabytes, and sorting through all those pictures, videos, and songs takes the better part of a day. Here's a way to automate the sorting of all your downloads and keep torrent-ed files organized with just a single click.
The Magic Folder
The Magic Folder is a widget for Windows Vista and 7 that can automatically sort files based on their extension. With the way it's meant to be used, you assign file types to any folder, and just drag files to The Magic Folder widget icon for automated sorting. This feature is enabled by clicking the check-box when you first install the widget.
But The Magic Folder also has a feature that enables it to monitor a folder and automatically sort any files that are downloaded or moved to it. Enable this ability by going to the widget's General settings tab and clicking the "Turn on the Watched Folder" option.
This "Watched Folder" is actually named "The Magic Folder" and resides next to your other document folders in your Windows User directory. Unfortunately, you can't rename or move the location of this watched folder.
What we're going to do next is set all our Firefox downloads to go to this watched folder, which would include.torrent files.
The Magic Folder has presets to recognize commonly downloaded file types, like JPEGS and MP3s, but it doesn't recognize .torrent files... yet. Hit the Folders tab in The Magic Folder settings menu and create a torrent folder location. This is where you want Magic Folder to drop all downloaded torrent files. We created a folder nested inside our default downloads folder to store these torrents.
Next, hit the Extensions tab and add a .torrent extension, directing these files to the previously created torrent folder location.
uTorrent
Here's the tricky part. We're going to use uTorrent - our preferred torrent manager - to automatically start downloading files based on torrents found in the newly created torrent storage folder. We can do this because uTorrent has its own folder monitoring feature!
Enter the uTorrent preferences, and click on the "Directories" menu. Near the bottom of the menu, enable the "Automatically load .torrents from:" feature and direct it to the torrents folder.
Next -- and this is important -- set the "Put new downloads in" option to a temporary folder anywhere on your hard drive. This is where uTorrent stores partially downloaded files.
Finally, set the "Move completed downloads to" option to The Magic Folder watched folder we mentioned earlier.
Complicated enough? Here's a breakdown of what happens when you download a file after all of this is done:
- You use Firefox to download a .torrent file. It downloads to the Watched Folder.
- The Magic Folder automatically moves it to your torrent storage folder, which uTorrent is monitoring.
- uTorrent automatically starts the file download, setting partially downloads aside in a temporary folder and putting completed downloads back into the Watched Folder.
- The Magic Folder sees the new downloaded file, whether it's an AVI, MP3, or JPEG (or anything else), and sorts it to whereever you want!
Have any great software combos or mash-ups that use can't live without? Post them in the comments below!
Amazing software
Submitted by carlosmessi on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 1:37pm
I really like this article, first it gives me some new information about free software, second it teaches me how to use them basically. As a geek it will take a lot of time from me from now on. I will try them all, hope that I will see more articles like that one.Yeah thank you guys you give me some work to do when I don't have nothing to do. Thank you.
CEO of Shop Carefully
http://www.shopcarefully.com baby.
Another Great Mashup
Submitted by levenberg@veriz... on Sat, 05/23/2009 - 12:09pm
Nice work, but what about Portable Firefox and Tor? You gave both of them very warm reviews, and I use them together to securely get pass content restrictions. Where I'm from, they don't even let me check my email, so I use these two apps together to get what I need off my email. They've never let me down.
Submitted by KaylaKaze on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 9:55pm
Hard and symbolic links are functions of NTFS, not Vista or Win 7. They work perfectly fine in XP. You can use the free program Winbolic Link to make them (since XP doesn't have mklink).
Good list; what about logmein?
Submitted by Sp3ctre18 on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 1:24pm
Very nice list, I didn't know about many of these and I might try some of them.
However, I'm confused about the mashup with Hamachi. You did not mention at all the main service / application of the creators of Hamachi: LOGMEIN, as their domain implies. Logmein is a free service to do just that; access your PC remotely, and even better: from ANY computer. You simply install the logmein progam on the clients, and you use the logmein website to access it. Very simple, very easy to use. The paid servies adds a few things for ease of use such as file transfer and even getting sound.
So why use Hamachi and UltraVNC? unless you wanted more control over the secure connection, but again, I think you should have mentioned it and tell us your arguemtn, why go through the hassle of setting up Hamachi and UltraVNC instead of simply using logmein.
Composer of Film / Cinematic music
Submitted by g2 on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 6:54am
Awesome set of free utilities, a couple others that I find very useful and should make the cutoff
Crossloop – remote pc control
Argali - phone number lookup
Submitted by gamzu07 on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 5:34am
You can already sync firefox profiles without using Mklink. Just create a new profile and browse to the dropbox directory.
I gave up on Hamachi quite a
Submitted by lunchbox73 on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 5:27am
I gave up on Hamachi quite a while ago. I always get a relayed (slow) connection no matter what I try. Different computers, different locations, ISPs, didn't matter. I never did figure that one out.
I currently use RealVNC + port forwarding on my router + encryption for my VNC stuff. Not as secure as a VPN I know but the connection is rock solid and speedy.
Submitted by metric_inch on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 6:06am
Did you try setting Hamachi to use a specific port for tunneling?
Pref > Status > Detailed Config button. Then set ports under the Connecting thru NAT, then make sure the firewall is forwarding those ports to the box running hamachi.
I had one site that needed to have ports entered, and forwared from the router. Home, Office, and Job site 1 all see each other just fine, but Job site 2 needed to have specific ports set. The idea of sending VNC traffic in plain text is way to scary.
One thing about uTorrent i
Submitted by Denis63 on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 5:13am
One thing about uTorrent i want to share is that it will look in a specifird folder for any torrent files and it will automatically add them into utorrent with the default settings, then delete the torrent file. Also, it can download stuff to a "Pending" folder then when they're done it'll copy them to a "Completed" folder. What a fantastic program. -Denis
Submitted by Defiant on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 6:33am
They already mentioned both those Denis, but I agree they are quite useful features
Hamachi + FreeProxy = Secure Web Browsing
Submitted by bytor7 on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 4:25am
I have been using Hamachi and UltraVNC
to remote into and troubleshoot my relatives computers from the
comfort of my home for years. Hamachi and FreeProxy is another
great combination to securely browse the web wherever you go.
Creating a Hamachi network with
FreeProxy on a home computer turns it into a secure proxy server.
Log into the Hamachi network from a laptop when you are not at home and
change the proxy settings of your web browser. Enter the Hamachi IP
address of the computer running Freeproxy and use port 8080. Now
your web traffic will be running through the secure Hamachi network.
It's great when using open wifi at a hotel or coffee shop. It may
slow you down a bit, but it's better than having some latte sipper
snooping in on your IMs.
Submitted by spentnickles on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 2:55am
Nice little mix here... I must say, things like this are the reason that I'm a MAXPC magazine and online reader... Keep up the good work...
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