RGdot

Month: December 2019

  • Complete Network Tools With NETworkManager

    NETworkManager offers a comprehensive set of tools to gather information about the network your computer is on and about external networks and the internet. The program is available in executable and portable formats and the user can set profiles to save IP addresses and other info to reuse again.

    The configure tab provides a interface to configure local connections such as IP addresses, static and DNS entries and most everything network related on a Windows computer.

    The information tab provides info on the local network and features a network scanner to search for and find local IP addresses, wireless access points and Address Resolution Protocol entries. It can also query local ports and listen for open and active ports and TCP connections. Additionally SNMP is available to look for info on devices and list info like printer or router Object Identifier. It can also turn on compatible devices using the Wake on LAN message. It can

    A set of tools for non local devices include ping, traceroute, Whois, DNS look ups and inspecting HTTP headers of a site.

    If all that is not enough NETworkManager has a subnet calculator. Useful for network managers and just as a simple learning tool.

    Upon first run it asks for permission to check for program updates and grab the public IP address of your network. It can also be configured to run PowerShell, PuTTY and VNC to connect securely to websites and networks via SSH, Telnet or other protocols.

    The current version of the program is 2019.12 and requires Windows 10 Build 1809 or later and the .NET-Framework 4.7.2. The older 1.11 version is available and compatible with Windows 7 and 8.1. Practically every setting has options to work with desired values as does the program’s looks and colors.

  • New Image Viewer: Mouser’s Media Browser

    Mouser at DonationCoder has restarted work on an image viewer that will be part of the site’s annual NANY (New Apps for the New Year).

    Mouser’s Media Browser is not aimed at competing with well known image viewers such as IrfanView and others but when running the program it does better than most in generating thumbnails for example. Its development has been fast in recent days with many releases and it has already improved in several ways, including the speed in which it generates thumbnails and how fast it scans recursively to find images within subfolders.

    The program shows a navigation tree with the user picking the folder to view, either via the tree or by browsing to a folder. It is also possible to filter files, for example showing only gifs by just typing gif in the filter bar. There is also a grid mode which eliminates the image preview pane. The program options (File —> Options) has settings with minimum and maximum thumbnail size.

    By default it comes with a thumbnail strip open. Another open by default view is the virtual tree which divides images by date showing how many by month and year. Future releases may include other virtual trees that divide media by tags or other attributes. These can be turned off via the Tree menu.

    The program can open an image using an external image viewer and it also integrates with Mouser’s other tools like Screenshot Captor and Automatic Screenshotter.

  • Keyword Tracking With Rankaware

    Search engine optimization remains crucial to all those who own or manage websites. Rankaware is one user friendly tool to keep a tab on a site’s performance on search engines.

    Rankaware installs easily and it is available for both Windows and Mac computers. The first step is to add a website to monitor. The program works in that it checks the position of a keyword on search engine results pages (SERP). The process starts by adding the site address of course, keywords that Rankaware will check on and up to three search engines. Google, Bing and Yahoo are available with their various country domains. The program allows the user to pick one, two or three engines.

    It is possible to set a schedule to run the program again and look for any changes that occur to the site’s keywords positions on the aforementioned search engines. Once a day, a week or month are available with the time of day to run as well. Optionally it is possible to run the check everytime the program is started.

    All that is left to click apply and wait for it to scan the engines and generate the results. The results page is simple but attractive with a pie chart showing the keyword position on the results page. Any position above 100 needs work and is not really considered a useful SERP.

    RGdot used to rank relatively high in several freeware keywords but that has changed with the inactivity on the site. Rankaware can track changes and will show them in the CHG column in subsequent runs of the program.

    Rankaware is available in three licences. A free version which only checks one site on one computer. The expert version can be used to monitor unlimited number of sites and generate reports with white label branding. The business version can run on more than one computer. The two paid versions currently cost $49.97 and $99.97 respectively, these are per year.