I am here yet again to introduce to you another great open source software. This time, it’s UltraVNC. If you don’t know what VNC is, please take a look at my earlier post. Basically, it allows you to control a PC through the LAN or the Internet from another PC. Something like Norton Anywhere (if you are into commercial products). And previously, I have introduced to you RealVNC and TightVNC. Both are capable software, but UltraVNC tops it all.

In additional to the regular features of VNC (that is client access to a VNC server), they support graphics mirror driver, which helps improve the speed of client access (useful if you have a slow PC). You can also do File Transfer (just like TightVNC), Text Chat as well as enabling Javaviewer applet. What this means is that you can access your desktop through a Java-enabled browser! No client software needed. Very cool indeed. But I think that the Javaviewer will be somewhat of a resource hog, so the client PC may need a higher end PC.

UltraVNC also allows add-ons. This means that additional features (other than the official ones) can be added to your software. These include repeater (allows you to access behind a router), NAT-to-NAT (allows you to access behind a router without any modifications) plus a customizable UltraVNC Client which your users can download and use without the need to do any setting changes.

It is amazing that an open source software can do so much. I have always thought that open source software are usually plain or featureless versions of the commercial ones. But I think soon, open source software may even overtake commercial ones in terms of functionality. I am so glad that I am firmly on the side of the open source community. And it is important to note that these software can save your company or business a lot of money. Everyone should take a look at what these projects can offer them. And please support them if you can.

Oh, I nearly forgot, UltraVNC works on all versions of Windows, even older ones.

How many of you guys have a PMP (Portable Media Player)? How many of you guys would like to compress your DVD Video to something smaller in size? How many of you guys would like to watch videos on your PC instead? Nowadays, we have DVD Players which can play Divx/Xvid Video files and this makes the Divx/Xvid format rather attractive. Think large screen TVs! And I guess this is a very convenient way to “transfer” files since Divx/Xvid video files are much smaller than the native DVD format.

Well, I am here to introduce to you another open source alternative, this time to convert your DVD Video files to other video formats. It’s called Handbrake. It works under Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. However, I see that not all DVD encryption is supported, so you may not be able to “rip” certain DVD Videos out. I believe that they only support CSS type protection. You will need additional software to rip out other DVD Video files with other encryptions. And best part for some, you can convert directly to mkv files. Oh, you can convert to h.264 format as well. I am sure a lot of iPod users will be glad to have this feature.

This software is a batch converter. It allows you to queue jobs for processing and you can then enjoy a tall cup of Vodka and come back later to collect your files. If you have to do a lot of files at one go, you will appreciate the usefulness of this feature. Unless the videos are short, it will usually take several hours to encode. With batch conversation, you don’t need to be physically there.

There are other open source software out there to convert DVD Videos to other formats. But this one makes it easy. Just choose the file and the output type and then all you have to do is to wait till it is finished. No more complex commands to use or multiple software to consider.