We recently wrote about Any Video Converter, which is one of the best tools I've come across for batch converting those videos you have laying around. Last week I found a new app called XMedia Recode (English translation) for Windows, which is both free and portable. What makes this app so unique is the extensive number of built-in profiles that are included.

The Windows HOSTS file is a way for you to redirect a domain on your local machine to any IP address that you specify. There are a lot of reasons for doing this, such as a web developer testing a website locally or even making certain sites inaccessible by pointing them back to your machine (a common method used for ad blocking).

One Windows app that I use almost everyday is WinMerge. It's become extremely popular as a free way to compare two text files to see what differences there are between them. Having WinMerge at your side is a no-brainer when you're working in an environment where multiple people have access to files, and you're not able to track every little change with a source control solution like SVN.

Most geeks love stats, and what could be more interesting than to see how many times you click your mouse or press a key on the keyboard each day? If you want to do something like that you'll need to hop on over and grab the free WinOMeter app. It doesn't require any installation to use, and I know you may be hesitant to have a "novelty" item like this using your system resources.

When was the last time you thought to yourself "I wonder how many acetabulas it takes to equal one gallon?" Well, if you had the free (and portable) ESBUnitConv app you wouldn't have to wonder any longer, and instead you'd be able to spend more time pondering why you can't get a date.

One of the features I've grown accustomed to on my Mac is being able to scroll in any window without first having to bring it to the foreground. The OS is smart enough to realize that I probably want to scroll the window underneath my mouse regardless of whether it is the foreground window.

One of the things that still surprises me is the fact that modern operating systems still don't make it easy for the average user to password protect a folder. I'm not even talking about encrypting a folder - just a simple password to keep prying eyes out. I know a lot of families who share a computer and even share a single user account, and therefore they all have access to the same files.

The other day I was jailbreaking my iPhone, but before doing so I had to put my iPhone into recovery mode. Getting your iPhone into recovery mode isn't difficult: shut down your iPhone, hold down the home button, and then plug the device into iTunes. After doing that you'll be prompted saying that you must restore the device back to the factory defaults.

I'm a pretty big fan of CDBurnerXP when it comes down to the best freeware for burning your CDs and DVDs. Incredibly, however, I have to say that the free AmoK CD/DVD Burning tool comes in a close second thanks to its portability, footprint, and size. This app uses less than 1MB of space once extracted, and uses around 7MB of memory while running.

For the longest time I've always been good about regularly defragmenting my hard drives. With Windows 7/Vista that has been a bit easier since it is set up to automatically defrag all drives every Wednesday, but I have to admit that Smart Defrag trumps many of the alternatives because of how fast it really is.

Are you a big fan of having images of Earth set as your desktop wallpaper? If so then Desktop Earth is definitely something you'll want to checkout. This free app will rotate your desktop wallpaper on an interval that you specify, and things such as the sunlight will be reflected across the map based upon the time of day.

I have used a lot of video converters in the past, but it wasn't until recently that I had a bunch of AVI videos that I needed to convert to MP4 so that they would play on my iPad. I looked into a lot of different apps, and Miro Video Converter has been one of my favorites due to how easy it is.

I'm always on the lookout for great apps that take full advantage of the Aero interface in Windows 7 or Vista, and OnTopReplica is undoubtedly one of the more handy ones. When you run this free (and portable) app you'll see a clear glass window. All you have to do is right-click, and select which of your currently open windows you want to clone on the screen.

We have covered all kinds of bulk file renaming tools here, but the free RegexRenamer is one of my new favorites. As you can see in the screenshot above it has a very clean interface, but that is largely because it relies on you understanding how regular expressions (a.k.a. regex) work.

I've always been a rather keyboard-oriented person myself, but mouse lovers can enjoy their own kind of shortcuts. X-Mouse Button Control is a free Windows app that lets you customize all the various buttons on your mouse so that they are a bit more useful, and the best part is that you can customize it on a per-app basis.

I'm not a huge fan of Java-based apps, but IOGraph is actually kinda cool. There isn't any real purpose to the app... it is really just for your own amusement.

Microsoft has been on the right track with the Windows Explorer updates in Vista and Windows 7, and I really like the breadcrumb functionality that they added. I never really understood why they didn't add tab capabilities, which makes sense with how many Explorer windows some users have open at any given time. Heck, at work I probably average having a dozen Explorer windows open at any moment.

We don't write about too many kid-friendly apps, but this one sure is. Rapid Typing is a freeware application that teaches both adults and kids how to type. It has all kinds of lessons that target specific areas of the keyboard, and the beginning stages even target specific letters. It then branches out to punctuation, entire paragraphs of text, and also the number pad.

Getting both the hardware and software details of your system typically requires using multiple apps. You'd have to peruse through the device manager, jump on over to the Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, and then if you want to run some diagnostics or benchmarks you'd have to go hunt down some apps to do that as well.

Most people carry a USB drive around for storing files on-the-go, but that's not all they are good for. A free (for non-commercial use) program called Predator will actually let you use a USB drive as a key for your computer. Basically, when you remove the drive the computer will lock itself, and it will be unlocked the next time you insert the drive.