Super User 
Software
Dude, Where Are My Keys?
As Super Users, it’s quite common for us to install quite a lot of software for various purposes – be it productivity, media playback, clean up et al. Quite often it happens that you’ll need to reinstall the software – perhaps you’re going to format and reinstall your Operating System but you don’t have written records of the license keys of your software. So how would you go about finding them? That’s the dilemma Super User rcmz was in, and he asked this simple question:
Is there a product key finder for a PC??
Is there a product key finder for a PC?
IObit Advanced SystemCare 4
IObit Advanced SystemCare4 is your one-stop shop for all your computer management needs and is, quite honestly, the most full featured and complete PC cleaner application I have ever seen.
Along with the standard suite of malware, registry and disk drive cleaners SystemCare4 also includes privacy protection, several speed boosting modes, closing of application vulnerabilities (which in my case recommended a couple of Microsoft updates that were not dished out by Windows Update) and several other useful features. It even has disk defragmentation which moves into disk optimization in the “Pro” version.
Listen to Pandora in your terminal via Pianobar
I constantly listen to Pandora (even while I sleep). However one thing I’ve always disliked about Pandora was that it required Flash. You remember Flash, it’s that enormous resource hog that’s constantly crashing. Then I discovered Pianobar, the open-source Pandora client that runs in your terminal. Pianobar is chock full of features:
- play and manage (create, add more music, delete, rename, …) your stations
- rate played songs and let Pandora explain why they have been selected
- show upcoming songs/song history
- configure keybindings
- last.fm scrobbling support (external application)
- proxy support for listeners outside the USA
Bored with your login? Hack it!
Do you ever get bored of the same old logon screen every single time you boot your computer?
Windows 7 Default Logon Screen
Today, the Super User Blog is going to show you four ways to customize your logon screen in Windows 7.
Working with VLC Media Player – Part 2 of 2
In the last article, I explained how to stream content using VLC. In this article, we’re going to take a look at using VLC to transcode files as well as how to control VLC with any Internet-connected device.
Transcoding Content
VLC ships with a number of built-in encoders for a wide range of different file formats. According to this page, the list of all of the video formats currently supported includes:
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Currently supported audio formats include:
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MetroTwit: an elegant, simple and free Twitter client
Note: This is Windows only. 
MetroTwit is a new twitter client with a user interface inspired by Windows Phone 7. Anyone who has used TweetDeck will instantly be familiar with the UI, but while TweetDeck is meant to be a one stop shop for all your social needs, MetroTwit takes the opposite approach, focusing only on Twitter and the need for a clean UI.
MetroTwit has all the features you’ve come to expect in a twitter client. Infinite scrolling, auto complete for usernames and hashtags, and even customizable themes. Did I mention that MetroTwit is ad free? (See update) Though the best feature MetroTwit has to to offer is something I like to call “Secret Following”.
Working with VLC Media Player – Part 1 of 2
VLC Media Player is one of the most versatile media players out there when it comes to playing back audio and video. The list of supported formats is quite long and covers just about anything you can find on the Internet. VLC is also cross-platform, so it doesn’t matter what OS you’re using – there’s something for everyone.
However, VLC is capable of far more than just playing back your music and video collection. It can also stream content to other computers and transcode (convert) files to a number of different formats. It also has a remote interface that allows you to control it from any Internet-connected device.
Note: although VLC has a full command line interface, we will only be using the graphical interface.
more »
Compression and Encryption: The ZIP Years.
In a comment to my last post Compression and Encryption, nhinkle asked:
Do you know then how encrypted ZIP files work? Encryption seems to be built into many encryption formats like zip, rar, 7z, etc. Do these usually compress and then encrypt, or somehow do both at once?
Well, ZIP handles this in its own special way. First let’s look at how a ZIP file is made up. A ZIP file consists of one or more ‘file entries’ – blocks of data that make up the actual content of the zip file, followed by a final ‘central directory’:
As you can see each file in the ZIP file has its own local header which contains the information about how the file is compressed. This allows each file in the ZIP file to be compressed in a different way – from “Store” (no compression – ideal for adding pre-compressed files) right up to the maximum and slowest compression available.
Portable Apps for the Flash Drive
These two wiki questions by Ram and Jonathan Sampson:
1. Best portable apps to keep on a thumbdrive for developers.
2. List of tiny portable free apps that you use
asks the Super User community for their favorites in portable apps. Here’s what you came up with:
PortableApps (answered by nik)
PortableApps is a piece of software that is similiar to PenDrive Linux where all of the portable apps and their setting are taken care of by one single application. There are plenty of Apps that you can choose from, including but not limited to:
