Free, Easy and Elegant MP4 Joiners ...

Most of our handy smart phones now have the ability to record videos in MP4 high resolution formats. And in a significant number of occasions we would be having multiple MP4 files on a single occasion and in need to merge them as a single video before publishing and/or sharing with others.

I have a recommendation of following tools which help in this direction:

1. Cross-Platform Joiner: http://www.mp4joiner.org/en/
2. GPAC package on Ubuntu: To get this run the command sudo apt-get install gpac; And then to combine Mp4 files the commandline is MP4Box -cat 1.mp4 -cat 2.mp4 -new joined.mp4

Trust these would be helpful to share your MP4 memories with others.

echo123 :: The hidden talk assistant in Skype

For those using Skype and when in need to troubleshoot audio call setting there is a good companion called 'Echo123' Currently it supports audio call only. You can talk to it and it will read back your responses thus helping out troubleshoot your audio connections.

With Skype 4.2 for Linux it even gives technical information regarding the call as illustrated below:

Whois Windows Tool

I was trying to learn a bit of Sockets programming with C# and as a test tool, I have made a small opensource product called 'Whois Helper'. Check out the screenshot of the same below:

You can also grab a source of the same from Codeplex here. The tool has the following features in its first version:

• Built-in static database (embedded resource) of Whois servers for all TLDs in the world.
• An option for the user to override the built-in server and query the custom server.
• Optionally copy the output (automatically) to clipboard.

Feel free to send me your comments, suggestions and criticisms on the same.

OpenDNS Utilities

OpenDNS is an amazing cloud based computing infrastructure where in you can configure your internet enabled devices to use that service and through the best engineered anycast DNS service by the team, you can ensure your living room is safe and secure from malware and unwanted websites.

I have made two small opensource utilities and have made the first draft of the same available through Codeplex (under Microsoft Public License). They are the following:

1. Codeplex Share URL: https://opendnsutils.codeplex.com/
2. autoupdate.php. You just need to host it on your WAMP or anywhere and it would pick your address and update to Dns-o-Matic (and hence OpenDNS). This comes in handy similar to OpenDNS updater.
3. When configuring OpenDNS on corporate laptops, it is a common problem that when we connect to our corporate networks, DNS configuration fails and we have to manually rollback the settings. Again we have to repeat the step in reverse when we are back at home. I have made a simple Windows Utility (using .NET framework 4.5) which manages this. If the system uses custom DNS servers, I am trying to preserve them too. It just uses a simple XML file to save the preferences and OpenDNS IPs:

Feel free to use the same and share them with your friends, send me your comments, criticisms and healthy suggestions for improving the same.

Related Topics:

1. Five questions with Deepak Kumar Vasudevan
2. Cross platform cloud based IP Updater

Contacts import utility from Web2Project to Addressbook

I have been using Web2Project for planning my personal and professional tasks for a few years now. Now I have bifurcated the tools into the following:

1. Project Pier
2. Address Book

The only issue I had was to import my addressbook from Web2Project to AB. PP is a different animal. It does not serve as a comprehensive candidate for addressbook and hence I needed this bifurcation. 

I wrote up a following simple script to import the contacts to AB. The pre-requisite for this script is to hop on to PhpMyAdmin, export the contacts as a PHP array and then  modify the path in our import script to whatever you downloaded from PhpMyAdmin.

Our import script would explode the entries as SQL scripts into the browser window. Copy them and execute into PhpMyAdmin AB database to have the contacts imported.

Script URL: https://gist.github.com/lavanyadeepak/5177500#file-import-php

A quick PHP script to fax documents

For me, I had to send my weekly time sheets to the employer along with a word document highlighting the details of the work sent. Instead of being another element in the crowd to use one of those routine methods of visiting a fax machine in the front office, I just thought I would innovate on a quick browser based utility which would pick up the documents, format them neatly, send one copy to the employer and archive one copy with us for our reference.

I am sharing one stripped down baseline version of this utility here (code shared through Github Gist).

You can run using any PHP version (5.2 or above). You need Interfax username and password for the same.