There are many ways you can lighten dark photos in Photoshop. In fact, there are usually many ways to achieve a particular results when working with Photoshop. The one you eventually choose, would depend on the photo and your level of expertise in Photoshop. It involves a bit of trial and error and some experimentation. Here are some techniques that I use often when brightening a dark photograph.

As an example this is the image we will be working with. Our objective is to lighten the background and bring back some details in the foreground as well.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Brightness and Contrast

The name says it all. To use brightness and contrast:

• Open up the photo in Photoshop.
• I always like to duplicate the layer before applying any adjustments, just in case I go too far and make a mistake, the original image isn’t affected. Press Ctrl + J or Cmd +J to duplicate the layer
• Go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness and Contrast and play with the sliders a bit, till you get the desired result.

New users would be tempted to use brightness slider to lighten their dark photographs. While it is easy to use, it only does what I would call a fairly good job of lightening your photos. Any time you are find yourself pushing the brightness slider too far, you are better off using any of the other mentioned ways or else it would be evident that you brightened your photo in post processing.

Levels

Complexity moves up a notch when you use Levels for this kind of work. You can summon the levels dialog box by going to Image > Adjustments > Levels or hitting (Ctrl/Cmd + L). Immediately, you are greeted by a histogram. Histograms in image processing and digital cameras let you know how many pixels or each brightness value are distributed in your image. Having graph lean towards towards the black slider means your photo is predominantly dark; if the graph leans towards the white marker, that means your photo is predominantly bright. (Things get a little more complex when we move into individual color channels, so you can leave that part out for the moment!)

You can use Levels to lighten photographs as follows:

• As always, feel free to duplicate the layer before you apply any adjustments. (Ctrl/Cmd + J)
• With the duplicate layer selected, hit Ctrl + L and you will see the Levels dialog with the histogram.
• Start moving the white slider under Input levels towards the center. As previously mentioned, if you are having to move the slider too far in to get what you want, perhaps you are better off with one of the advanced methods.

  

• If you looking for a drastic change you can play with the Output Levels slider, but note that this time you would have to move the black slider inwards to brighten.

Tip: Hold down the Alt Key while dragging and Photoshop will show you the overexposed areas in the photo. You want to keep this area to a minimum!

Curves

Curves gives you the greatest control when doing a job like this. It is just a bit complicated and not as intuitive as the brightness/contrast sliders, but it also gives you finer control. I would suggest using one of the presets when working with curves for the first time. There is even a preset to lighten your photos. Go ahead and try it out:

• Duplicate the layer and select the duplicate layer you just created
• Hit Ctrl/Cmd + M to show the curves dialog. Choose “Lighter(RGB)” from the Presets drop down.
• You will notice slight brightening in your photo, if that is a little less and you need to lighten more, just click on the square that appears on the curve and while holding the click down, drag upwards.
• As you move further from the baseline you would see your photo lighten even further.

  

• Choose the sweet spot and click OK

Some Pro Tricks

While those are the conventional ways you would lighten a dark photograph, there would be tens of other ways to achieve the same inside Photoshop. As you play around, you will discover new tricks of your own. Here are some I find useful in similar situations:

Screen Blend Mode

• Duplicate the layer, select the duplicate layer and change its blend mode to screen.

  

• Incase the effect is too intense you can lower the opacity of the duplicated layer.

Soft Light Blend Mode

• Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + N) or by clicking the new
• layer icon on layer’s palette.
• Hit the D key and press Ctrl + Backspace to fill the new layer with white.
• Now change the blend mode of the new layer to “Soft Light”

  

• If the effect is too intense, you can lower the opacity, if its is a little subdued you can duplicate the white layer to intensify it.

So there you go, five ways to lighten your dark photographs in Photoshop. Actually, there are many more but you are pretty much covered with these five. If you have any other creative way to achieve similar results, we would love to know about them. Let us know via comments!

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And sometimes there are software you find irksome and think things could have been better. In any case, I always like to try out a few alternative software choices before I settle with any particular application mainly for two reasons: One, you would never know how good or bad the one you are using is until you try some alternatives and two: a bit of choice and competition can only be for the good of us users! Your motivation might be different: perhaps you want to find a free software that does the same task as the paid software you are using or maybe your favorite Windows application is not available on Mac or Linux.

Whatever maybe the reason, here are some sites that you can use to find alternative software and suggested applications.

LinuxAppFinder

Missing your favorite Windows or Mac application on Linux? Try LinuxAppFinder. It provides a listing of popular Linux applications. Apart from that, it also lists popular Windows and Mac software and the Linux applications that can be used for similar purposes. Clicking on an alternative software listing will show you its description, rating and other related software. LinuxAppfinder is a great way to discover Linux software if you are new to Linux.

AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo lists a large number of Windows, Mac, Linux software. Click on the ones you use or need to find alternative software for, and you will be presented with a list of software with similar functionality. Likes ala Diggs are presented alongside each listed software, that lets you gauge the popularity of the software. Additionally, you can filter the mentioned alternative by platform, likes or recent popularity as well. AlternativeTo also lists webapps like Dropbox and Evernote, just in case you are looking to shift to the web!

Osalt

Osalt is yet another popular site that offers similar functionality. It lists Open Source applications as alternative to popular software that you might be paying lots of money for. Many of the open source software have come a long way in functionality and usability and they cover almost every purpose you can use your computer for. Mostly open source software are also free, so you should definitely check out osalt and see if you can find some good open source software that can replace the ones you are already using.

Wakoopa

Wakoopa takes a somewhat different approach. Wakoopa is a community where people share their favorite software. You can view most popular apps that other people are using on the Wakoopa home page. For personalized suggestions, you would have to signup and create a software profile listing the software you are presently using. In addition, you can also track how much time you are spending using each application.

MakeUseOf

Actually, this one goes far beyond suggesting alternative software! However, we also do our part when it comes to reviewing interesting or new applications. You should always check out the MakeUseOf directory that lists hundreds of useful web and mobile applications that you can use for a variety of purposes.

Do you have any applications you wish to switch over from? Sound off in the comments!

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We have reviewed quite a few online storage services in the past. Microsoft’s offering Skydrive is right up there with others when it comes to storage space, offering a staggering 25 GB of online space. In addition we also showed you how you can edit your Office documents stored in Windows Live Skydrive with Office Webapps.

One of the most annoying aspects of nearly all online storage solutions is that you have to use a web browser to upload and manage files. Some of them offer Java applets to upload but there are a number of other operations that you may want to perform on the files you have in your account. Doing them in a web browser is generally not the best way to do such things. It would be nicer if you could integrate Skydrive into the Windows shell. Wouldn’t it?

Skydrive Explorer is one such application that lets you do just that. With Skydrive Explorer installed you can easily access your Skydrive account just like any other drive from inside My Computer. A meagre 1.23 MB download, Skydrive Explorer installs in a jiffy. Once installed you will see a Skydrive Explorer System folder listed inside My Computer.

Double click on it and you will be prompted to log into your Skydrive account. You can then view the contents of your Skydrive account just like any other folder without having to use the web browser.

You should note that folders may take some time to load since Skydrive Explorer needs to send a request and then process it before it can display the relevant information to you. You should therefore avoid working directly with files stored in your Skydrive folders. The right way would be create a local copy, edit it and then copy it back to Skydrive. That said, the performance is acceptable and a large part of it would be attributed to your connection speed.

Skydrive Explorer lets you perform almost all the file/folder management tasks that you can need:

• You can create, delete, rename multiple folders in a single go.

• Copy files to Skydrive folders from your hard drive which would then be uploaded to your Skydrive account or copy the contents to your hard drive from the account.

• You can also right click on any folder and then copy its URL to the clipboard. Visiting the URL in any web browser would take you to your Skydrive account, right to where the file is located. You can easily use this functionality to share files with others by adding them to the “Public” folder.
• Create shortcuts to a Skydrive folder on your desktop for quick access

With a little effort you can easily use Skydrive to backup your important files. You can use software like the previously mentioned Directorysync pro or Freefilesync to keep two folder synchronized with each other. Let’s say you synchronize the Documents folder on your Skydrive account with the Documents folder for your user account in Windows. Now changes to any file or folder will be automatically communicated to your Skydrive account – just keep in mind the 50MB file limit!

You can also have a look at previously mentioned Gladinet and see which one would you like to use in case you are looking for a way to access your Skydrive. Which is your favorite online storage service and how do you access it?

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Of course it’s with Google and it is hard not to trust in them after all they do to honor your privacy. Another such attempt by Google is the new Google Dashboard that makes you feel a little bit safer about keeping the majority of your virtual life on their servers.

Here’s what Google Dashboard is all about:

The Google Dashboard gives you quick access to all kinds of information that Google knows about you. Accessible here, it requires you to re enter your password even if you are logged into your Google Account, because the Dashboard contains all kinds of information about you. Once you log in, a summary of the services you use and what Google knows about you through those services is presented.

The Dashboard tracks a number of Google Offerings including your profile data, web history, Gmail, Docs, Talk, Reader, Orkut, Calendar, Picasa, Youtube, Blogger, iGoogle, Contacts, Friend Connect, Voice, Custom Search engines, Mobile Sync, Health, Alerts and Tasks.

Other offerings like Analytics, App Engine, Bookmarks, Groups, Sites, Notebook, Page Creator, Webmaster tools and the latest addition Google Wave are not yet included in Google Dashboard.

Dashboard lets you know which data is private – that is visible to only you (and Google) and which is public – meaning you, your contacts or anyone can see those details (depending upon the context). Such shared and public items are marked with an icon and details are presented wherever applicable.

In addition to personal information, Dashboard also provides quick access to settings for any particular service you use. So you can easily change or share/unshare information from the Dashboard. Alongside are listed the various privacy policies of each letting you know how your personal information is stored and used.

The Google Dashboard is not the first effort from Google’s side to give you greater control over your personal information and data. There is also an Ads preference manager that addresses similar issues as well. To add on to that, Google has a special Data Liberation Front, a team that caters to, vaguely similar if not exactly, the same issues.

It is all about making it easy for users to switch. As an example you may love Google Docs right now, let’s say you don’t like it two years on, but you have a number of documents that are now sitting on Google’s servers. Ideally you should not be tied down into using Google docs just because you have your data on there. So Google Docs also offers an export as zip feature, that lets you export all your documents in one go.

Google is certainly leading the efforts in empowering users with an ability to have a greater say as to who can view their information and data and what can be done with it. Purists may find that it is a little too less a little too late and that Google can easily hide what they don’t want you to see. That they are giving you glasses to look through, but what if the glasses only show the brighter picture?

It would be interesting to know what you think of the issue. No doubt Google makes great products that makes us use them, but are we putting too much information about ourselves in their hands? Let us know your thoughts.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Here are 10 cool innovative Ubuntu linux wallpapers that would appeal to the Ubuntu enthusiasts!

The Dark Ubuntu

Ubuntu Wood Set

Ubuntu Bokeh

Ubuntu Metal

Linux for Robots

I don’t do Windows!

Ubuntu Denim

Ubuntu Poster

The Ubuntu User

Ubuntu vs Windows

Looking for more? Here are a few sources you should check for these kind of wallpapers – DesktopNexus has an awesome collection of Ubuntu Wallpapers. Ubuntu-Art, DeviantArt and Flickr are other sources worthy of a mention.

Having a myriad of favorite wallpapers brings forth another issue – ideally you would want to cycle through them so that you can see them all at one time or another and it also lends that little bit freshness to your desktop. Well changing wallpapers automatically is easy peasy. Try Wallpaper-Tray, its simple and straighforward. You point it to a folder, set the interval after which the wallpaper should be changed and it sets about to its task. If you are looking for something more flashy and feature rich take a look at other wallpaper changers for Linux and choose the one that suits your need.

One great thing about Linux is that you can customize even the slightest of details depending upon how much time you are willing to spend on it. While the result of a custom design would be truly amazing, it requires a fair bit of hacking and time. So you might want to check out how you can browse, download and apply themes right from the Ubuntu desktop. With tons of user contributed wallpapers, themes and icons, you can easily see time flying by when choosing the ultimate look and feel according to your choice.

And when you are done, let us know about it. Which Ubuntu wallpapers, themes, and icon sets are your favorites? We would love to check them out.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Create a new document, the size doesn’t really matter, we would be discarding it eventually, just make sure the background is white.

We will be creating a new brush by combining the existing brushes that Photoshop offers. So go ahead and choose the brush tool from the toolbox. In the options bar towards the top, click on the drop down arrow next to the brush shape. This allows you to choose the type of brush you want to work with. As we are creating a pixie dust effect, the obvious ingredients would be stars and glowing specks! So go ahead and choose any brush shape that looks like it would fit nicely into the effect. I use the Star brush, a soft round brush and the Starburst brush.

The star and round brushes can be found among the default brushes, you would have to click on the arrow and choose assorted brushes to get to the starburst brush. Additionally you can add even more stars by using the custom shape tool.

Just click two to three times at random spots with each of the brush/shape you choose to use. Try to contain the clicks fairly close to each other and try to vary the size. Although we will take care of this in the steps that follow, a little planning never hurts.

Next up, we will be creating a new brush from the semi-mess we just created. Make sure the background is white and go to Edit > Define brush preset. Give the new brush a name if you prefer and click OK.

You can now close this document (no need to save). Photoshop remembers the brush you just created across different documents. Now its time to load up the image you want to add the pixie dust to. I got this image from Stock Exchange

Create a new layer atop of the image you just opened. Let’s call it ‘dust’. Choose the brush tool and choose the brush you just created. Choose white as the foreground color.

If you click and drag, in other words “paint” with the brush you created, you might not get what you set out to achieve. The brush requires a little more tinkering and its time to summon Photoshop’s powerful brush engine. Click Window > Brushes or hit the F5 key to get to the brushes palette.

Place a check mark against Shape Dynamics and scattering. Now click on Shape dynamics and play around with the settings. As you tinker with the settings Photoshop will give you a live preview of what the brush stroke will look like. Here are my settings. Make sure to set the control to fade, this will give you a nice swipe of magical dust when you paint a stroke on your image.

Next click on scattering and play with the sliders till you get what you are looking for. Here are my settings. The settings would depend on the type of image you are using. If the image has some action, you would want a fading effect, if it is more of a front portrait you might want to sprinkle some dust all over rather than a continuous stroke. All that can be done from in here by playing around with the sliders.

Once the settings are done, paint a stroke on a new layer. You can add some glow to add a finishing touch. Double-click on the dust layer and check Outer Glow from the Layer Styles dialog that opens. Choose the color of the glow and its size. You can lower the fill opacity to let some of the background image show through the dust, while still keeping the glow opaque. Here is the end result:

How did you find that tutorial. Isn’t it easy to add a little pixie dust effect into your photos? Tell us how your photos turn out!

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Amazing Textures

Amazing Textures list various free Photoshop textures nicely sorted into different categories. You can find textures representing wood, bricks, glass, metal, fabric and many more. You can browse the site as it is, however if you want to download higher resolution images you would have to register with the site. The registration is free.

DeviantArt

DeviantArt is renowned for this kind of creative work. You can find some amazing textures to work with. Many of them created by users themselves rather than from photographs as on other sites, you can thus find some really unique textures here.

Lost and Taken

Lost and Taken works like a blog. There are regular posts listing free Photoshop textures that pertain to a particular theme. You might want to point your RSS reader there if you like collecting resources for design work and inspiration.

Grunge Textures

Grunge Textures specializes (hold your breath…) in grunge textures! There are all kinds of textures with a one common aspect – all have a grungy feel to them. According to the site, there are 1355 high resolution images in 18 categories that you can browse through to find what you are looking for.

Shizoo

Shizoo lists various resources like brushes, icons, patterns and much more that you can make use of. The textures section lists some nice colorful textures which you won’t find on every site.

Texture Gallery

Nicely designed site listing textures organized into various categories. One thing (besides the textures) I like about Texture Gallery is that most of the site is in a neutral gray, this helps in any avoiding any influence that the site’s color may have on texture choice.

Toybirds

Toybirds not only lists textures but also lists other resources you may find handy in your design work. There are occasional posts featuring brushes, patterns etc. Although the latest post dates back to 2008, it is nevertheless a worthy resource to browse when looking for design resources.

Texture King

Texture King offers stock texture images for free. While the textures may be low on count, you can find large high resolution textures for your work.

Urban Dirty

Urban Dirty also lists stock texture images, most of them have a grungy feel to them. In addition, the site also lists a few examples in which the texture images have been used, just in case you are looking for some inspiration! You can also check out the Urban Dirty photos in action on Flickr

Texture Library and Texture Archive

Just because we love to throw an extra one to make that 10 an 11 here are two more resources you can check out when looking for textures. Both of them list textures in various categories which often overlap. However, these are indispensable resources listing lots of textures to have in your bookmark directory.

Which site has the most variety of textures and appealed to you the most? Do you use any other site when looking for textures? Shoot a comment, we would love to know about them.

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MUI transforms almost the entire user interface to the language of your choice. The other option is to install what is called a language interface packs. Unlike the MUI, language interface packs are more freely available online and can be installed on Windows Home and Home Premium versions as well. One downside is that it won’t transform the entire user interface to another language. Rather, it concentrates on the most commonly used areas of the interface and makes them available in the language you choose.

Language packs can help you customize your computer to display text in language of your choice. Everything from dialog boxes, buttons and windows would display text in the language you want. As I pointed out earlier there are essentially two ways you can install additional languages. Either using Windows Update, or you can download and install the language packs separately. You can find language packs over at MSDN and Technet. And of course there are thousands of other places on the Internet where you can always find them.

Here are the steps you should follow to install additional language packs on your computer.

Open up Control Panel. Click on Change Display language under Clock, Language and Region section.

In the dialog that opens, see if the language you are looking for is installed on your computer. If it is you can choose it, or else click on Install and Uninstall languages.

In the resulting screen you can choose to install using Windows update, or if you have downloaded the files separately you can choose the second option to Browse computer or network.

Now simply point it to the folder containing the downloaded language pack. The wizard then lists the languages that are included in that language installer pack.

Choose the languages you want to install, click Next. You will be presented with the license agreement. Read through and choose to Accept or Decline the license. Naturally, you should choose to accept.

The installation will take some time. Once the it has finished, you can choose the newly-installed language.

With a little effort, you can also add the required languages to installation CD/DVD, so that they can be easily installed together with the operating system every time in case you need to install them on multiple computers. It requires a bit of effort you can find the details at this TechNet page.

You can find various language packs that you can use on your computer at Microsoft’s site. Do you use a language other than English on your computer? Let us know if you got it built in or installed it as an addon and the steps you took to do it.

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For a change, I will be talking about how to uninstall Linux Ubuntu (or other operating systems) from a dual boot windows pc, and still being able to boot into other OS without much work. So let’s get started right away.

Backup your Linux files

It pops up everytime, but backup really is very important. If you have been using your Linux system for some time, chances are you would have created files you wouldn’t want to loose. In such a case, you can boot into Linux, backup your files (check out your Home directory) on an external device or onto a Windows partition.

Alternatively if you somehow managed to mess up and can’t boot into Linux, you can use ext2 IFS which allows you access to your Linux paritions. It can only read ext2 and ext3 filesystems though. If you are using other filesystems, you would have to look around a bit for a similar application. In any case, you can always boot from a Linux live CD to backup files if everything else fails.

Delete Linux Partitions

Next step: delete every Linux partition. That would include everything – boot, swap, home, whatever way you set up your system, it is time to delete all Linux partitions. There are a couple of ways to achieve this, easiest being from within Windows’ Computer Management. You need to:

• Log in to an account with administrative privileges.
• Right click on My Computer, click ‘Manage’.
• Choose ‘Disk Management’ listed under ‘Storage’ and you will see all of your partitions listed there.

Next, you need to identify Linux partitions. The Linux partitions generally don’t have a file system listed with them if Windows doesn’t recognize it, so this can serve as a clue. Other ways can be identifying by size or partition number. You can use partition managers, these are generally better at identifying filesystems. Go ahead, delete the partitions, just make sure you delete the correct ones. Linux is gone and so is GRUB, which allowed you to choose operating system to use at boot time. So currently, you cannot boot into any other operating system, without some help. We are going to fix that soon.

Restore MBR

As we noted, GRUB is gone and so is the ability to boot into Windows. You would now need to boot from the Windows CD/DVD to restore the Master Boot Record. You can also use other Live CDs like one of my absolute favorites and highly recommended HBCD just in case you don’t have Windows installation media handy. Here are the steps:

• Boot from Windows CD/DVD and choose “Repair” when it shows up.

• Choose command prompt on the resulting screen and run the following two commands:
  • bootrec /fixmbr
  • bootrec /fixboot

XP users need to run the recovery console from Windows XP CD and then type fixmbr when at the command prompt.

Reclaim free space

Restart now, remove the CD and you should be able to boot into your Windows installation. Once there, you should go ahead and reclaim the unpartitioned free space which was previously occupied by Linux. Doing so is simple and straight forward:

• Fire up Disk Management as before.
• Right-click on the unparitioned space, choose new partition or new logical drive.
• Specify the size and other options according to your needs and you are done.

The free space should now be accessible from My Computer like any other partition. Alternatively, you can create multiple partitions from the free space or resize existing partitions to suit your needs.You can use utilities like GParted, Easues Partition Master or any one of the many partition managers on HBCD to perform such advanced tasks easily.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Step 1: The checks

First off, you would want to make sure your existing hardware can support Windows 7. Windows XP has been out for a long time and your hardware might not support the newer and comparatively more demanding versions of Windows like Windows 7. These are the official system requirements:

• 1 GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
• 1 GB of RAM (32-bit); 2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
• 16 GB of available disk space (32-bit); 20 GB of available disk space (64-bit)
• DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

You can use the Windows 7 Upgrade advisor to see if your computer will run Windows 7. Once you are sure that you are good to go, hop up to the next step.

Step 2: Backup and Migration

It is always a good idea to have backup of your important files and settings that you worked so hard to create. We have shown you various applications to backup your files and settings in the past. If you would rather not install any new software, a simple copy and paste would suffice for the time being. Just make sure to include everything you might need. While you might have set up your folders differently according to your taste, here are some key locations that you should check out and decide if you would like to back them up:

• My Documents
• My Music
• My Pictures
• (If you have more than one user account on your computer, make sure to back up their files as well)
• Your projects folders and files, if it is your work computer
• Browser bookmarks, saved passwords, etc.
• Other program data under %AppData% (This doesn’t always work. It is better if you use respective applications to export settings)

Another option you can use to quickly backup and transfer your settings is the Windows Easy Transfer tool that you can find on the Windows 7 DVD. Browse to the folder named support and then to migwiz on your Windows 7 DVD and launch migsetup.exe. This will launch the Windows Easy Transfer tool.

Choose how you would like to transfer the settings:

and then select what to transfer:

and Windows Easy Transfer will do the rest and give you a file you can store, on say a flash drive to transfer the settings to new installation later.

Step 3: Drivers

Next up are the drivers. It is always a good idea to search your computer manufacturer’s website to see if they have newer drivers for Windows 7. Older drivers may not always work, or may not work as intended. This is especially true for drivers made for Windows XP. I was able to use an XP display driver with Windows 7 beta but it didn’t work when Windows 7 RC came out. You might have more luck with Vista drivers on Windows 7, but nothing is guaranteed. So if you are trying to get older drivers to work, you better be prepared to play around after installation.

Step 4: Install

Finally, you are ready to install Windows 7. Pop in the DVD and restart your computer. Boot from the DVD and follow the prompts to install Windows 7.

Choose Custom (Advanced install) when given the choice:

Then choose the system drive (which was your C: on Windows XP) as the partition you would like to set up Windows 7.

Wait for the installation to complete, and boot into Windows 7 once you are done.

Installed, now what?

Already here? Way to go. Now that you have Windows installed there are few additional steps you should take before you are ready to go. First off, make sure you install an antivirus before you start browsing the web or transferring files using USB drives. MS Security Essentials, AVG, Avast and Antivir are good free choices. You might want to look into commercial ones if you want something better. ESET and Kaspersky are good choices over there (Oops! Did I start a flame war?).

Install your favorite applications now. This would be a good time to get the latest versions if you have been postponing pending software updates. Looking for some software recommendations? Check out the Mark pack.

Oh and don’t forget to restore the settings you backed up earlier. If you went the copy-paste route, its time to do some more copy-paste. If you used Windows Easy Transfer instead, click on Start button and type Windows Easy transfer, launch the application and let it know that this is your new computer, then browse to the location you stored those settings to and let it do the rest.

Hope this helps you plan your upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. Once you are done, use the comments area and tell us know how it went and if Windows 7 is worth the price tag!

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NirLauncher can be downloaded here. It is approximately a 7MB download that unpacks to give you over 100 useful tools and utilities that are always good to keep in handy. Listing all of them would be quite a task, but NirLauncher manages to present them in a very usable interface categorized according to their functionality. You can find portable utilities for your flash drive from ranging from password recovery tools to outlook and office utilities all ready to be fired up.

You might not know about all the tools that are listed in there, so NirLauncher provides a brief description of the tool letting you know what it would do. NirLauncher also lets you know the version and homepage of the tool/utility in case you need some more information about it.

Some of the tools included in NirLauncher might need administrative privileges in order to function properly, for such tools there is a Run As Administrator option in the file menu. If you need even finer controls while invoking any utility, try the Advance Run mode. The Advance Run mode lets you specify command line parameters that would be passed to the tools, environment variables, directory path and window mode options for various tools.

You can easily add or remove a software package via the appropriate commands under the Launcher menu. NirLauncher stores all the details regarding a software package in a .nlp file. So you would require one to add another software package. While it may not be easy to find one mentioning your favorite tools, it is easy to edit the existing nirlauncher.nlp file to do just about anything you want. The .nlp file is a regular text file you can edit with your favorite text editor. It is nicely structured and self explanatory. You can find additional details here if you get stuck someplace.

To remove an application, simply remove its entry and remove the executable and all related files from the NirLauncher directory. To add another portable tool, drop the required files and create a new entry under the appropriate group. Restart NirLauncher and you should see the changes you made. NirLauncher’s site provides an .nlp file for the ever so popular Sysinternal applications that you can use to integrate Sysinternal Suite into your list of tools.

There are some handy shortcuts you should get used to that will make navigating NirLauncher a snap. F7 and F8 keys can be used to move to the next and previous group or category. F3 and F4 keys can be used to switch between various software packages you might be using within NirLauncher. Use F6 to quickly access the Advance Run dialog and Alt + M to run any application with administrative privileges.

NirLauncher is an awesome tool that gives you access to hundreds of cool applications. Definitely one to keep handy on a USB drive. If you can spare some time, add your favorite tools and remove the ones you don’t like for a customized launcher harboring all your favorite portable applications.

What are you favorite portable applications? Would NirLauncher find a place on your flash drive? Tell us in comments.

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If you are stuck with XP or Vista and would like to have a piece of Aero Peek and Aero Shake, no need to get disheartened. This is what I am talking about:

Users over at the WinMatrix forums (the source of many such innovations) has created an excellent software that brings such functionality to Windows XP and Vista. The application is called WinShake and is available for download here. Make sure you download the latest version (2.02 at the time of writing). Written using AutoHotKey, Winshake offers quite a functionality as you shall see:

An improved show desktop which can only hide minimizable windows, leaving the gadgets and sidebars intact, or hide everything to show the entire desktop. It also remembers the minimized programs and can restore them to their previous state even if you fire up more any more applications or windows.

A very good Aero Shak-ish feature: In Windows 7, holding a window’s title bar and shaking it a little, minimizes all other windows letting you concentrate fully on the window, that is under the mouse pointer. Winshake does something similar – hold the shift key and middle click on any window to shake it and minimize all other windows.

A Ctrl + Middle Click on the right end of the taskbar activates the peek functionality similar to Windows 7 peek functionality. While this one lacks the eye candy it certainly does let you peek at your desktop. Using Ctrl + Middle Click on the close button in the title bar of any window, makes it translucent and lets you peek through it at the window underneath.

There is a taskbar peek function as well that lets you peek at specific windows using the taskbar, but that is part of a nag and you can only use that for seven days after which you would need to buy a code to keep running this specific function. All other functions will however keep running even if you don’t shell out those bucks.

The application also offers shortcut keys for the above functions, which are easier to use as opposed to the mouse control, however you can easily disable them if you desire. Alt-Win-D shows the Desktop, Shift-Alt-Win-D restores the windows, Alt-Win-S activates Shake, Shift-Alt-Win-S restores the windows. Alt-Win-Space can be used to activate peek functionality.

If you don’t like the mouse activation commands, you can customize those too using the system tray icon. In addition to that the tray icon gives you access to other settings as well. You can customize animation speeds and transparency levels that will be used while performing various actions.

The application definitely lacks the eye candy you would get if you use similar functionality on Windows 7. That said, it does a pretty decent job of emulating the functionality and if a very good alternative if you are wanting such functionality on Windows XP or Vista.

Also check out Tina’s article on how to make Windows XP to look like Windows 7. She mentions AeroSnap among other things which brings the Windows Seven’s Aero Snap feature to Windows XP as well.

Give Winshake a spin and pour in your thoughts about it. Know some other applications that emulate Windows 7 features? We would love to hear about them as well.

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Things have changed a lot over the past few years and there is plenty of eye candy available on the Linux desktop. Today however we are going to look at the gaming side of the spectrum and particularly at applications and resources you can use to find and install Linux games on your box.

Synaptic(or any other) Package Manager

A package manager lists various software that you can install on your computer. As an example the package manager in Ubuntu is called the synaptic package manager and it lists tons of applications you can choose to install from.

You can find it under System > Administration. In the sidebar you will find a special section dedicated to Linux games and amusement. Choose from official, multiverse and universe and you will see the games that are available via the repositories. You might have to enable universe and multiverse repositories from within System > Administration > Software Sources if you don’t see them listed by default.

Playdeb (for Debian/Ubuntu based distros)

Playdeb is a gaming repository. They mention Ubuntu specifically but you should be able to use playdeb with other Debian/Ubuntu derivatives just fine.

To use Playdeb you have to install the playdeb package (technically you should be able to install Linux games without the package, but it is a recommended installation to avoid further complications). You can download the package’s deb file or configure the repository. The details are available here.

Once you have installed the required software you are good to go. Browse for games that are available on the playdeb website. There are plenty of them out there. You can browse your favorite genre from amongst fps, education, dungeon, simulation, mmorpg, music, space, action, strategy and more.

Each Linux game listing consists of the necessary details along with a link to a Youtube video.  You can have a look at it to see if you would really like to install the game. If you like a game, installation is super easy and just a click away. Click on the big “Install this now” button and set the ball rolling. Soon the game along with all the dependencies will be downloaded, installed and ready for use.

djl

Inspired by Valve’s steam distribution setup, djl is a game manager for the Linux world. djl is not available in repositories so you would have to take the longer route for installation. Download the tarball from here. Extract the contents, and then run the included djl script. In case you are wondering here is what I mean:

1. tar -xvf <djl tar.gz file name>
2. cd djl
3. sh djl.sh

You would have to specify certain configuration settings the first time you run djl and then you will be able to view the djl game manager. With that out of the way you can browse the repository of about 120 or so games, read about them, view screenshots and install them at the click of a few buttons. You can view recently added and recently updated Linux games from the news tab, join the chat at the djl IRC channel and install plugins to extend djl’s functionality.

You can find hundreds of games that you can install on your Linux machine using the applications mentioned above. If you are a gaming enthusiast chances are you will find one matching your taste.

Have you tried games that are available for Linux, besides the obvious solitaire games? Which ones are your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

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There are various software available for creating and running virtual machine image. Microsoft’s Virtual PC, VMware, and Sun Microsystems’ VirtualBox to mention a few. Usually, there are several steps you would need to follow in order to create a virtual machine. These include creating a virtual hard disk and then installing the required operating system on the virtual hard disk.

Recently, Microsoft-owned Sysinternals released a utility that would be useful for easily creating a virtual machine image from your existing hard drive contents. This can be very useful if you have one of your computers at home or work set up for a particular task and you want to access all the same tools and software temporarily from your laptop.

The tool is aptly called Disk2vhd. Its a small download and doesn’t require installation. Just fire up the application with administrator rights and you are good to go. It will show you various hard disks and partitions on your computer. Select the one you would like turned into virtual hard disks, hit create and the applications goes about doing its thing.

In the ‘Space Required’ column, Disk2vhd shows you the amount of hard disk space you will need to have in order to create the virtual hard disk from your computer’s partitions. The process could take really long so you might as well go out grab something to eat/drink and come back — and if you are lucky, it would have created the virtual hard disk. The time it requires would depend on the size of the disk you are trying to turn into a virtual hard disk. Generally be prepared to wait for quite a while.

Once the VHD file is created, you can use one of the virtualization apps mentioned above to run a virtual machine off the hard disk image you’ve just created. All three support VHD files. Here are the details in case you want to look into them.

In addition, Vista (and now Windows 7) users can mount .vhd files as regular hard disks as well. Follow these steps:

• Right click on My Computer icon and choose ‘Manage’.
• Listed under Storage, choose ‘Disk Management’.

• From the Action menu, choose Attach VHD, browse to the location of the VHD file, check read-only if you want to safeguard the contents against modification and click OK.

• You will now be able to access it like a regular hard disk.

Disk2vhd is a great tool that lets you create a virtual machine image from your existing hard disk setup. The tool does all this from within the operating system without requiring you to boot from a CD. You can easily take your current computer and run it as a virtual machine on another computer. One thing you would require is free hard disk space.

What do you think of it? Do you know about similar tools? Share them with everyone in the comments.

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Another important and largely overlooked issue related to security and performance of your computer involves keeping the installed software updated. Contrary to popular belief, most of the free software is also constantly being developed and software version updates are available every now and then. So how do you keep track when a newer version for one of your installed software is available? Well you can manually keep checking sites like FileHippo, Softpedia, Download.com or you can use a tool like Techtracker.

Techtracker does all the heavy lifting for you when it comes to making sure the installed software is up to date. CNET requires you to register before you can download Techtracker, which is a bit annoying but comes in handy later in the form of software version update alerts and reports.

Once installed, Techtracker will scan your computer for installed software, check the version you have installed on your computer and the latest version that is available. In about a minute or two you can view the findings. It will list the software version updates that are available. Clicking on any one of them will take you to a detailed report of the scan.

The report lists all the software that Techtracker is tracking. The ones that need updating are displayed towards the top of the list. It lists the version you have installed on your computer and the latest version that is available. You can also find the download link for the latest version. Keep in mind that the download link would be to the latest version, if you are looking for a specific version you might have to hunt around.

The more info links display useful information like ratings, downloads and the file size. You can also customize the alert preferences from this page. By default the alerts are off. You can turn on alerts for all software which means that you will get an email when a newer version of any of your installed software is available, or you can turn off alerts on selected software that you want to be excluded from this feature.

What if you have more than one computer? Does Techtracker support multiple computers? Short answer: NO, Long answer: by the looks of it, they might support multiple computers in the future with a Techtracker pro application and some bucks (hmm..). Right now you would have to uninstall Techtracker from your computer, unlink the computer from your CNET account and then install Techtracker on the second computer.

Phew! That is some work, creating another account seems easier. How do you keep your computer software versions updated? We would love to hear about it in the comments.

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There are a number of free parental control software packages and some tools designed to assist parents in this very task. Here are five that are worth a look.

Windows Parental Control Software

Windows has been offering parental control features (or some that are close to the feature) from some time now. Internet Explorer has had a content advisor since ages ago. The recent version of Windows offer even greater control. Barring the Business edition, all other Windows editions ship with parental control. You would have to create a separate account for kids (which is the sensible thing to do anyway), then you can access and manage parental controls from the Windows Control Panel. You can limit the amount of time your kids spend on the computer, the applications they can use and for how long; and you can also get an activity report of what they have been up to.

OpenDNS

OpenDNS not only resolves web addresses quickly. It also offers a host of other interesting features similar to free parental control software which you can use to protect users from phishing attacks of unsuitable content on the Internet. All you need to do in order to use OpenDNS is to set the nameservers for your computer or router. Once this is done, go ahead and create a free web account. This will let you manage what to allow and give you detailed statistics as well.

OpenDNS maintains a list of websites, broken down into categories that you can use to make browsing a little safer. You can also create your own blacklists to restrict access to any sites you don’t want your kids to view.

Kidzui

Kidzui is safe, free parental control software in the form of a web browser for kids. It let’s the children access games, videos and content that have been approved by parents around the world. One really nice feature of Kidzui is that it takes up the entire screen by default, hiding the Windows interface so that children don’t wander off elsewhere on your computer. Kidzui is great if you want to set up a hassle-free, safe and educational window to the web for your young ones. Here is the complete scoop.

Visikid

Visikid is more of a monitoring application with a strong focus on your kid’s activities. It monitors the applications that are accessed and the sites that are visited along with the time spent on them. All this information is presented to you nicely categorized should you choose to know what your kids have been up to. There are graphs, custom categories and much more on the Visikid dashboard that you can access at their website. Here is the complete review.

Pikluk

Pikluk also allows you to create list of websites that you deem suitable for your kids. Similar to Kidzui, it provides a safe means to access educational websites, games and all the usual features. A distinguishing feature is that you can create a Pikluk email address for your children and create a white list of users they are allowed to communicate with. Any email to or from anyone not on the list will be blocked.

Video sites for kids

Videos are generally very popular among kids but allowing access to something like Youtube is fishing in troubled waters. Although they are not strictly parental control tools, sites like ZuiTube and Totlol take a lot of burden off your shoulders when letting your kids watch videos online. These sites list videos that are fun, educational and moderated to be child-safe.

With all the tools combined and a careful strategy, you can be reasonably sure your kids are safe on the computer. However, nothing can match the caring and watchful attention of parents. We suggest you stick to that from time to time as well. Also check out 5 sites that promote internet safety for kids for some serious in depth information on the topic

What do you think about these? Do you know of some other useful tools for similar purposes? Sound off in the comments.

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Stick is an application that lets you attach tabs to the sides of your screen so that you have a convenient tabbed desktop. The tabs can contain a wide variety of content ranging from contents of a folder to web pages to RSS feeds to Notes to a calendar or calculator.

Let’s have a look.

You can download stick from iWonderDesigns. The application is available as an installer as well as a portable version that you can run off your USB drive. When running for the first time, Stick prompts you start building a tabbed desktop by adding the tabs. Go ahead and create some that you would like. You can create 6 types of tabs:

Notes

• Lets you store notes in rich text format which makes it perfect for things like a To Do list you can access quickly from your tabbed desktop, or any kind of random scribblings you access often.

Navigator

• The navigator tab can be used to create a tab to point to your favorite folder location or any URL of your choice. Excellent for things like Gmail and Google Reader that you like to keep open.

RSS Reader

• I mention Google Reader above, however Stick offers an RSS reader of its own. Complete with auto refresh and previews you can view one or more RSS feeds in an RSS tab. It can also notify you of new items in the feed via a popup.

TaskBar

• Displays a list of all items you have opened, similar to the Windows Taskbar

A Calendar and Calculator

It can take some time to think out a perfect tab setup for your desktop. You can of course add as many of them as you want to begin with and then narrow down or refine your choices to get the perfect setup. I have a To Do tab, some other random note tabs, a Gmail tab, a Twitter Tab, another for a quick Google search, and some that point to local folders that I access often.

You can simply move the tabs around to stick to any edge of the screen. You have to move the tabs one by one to wherever you want them to be which is a pain. It would be nice to have the ability to move all the tabs as a group.

Stick offers you a dedicated Tab Manager that you can use to create and delete tabs. In addition, the Tab Manager lets you change the properties of any tab. Properties include options like always on top, autohide, autoshow, keyboard shortcuts to toggle visibility of any tab, transparency and themes.

You can store a set of options for the tabbed desktop as a template and thus change the options of all tabs together in a snap. This comes in handy when you would be working full screen or want to get rid of all the distraction for whatever reasons.

Stick is loaded with options and lets you tweak almost every aspect of the tabs to your liking. It is a great alternative way to display information which I prefer over gadgets and sidebars that keep staring at your face.

Do you have other creative desktop setups or favorite applications you use for similar purposes?  Please mention them in the comments!

If you missed the link above , here is the link to Stick

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You can download MobaLiveCD from here. A mere 1.6 MB download, MobaLiveCD presents an inviting prospect over virtualization solutions like Virtualbox, although it is not as feature rich. Under the hood, MobaLiveCD uses QEMU – the open source emulator. If you ever tried using QEMU, you would know that it requires a fair bit of configuration and know-how. MobaLiveCD does away with all that and provides you with a single executable file which launches the application, you don’t even need to install MobaLiveCD.

MobaLiveCD is a portable application, the interface is intuitive and straightforward. To run a Linux LiveCD:

• Just click on the ‘Run the LiveCD’ button.
• Browse to the iso image.
• Choose whether to create a virtual hard drive or not and the LiveCD boots up.

MobaLiveCD needs to copy files to the system32 directory, so you should run MobaLiveCD with elevated rights if you see an error like the one below. To do with elevated rights just click on the exe file and choose Run as Administrator.

Keep in mind that you are essentially running another operating system inside Windows thus the resources available to MobaLiveCD will be limited. So you should not expect the same performance levels you would get by restarting the computer and booting from the CD ROM. Nevertheless depending upon your computer’s configuration you can still get decent performance, enough to let you try out the Linux Live CD thoroughly.

You can toggle full screen mode using Ctrl + Alt + F and Ctrl + Alt would bring the cursor back to the host operating system. In addition you can use the Right-Click Menu button that would create a right click context menu entry for ISO files, allowing you to run an ISO file directly within MobaLiveCD from the context menu.

The latest version of MobaLiveCD can also be used to run a Live USB drive right inside Windows. Click on the Run Live USB button and follow the prompts. If you would like to save the state of your work MobaLiveCD also lets you create a virtual hard disk.

Oh and in case you are wondering which LiveCD you should download, check out the Unofficial(fake) Chrome OS. And now that we are on the topic, let me confess that it was out of an urge to try out the fake Chrome OS(and laziness to set up a virtual machine in Virtual Box) that I realized MobaLiveCD is a cool application we haven’t covered yet, so now you know about it.

MobaLiveCD is great for testing new Linux distributions with a Linux Live CD, downloading ISO’s before burning them or testing remastered Live CD’s that generally require some hit and miss to get things exactly the way you want. With MobaLiveCD you can test them without needing to set up a virtual machine or burning CD’s.

Have you used MobaLiveCD? Do you know of any other similar application? Let us know in the comments.

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Most download managers have it, µtorrent has it and they are perfect for my need. There has always been a great void in this setup due to Firefox. Many a time, I have files downloading in Firefox but no way to auto-shutdown the computer. Some time back, I hacked together an auto script that would sit there and wait for the Firefox’s ‘Downloads finished’ notification to appear, it would then close Firefox and shutdown the computer. Lame I know, but it did the trick.

Recently, however, I found an excellent addon that lets you do schedule auto shutdowns in Firefox and a whole lot more, its (aptly) called Auto-Shutdown. The addon is auto shutdown software that provides you with a number of options to perform precisely the action you want once the downloads have completed. You can play sounds, clear downloads, shutdown, logoff, restart your computer or run any command or multiple commands through a script.

Auto Shutdown is available at AMO, it works with Firefox version 3 and upwards. Once installed, the auto shutdown software will add a power icon to the status bar. You can remove the icon if you desire, however it provides quick access to its options and can be used to enable auto-shutdown in a flash.

You can use the built-in commands for basic needs like shutdown, hibernate, stand by, etc. There are different versions of these commands for different version of Windows and Linux and Mac.

Apart from the built-in commands you can do almost anything with Auto Shutdown. You can run any JavaScript code or any external application when the downloads finish or when the computer is idle while Firefox is downloading the files. To run custom commands or JavaScript code:

• Go to the Customize tab within Auto Shutdown settings.
• Type in your code in the lower text area surrounded by <javaScript> </javaScript> tags or <shell> </shell> tags depending on what you are planning to achieve.

• Click Save As and assign the script to User Command 1 or User Command 2

• Choose User Command 1 or User Command 2 from Adjust shutdown Command drop down list towards the top.

You can easily pass arguments to external applications and Auto Shutdown also provides you with certain reserved words that can be used in your scripts to refer to special locations and files. %sysRoot%, for example, refers to the Windows/system32 directory and %WinD refers to the Windows directory. The complete list is available here.

You can also choose the amount of time Auto Shutdown waits before executing the commands after the downloads have finished. Auto Shutdown will display a countdown for that specified time, allowing you to save any work if you have been working along or cancel the download altogether. You can force Firefox to exit when the command is eventually triggered and choose to restore the session, the next time Firefox is started. If you use DownThemAll, Auto Shutdown has you covered and can monitor DownThemAll as well.

Auto Shutdown is a dream come true if you ever leave the computer running only to let the downloads complete. With Auto Shutdown, you can now automatically close the browser or shutdown the system when downloads complete. Give it a spin and let us know what you like or dislike.

Do you have some clever ways of your own to automatically shutdown the computer after downloads complete? Let us know in the comments.

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There are open source free desktop applications, then there are free cloud-based applications. Microsoft has been working on a free version of its popular Office franchise as well. The free version would be available online. Microsoft recently launched a tech preview. It is an invite-only preview, however you just need a Skydrive account and some URL tweaking to try out the Microsoft Office Web Apps Preview.

Here is how:

• The following steps seem to work only if you have ?mkt=en-us appended to the Skydrive URL. So click here.
• Create a Skydrive account (Windows Live Account) if you don’t have one, or log into your existing one. It gives you 25GB of online space you can use to store/backup your files. We wrote about it some time back.
• Make sure there is a Word/Excel file in your Skydrive. If there isn’t, you can upload one.
• You will see an option to join the tech preview to edit the file.

• Click on the link, read and choose to accept the terms. Silverlight should be installed for you to use Office Online. Don’t worry, you will be given instructions to download and install in case it is not found on your computer.

With all that done and completed you are in and ready to test out the latest in cloud office apps.

So how good is it?

Well to begin with – the Microsoft Office web apps have the same ribbon interface of Office 2007 and Office 2010. So if you were hoping to get back to the Office 2003 like menus and buttons, you will be disappointed. The similar look definitely makes it easier to find your way around. All the icons, menus and options (though few) resemble the ones you would find in the desktop version of the software.

As for the file format, Microsoft Office Web Apps uses Office Open XML formats (i.e. the .docx, .xlsx, .pptx formats). However, you can still use the older formats, only they will be converted to the newer OOXML formats before Office Web Apps allows you work on them.

Overall, it is limited and don’t expect to see all the functionality of the desktop version or something reasonably close to it. You would be better to make a comparison with some of the web-based office suites instead, in which case the functionality seems respectable, no amazing over-the-top stuff that would overthrow Google Docs.

Collaboration is the key feature, as is often the case with most cloud-based applications. You can share files with others, make your files public, choose whether they would be able to edit documents or not. People can leave comments as your file gets edited, re-edited and refined.

Go ahead check it out and let us know what you think. Do you think Office Online offers the features you need to do your day to day work? Or is it too stripped down to be used for any decent job? Give it a thorough spin and sound off in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Although Windows comes with a built in system information tool, it doesn’t provide ‘the complete picture‘ by any stretch of imagination. Some time back we looked at System Information Tool for Linux. Here is one you can use with Windows – it is called PC Wizard.

PC Wizard is an advanced system information utility and it provides you with loads of information relating to hardware, software and certain computer benchmarks. It is available both as an installable exe file and a portable zip file. Once you have it on your computer, go ahead and fire it up.

PC Wizard starts collecting information as soon as it loads. It will display the hardware information summary by default. This contains information about the processor, motherboard, RAM, hard disk, network cards and so on. You can get additional detailed information on any hardware component using the toolbar on the left

.

Click on configuration from the toolbar to get system configuration information. Here you can get information about the operating system such as windows uptime, which includes the number of times the operating system has been booted, and no bluescreens encountered. In addition you can also find Outlook, Internet Explorer and other passwords, file associations, list of updates and patches that have been installed and much more, like startup applications, services that are currently running and DirectX information.

The System Files section lets you view the contents of important system files and information like boot.ini, autoexec.bat, environment variables and event log to mention a few.

PC Wizard also lets you run computer benchmarks on Processor (namely Dhrystone (MIPS), Whetstone (MFLOPS) etc), L1, L2, L3 Cache, RAM, Hard Drives, CD/DVD Rom, DirectX 3D, Video, Removable/Flash Support. Note that some computer benchmarks requires a good amount of time for completion, during which you might not be able to work on your computer, so you might want to run them when the computer is idle.

PC Wizard monitors the computer for changing information like CPU core temperatures, hard disk temperatures and CPU utilization. This information can be displayed on your desktop when PC Wizard is running in the background.

You can customize various aspects of PC Wizard via Tools > Options. In here you can customize the user interface, choose additional information you want to view as well as configure the monitoring and benchmarking options.

The tool also allows you to save the reports in a variety of formats such as text, HTML, PDF or CSV. You can also generate a comprehensive report and print or email it. You can also use PC Wizard from the command line which would generate a report in the specified format without firing up the interface. The readme file contains a list of switches and options you can use on the command line.

PC Wizard provides you with exhaustive information about your computer in one place. Gathering such information without PC Wizard wouldn’t only require lots of work but might not be possible for the average user. The monitoring and benchmarking features are a welcome addition.

Give it a try and let us know what you think about it. In case you know of similar or better software used for the same purpose, we would love to know about it.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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A small download, Default Programs Editor is portable and doesn’t need any installation. It can be used for doing things like editing context menus for a file type or to set default programs or managing Autoplay handlers. Default Programs Editor works in a wizard-like mode making it super easy to make such changes.

You can edit File Type Settings which include editing the default program used to open a file type, changing the context menu entries for a file type and changing the description and icon. As an example when I used 7-Zip to extract a RAR file for the first time on my computer, the RAR file automatically got an ugly white 7-Zip icon. So how can I change the default icon for RAR files?

You can suggest I use the built in Windows tools and spend the next 15 minutes trying to figure out how to do it or perhaps edit the registry. Here is how it is down with Default Programs Editor:

• I went to IconFinder, searched for a suitable icon and downloaded it.
• Next I clicked on File type settings in Default Programs Editor, then clicked on Icon.
• In the search box I typed .rar, chose RAR file and clicked next.

• Clicked browse and chose the icon file I wanted to use and then clicked Save Icon and it was done already.

Similarly you can change the context menu entries and description easily.

Another important function you can use Default Programs Editor in addition to being able to set default programs is  for managing the AutoPlay Handler. AutoPlay handlers appear on the list when you plus in a USB drive, or insert a Blank CD, or connect your iPod. You can change which options appear when you insert a certain media, as well as create your own AutoPlay Handlers.

• Click on the type of media you want to edit the handlers for
• In the next screen, you can edit the existing handlers, delete the ones you don’t want or add new ones

• Clicking on Add will give you a list of handlers that already exist but may not be used for the type of media you are editing for.

• If you don’t find what you want in here, you can also create your own handlers. Just click on Add a new handler, specify the action name, program and icon and you are done.

Lastly you can change program associations with the minimum of fuss. Choose the third option (Default Programs Settings). You can now see a list of all registered programs and the file types they handle. Click on the one you want to assign to/revoke from a file type, click next and check/uncheck the file type under question. For example if you want iTunes to handle all .mp3 files, click on iTunes, click next and place a check against .mp3.

All these settings are of course stored in the registry. Default Programs Editor allows you to create reg files for the changes you just made so that you can just double click the reg file to apply the settings in future or apply them on another computer (provided the software and/or files are available).

To create a reg file just click on the downward pointing arrow in the final step and choose the appropriate option.

Default Programs Editor is a great, light wieght portable application that you can use for tasks like above without requiring full on tweaking utilities. If you know of other similar programs let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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But then there are considerations of not wanting to be seen tweeting while at work. Now we surely encourage you to do your work with all the required zeal, but it is always nice to know a tool or two that may be used in such a situation or are simple and plain fun to use otherwise as well.

Here are two of the ‘Undercover Twitter clients’, which give you an interface that people don’t generally associate with Twitter.

SpreadTweet

SpreadTweet gives you a Microsoft Excel-like interface to access Twitter. Your tweets are nicely listed as the contents of the spreadsheet and you can use the ‘formula bar’ to send out a tweet.

There are different versions available to match the look of Excel 2003, Excel 2007 or to match the Office OSX look and feel. Most of the buttons and options of the ‘Excel interface’ are non functional, but you can check replies, direct messages or refresh.

The desktop version of this Twitter client requires Adobe AIR. There is also a web version which defaults to Office OSX look. With all the browser toolbars around, it may not be the best disguise ever, although full screen mode would look convincing if you are on a Mac. Overall – SpreadTweet looks convincing and does a good job at replicating the Excel interface, although the taskbar button gives it away easily.

Quitter

Next up in line is Quitter. Quitter is a Twitter client that’s like tweeting from the command line. While this may seem archaic, Quitter offers some really cool features:

First and foremost, its only 43 KB in size and you don’t need to install it (though it requires .NET framework). Just double click the file and you are ready. Quitter then creates an XML file containing the configuration details. Quitter requires you to grant access to your Twitter account, it would take you to the Twitter page and generate a pin should you choose to allow it. Enter that pin in Quitter and you are ready to tweet.

Quitter can do most of the things that you would expect from a Twitter client. It allows you to:

• Read, post, reply and retweet.
• Organize the people you follow into groups and read tweets by group.
• Filter tweets from specific users or that contain certain #hashtags.
• Shorten URL’s
• Easily open tweeted links from other users in your default browser (no copy/paste needed)
• Send and receive direct messages
• Follow or unfollow other users

All this is of course achieved via simple commands like:

Quitter is surprisingly functional and fun to use, although I am still wondering why it was named Quitter. Any guesses?

Both SpreadTweet and Quitter are handy applications that don’t look like Twitter clients. While SpreadTweet gives you an Excel-like interface, it offers limited functionality. Quitter offers nice features and a geeky command line interface that some of us cherish better than others!

Do you know of other Twitter clients that offer unconventional interfaces?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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AdBlock blocks the advertisements on websites and lets you browse distraction free. Quite a few people don’t make the switch to alternative browsers because none of them can support AdBlock. That said, you can still block display ads using most of the popular browsers so let us see how you can block ads in other browsers that are not Firefox.

There are different hacks around there like special proxies and selective content blocking that you can use depending upon which browser you use. Here we will be using mainly using Adsweep. Although the project is not being maintained anymore, it provides a simple and easy ad blocking solution that just works.

Adsweep is essentially a user javascript (think Greasemonkey) that hides the page elements that contain advertisements. Setting it up is a little different for different browsers, lets have a look.

Chrome

• Download AdSweep.user.js
• Open Chrome user data directory. Use the following information if you are unsure about its location:
  • Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
  • Vista: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
  • Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
  • Linux: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default
• Once you are in there, create a folder named User Scripts

• Copy the file you downloaded above into this folder.
• Now we need to close Chrome and restart it with the ‘–enable-user-scripts‘ switch. You can do so from the command line or simply right-click on the chrome icon on your desktop and click properties. Add ‘ –enable-user-scripts‘ at the end. Click OK and double the icon to start Chrome with User Scripts enabled.

• Visit the AdSweep website.  If you see a red notification in the top right corner, everything went fine. If you don’t, recheck that you performed the above mentioned steps correctly.

If you use the development build of Chrome and have extensions enabled, then you can click and download the Adsweep extension for Chrome and spare yourself some work!

Opera

• Download AdSweep.js
• Within Opera, go to Tools > Preferences and then to the Advanced tab.
• Choose Content on the left side and then click on Javascript Options.

• Click Choose and browse to the location where you downloaded the file in Step 1

• Hit Refresh and notice the difference

Here is a quick before and after:

How to Block Display Ads In Internet Explorer

This is where you would have to leave AdSweep (it won’t work on IE) and take things into your hands. First and foremost, upgrade to the latest version of IE – Internet Explorer 8. IE8 has a feature called InPrivate filtering which can be tweaked to block ads. Here is how:

• Enable InPrivate Filtering from the Safety Menu (or press Ctrl + Shift +F)
• Now you need a filtering list of some sorts, that can identify ads on a page. Just Google around and you can find plenty, even AdBlock lists. Download the XML file onto your computer.
• Click on Safety > InPrivate Filtering Settings. In the dialog that opens, lower the Show content by providers used by this number of websites to the minimum. click on Advanced settings.

• In the Manage Add-ons dialog that opens, choose InPrivate Filtering on the left and click on import, browse to the XML file you just downloaded and the rules will be imported.

Keep in mind that you won’t block each and every ad with these methods, because the rules have to updated frequently to take care of new advertisers and other changes. On the flip side there would be times when genuine third party content will be blocked as well (specially in the InPrivate Filtering Technique). In any case, this should rid you of a considerable amount of ads and improve the overall browsing experience.

Do you know of any other ways to block display ads in Internet Explorer, Chrome or any other browser? Sound off in the comments, we would love to hear about them.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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To be able to revise quickly and often, it helps if the information is terse and to the point highlighting only the important aspects. Something like an application cheat sheet or a poster that you can print and pin to a board or keep on your desk.

Here are some application cheat sheets for commonly used software that will hopefully make you more productive.

Microsoft Office

Need to get that report typed and formatted quickly? Can’t find your way around the ribbon interface? Check these out:

Explains the ribbon interface, smart shapes, which format to choose and how to do things like adding a digital signature, protecting the document and other little tips. (Download)

Excel 2007 (Download)	Word 2007 (Download)
PowerPoint 2007 (Download)	Outlook 2007 (Download)

If you are interested in other Office applications or different version of Microsoft Office, Customguide is a great resource.

Browsers

Browsers are among most commonly used software these days. You may be using Firefox or Chrome or Opera or even Internet Explorer, the bottomline is you need to get online and browsers help you in doing so. It is always nice to know your browser inside out and have some tricks up your sleeves, here are some cheat sheets that should get you started:

Google Chrome

Contains keyboard shortcuts, command line switches and the about:urls (Go there) (PDF)

Firefox

Contains keyboard shortcuts, highlights important directories related to Firefox, and presents a trick or two. It has not been updated for a long time but the information still stands good for Firefox 3.5 (Go there) ( PDF )

Linux

This is a huge 18 x 18 in poster that presents you – “The Anatomy of a Linux System”. It has a plethora of information about Linux, top Linux magazines, top Linux sites. In addition, it lists the popular software on Linux systems along with the sites and useful books (it’s from O’Reilly after all) on each of them. (More) (Download)

Lists commonly used commands, switches and what they do. Good for beginners. (Download)

Looking for something a little more advanced? Linux Administrator’s Quick Reference card has you covered with the important files and commands you need to know for system administration. (Download) Credit: Jialong He

Vi/Vim

One of my personal favorites, I actually learned Vim way back using this. It is a complete tutorial and apart from the all inclusive version, there are ones for individual chapters. You can download the SVG versions and scale them to make a wallpaper if you like! (Download)

Photoshop

Concisely lists all the common Photoshop shortcuts you should know to make your work easier and faster. (Download for CS4) (Other Photoshop Versions)

Twitter

Twitter finds its way into everything these days, how could we not have a reference sheet for Twitter?

Packed with all kinds of information about Twitter including important pages, desktop clients, widgets and apps, a definition of various Twitter buzzwords and ethics! (Download)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

It has tons of information on what to include in tags, redirects, sitemap syntax, robots.txt syntax and much more. Presents lots of useful information in a tiny little booklet. A must for anyone working with SEO. (Download)

Looking for more?

I bet you are. Didn’t find the one you were looking for? Well there were too many of them to fit in one post. If you are looking for a specific application cheat sheet fire up the request in the comments section, someone might drop you a link. There are two great resources for posters and cheat sheets here and here. If you ever created one for yourself we would love to see them too!

Plus, don’t forget that MakeUseOf have our very own cheat sheets. Click here to check them out and if you like them, download them for free!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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It was a mystery because at first I didn’t realize that the erratic cursor movement is caused when your hand touches the touchpad while you are typing. It can get annoying pretty quickly when all of a sudden you find that you are typing the password in the username box all because the touchpad mistook the accidental contact as tap.

If you want to know how to disable the touchpad while typing, here are the steps:

On Windows

It is pretty straightforward to disable the touchpad in Windows. The settings can be generally accessed via the control panel. Open up Mouse Settings from the control panel, move over to the Device Settings tab and you can access touchpad settings in there.

Depending on the make and model of your laptop you will find options such as ‘disable touchpad when an external USB pointing device is connected‘ which is helpful if you use a USB mouse and want to disable the touchpad when a USB mouse is connected. You can also disable the touchpad entirely from here, or you can choose to disable only the buttons.

If enabling/disabling every time you are in for a bit of typing feels like too much work, you can look into the sensitivity settings for the touchpad and lower the sensitivity a bit. Although this doesn’t solve the problem in its entirety it helps to reduce it.

On Linux

Things get a bit more involved on the Linux side. You need to make sure that xorg.conf located at (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) contains the line: SHMConfig true under the input section.

• Fire up your preferred text editor and open up /etc/x11/xorg.conf. Look for a section like:
  

  Section “Input Device”
  Identifier “Synaptics Touchpad”
  …
  End Section

• This needs to contain the line Option “SHMConfig” “true”. Note that if you are using Jaunty Jackalope you would have to create a file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/shmconfig.fdi with contents as under

• If you added it to the file you need to restart the GUI. You can use Ctrl + Alt + Backspace. If that doesn’t work, just restart the system.
• Next open up the sessions manager. System > Preferences > Sessions and add an entry for syndaemon -i 1 -d. You can use man syndaemon to check out additional options like.

That should just about do it.  Syndaemon monitors the keyboard and as soon as you start typing it disables the tapping and scrolling action (according to the options you choose) on the touchpad. This means that you can still move the cursor, only you wouldn’t be able to accidentally tap it and thus wander off to another line.

I really like the Linux solution. You don’t have to do anything, it detects that you are typing and disables the tapping and scrolling while still letting you to move around the cursor and use the touchpad buttons to click. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a similar solution for Windows.

Maybe you are aware of one? Let us know in the comments how do you tackle the problem.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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There are couple of situations where the use of USB drive brings a certain benefit:

• When you are trying to install Windows on a netbook or your optical drive is broken
• When you want to create a live USB from an ISO image (requires some extra effort)
• Theoretically, the transfer speeds should be better and the installation process is a little faster
• You can protect your original install media from wear and tear.

There are a number of ways to create a bootable USB drive, however most of them require copying files manually – making it prone to mistakes. WinToFlash makes the entire task a lot simpler by the magic of automation.

Download WinToFlash from here. It is a portable application, all you have to do is extract the zip file and you are ready to go. Start WinToFlash, pop in the Windows CD/DVD, plug in the USB flash drive and specify the paths. Click ‘Next’ and sit back and watch WinToFlash create a bootable USB drive from the installation media. This might take some time depending upon the size of the installation media.

WinToFlash can also be used transfer Preinstalled Environments (PE’s) to a flash drive. Go to the ‘Tasks’ tab and choose the appropriate option you want to use.

Creating a bootable flash drive from an ISO image is a little more involved. WinToFlash doesn’t let you specify an ISO image as the source for Windows file. To get around this limitation, you can do one of the following:

• Extract the ISO file. Most modern archiving software can extract files from an ISO image. I used 7-zip.
• Virtually mount the ISO image (try Virtual CD-ROM control panel) and specify the virtual drive as the Windows file path in WinToFlash.

The rest of the process remain unchanged and you will get a bootable USB drive after successful completion.

I want to install Linux using a bootable flash drive?

As the name suggests WinToFlash only works with Windows installation media. If you want to install Linux using a USB drive we suggest you have a look at UNetbootin. It works well with ISO files and can even download the required files if you don’t currently have them on your computer. You can also use built-in tools included in many distributions these days, if you already have Linux installed on another computer.

How do I check if my computer can boot from USB drive?

That is a question I get asked many a times. You can refer to your computer’s manual to check if you are able to boot from a USB drive. If that doesn’t work or you have a custom-built computer than you can always check the BIOS settings to see if there is an option to boot from External drive or USB drive. If there is one, make sure your computer is configured to look for a USB drive before it defaults to boot from the hard disk.

After you are through with the installation, I would suggest that you move the USB drive option back down the order and protect the BIOS settings with a password to minimize the risk of your computer being compromised.

If you have some other nifty ideas on installing/upgrading operating systems without burning a DVD, we would love to hear about them in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Let’s today shift the focus slightly towards a few external Firefox tools that can be used to optimize Firefox:

SpeedyFox

SpeedyFox is a cool little Firefox tool which lets you optimize Firefox for speed. Firefox stores a lot of information in an sqlite database, which grows over time.

SpeedyFox takes care of any database fragmentation and thus makes Firefox zippier. You might not see a difference if you try SpeedyFox on a fresh Firefox install, it works great after you have been using Firefox for some time. Just close Firefox, run SpeedyFox and point it to the profile you want to optimize.

The optimization may take some time depending upon how much data SpeedyFox has to work with. Also don’t forget to check out The ultimate guide to speeding up Firefox 3.5

Silence of the Foxes

This simple Firefox tool lets you create custom Firefox installers which you can use to deploy Firefox’s preconfigured settings and add-ons. It unpacks the original Firefox setup, lets you add your own extensions, themes, preferences and then repacks to give you a silent installation package.

Although this Firefox tool was designed a long time back for a now obsolete version of Firefox, it worked pretty well for me. Download and fire it up, choose a new project and point the application to Firefox Setup that you downloaded from the web. It will extract the files, detect your Firefox profiles and show you the files that it will add to the silent installation package.

By default it adds your preferences and bookmarks, if you want to add themes and extensions you will have to download the .jar and .xpi files and add them to the files to be added to the installer. Once everything is done, it will create a file sfirefox.exe which is your new silent installation customized package. You might want to go through the readme file for some advanced tinkering.

FirePasswordViewer

Firefox can remember the login details for your favorite websites. All these details are encrypted and then stored in Firefox’s profile database. FirePasswordViewer lets you view these details for any Firefox profile you point it to. You can use it to get back passwords you might have forgotten and some other purposes (use your imagination here).

The Firefox tool will not work if you have enabled and set the Master Password. So it might be a good idea to set your Firefox Master password to protect yourself from such hacks. It can be set via the Security tab inside Tools > Options in Firefox.

FireMaster

Just when you thought setting the master password protected all the sensitive sign-on information, we present FireMaster. FireMaster can be used to recover the master password in case you forget it. However, like always, there are inherent limitations as with any password recovery tool – FireMaster uses a combination of dictionary and brute force attacks so it would take a very long time to recover any moderately strong password. All the more reason to use strong passwords. Refer FireMaster page for usage tips.

Do you know of some other tools you can use with Firefox for similar purposes? You can tell us all about them in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Here is all you need to know about Windows 7 themes:

Activate hidden themes in Windows 7

Did you know that Windows 7 activates themes based on the region you select while installation? So there are a number of themes belonging to different regions that remain hidden. They are not available via the personalization window. However, you can still activate those hidden themes in windows 7 and use them. Here’s how to find them:

1. Press Win + R, then type %systemroot%/Globalization/MCT into the Run field
2. If you don’t see anything, click on Organize, then on Folder and Search options and then choose to view hidden files and uncheck Hide protected operating system files.
3. You will see some folders containing themes belonging to various regions. These folders contain the .theme files that you can use to apply the themes

Create Your Own Windows 7 Themes

Creating a theme is super easy. A theme is just a collection of various elements like desktop wallpapers, sounds, screen savers, color, mouse pointers, icons etc. Make your pick for each of them and you have made yourself a theme. There are a few changes from previous versions of Windows that you should be aware of and use to your advantage.

Desktop Background

Windows 7 allows you to specify multiple desktop backgrounds. It then switches the desktop background automatically, picking from the ones you specified. The best way to specify a group of wallpapers is to place all of them in a folder. You can then point Windows to this folder, check all the wallpapers you wish to use, specify the cycle time and Windows will take care of the rest.

Sounds

Clicking on Sounds lets you choose from amongst the built-in sound themes or you can create your own. To create a sound theme, just specify a sound file to use for different events that you see. Changing all of them and getting a perfect sound theme can get quite cumbersome, so you might want to stick with changing a sound or two and saving the modified theme. If you are looking for some sound files, you can check out FindSounds or Soungle.

Similarly, you can choose screen savers, colors, mouse pointer and icons – which are pretty straightforward. After all the choices are made, you have created yourself a theme.

Share your themes with friends and family

So you spent some time creating the perfect theme and the results seem good. Sometimes you might want to apply the same theme to all of your computers or share them with your friends and family. So do you perform everything all over again? Na, just make all the changes you want, add the custom desktop backgrounds, screen savers or sounds you want (in short, create a theme once) and then when you are done making the changes, right-click on the unsaved theme and choose Save for sharing.

You will get a .theme file that you can transfer to other computers or send across to somebody.

Download Windows 7 Theme Files Online

Windows 7 now presents an option to ‘Get more themes online’. Clicking that would take you to Microsoft’s Personalize My PC page. You can download windows 7 theme files, backgrounds and gadgets here. You can also find themes created by others. However, they generally leave a lot to be desired and I prefer to stay away from them unless I absolutely trust the source. If you know a good source let us know in the comments.

Do you create your own themes? Or are you content with the built-in ones? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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We have covered our fair share of launchers here on MakeUseOf, each having its own strong point. Blaze is yet another innovative addition to the application launcher universe, however it has a lot going for it with its some of its killer features. Let’s have a look.

First off, it does all the usual application launcher chores like indexing, launching your applications and letting you jump to a file or location. I didn’t find anything special in here except for the fact that it handles typos better. Application launchers generally give way when you accidentally type in a character that is not a part of the application name, Blaze handles this scenario better than others. Let’s face it we all make typos and having a program smart enough to still guess the correct application really helps.

That is not all, Blaze is even smarter. Blaze sneakily watches what you are doing on the computer and tries to come up with a way to automate repetitive tasks. The next time you are doing something over and over again just keep an eye on the system tray. The Blaze icon in the system tray turns yellow when it has some suggestion to automate repetitive tasks. You can then quickly view what suggestion Blaze has to offer by tapping the Caps Lock key twice.

Blaze can monitor and automate anything from entering text to mouse clicks to renaming files to creating folders. In short, if your previous few actions have something in common, Blaze will most likely come up with a suggestion to do it for you.

Here is a look of the suggestion window:

If Blaze comes up with a suggestion which is not what you were looking for exactly, you can tweak the suggestion to your liking before giving Blaze a go ahead to perform it. You can click on the arrows to cycle through the various suggestions that Blaze has to offer, you can increase or decrease the number of repetitions that should be performed, you can control the speed with which the automation is performed allowing you a chance to jump in if something is not right.

Blaze also lets you create new automations from scratch or modify the suggested automation to your liking. You can do so by clicking on ‘Create a new Automation’ or ‘Modify this Automation’ buttons. You will be shown the Automation editor, in here you can modify the automations, add, subtract and modify actions to your liking.

Blaze doesn’t currently support skins so you would to have to be content with the default orange look. It supports plug ins and there are some handy plug ins installed by default, like the one that lets you perform calculations or one which indexes the ID3 tags to let you search music better.

I tried but couldn’t find any more plug ins than the ones those are already installed. If you are into development you can use IronPython to write some of your own!

Overall Blaze is an application launcher with some amazing features that make it worth checking out. You can also refer to the Blaze Quick Guide for advanced automation examples.

What do you think of Blaze? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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