Nick mentioned Feedly in the comments of this Make Use Of article and the fact that it’s just a Firefox extension caught my eye. I checked it out immediately and I was pleasantly surprised. Feedly is like a browser start page – but it works from your local computer. It’s touted as a social and magazine-like start page and I must say it lives up to its name.

Once you install the Feedly Firefox extension from here and restart Firefox, you can load the Feedly start page by clicking on the Feedly icon on the toolbar.

What you’ll see is a neat page that asks you if you want to synchronize with your Google Reader, Twitter, FriendFeed and other web 2.0 accounts. If you ask Feedly to connect with Google Reader or Bloglines, it will then load a copy of your OPML file that contains a list of RSS feeds you read from there – you need not essentially subscribe to every one of them manually on Feedly. If you’ve got it integrated with Twitter, it lets you tweet about articles on your start page. Similarly, many other services can be integrated.

The cover page lists new and unread items from your subscribed blogs as you can see from the screenshot below. The page looks like a magazine cover. Fancy stuff to love.

There’s another tab called What’s New that lists items based on your reading patterns. Your Google Reader contacts and their recommendations are available from here too, and they rank higher on this page.

You can click on the tweet button near an article to share it with your Twitter followers (of course, you should have told Feedly about your Twitter account initially):

There’s a preview button you can click and the web page of that item opens in a page in popup, as you can see here:

To mark an item for reading later, click ‘Save for Later’. To share an item, click ‘Recommend’. You can also click on the ‘Annotate’ link to quote an item and share it on Google Reader, NewsGator online, etc.

There’s a search bar on top that lets you search and find articles from sites that you’ve favourited.

Oh and did I mention that by clicking on the screensaver link on the top right, you get a cool view of what’s new on your reading list. Articles appear and vanish one by one and you can click on the title to read/save it for later. Have a look:

Final Thoughts

Feedly is simply AWESOME. I tried it for about an hour, and it seems that I’ve fallen in love with the tool. It’s slick, fast and simply works out of the box, I found no niggles.

The fact that it integrates with many of my other accounts like Twitter, FriendFeed and more and being able to share items with my friends without being on Google Reader is making me love Feedly even more.

There’s a Feedly content API as well. What that means is that developers can easily build on top of the tool and make plenty of tools for the same (the cover page and the screensaver tool for Feedly exist due to the API). I’m waiting for something exciting from here.

What are your views? Did you try Feedly, or will you still stick to the traditional about:blank and Google Reader? Drop a comment and kick off a debate!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old blogger and freelance writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips.

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In this post, I want to cover a few apps that will make managing your USB drive easier. In essence, I’ll talk about tools that can be used to make things easier if you’ve got a USB drive – not about apps that work from your drive.

So here we go – five applications to make things easier if you’re using a USB thumb drive.

1) Prevent Virus Infections on your USB Thumb Drive with ThumbScrew

If you’re working on a system that’s probably infected with viruses, you wouldn’t want to see your USB thumb drive get infected by the same – they probably have some backups of your data that you cannot afford to lose. However, if you’re in an inevitable situation where you really have to access the USB drive, do so after you install ThumbScrew.

ThumbScrew can be used to write-protect your USB drive so that malware from your computer doesn’t spread to it. Download and launch the app, right click the System Tray icon and choose ‘Make USB Read Only’. Nothing could be written to the USB Drive, you’re completely protected from infections spreading to your disk from your computer.

2) Eject USB Devices Quickly with USB Disk Eject

Let’s admit it. Windows does give you options to eject your USB drives – we all use that by clicking on the ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ option in the System Tray. But have you ever thought it’s too cumbersome and the list confuses you more than helps you remove that particular device?

People who’ve got multiple USB Devices connected to their system will have really felt this annoyance as the hardware remove dialog doesn’t make it clear which option removes what device.

Here’s the way out: Download this tiny but functional app called USB Disk Eject. Just double-click when you need to remove a USB drive and a window will pop up listing the devices connected to your system via USB. Each device is labelled clearly and legibly. Just double-click on the one that you want to get removed and you’re done. Much quicker, I’d say.

3) Access USB Drives Quickly with Desk Drive

DeskDrive is somewhat similar to the above application, but it’s for keyboard junkies. Mark just mentioned it a few days ago here on Make Use Of. I’ve been using it since yesterday, and I couldn’t help thinking why Windows doesn’t have this feature by default.

Here’s a summary of the app: DeskDrive puts shortcuts to your USB drives on your desktop immediately after you insert them. Quick access. That’s pretty much it. For more, head on to Mark’s post or download the app directly from here.

4) Autorun Apps from your USB Drive with USB Autorun Maker

How many times have you browsed through those myriad of folders to launch that one particular app that you always run from your USB drive? Why not make it autorun so that the application launches immediately when you open the drive icon?

Yep, that’s possible, thanks to a utility called USB Autorun. Download USB Autorun (direct link), and use the options in the system tray icon to build an autorun.inf file. You’ll have to specify which app should be run automatically, and click ‘Build’ and the autorun maker will create an autorun.inf file that tells Windows that a particular app should be launched. No big thing to do here – you just need to specify the path where the app is present. Please note that this software is shareware, so there are some limitations.

5) Backup Files to your USB Drive with SyncToy

How many times have you copy-pasted those folders in Windows to back up your most important data and got fed up copy-pasting back and forth? Just relax, and get the SyncToy tool from Microsoft.

Install the Synctoy application, specify what directory should be copied to where – it’s called a ‘folder pair’ in Synctoy (here in this case, the directory where your files should be put in should be somewhere in your USB Drive) and then just press the Run button for the backup operation to take place. For an in depth guide, check out our previous guide on syncing your USB Drive. I bet this software will probably save you from a lot of frustration.

What other apps have made working with your USB devices easier? Let us know in the comments. I’m all ears!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He blogs about computers and software tips at Killer Tech Tips.

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In this post, I’ll talk about how you can use Launchy to stay more productive throughout the day. Trust me, once you get the hang of it, you’ll never touch icons or your start menu again. It just rocks. Before you go about using it, let’s have a look at some basic configuration options that you can alter to make Launchy work better for you.

Installation and Basic Configuration

Just grab the installer from the Sourceforge page, install Launchy and if the installation went smoothly – chances are you won’t see anything new. No system tray icon. No visible windows. Yup, nothing really. Until you press the ALT + SPACE keys together.

You can now right click on the Launchy box and configure Launchy’s behaviour by going to Options. Keep the first option checked if you want Launchy to be shown all the time. I wouldn’t recommend it though, since it’d interrupt your use of other applications/windows. You can, of course, modify the shortcut key to anything you wish – just modify the Hotkey option.

You can also set the transparency levels from the GUI Options. Launchy also provides alternate suggestions if you typed an unknown program name, you can set how many such items should be displayed.

From the Skins tab, you can choose from a number of skins for Launchy to make it blend with your desktop. User-created skins are available on DeviantArt.com and also from the Sourceforge forum.

Configure Indexing

Launchy needs to index your programs before you can actually use it. By default, Launchy indexes your Start Menu folder since most programs are present there. However, if you want to be able to launch your programs or files, you need to tell Launchy where they’re present.

To do this, use the Catalog tab and use the + button to add your commonly used directories to the Launchy index. You also need to specify what files need to be indexed – you might want your music files indexed, but not your .dll files. You can specify using the File Types box.

By checking the Executables option, you’re telling it to index all .exe files (these are generally software programs installed on your computer).

When you’re done with that, just click Rescan Catalog and now Launchy should have got all your program and files info into your index. Pretty quick too!

Using Launchy

Let’s take off with Launchy. First, just press the default hotkey combination. If you’ve modified the hotkey using the settings, press the ones that you’ve opted for. The launch window should popup.

Just type in a few letters of the app’s name and Launchy should instantly show its icon in the dock. Have a look at the screenshot on the right. I typed fox and it suggested Firefox. I launched it by pressing Enter

In case you typed something and some other program instead of the program you intended to start shows up, just use the “down arrow” key for more programs that match your keyword. For instance, I typed Windows and it showed multiple suggestions.

Launchy can also be used as a simple calculator and it can peform basic arithmetic operations.

Portable Launchy

If you’ve got a USB drive and it’s loaded with portable apps, then the portable version of Launchy is something you shouldn’t miss to check out. Just activate the Portable Mode option from the Options dialog (please see the first screenshot in this post).

Then, copy the Launchy folder from C:\Program Files and put it on your USB Drive. Launchy will now store its configuration files in your thumb drive and will act as a portable launcher.

Plugins

Launchy supports plugins, and a few basic plugins are already present and can be activated. For instance, the Weby plugin indexes your Firefox and IE bookmarks so that you can open them quickly from Launchy.

You might find some more useful plugins for Launchy here. Also, check out this excellent Lifehacker article on how you can tweak Launchy even more to create todo lists, reminders etc.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16-year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips.

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You should be able to receive suggestions for blog posts and questions on some issues from your blog’s readers. However, a new service from Paul Stamatiou called Skribit takes reader participation to a whole new level.

What does Skribit do?

Skribit helps you get suggestions from readers and then others can vote for them. For example, one reader could suggest that you video-blog and other readers who like the idea can vote for it. Readers have a chance to easily drop in their questions/interests, and you get benefit as a blogger too – yes, you can get ideas for posts! Skribit can aid in beating writer’s block.

How Skribit Works

Upon signing up for Skribit, you’ll be taken to a page from where you can add your blog by clicking on the ‘Add New Blog’ option on the right. You’ll then have to tell Skribit the name and URL of your blog, and then click ‘Add Blog’.

If you leave the ‘Allow Anonymous Suggestions’ checkbox checked, you’ll be able to receive suggestions from all readers – even readers who don’t want to register themselves at Skribit will be able to vote and contribute suggestions to you using the widget. I highly recommend allowing anonymous suggestions.

Once the blog has been added, you’ll have to place the Skribit widget on your page. To customize the widget, click on the ‘Customize Widget’ under the second section. You’ll be taken to a page where you can change the way the Skribit widget looks on your blog.

As you can see from the screenshot above, you can change the text header, the colours and basically “skin” the widget and make it blend in with your blog’s template.

You now need to get the code for the widget and add it to your page. You can then click on the ‘Verify Blog’ link and confirm that you’ve put up the widget on the blog.

Readers who visit your blog can leave their suggestions using the Skribit widget. Clicking on the header on the Skribit widget, they’ll get a text box where they can type in their suggestions and click ‘Submit’. Once that’s done, the suggestion will appear on the widget. Other visitors will be able to vote for their favourite suggestions by clicking on the ‘Vote’ button next to each suggestion.

You’ll be able to see the suggestions left by readers from your Skribit management page after you’ve logged in. Furthermore, you can also see who’s left the suggestion (must be either a Skribit user or an anonymous reader) and also check how many votes each idea has got.

Skribit will also email you every week with a report of suggested reader topics and votes. You can now estimate reader participation and interest, and what kind of posts your readers would want – thanks to Skribit.

So, what are you waiting for? Follow this link to sign up for Skribit!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips

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

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For instance, drag a window and the window wobbles. Compiz also has plugin support which means that you can add more such effects to decorate your desktop’s look.

Compiz works perfectly on most hardware that has good drivers – however, problems do exist and sometimes it may not work so well with your computer’s graphics card. Depending upon the kind of drivers and support, Compiz may not work at all, or it might throw up errors when activated.

Those of you who want to experience the ‘wow!’ that Compiz does on your desktop, but are not sure whether it’ll work well with your graphics card and other devices can make use of this little tool called Compiz Check.

Compiz Check checks your system’s hardware and gives you a brief report on the compatibility of your hardware. You can basically find out if Compiz will run on your computer.

Follow these steps to use Compiz Check:

• (1) Download this file and put it in your home directory (ie, /home/username/).
• (2) Go to the terminal and type: chmod +x compiz-check
• (3) Now, type: ./compiz-check

Here’s how the Compiz Check report looks in the terminal:

You’ll see some technical things listed in there, and the last line, as described in this page. The script checks

• for the current’s driver compatibility with Compiz.
• if it’s an nVidia card, it checks to see if there’s adequate memory on the card
• ATI/Radeon drivers
• if the current resolution is compatible with Compiz

Just in case something seems to be incompatible, you’ll get a clear report on what’s wrong. You’ll get descriptions which will help you to understand the real reason why Compiz wouldn’t run well on your computer. You could then analyse those details, and then ask for solutions from others in the Ubuntu community – things will be much easier then!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips

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While previously mentioned Uber Note can be accessed only via your browser, Evernote can be accessed via your desktop, web and mobile. Evernote is not just another note taking application where you just copy paste text and images – it can do much more than that.

How does Evernote work?

When using Evernote, you can capture all your stuff – web pages, to do lists, your handwriting, images whatever. What Evernote does however is – instead of storing all of these as just images and handwriting – it recognizes the individual elements and characters present in those and makes them all searchable.

As their page explains, there are currently four ways to add stuff into your Evernote notes repository. You can:

• Type - Just enter your notes manually
• Capture - Capture images from your digicam or webcam and insert them into your notes
• Clip – Scrap web pages or pictures from your computer
• Email – Email notes to Evernote when you can’t access the apps
• Record – Tape your voice and embed them into your notes

Using the Evernote Desktop Application

In the next few paragraphs, we’re going to dive into the desktop application that Evernote provides to capture notes. I’ll be talking about its salient features. Evernote is available as a desktop app for Windows and Mac.

The Windows desktop application for Evernote is a bit huge at around 52 MB, but once you install it, you’re probably going to love it. Start up the application after installation and you’ll be asked to enter your username and password that you created during sign up. When that’s over, the default interface will open up:

Click New Note in the toolbar and start typing your notes. Clicking on the small square icon to the right of each note opens up that individual note in a new window for you to edit. Click on the rectangular icon to the extreme left near the note toggles text/drawing mode. When you click it for the first time, you’ll be taken to the drawing mode and you can directly draw using a pen tool over your note, like this:

Basic drawing tools are present.

Using the Synchronize button from the toolbar, you can sync notes with the Evernote server so that you can access them from your mobile and the web. Clicking on Email opens up the default email client on your computer with the note in the message field so that you can send it to anyone. You can use the Tag button to tag notes for efficient searching and sorting later.

You can export notes and save a local copy to import them later. To export your notes, press Ctrl + Shift + X together.

Perhaps the most useful tool built into Evernote is the Universal Clipper that can be launched from the Tools menu. Universal Clipper sits on the system tray. Select an item from anywhere and press the Win + A key to save the selection as a new note. To clip a screenshot of the current view, just press Win + PrintScreen and you’re done. The Universal Clipper starts up when Windows starts, but you can alter this from the settings.

Right click the Universal Clipper Icon and select Show/Hide Floating Window. The window has two buttons. Click on the green button on the right and you can instantly capture any area in your screen and save it as a note.

When you’ve got a pile of notes built up and when you want to find that one note that you saved earlier, just type the keywords/tags in the search bar on the top right and there you see the matching results highlighted in yellow.

I’d advise you to toggle the note list into display using the F10 key. This divides the window into two panels and you’ll see the list of notes you’ve created on top and the selected note at the bottom.

From the tools menu, you can install the Evernote portable edition to your USB key. You can use the Note > Import Wizard to import settings from your mobile device or a folder on your computer.

Evernote Web Version

You can sign into to your Evernote account from the Evernote website, and you can manage all your notes from the browser itself when you don’t have the desktop app installed.

I wouldn’t say the web version is very smooth and polished like the desktop app, but still it should prove quite OK for your needs. If you saved any notes using the desktop app, you’ll see them here since they’ve all been synchronized.

The web version has got all the tools similar to the desktop app to help you manage your notes – like tagging, searching, etc. There’s also a bookmarklet that you can drag to your browser and save selections on web pages instantly to your notes. Firefox users can get the extension for Evernote to take notes from inside their browser.

Evernote Mobile App

Evernote is currently available for Windows mobiles, but apps for Java ME phones and the iPhone are coming soon. Just like the desktop and web versions, you can create and clip notes from your Windows mobile to Evernote and then sync them up.

Here are some screenshots of the Evernote mobile app in action (Thanks to Ross who offered the screenshots!):

Evernote Search:

Evernote Advanced Options:

Final Thoughts

Considering that note taking applications are getting popular by the day, Evernote could simply serve as your most friendly note taker, wherever you go. There are a myriad of things that you could do with it – once you learn how to use it.

From taking notes about your subjects/classes, blog post ideas, to-do lists, saving random stuff from the web for later reference, and lots more – Evernote could do them all. And the best thing is the sync feature because of which you’ll be able to access your notes not just from your desktop, but also from your mobile and the web. Install the portable edition – and you can store notes when you switch between computers that don’t have an internet connection.

Free Evernote Invites Giveaway

The Evernote guys have offered a hundred invites for MakeUseOf readers. If you need an invite to try out Evernote, just send an email to shankar@makeuseof.com with the subject “Evernote Invite” and I’ll send them over to your inbox.

UPDATE : Sorry guys, we’re out of invites. Check out comments maybe you can find some there.

If you’ve tried any other note taking app before, do tell us in the comments!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips.

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

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Here are seven carefully hand-picked utilities that enhance the default Windows Explorer functions and will leave you thinking “Why doesn’t Explorer have these by default?”

1. Folder Size

Windows Explorer, by default, doesn’t show the size of the folder when you opt for the ‘Details’ view. This is one of the little things that users will find lacking in Windows Explorer.

Well, this is when Folder Size comes in as a handy tool that adds the ‘Folder Size’ column to Windows Explorer Details View. Here’s the details column after installing Folder Size:

Download FolderSize

2. QT Tab Bar

QT Tab Bar brings tabbed navigation to Windows Explorer. If you frequently deal with a large number of scattered files, you should definitely consider using this application.

Once installed, re-login to Windows, open Windows explorer, right click on the toolbar and check QT Tab Bar and QT Standard Buttons to activate the tabbed interface.

Download QT Tab Bar

3. InfoTag Magic

Makes the Windows Explorer File/Folder tooltips to display more information than you can imagine about the selected item.

It displays information on MP3, Ogg Vorbis, etc, when you hover over the items. For EXE and DLL files and the like, it displays version information. Furthermore, it goes ahead to display a preview of text files in the tooltip when you hover over them.

Download InfoTag Magic

If you’re an audiophile and have plenty of media files on your hard disk, try MediaInfo that is exclusively made for audio/video files and supports more media file formats than InfoTag Magic.

4. TeraCopy / Piky Basket

The default copy paste tool in XP is probably the most inefficient tool built into Windows. You can’t pause file copying and the process usually stops abruptly when a single file is uncopyable among a pile of files.

TeraCopy replaces the default file copy tool in Windows XP and makes copying big files faster. If a file is damaged, it tries a number of times to recover the file. Go for TeraCopy if you frequently deal with big files.

You can read previous TeraCopy review here.

Download TeraCopy

There’s another similar tool called Piky Basket which enhances copy’n paste functionality, perfect for everyday home use. But it also comes with very powerful options that need to be mentioned.

If you have files spread across a dozen folders that should be copied to a single folder, your job of copying those set of files from each location and then placing it in the desired location isn’t going to be easy. With Piky Basket, you can make Explorer remember the locations of the spread-out files and put them all in one folder in one go.

Download PikyBasket

5. Clickie Path Name Copier

Clickie adds two options to the Windows Explorer Context Menu, which Windows Explorer doesn’t have.

One is ‘Copy Path Name’ – copies the path name of the selected item to the clipboard as normal text. The other is ‘Open MS Dos Prompt’ which when selected, opens the DOS prompt with the selected directory as the working directory.

Download Clickie

6. Drive Icon

This is a little tool that is both funky, nice for a show-off and yet, useful. Changes the hard disk partition icons in Windows XP to look like the ones in Vista. What you see is a pleasing graphic near the icon that displays disk usage. Quite useful if you have plenty of data crammed into your tiny hard disk.

Download Drive Icon

7. Y’z Toolbar

Y’z Toolbar lets you customize the Windows Explorer Toolbar with skins and icon sets. It also hides the throbber in the extreme, top right of the Explorer window.

It doesn’t replace critical system files. Can be activated by right clicking on the Windows Explorer Toolbar.

Download Y’z Toolbar

Let us know about your experiences with the above software in the comments. If you know any better apps than the ones mentioned, do point us to it. Thanks!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old blogger and freelance writer from India. He writes about Computers and Software at Killer Tech Tips.

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

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For those of you who don’t know, the cache is a place on your hard disk where Firefox stores the websites you’ve visited temporarily. Firefox caches visited sites so that when you access them the next time after you’ve closed them, it need not download the page again. This saves you potential bandwidth. But the downside is that the cached version will not display the recent changes to the site (meaning you need to refresh the page).

By default, Firefox doesn’t provide you with advanced configuration options on web site caching levels. Though you can specify the size of the cache in the Advanced Settings from Tools > Options in the menu bar, there’s nothing more you can do about the caching of web pages.

This is when the Better Cache Firefox Extension comes as a life-saver. With the Better Cache Firefox extension installed, you can control the cache settings and, in the process, save plenty of bandwidth.

In the Tools >> Add-ons window click Options, near Better Cache, to get access to the configurable choices:

You should of course have the first option checked in order to use Better Cache.

If you leave ‘Cache secure connections too’ option selected, you’re asking Firefox to store (cache) even those secure pages – the ones that you primarily logon by giving a password – like your bank account website, etc. Firefox won’t re-download the page every time you open it.

Under ‘Check pages for actuality’, you can tell Firefox when it should override the cache and download pages again.

1. If you leave the first option ‘Once per browser session’ checked, Firefox will download a website only once. If you close a web page and load it again later, it will not re-download that page from the internet. Instead, it will just display the cached version. And so until you restart your browser.

2. If the second option ‘Everytime a site opens’ is selected, Firefox will attempt to download the web page every time you access it – meaning you’ll be using a maximum of your bandwidth. It’s not recommended you use this setting.

3. The third option ‘Never’, when chosen, tells Firefox never to check for actuality of web pages. Firefox will never look up for the latest version of the page. It’ll just load the version that’s been cached already.

4. The fourth option tells Firefox tells Firefox to manage cache automatically – when it is selected, Firefox will control the cache as usual – this extension will not affect the default parameters/settings for cache management.

Download the Better Cache Firefox extension from here, and use less of your bandwidth!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He blogs about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips.

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

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1) Turn on Spell Check

One thing that I missed a lot on Windows Live Writer (WLW) is a spell checker. But when Travis told me that there was a spell checker inbuilt and only that it needed to be turned on, I was overjoyed. Here’s how you can turn it on:

• Go to Tools > Options
• Under Dictionary, select a language of your choice to turn on spell checking
• Turn on real time spell checking by selecting the 2nd option.

2) Use Link Glossary

Link Glossary – What is it anyway? You can add a few words, and relate URLs with those words. For example, Make Use Of can be coupled with http://www.makeuseof.com. You can do this using the options in Tools > Options > Link Glossary.

This way, the next time you type Make Use Of in any of your posts, the words will automatically be linked to the URL http://www.makeuseof.com You can add an endless list of commonly linked sites from your blog here, it’ll save you a lot of time.

3) Configure FTP

Please don’t neglect this one. Don’t forget to configure FTP settings for your blog. Without configured FTP settings, using images in your blog post is worthless, and then you’ll have to manually upload and insert images via the WordPress post editor, which is a pain.

You’ll have to configure FTP settings from the Tools > Accounts > (Select the blog account) Edit > Images > Upload Images via an FTP server > Configure FTP.

FTP hostname should contain the FTP address of your server, for example, ftp://mysite.com. In the next fields, type in your username and password, specify the folder in the server where the images should be uploaded and also specify the address of the folder as a http:// URL.

Here’s another example: if your site’s ftp address is ftp://mysite.com, and the folder where the images are uploaded is ftp://mysite.com/images/, the http URL will usually be http://mysite.com/images.

4) Learn the Shortcuts

Windows Live Writer comes with a set of shortcuts that are make using it very easy, convenient and also productive. Here’s a list of shortcuts supported by WLW. Make sure you keep them by heart, they’ll come in big use when you’re writing posts.

New Post	Ctrl + N
New Page	Ctrl + G
Open	Ctrl + O
Save Drafts Locally	Ctrl + S
Publish	Ctrl + Shift + P
Print	Ctrl + P
Insert Link	Ctrl + K
Insert Image	Ctrl + L
Check Spelling	F7
Normal View	Ctrl + F11
Web Layout View	F11
Web Preview	F12
HTML Code	Shift + F11
View Post Properties	F2
Toggle View of WLW Sidebar Options	F9

5) Set Blog Pings

Don’t you want your blog posts to get listed by blog search engines and other sites as soon as possible? It’s good for getting traffic since Google tends to rank a page using the time it was published for keywords that are gaining instant popularity on searches.

Go to Tools > Options > Ping Servers and check ‘Send Pings to the URL below’ and specify the ping URLs one by one.

Here’s a screenshot that lists two ping servers. The first one notifies Google Blog Search that a new blog post has been published, and the second one tells FeedBurner to update the feed with the new post:

Do you use Windows Live Writer? What settings are your favourites? Or do you prefer another blog editing tool? Let us know in the comments!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips

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

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• Take Advantage Of The New Windows Live Writer (21)
• I Make Use Of: Microsoft Live Writer Beta (13)
• Easy Blog Publishing with Microsoft Live Writer (13)
• 7 Reasons Why You Should Try Out Windows Live Writer 2009 (24)
• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)

Docks

We’ve covered Windows desktop docks before. Desktop docks are just indispensable if you want to make your PC look like a Mac. Docks can be used to launch programs and could well replace your Windows taskbar.

Widgets

Widgets are little objects that lie on your screen and do tiny tasks such as fetching weather data, displaying system statistics, showing time, etc.

To mimic the OS X Dashboard, you can try the Yahoo! Widget Engine and get lots of widgets on to your desktop (check their widget gallery here). MakeUseOf has its own widget as well. Or you could get Google Desktop which doubles as a desktop search engine. The former is a bit cooler and slicker. Some more alternatives can be found in 6 widget platforms for your PC.

Tool Bar Icons

To decorate Windows Explorer with Mac-like toolbar icons, you can download and install Y’z Toolbar software from here. Then, get this skin for Y’z Toolbar. Windows Explorer icons now resemble that of a Mac.

Drop Shadow

Use Y’z Shadow to add drop shadow effects to Window borders. Y’z Shadow can also make menus transparent. You can, of course, specify the thickness of the shadow by using the parameters in the Y’z Shadow settings.

FlyakiteOSX

We’ve mentioned this before, and this is an all-in-one transformation pack that applies a lot of changes to the Windows shell. It adds plenty of eye-candy to make Windows look like a Mac. Boot Screen, Login Screen, Wallpapers, Screensavers, Sound effects are all altered to mimic a Mac Desktop. If you’re looking for an all-in-one pack, FlyakiteOSX is the way to go. Download here.

Firefox Themes

As Kaly pointed out in this post, there are quite a number of themes available for Firefox that make it look like Safari. Here’s the list: iFox Smooth, iFox Metal, Macfox II, Macfox II Graphite, Cobalt Firefox.

Or you can just download Safari for Windows from Apple’s website here.

Icons

Mac has an amazing set of visually pleasing icons that are really very pro-looking. You can grab the icons from here and here and set them as a default icons for some of your Windows apps.

Get iTunes

iTunes is the default music management software for the Mac. Although it’s quite heavy on system resources, it comes with a nice Mac-ish look. Plus it has a number of really cool third party addons. Download iTunes from here.

Let us know in the comments if you make use of any other Windows software to make Windows look like a Mac.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips

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• WinHack – How to Change the Windows Start Button (Win XP) (20)
• Windows Registry Tweaks (Part 2) (8)
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• Speed up file Copy’n Paste with Piky Basket (9)
• Some non-Registry Windows tweaks (7)

Here are four neat Firefox extensions and 1 desktop app that help you track the time you spend online. They even give you reports so you can watch out and make efficient use of your time by cutting down on wandering around sites that are of no use.

LeechBlock

LeechBlock can be set to block websites from loading in Firefox.

You can create up to six ‘block sets’ – each set can contain a number of sites that should be blocked only during a specific time interval.

For example, you can create a block set and put all the social networking sites in it – and block all those sites together for a set period of time (instance, 9AM-4PM). Then you can create another block set – containing another bunch of time-consuming sites and block them all together for a specified time period. That’s how block sets work. Wildcards can be used to block specific subdomains/parts of a bigger site.

Download LeechBlock

Time Tracker

Simple yet effective tool that tracks the amount of time you’ve been browsing around. The display on the status bar indicates the amount of time you’ve been surfing around inside Firefox.

As you can see in the options above, you can set the status bar display of TimeTracker to show only the time you’ve spent today/last reset/since installing Time Tracker. In the time-out option, you can specify when the addon should pause counting the time. You can use the filter list to add websites that will not be time-tracked.

If you want to continue tracking the time even when the new windows are opened then leave the last checkbox unchecked.

Download TimeTracker

8aWeek

Same as the first extension, but it has more powerful options and provides graphs that display the various activities versus the time you’ve spent on them.

Once installed, you’ll see a toolbar that has around four options. You’ll also be taken to a registration page. You could register if you want the reports to be saved for the long term. Else, you can skip it and continue using 8aweek.

It provides interesting charts like the one below that lists the amount of time I’ve spent on each site:

You can set it to limit the time you spend on useless sites. For example, you could set it to make Facebook available to you for no more than 10 minutes per day. Additionally, you can also save the reports for later viewing. For more details check out our directory listing on 8aWeek.

Download 8aweek

MeeTimer

MeeTimer is a plain and light activity tracker. It keeps track of the visited websites in any given day, records total time, and groups them into purpose-based categories (e.g. Myspace/Facebook = procrastination, Gmail = communication, etc.). At the end of the day you get a clear picture of your daily activity.

Download MeeTimer

RescueTime

Unlike the above, RescueTime is a desktop program. Same goal here, understand how and where you spend your time while browsing web or working on PC. Find out what programs and websites take most of your time (Digg, Wikipedia, Word, Google, Dreamweaver …). Cool thing about this app is that it’s completely automated and requires almost no effort on your behalf. The only thing you have to do is assign different programs and sites to certain tags.

Get Rescuetime here

Do you know of any other good tools for managing your time on the internet? Let us know in the comments!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips

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• SmarterFox Makes You More Productive in FireFox (5)
• Ubiquity – Extend Firefox and Improve your Browsing Experience (9)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The most Essential Keyboard Shortcuts for Firefox (30)
• Speed up Firefox Browsing with Keyboard Shortcuts (14)

For the same setup you need addons 1, 2, and 5. Then go to customize and move everything (i.e. navigation and SU toolbar) to the top.

Here are a few tweaks and extensions to help gaining more space for viewing websites in Firefox:

1. Smaller Icons

Do you really need icons in their biggest size? Right-click on those navigation buttons, click ‘Customize’ and check ‘Use Small Icons’ at the bottom. Smaller Icons. Space gained.

2. TinyMenu

Install this addon from here. It shrinks the entire menu bar to a small rectangular box or image. It doesn’t work in Mac, though.

3. Hide Menu Bar

This hides the Menu bar completely. You end up gaining a good amount of screen space. To access the menus just hold down the ALT key. Download here.

4. Hide Tab Bar

This addon hides the tab bar. You can toggle the tab bar display via selected keyboard shortcut. Extremely useful if you work with lot of tabs. Download it here.

5. Vertigo

We already mentioned Vertigo in ‘Firefox Addons to Manage a Tab Jam‘. Vertigo will gain you additional only if you have a 20″ or bigger widescreen monitor. Basically it makes the tab bar vertical. Checkit out below.

6. FullerScreen

The standard Full Screen mode in Firefox (press F11) could be better – even when you’re in full screen mode, most of the buttons and the tab bar are still there. Get the ‘real’ full screen experience with FullerScreen – download IT here. Upon operation, you can view the site in your entire screen – the tab bar and other buttons are auto-hidden.

7. MiniFirefox

Claims to hide all the toolbars and keep only 3 basic navigation buttons visible. Download here. Hoever, the extension didn’t hide a few elements like it said when I tried it (for instance – it didn’t hide the StumbleUpon toolbar in my Firefox window)

8. Firefox UI Tweaker

This brilliant extension for Firefox lets you do a myriad of little things. Some things it’s capable of include :

• Combine a few buttons on the toolbar
• Auto-hide the search bar
• Remove a few icons in Full Screen Mode

More listed in this addon page from where you can download it.

9. Little Fox

If you have too many things on your Firefox then this addon is for you. It revamps the Firefox theme and makes the elements smaller. Download it from here, install it, activate the Little Fox theme, restart and see the amount of screen space gained. It makes everything on your Firefox smaller. May not be pleasing to the eyes, but definitely does its job well.

10. Toolbar Tweaks

In MUO, we’ve already discussed merging buttons on your Firefox toolbar. Check out the article here. I’m sure you can implement this easily and eliminate unwanted buttons that clutter the toolbar area.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. Check out his blog Killer Tech Tips where he writes about computers and software.

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• Too Many Tabs? Firefox Add-ons to manage a TAB JAM (78)
• Ubiquity – Extend Firefox and Improve your Browsing Experience (9)
• Leave Repetitive Browser Tasks to iMacros (4)
• Get The Awesome Read it Later Extension For Firefox 3 (19)
• Build an Online Reading List with “Read It Later” (24)

But instead I have tried ways to bypass such sign up forms. Here are a few tips for you:

1. Bug Me Not

Aibek previously covered Bug Me Not which is a wonderful service that provides disposable login details for most sites and forums. You could use those IDs and passwords to login – bypassing compulsory registrations. Most of the time this should suffice, especially for popular sites. There’s also a Firefox extension available.

But Bug Me Not obviously does not have login details for every site on the entire internet. Sometimes the login details provided for some of these sites don’t work anymore. In that case, you could try the following methods:

2. Google Cache

If the snippet near the result seemed to talk about the problem you’re having, there are high chances that Google Cache should have a copy of the website you landed on. One of the sites where it works quite well is ‘Experts Exchange’.

Instead of clicking on the direct link, just click the ‘Cached’ link near the search result. View the page. Go till the end of it. You might end up finding the information there.

3. Be the Bot

In a rare case when you’re not able to view the solution even by accessing the Google Cache, you can use Be The Bot.

Be The Bot fools the site to thinking that Google Crawler Bot is accessing it. And hence, you’ll get a view of the ‘real’ site via Be The Bot.

What other ways can you think of to bypass compulsory registration forms in sites, especially forums?

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about Computers and Software at Killer Tech Tips.

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

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• How to Save and Monitor Bandwidth when using Firefox (11)
• 7 Useful Hacks To Improve Your Google Chrome Experience (23)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• Set Firefox To Clear Temp Files, History etc. On Shut Down (11)

Block Images

Go to the Tools >> Options dialog in Firefox. In the content tab, uncheck ‘Load Images Automatically’. By clicking on the exceptions button, you could add a few sites which can be allowed to display images. This way, you can set Firefox to download images from only a handful of sites. That means less bandwidth consumed, since every other page on the internet contains pictures. You’ll lose the full glory of a webpage, though.

Similarly you can also use the additional options present in the dialog to block Java Scripts and Java elements.

Block Obtrusive and Bandwidth Consuming ads using Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus is a neat addon for Firefox that blocks banner ads and images that consume your bandwidth hugely. Once installed, you can use the settings to add filters and block advertisements on webpages. Wildcards and regular expressions supported.

Right click, and set an image/ad to be blocked, it’ll never appear again. Otherwise, use the icon in the toolbar to view the page’s multimedia elements along with the networks that serve them, and block them.

Block Javascript, Java and other Special Executable Content from running with Noscript

NoScript blocks all scripts (ex. animations) in sites, and allows only a few trusted sites to run such applets on your browser.

Besides saving tons of bandwidth, you’ll also get improved security because only these executable elements do harmful things to your computer, most of the time.

Cap Download/Upload rates and monitor your bandwidth consumption

Firefox Throttle is a very interesting addon for Firefox that lets you limit the upload and download rates (throttling) for Firefox – this will affect not just the speed of your downloads, but also the loading time of web pages. Basically, by using Firefox Throttle you are able to reduce the speed of your connection.

You can also exclude websites from being ‘throttled’. There’s a little button to immediately turn on/off throttling. The Options dialog has a Stats tab that displays the amount of bandwidth consumed – how much data has been uploaded and downloaded. Quite useful if you’re sharing an internet connection across multiple computers.

Another addon worth a mention here is Bandwidth Meter and Diagnostics. Although it doesn’t monitor your bandwidth, it lets you test download/upload speeds.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He blogs about Computers and Software at Killer Tech Tips

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

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• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• Keeping Safe on the Web: 8 Firefox Addons for Privacy and Security (19)
• Welcome to My Firefox: Extensions, Themes, Setup (14)
• Watch Videos In The Firefox Sidebar With YouPlayer (16)
• Ubiquity – Extend Firefox and Improve your Browsing Experience (9)

Multi Protocol Instant Messengers

Not add-ons, really, but these multi-protocol IMs help a lot in connecting to people from various networks – you need not necessarily have to install every other Instant Messaging software around. Give them a go!

Pidgin – Probably the most popular multi protocol Instant Messaging client out there, supporting a wide number of platforms, including Skype. There a number of enhancements you could add to it, read our Pidgin Tips or go to Lifehacker’s article on how to customize it.

Digsby – New on the block, but doing really well. Connect to multiple messaging networks, receive emails, and even associate your Facebook account and get notifications about your Facebook contacts. You can email directly from the chat window without opening your browser. See the above screenshot.

Trillian Basic – The most professional multiprotocol instant messenger, has a very skinnable user interface.

AIRTalkr – Built on the Adobe AIR Platform, this is a primitive software (a bit buggy), but nevertheless, it looks very cool and you can easily keep track of what your friends are up to in a variety of social networking sites, including Flickr, MySpace, etc.

Check out some more alternatives, including chat clients for mobile phones at previously posted Multi-protocol instant messengers.

Addons that Work with most Instant Messengers

HyperIM – If you’re online simultaneously in many clients, this one is for you. This brilliant status manager and changer can work along with Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, Live Messenger, Skype and lets you keep dynamic statuses. Uses macros and variables to set the status.

Like, for example, I’m listening to %mSong% will insert the song name that’s currently playing on your media player across all instant messenger statuses. There are a wide variety of plugins you could add to HyperIM, for instance, there’s a plugin that works with uTorrent and shows off your torrent uploading/downloading statistics to your buddies.

IMHistory – This tool is in the Make Use Of directory, very very useful for archiving your chats across multiple IMs online so that you can access them from anywhere. It also comes highly recommended by Mark who has used it for a long time to tame his wild chat logs.

IMified – Unique productivity addon that brings lots of essential applications to your chat program (Gtalk/Jabber, AIM, MSN Messenger). Simply add IMified as a contact and you will able to access and use growing number of web applications right from the messenger window. It’s your personal assistant that can be your to do list, reminder service, calendar, Twitter client, and more.

FeedCrier – FeedCrier lets you setup notification alerts for favorite feeds and get them delivered to your instant messenger. Supports AIM , MSN Messenger and Jabber / GTalk. More about FeedCrier here.

Vicito – Vicito delivers latest filtered news to your instant messenger. Simply add relevant Vicito ID to your IM buddy list and tell it what keywords you want it to track and how frequently it should check for the news.

MessenPass – Forgot the password to one of your messenger accounts? Recover it with MessenPass. It works with pretty much every popular IM client, and can be used to extract the IM passwords of the currently logged in user on your computer.

Google Talk Plugins

We’ve Google Talk Add-ons before, here’s a list of stuff you can use along with Gtalk:

g Always Idle – Lets you make your status idle on Google Talk (even though you’re online and using it).

Extended Talk – Adds a ton of funky features to Google Talk, and you could use commands like /signout from the chat window once this addon is installed.

GPlus Addon – Adds more functionality to Gtalk, like graphical smileys, and other font styling. HTML Chat Logging is a good feature.

Yahoo! Messenger Plugins

Winamp Music Status Changer – Puts what’s playing in Winamp in your Yahoo! Messenger Status Message.

Buddy Spy – Shows the real status of your online Yahoo! Buddies, you can find out if any of your buddies are invisible or in stealth mode using this tool

Yahoo Messenger Hider – Hide/Unhide all Yahoo Messenger Windows with a single shortcut key. Useful if you chat from your workplace. Works with Yahoo messenger versions 8.1 and above.

For more Yahoo Messenger plugins go to Yahoo Gallery. There are plenty of user-submitted plugins there.

That’s it. Let me know in the comments if I’ve missed any of your favourite tools!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He blogs about Computers and Software at Killer Tech Tips

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Here are some tips for Picasa users to efficiently manage their photo collections:

1. Tag your Photos using Keywords

Select a few photos (Use CTRL + Click), and press CTRL + K to add keywords to your photos. This could help a lot in sorting through and finding a photo later.

2. Geotag Photos using Google Earth

If you’ve got Google Earth installed on your computer, geotagging your photos is a piece of cake. Select the pictures, go to Tools >> Geotag >> Geotag using Google Earth to go to the location where the photos were taken. Position the crosshairs on Google Earth after reaching the location, press Geotag and you’re done!

3. Upload Photos to Flickr from Picasa

Ok, you can obviously upload your pictures to Picasa Web Albums from Picasa, but what if Flickr is your favourite? You cannot use Picasa to upload photos to Flickr, but there’s a third party tool to the rescue.

Picasa2Flickr is how it’s called, and it adds a ‘Send To Flickr’ button to Picasa. Click it, authorize and then you can upload photos to Flickr directly from Picasa.

4. Batch Edit Photos

If you want to edit multiple photos at once in Picasa, use CTRL + Click to select them all. Then, use the option Pictures >> Batch Edit from the menu bar to apply effects to all the photos you’ve selected.

5. Publish to Blogger, Export as HTML Pages

In addition to uploading your photos to your Picasa Web Albums, Picasa makes it easy to upload your photos to a blog hosted on Google’s Blogger Service. Use the options from the Tools menu to share your photos with others on your Blogger Blog.

Picasa can also make HTML Gallery pages for you locally, you can share them around computers. It’s only easier to browse the photos in your browser. Use the Create menu to export photos as HTML Gallery Pages.

6. Gift CD with only selected Photos

There’s only one possibility when creating Gift CDs in Picasa: you can only add an entire folder to a gift CD, not particular photos. There’s a work around though, here’s how:

Do this for the photos you don’t want to be included in the gift CD: Right Click on the photos you want to exclude and select Hide from the menu that appears. Once you’ve done this for all the photos, press the Gift CD option on the toolbar to burn a disk only with those specific photos.

7. Make a Photo Black and White

Five detailed procedures to create black and white copies of your photos are nicely explained here.

8. Faster Zooming

When you’re viewing a single photo in Picasa, you can zoom into the photo by using your mouse’s scroll wheel. Or, there’s an even quicker way to zoom: use the left mouse button, draw a diagonal line across the photo, and it gets bigger instantly.

9. Full Screen Photo Viewing

Put your cursor over a photo, press CTRL and then ALT. A full screen view of the picture is shown immediately.

10. Picasa Shortcuts

Picasa has got shortcuts for almost every other action, you can see a list here. Make sure you master them. They could really come handy. Some of my favoites are:

• Ctrl-A: Select all photos in album
• Ctrl-1: View your photos as small thumbnails
• Ctrl-2: View your photos as large thumbnails
• F11: Use Picasa in full-screen mode
• Ctrl-4: Start a slideshow
• Ctrl-3: Open an image in “Edit Mode”
• Ctrl-Shift-H: Flip image horizontally
• Ctrl-Shift-V: Flip image vertically
• Ctrl-Shift-B: Add black and white effect

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Student and Freelance Writer from India. He blogs about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips.

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Some reasons why you should give Ubuntu a try:

* It is completely free. Order a CD via their ShipIt service, and you get the CD delivered at your doorstep, at ZERO cost!

* It doesn’t need expensive hardware to run, it can run perfectly on a machine with a normal configuration. Doesn’t crash often like Windows.

* Ubuntu updates every six months, and they’re free as well.

* Installing apps in Ubuntu is very easy. Just a single command and you’re done.

* Ubuntu Installer imports your Windows OS settings, so some things come configured when you install it – just like you had on Windows. For instance, your XP Firefox profile could be imported.

Although Ubuntu comes with excellent packages that help you alter the default settings and customize the distro for yourself, tweaking a few settings however requires you to go deeper into the system. Plus if you do something wrong, you’re probably going to end up making a mess of your Ubuntu installation. That’s where a program called Ubuntu Tweak comes in handy. Ubuntu Tweak is a little GUI based tool and it lets you edit some hidden settings on your Ubuntu installation very easily. It’s similar to Tweak UI for Windows XP.

Here’s how you can install it:

In the terminal, type:

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

In the file that opens, add the following lines to the end of the list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/tualatrix/ubuntu gutsy main

Save the file, go back to the terminal, and type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak

Once installed, you should see a ‘System Tools’ sub menu in your Gnome Menu List from where you can access Ubuntu Tweak.

Open the program, and you get access to instantly modify a lot of hidden settings. You can change the splash screen in one single click; remove items from Auto Start; hide Computer, Home, Network icons from the desktop; adjust active window opacity; and lots more.

Besides that, Ubuntu Tweak also lets you disable some services for a higher level of security. For instance – you could disable user switching, printing, run application dialog, etc. – in just a few clicks.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India who blogs about computer and software at Killer Tech Tips

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Here, I have listed the resources I have used in the past, and those I’m currently using, for your own benefit.

Online Dictionaries and Thesaurus

Reference.com – Comes with a dictionary and thesaurus, and is one of my favourite destinations to know the meaning and origin of a particular word. You can use it for free, although there’s a premium version of the site that you can pay for if you need pronounciation help.

The Free Dictionary – Get ready to learn a lot of things at the Free Dictionary site. It’s an awesome resource that has information categorized, helps you with definitions, spelling bee games and lots more. The site also features a start page where you can add your favourite modules and learn things new every day.

Visual Thesaurus – At Visual Thesaurus, you can have a great time exploring words and related terms and play around with them. Includes a pronunciation helper so you need not worry about getting a word wrongly pronounced. Some other features include examples of usages and additional tips to help you from mistakenly using the wrong word. Available as a download, it’s worth paying for.

Google’s Define Operator – Since people have got used to Googling for everything that you can imagine, it’s not a surprise that they’ve included a little functionality to their search engine. If you want to know the meaning of a word, just type define: followed by the word in the Google search box, and get the definitions instantly on your screen. Example: define: intuitive.

Definr – Definr calls itself an incredibly fast dictionary, and it really lives up to its name. Type in a word, and get the meaning instantly. Advantages – it loads really fast so you rarely have to wait. But it seems to have a smaller database of words when compared to the tools mentioned above.

HowJSay.com – This is a brilliant web 2.0 tool, just type in a word and get it pronounced immediately. It might prove very useful in some situations. This site has a large database of words so you won’t be disappointed.

Offline Dictionaries

WordWeb – WordWeb functions as a dictionary tool that comes packed with the features that you expect in a dictionary. Select a word from any application and then press a shortcut to find out its meaning in WordWeb. Something you’ll love is the way its interface has been designed. In case you need synonyms, related terms, etc, just click on the appropriate tab and you’re done. The Pro version includes a few more capabilites, although the free version might be more than enough for your needs.

Merriam Webster – Puts the reputed Merriam Webster Dictionary tool on your PC. Get instant meanings, just a right-click away. Spell Checker included.

Enso Dictionary and Spell Checker – Instantly check the spelling in your text by holding down a hotkey (works universally in Windows). Also included is a dictionary that can be activated using the command ‘define’

Grammar Resources

The BBC Learning English site has loads of information on English grammar, such as FAQs, exercises and quizzes. If you still need more, you can test yourself with the aid of exercises in these sites:

About.com Grammar Quiz, Interactive Grammar Quizzes, Grammar Self Tests, 40+ Resources to improve your Grammar and Punctuation

Dedicated Portals

BBC Learning English – There’s just so many things here that you can retain for learning – quizzes, crosswords, podcasts, radio and many other useful resources all under one internationally-recognized brand. It’s a site that must be bookmarked.

Wordie.Org – This is a social network centred around words. You can list your favourite words and phrases, see who else has your favourite word in their list, browse around their lists, tag them and have lots of fun. Create words you hate, words you find weird, words that make you laugh etc. Within a few minutes of wandering on the site, you’ll find lots of new terms that could improve your vocabulary skills.

A Word A Day

The following sites are updated every day with words that you might have never heard of. You can see their origin, etymology, pronunciation and a lot more. You could subscribe to their newsletters and spending less than a minute every day you can enrich your English vocabulary greatly.

Wordsmith’s A Word A Day – One of the world’s most subscribed-to newsletters.

Other “Word of the Day” sites: Yahoo! Education, Merriam Webster, Oxford’s Word Of the Day.

Podcasts

Podcasts are MP3 files that you can download and play on your computer or your portable media player such as your iPod. I listen to the Grammar’s Girl Podcast quite often. Maybe you want to tune in as well.

eBooks

Project Gutenberg – 20,000+ downloadable books. An awesome project that has rich classic books included. Download and distribute, share the knowledge. You have content here that’ll take you a lot of time to read and quench your thirst for literature. Books from many languages are available, just take your pick from the online Gutenberg catalogue.

There’s quite a lot of Shakespeare stuff as well, Google is your friend.

Foxit Reader – Ok, you download a lot of eBooks in the PDF format, but do you find that your Adobe Reader software slows down your entire computer? Get this alternative instead. It’s called Foxit

Educational Games

Jumble – A game I love to play when I see it in the newspapers every morning. It’s playable online and downloadable.

BingoBinge – Play Scrabble Online

ManyThings, Hangman Flash Game – Play Hangman Online

Blogs

There are of course a few blogs that provide tips on improving your English. You can check these that I found: Daily Writing Tips, The Grammar Vandal, Triangle Grammar Guide.

Start Pages

These are quite great, and can save you loads of time. A Start Page is a page on the web that you can customize with stuff that you need to keep an eye on. For example, my start page contains modules that give me access to a few blogs, top news stories and weather:

Likewise, you too can create a start page with modules like a dictionary, word a day stuff, etc. Try Netvibes or iGoogle. Trust me, if you know how to use them, you’ll find them very helpful and fun to learn with.

Let me know in the comments if you found the post useful.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old guy from India who blogs about computers and soft at Killer Tech Tips.

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(1) Vista Start Menu

The name might sound strange, but this one works in most versions of Windows, not just Vista. Vista Start Menu might take you aback when you use it for the first time, but it’s worth it once you get used to it. It simply replaces your current start menu (even on Vista) with a more functional, feature rich and customizable menu.

You can organize your programs in tabs, use commands from the menu itself, and even zoom into the menu for better viewing. But beware, the program is known to consume a considerable amount of system memory, so go for it only if you have memory to spare.

(2) JetStart

JetStart is more of a suite, and can be considered an all-in-one replacement to your default Windows XP Start Menu. JetStart categorizes applications based on their use and purpose. It also has a search as you type feature that can locate the program you need in just seconds. Plus, there’s a JetStart toolbar to house your most used applications for quick launching.

(3) Vista Start Menu Emulator

Vista Start Menu Emulator replaces the default XP Start Menu with that of a Vista. Besides putting the Vista-like Start Menu on XP, this tool also gives a live search feature similar to the one on Vista.

(4) Launchy

If you’re bored of icons and menus for launching programs, give Launchy a try. Launchy indexes your drive for applications and visited webpages and lets you launch an application or some web address by simply typing couple of first letters. Saves you a lot of time, and can fully replace the Windows Start Menu.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old guy from India who blogs about computers and software at KillerTechTips

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Why not try some freeware CD DVD Burning Apps applications that can serve as an alternative to Nero Burning ROM for your Windows PC?

1. CDBurnerXP

This is by far the most popular free alternative to the expensive Nero Software. Works on Vista as well, and here’s a features-highlight from CDBurnerXP:

• Multi Language Interface
• Support for Blu Ray/HD DVD
• BIN > ISO converter included

Download CDBurnerXP

2. InfraRecorder

This is the software that I currently use on my computer as a Nero alternative, and I must tell, it’s damn simple and straightforward. Has all that you might expect in a CD DVD Burning software like Nero. Some highlights from this Nero alternative include:

• Support for Multi-Session
• Very Light on Resources
• Support for not just ISO, but also BIN and CUE images
• Burning on Dual Layer DVDs is supported

Download InfraRecorder

3. DeepBurner (Free Edition)

Another good alternative. Available both as a regular and portable app. So if you want something you can carry around on your USB Flash Drive then check this one out.

• Supports both internal and external CD/DVD writers.
• Burn any data, copy any disc.
• Create multiple disk copies.
• Make ISO CDs.
• Print CD labels.

Download DeepBurner

4. Ultimate CD/DVD Burner

This simple solution can serve all your basic CD burning needs. Similar to above Deepburner, there is a portable version. The only thing I don’t like about this one is interface, it reminds of Windows 95.

• CD Photo Albums creation
• Easy Backup CD creation
• Disk copying
• ISO Creation and Burning

Download Ultimate CD/DVD Burner

5. Burn At Once

Burn At Once is another good CD/DVD Burning Application. It can copy discs on the fly and has the following unique features:

• Tagging of media by importing data from FreeDB
• Multi Language Support
• Drag and Drop Interface

However, it looks like support for this application is stagnant at the moment.

Download Burn At Once

6. Burn Aware Free Edition

This relatively new software is creating waves, and it’s intuitive interface is attracting users. It’s very light on resources, and supports every other format that you can imagine (including Blu Ray). Burning is fast because this software burns data directly on to the medium, instead of waiting for ‘hard disk staging’

Download BurnAware

7. ImgBurn

Another software that’s worth mentioning here is ImgBurn. It’s a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application that can be installed both on Windows and Linux PCs. It’s probably the most extensive out of all. If you’re looking for something advanced and with lots of features ImgBurn seems like a good candidate.

Download ImgBurn

Do let us know about your experiences with these software in the comments. Have I missed out any? Shoot out your voices, come and discuss!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Student and Freelance Writer from India. Killer Tech Tips is his blog.

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1. Download SyncToy and install it.

2. Run SyncToy from the Start Menu

3. You’ll now have to create a Folder Pair

4. Choose a Left Folder (this is a folder on your PC’s hard disk) and a Right Folder (this points to your removable USB Pen Drive)



5. Choose a Synchronization Method. This could be anything from:

• Synchronize: Two Way Synchronization (left to right as well as right to left).
• Echo: Transfer happens Left to Right. Renames and Deletes are also synced from left to right.
• Contribute: Left to Right Syncing. Renames are done on right with left as the source. No Deletions occur.

6. In the window that appears, click on Run to start the Syncing Process. In case you want to be able to preview the changes that’ll be done, use the ‘Preview’ option to have a look at the upcoming actions that’ll be taken.

So that’s how you sync files between your PC’s hard drive and USB Pen Drive. Should come really handy, I hope.

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Plugins

Ah! Most Open Source applications allow you to install plugins to add additional features, and Pidgin is no exception. It comes with a set of plugins that are deactivated by default. You can go to Tools >> Plugins to configure them.

Buddy Notes and Buddy Status Notifications are two cool plugins among others in the list. Can’t get enough from Pidgin? Want character counter? Maybe a plugin to synchronize your chat history across multiple PCs? Add more functionality with more plugins. Even more plugins here.

Buddy Pounces

This is a relatively powerful feature in Pidgin, and could turn very useful. Basically, it’s like making Pidgin perform an action when a buddy signs in/out/sends a message and so on.

You could set sound alerts, make Pidgin automatically open the chat window, or execute a command or an application.

So how do you set up Buddy Pounces? Just go Tools >> Buddy Pounces and click ‘Add’ to configure.

Control Idle Status

From Tools >> Preferences >> Status/Idle, you can control settings related to your Idle Status. You can configure Pidgin to report idle status based on keyboard/mouse use, or last message, the minutes before idle status and also set the status message to be displayed if you go idle.

Chat History

You can set Pidgin to log chats and conversations in basic text/html format by going to Tools >> Preferences >> Logging.

Themes

The beauty of Open Source, may be. There are a variety of themes available for Pidgin, and you could grab one yourself and give a new look to the multi protocol IM. Get Pidgin themes from here (search for pidgin).

Customize Fonts

Yes, that’s possible. If you dislike the default font sizes, you can alter them from the Tools >> Preferences >> Conversations dialog box.

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Slow Start Up
There can be a variety of reasons to Windows loading slow during start up. Go to Run, type msconfig and hit enter. Under the ‘Start Up’ tab, uncheck the unwanted programs and press OK. Things should be a bit fine the next time Windows boots.

Another program worth mentioning here is StartUp Delayer which will help in setting after how much time programs should be loaded after Windows boots. For instance, you could set your instant messenger program to load 50 seconds after Windows starts up.

Slow Loading Start Menu
If the Start Menu items are loading slowly, you can open the Registry Editor by typing in the Run menu ‘regedit.exe’ and pressing Enter. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Look for MenuShowDelay, and double click to edit the value. The lower the number specified, the faster the Start Menu will load.

Slow Right Click Context Menu
Probably the Windows Right Click menu on your computer is loading slow because too many programs added unwanted entries there. Just download this program called Mmm, install it and then modify your context menu to remove unwanted items to speed it up.

Slow Send To Menu
If the Send To menu loads slowly, you can type ’sendto’ in the Run Dialog, and remove unwanted items in the Explorer Window that appears. This should add some speed to it.

Slow Defragmentation
The Windows Defragmenter can’t get any slower. You need to have an alternative to the Windows Defragmenter, and Defraggler is just one of the best ones available in the market. It’s free, and works like a charm and can speed up defragmentation manifold. For some alternatives, see Five Free Programs to Defragment your PC.

Slow loading My Computer Window
If the My Computer Window loads slowly, in the Explorer Window, go to Tools >> Folder Options >> View and uncheck ‘Automatically search for network folders and printers”

Slow loading Add or Remove Programs Applet
This is one of the most annoying piece of programs present in Windows, it takes ages to load if you have a considerable number of programs installed on your computer. You can either use the all-in-one CCleaner for this purpose, or get MyUninstaller that comes as a speedy replacement for Add or Remove Programs.

Slow Ending of Unresponsive Programs
If you’ve clicked on ‘End Task’ if any program is running unresponsive, you might have noticed that the program is not terminated immediately. You can alter this by going to Run >> regedit.exe >> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ and change this value to 1000.

Disable Animations and Appearance Overhauls to maximize performance
If you’re a serious performance junkie, you probably won’t bother about eyecandy. Go to System Properties in the Control Panel. Click ‘Advanced’, then ‘Performance’ and click ‘Adjust for best performance’. This might boost your PC’s performance up a bit.

Additional Tips:

- Always keep your computer clean. Remove Junk and Unnecessary registry entries. Use CCleaner for this purpose, one excellent tool that just does what it says.

- Don’t keep installing software. Install a program only if it really serves you a purpose.

- Keep as less programs as possible running on the System Tray. This essentially means reducing the number of programs that start during Windows start up.

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a student and part time blogger from India, and the guy behind KillerTechTips

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Desktop Blogging Clients

Post to your blog straigth from the desktop.

Windows Live Writer – One of the best. Plugins can be added to increase its power. Check out our review here.
w.bloggar (Windows only) – Available as a full and portable version (can run from USB thumbdrive).
AIRPress (Windows, Mac) – Adobe AIR based blog editor for WordPress blogs. AIRPress requires Adobe AIR beta 2 to work. If it’s not installed already, it will be auto installed with AIRPress.
Thingamablog (Window, Mac, Linux)
Qumana (Windows, Mac)
BlogDesk (Windows) – Optimized for WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine.

Statistics Tools

Monitor websites traffic and other stats.

Google Analytics (AIR) – Check detailed traffic stats from the desktop. Works both on Mac and Windows PCs. Google Analytics account required.
Snoop (Mac, Win) – Track website visitors in real time staight from the desktop. Stats provided by reinvigorate.net
SERPs Finder (Win) – Find where your page lists for a particular keyword on Google, Live and Yahoo! Search.

Screen Capturing Tools

Snippy (Windows) – System Tray Tool for screen capturing. Mark out the region of the screen that you want to copy — and Snipp it.
Clip2Net (Windows) – Take screenshots, add notes and arrows, and save them online.
WebShot (Windows) – One more screesnhot grabber, free version is quite limited, but still does the job.
Camstudio (Windows) – Capture screen activity (vide+audio) and save it in AVI or SWF format.
Windows Media Encoder – Capture audio and video content and encode video captures to WMV format.
SnagIt 7 (Windows) – Powerful screenshot capture and editing tool. Normally it costs $29 but version 7 is available for free. Unfortunately, the promotion period is over.

Image Editing Programs

GIMP (Win, Linux) – Free Photoshop alternative. Also see Gimpshop which even looks like Photopshop.
Paint.NET (Win) – Another open source software tool for your image editing needs.
IrfanView (Win) – Worth a mention here, it’s an image viewer with a few editing capabilities.

FTP Programs

Filezilla (Win, Mac, Linux) – Open Source FTP Client. Read MakeUseOf review here.
FireFTP (Win, Mac, Linux) – FTP extension for your Firefox browser.

Keyword Research

Good Keywords (Win) – Excellent too for finding suitable keywords for your article titles. MakeUseOf review: Get Your Keywords Right.

Microblogging Tools

Pwytter (Win, Mac, Linux) – Cross-platofrm Twitter client.
Twitbin – Firefox Extension for Twittering
OutTwit – Twitter client for Outlook. If you’re interested check out more Outlook addons here.
Pownce Client – Official Pownce clients for Mac and Windows. [What is Pownce ?]

Task Management

Rainlendar (Win) – One of the best desktop calendar apps for Windows.
Essential PIM (Win) – A free personal information manager.

Offline HTML editors

First Page (Win) – Two paned windows HTML editor.
KomPozer (Win, Mac, Linux) – Extremely easy to use and ideal for non-technical users.

Miscellaneous

WordPress Comment Moderation Notifier – Get notifications when there are comments that need to be moderated.

That’s about it. Do you have a must-see program that’s not on the above list? Let us know in comments.

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(Note: Some of the listed transformation packs are quite extensive so please read installation guidelines carefully)

Vista Transformation Pack [Download]

Vista Transformation Pack does all kinds of appearance tweaks, and makes Windows XP look like Vista. From icons, transparency to new sounds, this pack does it all to make your XP look like Windows Vista.

Mac OS Transformation Pack [Download]

[bigger image]

Transforms XP to look like Mac OS X 10.5. Some important components like Windows Explorer and other shell files are patched to mimic Mac OS X appearance. Work only with Windows XP SP2 (English version).

FlyakiteOSX [Download]

Again, make your windows look like Mac OS X. However, it’s much more comprehensive than the above one. This enhancement utility does everything from registry tweaks, visual styles, sounds, icons to imitate the appearance of Mac OS X. See other screenshots here. If you’re using iTunes then make sure to deselect ‘iTunes Multi-Pugin’ option (under ‘Software’) in the installation wizard.

Fedora Transformation Pack [Download]

This tool is intended for making XP resemble the Fedora Linux Distro. Though the utility just packs a simple visual style, it does include icons, screensavers and wallpapers, and other Fedora-like skins for programs.

Ubuntu Transformation Pack [Download]

This pack contains visual styles, icons and other patches that can give the brownish Ubuntu look to Windows XP. If you just can’t get Ubuntu working on your PC, but still love its looks, you can download this pack. [via]

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gAlwaysIdle

At the time of writing, there’s nothing like ‘invisible mode’ on Gtalk that can keep the annoyers at bay. But most people desperately need it. Here’s where gAlwaysIdle comes in.

Download it , install it and from then on you can control your Google Talk idle status.

Use the ‘Always Idle’ mode to keep your status idle, so that your status appears away even though you’re really online. ‘Never Idle’ mode works the other way, and will never put you on idle status – even when you’re away.

GPlus

GPlus is another third party addon for Google Talk. You can spicy tools to your minimalistic instant messenger with this little tool.

GPlus can spice up your chats by replacing smiley codes with graphical emoticons, and also play ‘Emotisounds’ to express what you’re feeling. GPlus can also log your chat conversations in HTML format. (via)

Extended Talk

Using Extended Talk, you can add a lot of very useful stuff to Google Talk. For instance, you can create shortcuts for frequently used phrases, so that you can save time by not typing them entirely. You can also put a shortcut on your desktop that instantly starts a conversation with the friend specified when activated.

Other features include: make your chat window transparent, close all active windows at once, text commands (/signout), underline support, dynamic status changer, file transfers, smileys, and more.

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