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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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