Since this is an Evernote extension, Clearly includes additional features for copying selected articles to your Evernote account, as well as three types of reading formats, including small, medium and large font sizes, and a Night Owl view that changes the background of the page to black, and the font color to white.

You can access Clearly in the Firefox menu bar (Tools > Clearly) or its extension button in the browser’s toolbar.

When you use Clearly to clip an article to your Evernote account, it sends the read-only version to your default notebook. This means you no longer have to manually strip away clutter from clippings in your Evernote account and notebook. To use the Clearly clipping feature, you will of course need a free Evernote account.

Source: Techcrunch

As explained in the post, keeping cookies indefinitely in your browser has some privacy concerns. All browsers have cookie management functions. You can easily delete all cookies or specific cookies. You can even configure certain cookies to be blocked while allowing others. But sometimes I like to retain a few cookies – for e.g. those from social forums, banking site, extension preferences – while deleting the rest across browsing sessions.

Firefox lets me create a whitelist and save cookie information. Chrome still does not give you that fine-tuned control. So, let’s look at a quick way to create a whitelist to save specific cookies in Chrome and a more global solution using a great freeware.

Vanilla for Google Chrome

Vanilla for Google Chrome is a very useful and a simple to use cookie management extension. Vanilla for Google Chrome allows you to add domain names to your whitelist. You can add top-level domain names (like www.google.com) or use wildcards (*.google.com) to bring all sub-domains (like docs.google.com, mail.google.com) within the scope of the whitelist. You can add domains to the whitelist manually from the whitelist manager that’s available under the extension’s options.

Please note that the extension mentions – The site that stores your login might be different from the site you are using. E.g. if you log on to youtube.com with your Google ID you have to add both. Also, you have to make sure that Clear cookies and other site data when the browser is closed is disabled in Chrome, otherwise all your cookies will be deleted. The protection of the whitelist when this is not done is still a beta feature.

But adding domain names to the whitelist is easiest from the extension’s icon on the omnibar. The omnibar will display the icon for every website that sends forth a first-party cookie.

The remaining configuration can be done from the Options page of the extension. As in the screenshot, you can set the extension to delete all cookies on startup except the ones on the whitelist and/or set it to auto-delete all cookies after 30 minutes.

The diagnostic tools enable you to view the cookies in your browser. A log lists all cookies with timestamps.

CCleaner

We have talked a lot about CCleaner. It has often been cited as one of the must-install PC maintenance tools. A lot of don’t use the browser’s inbuilt cleaning tools to wipe out temporary data but rely cleaning tools like CCleaner to optimize all corners of our system in one go. CCleaner cleans all traces of our browsing but it also gives us a way to create a whitelist and retain the use of specific cookies. Creating a whitelist with cookies of our most used sites is a dead easy process in CCleaner. After a normal browsing session, open up CCleaner and go to Options.

CCleaner captures all cookies that are in the browser(s) temporary cache and lists them. All you have to do select them from the list and move them to the protected list (Cookies to keep) using the arrow. As mentioned, this list includes all cookies from all internet browsers and Flash plugins.

Do you consciously manage your cookies with a whitelist that helps you keep certain cookies across your browsing sessions? Do you prefer Firefox or Chrome when it comes to ‘cookie management’?

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Auslogics have been helping users clean up and boost their computers for quite a while now, and have a whole line of products up their sleeve. BoostSpeed is a general speeding-up tool which will scan your computer for errors, junk, and crippling system settings, and offer fixes. As usual, you should keep an eye on what you erase and make sure not to delete anything important by mistake.

This week, we’re giving away 25 licenses for Auslogics BoostSpeed PRO 5. Stick around to read more about what BoostSpeed can do and to find out how you can win your own free license!

Finding Trouble And Fixing It

After installation, BoostSpeed will prompt you to perform a full system scan for problems.

If you want to save time, or make sure things are not deleted automatically, you can tweak BoostSpeed to scan just certain things and decide what actions it will perform after the scan.

The scan itself is surprisingly fast. Within several minutes, BoostSpeed will show you exactly how many errors it found, where it found them and how they affect your computer’s speed. The interface is well thought out and gives you a general idea of what’s going on at a glance.

When the scan is complete, you can choose to either trust the program and click “Repair Now”, but you can also view details, see exactly what the problems are and choose how you’d like to handle them. One thing I’d like to see added is the ability to choose individual problems and exclude them from the repair process.

System Advisor

While you’re running the scan, you can head over to the “System Advisor” tab. This tool analyzes your system’s settings and advises you what you can change in order to speed up your computer.

After it scans everything, you’ll get a list of recommendations along with explanations as to why you’re getting them. You can then check the ones you’d like to fix and have the program fix them for you.

Advanced Tools

BoostSpeed also comes with a bundle of advanced tools you can use to tweak, polish and speed up your computer.

Here you’ll find everything from disk and registry maintenance and ways to free up disk space to recovery tools and privacy settings. Each of these links leads to a whole different tool, and it would take a much longer article than this to go over them all. In short, almost anything you could wish for regarding system maintenance is right here within BoostSpeed.

Rescue Center

Using a tool which deletes files from your system is always a concern. No matter how safe it is, you’re always bound to be worried whether you’re really deleting junk, or if these files might be important after all. Well, BoostSpeed comes with its own rescue center for just those cases.

In the settings, you can control exactly what will be backed up by the program.

Auslogics BoostSpeed PRO 5 can be purchased from their online store for $49.95. The license supports up to 3 PCs in a household and offers a year’s worth of updates. There are 25 copies of BoostSpeed waiting for you. Here is how you can win one.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

The giveaway code required to activate the form is available from our Facebook page.

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post. There are 2 options to choose from or you can do both!

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, November 25th. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank Auslogics for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interested in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

But there are times when we need to clear the desktop to focus on a particular task, take clean screenshots, watch DVD movies, or make  presentations. While keyboard shortcuts can be very useful for hiding opened windows or deleting files, there are several small applications that can clean your Mac desktop more efficiently. Let’s check them out.

Hide All

If you need to hide and un-hide applications on your desktop, Hide All consists of one small window that can minimize all your open applications with one simple click, and bring them back with another click.

Unfortunately, however, Hide All doesn’t have support for a keyboard shortcut, or an icon in the menu bar. So this app would be most useful if you’re hiding and un-hiding applications on a regular basis throughout the day whereby you would keep the little window open.

GoodbyeHello

Sometimes when you’re working at a computer, you might need to temporarily hide selected files or folders on the desktop, and later quickly retrieve them without opening several folders to do so. This is where GoodbyeHello comes in.

This app allows you to simply drop selected files or folders in the application’s window, or its icon in the dock where they will be tucked away until you need them.

You use the application’s File menu commands to make the selected files or folders visible again, where they were last saved. There are several other apps and methods that accomplish what GoodbyeHello does, but this one is free and easy to use.

Clean

If you are a computer user who perpetually saves items on your desktop and rarely takes the time clean it up, you might try using the free Mac store app, Clean, to do the housekeeping for you.

Each day or week Clean will scoop up all the files on your desktop and put them in a folder, and then move them to a place you specify. Each saved folder of items will be labeled with the date and can be grouped by day or month—or not at all. You can also hit the “Clean now” button to do the job manually.

Clean is also free and works well for those with small computer housekeeping needs, but a paid application called Hazel, which is what I use, accomplishes this sort of thing ten times better.

Desktoday

Desktoday also clears your desktop files and puts them into a designated folder, but unlike Clean, Desktoday is accessed from your menu bar where you manually click to do the cleaning.

You can also designate particular files or icons on your desktop that you never want put into a folder.

By the way, you might not know that a new feature in Mac OS X Lion also features a way to right- or control-click on selected Finder items and put those items into a folder.

HideAllApps and Spirited Away

If you find your desktop constantly cluttered with application windows, HideAllApps will at specified time intervals hide all of your background applications. In the pop-up menu and application’s icon, you can check which applications you want exempt from hiding.

Spirited Away does the same thing, but you can access it from the menu bar.

The only problem with these two applications is that you have to recheck which applications you don’t want hidden each time you reboot your Mac.

Automator Workflow

Another way to hide applications is to create automated workflows, which will automatically hide opened windows and applications when a designated item is launched. So for example, you could create a workflow that hides all background applications when you launch the DVD Player.

If you don’t know how to use Automator, check out this article. This workflow consists of three actions – two for selecting the Finder item you want launched, and an action for hiding background applications. You save the workflow as an application, and park it in your Dock for when you need it.

There several other utility solutions for cleaning up your Mac. Let us know your personal favorites. Also check out 5 Great Tips and Tools for a Clean and Minimalist Mac Desktop for other ideas.

This week, we’re giving away 25 6-month licenses for CleanMyPC. Read on to see what CleanMyPC is all about, and how you can win your own copy.

CleanMyPC is the Windows version of CleanMyMac, brought to us by MacPaw. It scans your computer for files you don’t really need, and also offers some useful utilities you can use to keep your PC running efficiently. As always with this type of software, keep an eye on what you’re erasing and on the preferences, so as to not erase something important by mistake.

Scanning And Cleaning

When you launch CleanMyPC, you will be immediately prompted to scan. You can start by running a complete scan which will look for things like caches & logs, help files, extra languages, etc.

The scan may take several minutes. If you don’t want to wait for a complete scan, you can choose one category by clicking on it, and perform a scan just for this type of files.

You can then view a list of the files CleanMyPC found, and choose what you want to erase. CleanMyPC doesn’t just delete everything automatically, though. As you can see, it found my system restore data, but did not check these files by default, so I would not have lost this data even if I had performed an automatic cleanup.

If you run a full scan, you will get an estimate of the wasted space you currently have, and will get the option to clean everything up at once.

CleanMyPC will show you exactly which category is being cleaned up, and how much space will be salvaged from each category.

Notice that by default, CleanMyPC will clean recycled data on connected devices. It can also automatically empty the recycle bin. Check out the preferences to control these things.

Utilities

CleanMyPC also comes with some handy utilities. Many of these are available on the paid version only (which you can win at the end of this post!), but you get to try the registry maintenance tool for free.

These utilities will also perform a scan, and detect registry issues which you can clean up, all your installed programs which you can uninstall through the program, all your plugins and extensions, and all the files that automatically run on startup. You can then manually decide what you want to do with these findings. For example, you can use the program to remove applications from your autorun list.

CleamMyPC also offers a Secure Erase option, to permanently delete files you don’t need anymore.

We have 25 copies of CleanMyPC (6-month licenses) to give away, here’s how you can win one.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

Step 1: Fill in the giveaway form

Please fill in the form with your real name and email address so that we can get in touch if you are chosen as a winner. Click here if you can’t view the form.

The giveaway code required to activate the form is available from our Facebook page.

Step 2: Share!

You’re almost done. Now, all that’s left to do is to share the post. There are 2 options to choose from or you can do both!

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, November 11th. The winners will be selected at random and informed via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank MacPaw for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interested in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

If you have family members or friends that are always calling you for help with a slow computer, I’m going to offer you a solution that you can use to stop those phone calls right now. This solution incorporates six tools into a Windows script. That script is going to perform all of the PC cleanup work that you would do if you were sitting right in front of the computer yourself.

What This Script Will Accomplish

This Windows script is going to run the required tools in command line mode. Many of these tools that you’ve been using for years, you may not have even realized that there is a command-line mode available.

Clean Up Registry & Temp Folders

The first step is probably the most important. We’re going to launch CCleaner in command line mode to clean up temp files and the registry.

One catch. In order to make this script work without constant notifications about the apps making computer changes, you’ll have to disable the User Account Control windows feature in Windows 7.

Now you’re ready to roll. Create a file called CleanComputer.wsf and start it off with the following script.

<job>

<script language="VBScript">

Option Explicit

On Error Resume Next

Dim WshShell

Dim retVal

set WshShell=CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

WshShell.run "CCleaner.exe /AUTO"

Danny covered CCleaner recently, so you can see just what it is capable of and how much it can optimize your system. When you launch it in the script as shown above with the /AUTO flag, it’ll run invisible and it’ll use the settings you used when you last ran the application. You’ll see CCleaner.exe running in the Task Manager.

If you configure CCleaner beforehand, in auto mode it’ll automatically clean up temporary files, log files and your registry as well.

Clean Up Spyware

Next up is to take care of any spyware that might be running on the PC. My favorite tool for that is Spybot, and luckily Spybot also offers a command line feature. The one problem here is that the path to Spybot is full of spaces, which is hard to handle in a Windows Script shell command.

So, create a .bat file with the following:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Spybot - Search & Destroy\SpybotSD.exe" /taskbarhide /autocheck /autofix /autoclose

Exit

Save it as SpyBot.bat in the same directory as your Windows script. Then in the next line of your WSF file, add the following:

WshShell.run "spybot.bat"

Your Windows Script will launch your batch job that will launch Spybot in command-line mode. You will know it’s running when the Exe appears in the task manager.

Those four parameters after the spybotsd.exe file  will run Spybot in silent mode, automatically remove any spyware found, and then automatically close.

Remove Malicious Software

In addition to anything Spybot catches, I also like to run the Microsoft Malicious Software removal tool. Download the executable from the “Microsoft Download Center” section, save it in your script directory as “malremove.exe” and then add the following line to your growing Windows Script.

WshShell.run "malremove.exe /Q /F:Y"

The /Q command tells the malware removal tool to run in quiet mode (no interface) and /F:Y tells it to forcibly remove any malware that it finds without any intervention required. The first time you run it during your initial testing, you’ll have to select the option for no warning the next time it runs.

Here it is running in the background.

So, we’ve covered most of what you’d probably do if you were there in person – run CCleaner to get rid of temporary Internet files and other temp files, remove spyware and malware, so what’s left?

Automate Disk Cleanup

Another common tool that can help computer performance is the Windows Disk Cleanup tool.  First you have to set it up. Go to Start -> Run and type: “cleanmgr /sageset:1“. The following window will appear.

Set up the items that you’d like your command line to automatically clean, and then click OK. This tells it that whenever you choose /sageset:1, to utilize the settings you’ve just created. Now, in your Windows Script, add the following line.

WshShell.run "Cleanmgr /sagerun:1"

This will run the Windows disk cleanup silently, using the settings you’ve just created. You can also install the latest Windows updates by first installing WuInstall.exe and adding this line.

WshShell.run "wuinstall.exe /install /reboot_if_needed"

And don’t forget to do a quick defrag of the hard drive by adding the following lines to the script.

WshShell.run “Defrag volume c:”

WshShell.run "Defrag volume d:"

Automate Virus Scan After Cleanup

Last, but definitely not least, you’ll also want to end your script by firing off a full virus scan. For example, I use Kaspersky, which offers its own set of command line parameters.

In my case, I just add the following final line to my script.

WshShell.run "AVP.exe SCAN /ALL /i4"

And that kicks off the command window and runs through a full scan (which can take several hours).

Most other anti-virus providers out there offer similar command-line options.

So, once you’ve added all of these lines, close out your Windows Script.

WScript.Quit

</script>

</job>

Once you’ve finished the procedure above and saved your file on the PC, just schedule the job to run on a regular basis (/Accessories/System Tools/Task Scheduler). Give the procedure above a try and see how well it works for you.

Did it work well, and can you think of any other useful command line tasks that could also be added? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Over the last two years, CCleaner has changed quite a bit in terms of version numbers…up now to version 3.10 at the time of this writing. While visually the program actually hasn’t changed much (it’s good, why break something that’s not broken?), a lot of additional features have been included behind-the-scenes to make it more functional than ever.

About CCleaner and Installation

CCleaner is the most updated program out of all the Piriform offerings (CCleaner, Defraggler, and Recuva), and will ask you to update practically once every week or two. In case you haven’t installed CCleaner yet or want to check for updates without opening the program, you can head over to this page, download the setup file, and run it. During installation, I recommend that you actually look through the settings, as there may be a few preferences you may not want, such as menu options for the Recycle Bin.

Clean Out Temporary Files

CCleaner lives up to its name in a number of different ways. First, you can go through the usual temporary files of any supported applications. This includes the usual list of browsers, system, and some other lesser known options such as Java. With more and more updates, the amount of supported applications increases by a lot.

Clean Out Your Bloated Registry

The second way CCleaner lives up to its name is by its registry cleaning capabilities. CCleaner can look for a number of different registry keys that are irrelevant or unusable to the system which just clutter up the registry as a whole. As far as my experience has gone, CCleaner has been the only tool that doesn’t screw up your programs after sweeping through the registry. Updates ensure that the algorithms to find these unwanted registry keys are accurate and do not disturb anything on the system.

Even More System Maintenance Options

CCleaner continues on to include some other interesting options. In order to not have to switch between multiple applications, CCleaner also includes areas where you can remove installed programs.

You can also control the list of startup applications to lessen the strain on resources and increase boot/login time.

Deleting any old system restore points (except for the newest one to ensure you still have a point to go back to in case your system immediately breaks afterwards) helps a lot too.

Finally, you can wipe a drive’s free space (or even the whole thing) completely. For the wipe procedure, you’re offered multiple options for wiping, such as 1 pass, 3 passes, 7 passes, or an incredible (and time consuming) 35 passes.

Options

Finally, CCleaner does offer a decent amount of options to customize a few aspects of how the system maintenance tool operates. There are also specific things you can include or exclude, such as cookies and other directories.

Conclusion

CCleaner could possibly be named one of the 7 wonders of computer maintenance (don’t ask me what the other 6 are, it was just a play on words). It has been extremely easy to use, and it works. Every time. Simply on occasional runs, it often cleans out over half a gigabyte of data. While your results may not be that large, as I am a fairly heavy user, your computer will thank you for using CCleaner. So if you’re one of the very few that haven’t used it yet, I highly recommend you try it out! Don’t rely on just the Windows Disk Cleaner!

Even though CCleaner can do everything except make you sandwiches, what would you like to see added to it? Let us know in the comments! Maybe with the regular updates some will be included!