In the computer world, icons are an app’s visual representative and personal identity. In terms of marketing, icons are the packaging and one of the selling points. I know some people who would try out (or even buy) applications just because of the beautiful icon. If you think I’m exaggerating, visit the iTunes Store and go to the iPhone applications department.

Mac is famous for its good looking icons. Apple has set its icon standard so high that third party developers have to match or surpass the quality if they want to survive in the demanding community of Mac users.

Giving Files & Folders Some Personalities

Even though Mac users can feast their eyes with tons of beautifully crafted Mac icons, some general items always use the same old icons. I’m sure that, just like me, sometimes most computer users would love to give their personal files and folders unique personalities.

I’m not talking about changing the whole set of Mac icons for the whole system using some icon packages. I’m talking about changing icons for individual items using your own customized creation.

There are at least two ways to do that quickly and easily in Mac, manually and automatically. The first method could be done if you’ve already have ready to use Mac icons.

Getting Mac Icons

Due to the different file format, you can’t just use Windows icons in Mac – and vice versa. Mac icons are in .icns format while Windows’ is .ico.

While a great number of sites with free downloadable Mac icons are only a search engine away, a free web service to create your own Mac icons is a rare breed. The only one that I could find is iConvert. This service will help you to convert images into Mac icons. The service is also able to convert images to icons, and icons to icons for other platform like Windows and Linux.

So we can use this service to convert and use Linux and Windows icons in Mac (should you ever need and want to do that ), or convert Mac icons to be used in those other platform.

To use iConvert, you need to browse and upload the image or icon file and click “Convert“. As simple as that. After the converting process is done, the icons are available in Mac, Windows and Linux formats, ready to be downloaded.

With the icons ready, we can continue to the next step: replacing the old icons with the new.

Changing Icons

Replacing icons in Mac is very easy. You just choose a file or folder with the icon that you want to change and hit Command + I (or File –> Get Info menu) to open the File/Folder Info window.

Then drag and drop the new icon to replace the icon image at the top left corner of the Info window.

That’s it.

And as if the above method is not simple enough, the second option of changing an icon is even easier.

The Automatic Method

All the above steps can be done offline in a more simple manner using the help of a small application called img2icns. The app is available in the paid version and the free version – with some features disabled. But the free version is more than enough for daily uses.

Just drag and drop the image that you want to change into icon to img2icns and it will be automatically converted.

The next step is another drag and drop. This time, ‘the victim’ is the file or folder which needs the facelift. The new icon will be attached without all the hassle.

Alternatively, you could save the new icon as an .icns file to be used later.

Do you know of another application to create and change Mac icons? Share using the comments below!

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Changing the colors of our folders has certain visual advantages. Other than the superficial visual appeal, different colors for different folders can serve as visual tags. We can color code folders according to importance (for instance, red for red hot documents) or say, according to contents (green for country music, orange for grunge?) or whatever strikes our fancy.

Looking at a bunch of yellow folders can make us unsighted as to the true value of the folders. And it’s quite easy to inadvertently delete the wrong folder. With color labeling, we can easily make the important ones standout amidst the sea of yellow.

So, let’s begin to paint our folders in any colors other than yellow, with these three free icon changer programs.

iColorFolder

iColorFolder (ver. 1.4.2) is a small icon changer program that lets us color Windows XP folders with a right click. Choose from 7 different colors (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Pink and Gray) or eight differently colored folder icons. Selecting a new color is a cinch. Just right click on the selected folder and select Color Label to go into the sub-menu with the seven colors. And if you hanker for the old yellow, you can go back to it easily by selecting None.

iColorFolder also comes with three skins – Agua, Mac OS X and Vista. Additional folder skins are available for download in a 7MB pack. The skins can be easily applied with the installed Skin selector. On un-installation, all icons return to the same ol’ yellow.

The only two negatives I could observe were its tendency to realign my desktop icons when they weren’t auto-arranged. The other peeve relates to the lack of skins. But beyond this, iColorFolder is a simple color labeler for our folders.

iColorFolder is an Open Source project and supported by Windows XP.

Folderico

Folderico (ver.3.7.2) is another icon changer program built for Windows XP just to give it some touch of color. Folderico is quite similar to iColorFolder but it has its individualistic pluses.

Using Folderico, we can browse to the target folder and select any icon to apply from the five icon libraries provided.  A further bit of customization can be added by putting in a custom tooltip for the folder that gets displayed with a mouse hover.

Additional Folderico themes (i.e. icon libraries) can be downloaded from the website. Using an associated program called ICL Builder (Beta), we can create ICL-files from standalone ico files.

Right click integration is a matter of choosing the choice theme and setting it. We can opt for one theme and set it to apply on folders using the right click context menu. The best feature of this little free software (apart from the tooltip customization) is that it stores the folder’s new icon within the folder itself. So, if we transfer the folder to another computer it will retain the new icon.

Folderico is a free software and supported by Windows XP.

StyleFolder

Customizing a folder’s icon is just one feature in the repertoire of StyleFolder (ver.1.0.3). It goes one up on the first two icon changer programs by letting us customize the entire folder starting with its icon.

Let’s start with changing the icon – StyleFolder does not offer any unique sets of icons but we can use it with any available (or downloaded) icon resources.

The folder can be given its own ‘wallpaper’ using any picture as a background. Set contrasts within the folder by giving the sub-folders names their own color. Like Folderico again, you can change the folder’s info tip. Right click integration makes the whole process easier and if going back to square one is easy with a click.

Again, the best thing about this freeware (like Folderico) is its ability to keep the look ‘permanent’ even with a change in folder location, as the customizations are stored within the folder itself.

StyleFolder is a free software and supported by Windows XP.

As with all things related to customization, the ultimate goal is to create an intuitive system for ourselves. These three are just a few among the many tools which help us to change a bit of our Windows user experience.

Probably, Varun’s post on 10 Tools to Overhaul Your Windows Interface would make good reading for those bored with timeworn milk-and-water looks of our PCs. If you happen to read his post, then do also click through to the mention of Rainbow Folders, another of the ilk we talked about here.

Are you caught up in colors and customizations? Or do you like your yellows just the way they are?

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

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Time and time again I have to create custom icons and buttons for clients. Now with IconFinder that is a thing of the past. IconFinder is a search engine that will return icons or png files with free website icons. They allow you to change the background of each from either black, white or transparent as well as filter results for a commercial website or just for personal use.

Let’s take a look at Icon Finder:

Just like any other search engine the search bar and options are at the top. Type in a search term and hit that search button. It will then search through their 109,067 free website icons and 206 icon sets. Not too shabby for a new site.

After hitting that search button you will be shown your results. They will look like this:

Now you can click on one to download or view it but check out these features. Click on the transparent or black button under background color and watch the free website icons change to meet your requirements:

You can also narrow down your results to only show commercial images or ones you can use personally by hitting this:

Once you see the image you want to download click on it and it will bring up another screen that looks like this:

You see from this screen that you can grab the PNG file or the ICO file. It also has the dimensions – in this case it is 128×128 – a nice size for an icon. There is a link to show all icons in this set and tags/ratings.

When we click on the show all icons in this icon set button we get this:

These images are free for commercial use! WOOT! That means I do not need to pay any royalties or fees to use these in a website that makes someone money. I can’t express how awesome this is. Consider this the equivalent of Creative Commons for icons!

I ran a few other searches before I bounced, including this left arrow search:

These icons are great for small buttons designating back or forward.

The site is pretty new and I can only assume that as time goes on the site will get bigger and be filled with more and more icons. If you create icons I am sure you can get some recognition by uploading them to their site. You can browse all those sets by hitting the browse sets button.

That will take you to a page that looks like this:

You can then click on the entire set and view all of the icons in it. This is great for sticking with a static theme throughout the website.

Where do you grab your icon files from? We would love to hear about more icon download sites in the comments! Don’t be shy guys!

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Sadly there is no portable version of the application. It would have been an excellent tool to keep on your USB drive had there been a portable version available.

The commands or actions are categorized into sections displayed towards the left. There are as many as 70 actions that you can perform with Commands in Demand. We have to say though, that some of them are easier and quicker if done the conventional way!

Some of the salient features of the application are:

Tools to deal with non responsive applications. You can kill non responsive applications at the click of a button, it even lets you create a shortcut to do so, like we showed you some time back. You can restart Windows Explorer with a single click or fire the Task Manager to take things in your hand!

A real time clipboard editor that lets you edit the contents of the clipboard. It automatically reads the text on your clipboard and then you can edit it as you would do in notepad. You can also drag and drop additional text to add to the text already on your clipboard. Print from here, save to a file or paste anywhere and the updated text will be pasted at the destination.

A list alphabetizer application that lets you create a list, sort it and then create a directory structure according to the list. You can even read in the contents of a folder as a list and then perform various operations on the list. The files and folders section also allows you to quickly launch common folders or open command prompt in a said folder.

An icon extractor that can extract icons from exe and dll files. Here are some icons that it found in Google Talk executable:

A memory and CPU usage Monitor with a memory cleaner. The memory cleaner would essentially free up memory by dumping to the virtual memory, so make sure you don’t use it when you are working in an application. It would be helpful if you are going to launch a memory intensive application and don’t need the other applications for some time as they will become less responsive till they are swapped back into the memory.

It also lets you search and compare results from two search engines side by side. Check the search engines (no Bing sadly) you want, type in your query and hit enter. It will open up the search results in your web browser.

You can also change Commands in Demand’s settings. You can adjust transparency and control behavior like loading on startup and minimizing when a button is clicked to perform an action.

Commands in Demand is a nice application that lets you run several windows comments and perform a number of tasks from within a single application. It is a mix of a tweaker, launcher and a whole bunch of other tools. Definitely worth checking out. I would really like to see a portable version of an application like this. What do you think about it? Let us know in the comments.

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But, don’t worry – in this article, we’ll take a look at a few good RSS icons where you can find the right style to fit your site.

The ordinary plain RSS icon

We can start with the original RSS web icons by looking at the current set that is considered standard in most web browsers today. Originally started by the Mozilla Foundation, this set of RSS icons over at Feed Icons is probably the most basic and simple set you’ll find on the web, consisting of a few classic orange icons and a separate set of multicolored icons.

In addition to these two sets, a developer package is also available consisting of many different formats and sizes from 12×12 up to 128×128. The icons are available to download here and can be used for most purposes except for in logos, favicons and “non-open syndication formats”.

RSS icons with a bit of a twist

Another great set of RSS icons comes from 0at with a set of 15 free icons. The icons come in many different objects, including RSS bottles, books, printers, meat, sandwiches, omlettes, lights, melons and more (no, i’m not kidding!).

The download comes in a zip file and includes icons in high-quality JPEG and ZIP formats. The icons are  free, but if you enjoy them, you’re encouraged to send a cup of coffee when you download them here.

A RSS cup of coffee

Brazilian designer Dirceu Veiga created another neat set of icons for Smashing Magazine.

Although it only contains eight icons total, they are pretty neat and include things like RSS billboards, coffee and even a man sitting on a bench reading an RSS newspaper.

While they are free to use on any project, the author does request a backlink if they are used. The icons come in ico, png and mac format in sizes from 16×16 and up to 512×512.

For a download and more information, see here.

Glossy color RSS icons

The next set comes from the Snap2Objects site and is a glossy version of the standard RSS icon in many, many different colors. Red, blue, green, black, grey and 25 other colors are available for download.

A great thing about this set is that all of the icons are in vector format as well, so you can resize the icons to your pleasure.

The icons are licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 format with attribution required. Download the set from Snap2Objects here.

And finally…

Last but not least is the Feedicons RSS icon set from Zeusbox Studio.

This set is a little bit more widely-scoped and includes RSS logos with plus icons, minus icons, share icons as well as some others.

The entire set includes almost seventy icons and are in PNG and mac-friendly formats.

The set is available to download here and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license with no derivative works.

Do you have your own favourite site where you get your RSS icons from? Share the icon love and let us know in the comments below!

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No longer do you have to be content with a user interface having overly sized buttons and the weirdest of fonts. These days there are a wealth of themes, icons, login screens and wallpapers available for your Linux system on sites like gnomelook, kdelook, Gnome Art and the likes.

You can visit these sites, look for what seems pleasing, download it and then copy the files to the appropriate directory to install. There is an application that streamlines all of these steps, its called GnomeArt-NG. GnomeArt-NG is a tool for the Gnome Desktop Environment that makes it easier for you to browse and apply themes, icons and wallpapers.

Deb packages are available for Debian/Ubuntu. Other distro users can browse the download page for a suitable download.

When you run it for the first time GnomeArt-NG needs to download thumbnail previews so go ahead, click apply and let it do its thing. Once the download has finished you will be able to browse through various elements, choose the one you like and apply. You are done already!

GnomeArt-NG lets you browse backgrounds categorised into gnome, nature, abstract and others. You can choose different window decorations, icons, gdm greeters and splash screens all right from within the window.

Click on a theme, icon pack or background and you will see additional information about it in the right hand pane. In addition to the creator and basic description GnomeArt-NG also displays the download count and rating for the currently selected element.

You can even customize the download settings letting GnomeArt-NG know how often you want it to look for new themes and where to store the thumbnails and meta data on your hard disk. If you happen to be using a proxy you can also specify it here within the network setting. You can also run “First Time Download Assistant” again if you happen to experience any problems with the thumbnail previews.

GnomeArt-NG makes it super easy to customize your Gnome Desktop. If you are new to Linux and don’t know how to install themes and icon packs you will love it. If you are an experienced user you would still like streamlining of the whole customization process, but nothing ever stops you from digging deep and editing configuration files to get everything set up perfectly the way you want to in case you feel the need to do so.

How do you install themes, icons and window decorations? What do you think of GnomeArt-NG?

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

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Some distros provide you with these icons on the desktop and some don’t. Having the icons on the desktop might be an overkill for the geeks. After all, the Places Menu works just fine. However, I guess new users still want those icons on the desktop (Ubuntu forums would attest to the fact). So, if you are looking to get the Home, Trash or the Computer icons on the desktop, it is very easy. Follow along (works for all Gnome-based distros)

Hit Alt + F2, type in gconf-editor in the dialog box that comes up and hit Enter.

The Configuration Editor will open up. Navigate to Apps > Nautilus > Desktop.

Towards the right side, you will see a set of options. Place a check against the icons you want to see displayed on the desktop. You can display the Computer, Home, Trash and Network icons from in here.

While you are there, you can also tinker with the names. If for example, you want to change the name from “Computer” to “Varun’s Computer”, all you have to do is double-click on computer_icon_name, choose String as the type and then key in the name you want to give to it.

You can also uncheck volumes_visible option if you don’t want the mounted drives to appear on the desktop. I personally loathed them, could never get in terms with where they appear (on top of each other at times) and how to customize their positions.

That’s it! You can customize what to show up on your desktop easily. While you are there, you might look into other options with gconf-editor, it provides an explanation of every option that you select, so you know what you are about to do. In case something goes wrong you can always correct it via the editor or by using the gconftool2 command within the terminal.

Confused or crystal clear? Shoot any questions in the comments!

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Well then, I have the perfect piece of software for you! Desktop OK does one job and it does it great. It can remember your desktop icons’ position and restore them whenever you want.

Just download the 37.5KB ZIP file from here and start the portable application. Choose your language (English or Dutch) and you are on your way.

The console looks like this:

So, my desktop looks like this to begin with (I am not a neat freak, trust me!)

Now, I saved my layout by hitting the save button within Desktop OK.

As you can see, it shows the layout and when it was saved. Then, I went all crazy and moved some other icons around and on my desktop like so:

And then, I said, “WAIT A MINUTE, What did I just do?”

I want my desktop to look like it did before. But just for kicks, I decided to save a copy of my desktop like this so I hit Save on the console again.

When I click on the second icon set (which is actually the first one created), I get my original desktop back and if I click the first one, it gives me that messed up looking desktop. This is great especially after playing games that change your resolution and distort your icon placing!

Do you use something similar? Share it with us in the comments!

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All of these icons have been designed according to the style used in the original iPhone icons, which turns them into really eye-catching designs

Here are 15 absolutely free iPhone icon sets for the personalization of your iPhone courtesy of MakeUseOf!

Enjoy!

Comic iPhone Icons

Social Bookmark Icons

SummerBoard

Hand Draw iPhone Icons

Aquaticus Socia

Some beautiful iPhone icons

ultra colors

IPhoneStyle Dock

Radiance

Aluminium and White

Chalkwork

Web 2 Icons

Sleek Icons

Toolbar Icons

Spiffy Icon Pack

Installing Your iPhone Icons

First off, you have to start off with the basics. iPhone icons arrive in two sizes, one of which you see most; the home screen icons are generally 59×59 pixels, whereas some icons can also be seen in 29×29 for list size; an example of the list sized icons can be seen within the iPhone’s settings area.

Now, how do you replace the icons on your iPhone? The icons for each application on the home screen can be found in the bundles, which you can easily find on your iPhone’s /Applications folder. For example, for changing the Weather app icon, you have to place your new icon (that should be named as icon.png) in /Applications/Weather.app/. You will have to overwrite the existing icon.png file with the new one.

And there you have it! That’s how you can install an icon on your iPhone.

Customizing your iPhone can be a fun way to put technology to an inspiring use. Let your iPhone reflect whatever you’d like it to and which icon set did you like the best? Feel free to leave us a comment below to share your valuable thoughts. If you know about some other cool free iPhone icon sets please share them as well.

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

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So if you are starting up a website and you want to convert your small 16×16 JPG file into an .ico file Iconvert lets you convert it to icon file online.

If you want to convert all your OS X Icon files to load up on your Vista machine then again this is the place to do it. In the past I have tried small programs that say they convert image formats but they all had to be installed. Now you can simply visit this website and convert away to your hearts content!

Let’s check out the website and see how it works. I am on a Windows XP machine with SP3 installed. But as I said before, anyone with a browser can get down on the converting.

I decided to use my Admin guy JPG that you can see in the image above. If I want to use this little guy as an icon all I need to do is browse on over to the iconvert website (which is not iconvert.com by the way).

From here, I simply clicked on Browse and looked for an image that was either .icns, ico, .png, .svg, .tif, .jpg, .bmp, .tga or .cur. I found my image that was in JPG format and clicked away.

And in no time at all I was returned to the same page except it had web links to download my new icons! Check out my results here:

And that is all there is to it! Can you imagine it would be so simple? This works on any web browser and you can then email or IM someone the link as well. Try it out here is my link for a windows .ico file. This can be a very handy resource and let’s all hope the author can get a domain name for it!

There is one small thing to keep in mind – the icons that you convert will be displayed at the bottom of their home page as “Recently Converted Icons” so you might not want to create one out of naked pics of your girlfriend confidential pictures if you know what I mean!

Do you have a favorite on-line resource that you use to convert icons between formats? If you do we would love to hear about it in the comments! C’mon we would tell you!

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Now, what if you can create your own animated “now loading” gif image and use it on your site within 5 seconds without any graphic editing, programming skill or any form of technical knowledge? Or how about animated avatar ? Wouldn’t it be great?

Ajaxload is a website that allows you to create animated loading images at a price of free (as in beer). This site has a very simple design. The upper yellow box is where you choose your loading image and set your background/foreground color while the bottom red box is where you preview the generated animated loading image. If you like what you see, you can download and use it on your websites/applications.

Ajaxload comes with a variety of shapes for you to choose. There are 37 shapes altogether and mostly are in the form of a circle or rectangle. Here is a preview of some of them.

Depending on the theme of your site/application, you can customize the background and foreground color. The best option for anyone is to get it to display a transparent background so you can use the image anywhere you want.

Ajaxload is accessible in most browsers. If you are using Opera, there is also a widget that you can use. On your Opera browser menu bar, go to Widgets -> Add widget on the menu bar. Type in “animated loading image generator” on the search bar and it will fetch the widget from its database. Add the widget to your browser and you will be able to use it anytime and anywhere. The interface of the widget image generator is exactly the same as the website, so you don’t have to spend extra time getting used to it.

Alternative to Ajaxload

If you find the shapes and design at Ajaxload are too simple and not to your liking, another site that you can use to generate animated loading image is Load Info.

Load Info has a different interface from Ajaxload. On the main screen, you will see all the various types of animated icons. There are hundreds of them, so it is unlikely that you will run out of choice. Pick the one(s) you like and click on it, it will pop up a window to ask you for the background, foreground color and the size you want (16×16, 24×24 or 48×48). Same as Ajaxload, click on the Generate button to get an instant preview and download option.

On the whole, LoadInfo has more choices of icons. If you don’t mind the black background which makes it hard to see and navigate, LoadInfo can be a great alternative to Ajaxload.

Which one is your favorite animated loading image generator: Ajaxload, LoadInfo – or another site maybe? Let us know in the comments.

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For those of you that don’t know what the BumpTop was supposed to be check out the link above. But long story short it is (was?) a 3 dimensional desktop where the icons can interact with each other and you have a lot more control over your Virtual Desktop.

Shock Desktop comes with most of the same functionality. I don’t know if I would use this as a full replacement for my Windows desktop but it sure is fun! (make sure you grab the ZIP – the executable archive did not work for me.)

Remember that even though this is more fun than productive, it is still a huge step in the right direction for computing. You can have a little fun with your desktop when you are bored. Or actually use this virtual 3D desktop to arrange items in stacks, larger and smaller icons, 3D cubes and best of all throw your icons around.

Have them bump each other around or stack everything on top of each other and watch gravity take it’s course.

How long until our Windows GUI can do this? Are you guys in Redmond listening to me?

Let’s check out our options. You can bring up the 3D desktop by right clicking on your new D icon. You will see this:

Just make sure there is a check mark next to Show 3D desktop and you are ready to start. There are few options to change icon size and shape. Change effects and lighting and even work with multiple monitors.

Yup now we are talking geeky fun!

The last option screen you see is for Themes – very cool idea for creating and trying out different looks. I tried what was included and will continue to search out a place to find some themes. Any one know where we can grab them or do you have some of your own?

Do you find this cool? Do you want to see more posts like this? Well you the reader should let us know….you know where?  In the comments!

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• Your Computer, Your World – How to Keep Out the Mindless (51)
• MUO Games – The Best Free Online Racing Games (9)
• Magically Hide & Unhide Desktop Icons in Windows with Iconoid (12)
• How To Customize Your Linux Desktop With GnomeART-NG (7)
• How To Create & Change Mac Icons Quickly & Easily (2)

The disadvantage of all of these techniques is that you will have to actually remove the icons from your desktop. If that is not to your liking, here is a tool that is completely different. It lets you keep your icons where they are, yet it will take some strain off of your eyes.

Iconoid is a lightweight tool for Windows (tested on XP) that can hide all of your desktop icons and bring them back once you click onto the desktop – and it can do even more than that.

Iconoid comes with a ton of options and all of them are thoroughly explained on the Iconoid Help site. On the website you can go through every tab of the Iconoid menu and look at the various options, simply by dragging your mouse over the image representing the menu. Best of all, each possible setting is explained in a separate field on the right hand side. This is amazingly well done!

Iconoid plants an icon in the taskbar. Left-clicking the icon opens the above mentioned main menu. A right-click launches a regular small menu that is shown below.

Not only can Iconoid hide your icons and let them re-appear when you click on a random spot on your desktop, it can also save the arrangement of your icons and restore them, should something, e.g. a different screen resolution, mess them all up.

A fun feature is the Icon Dance which might be enough to freak out some people. Icons will randomly move across the desktop until the selection “Do the Icon Dance” in the taskbar menu is unchecked. Be careful though, the Icon Dance will mess up the position of your icons, so better save them first.

The small menu gives quick access to features that can be tweaked in the main menu.

For hiding the icons you can choose between ’show always’, ‘as needed’ or ‘hide always’. I have selected to always hide my icons, so they will only appear when I deliberately click onto my desktop. They will hide again after 10 seconds, but you can choose any time between 1 up to 60 seconds.

When you choose to show icons as needed, you can let them reappear when the mouse rests on the desktop from 0 – 60 seconds and have them disappear again after the mouse has left the desktop for a certain time.

Another very cool feature to be toggled in the main menu is the “Hide all windows” option.

I set it to “Hot Corner”, clicked the top right button and selected “Lock Workstation” as the action from the drop-down menu. That means as soon as I move my mouse to the top right corner of my screen, my computer will act as if I had clicked [Windows] + [L].

Alternatively, you can hide all open windows or start the screen saver. It works flawlessly.

These were just some of the many great features the program has to offer. Taken together this is one of the coolest tools I’ve had on my desk for weeks, if not months. It’s small and it simply works. In other words, I highly recommend Iconoid. How do you like it?

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

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

• How To Customize Your Linux Desktop With GnomeART-NG (7)
• Give your Desktop a Fresh Look with MyColors (6)
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Here are six little features and applications in Vista which I think are quite useful:

Snipping Tool

The Snipping Tool was an application I didn’t even know existed till yesterday. This tool was introduced with Windows Vista (although it is not present in Vista Basic) but I just hadn’t come across it yet.

I’m so used to replacing any Windows applications with better freeware alternatives that it didn’t occur to me a Windows tool could do the job adequately. Sure, Snipping Tool isn’t the best screenshot application but it does all the basics, and even has a few extra features such as the ability to directly email a screenshot, or highlight something quickly. All it needs is a setting that enables it to be launched from the printscreen key.

Quick Launch ToolBar

If you initially tried to drag the Quick Launch toolbar off the Vista task bar, you wouldn’t have had much success. However this feature hasn’t been removed from Vista – its just been made less accessible for some strange reason.

If you want to enable the Quick Launch bar, simply create a new folder on your desktop. Drag this folder to the right edge of your screen and let go. The toolbar should have now have appeared down the side of the screen. By right clicking on the bar and selecting ‘Toolbars > Quick Launch’ you will have enabled the Quick Launch toolbar.

There are a couple of adjustable options such as hiding the title and folder text or making the icons smaller. I like using this as my application launcher as it’s the best launcher you’ll find, and I can live without the visual effects of others .

Photo Slideshows

You’ve probably seen this option amongst the buttons along the explorer bar, but have you actually tried it?

The Slideshow is actually a nice way to view your photographs. You can change the speed and effects of the presentation, and a number of themes are included such as “collage”, “album”, “glass” and more. You can display photographs in Sepia, black and white and normal. It may seem trivial but it can be quite useful when you have relatives around, you can bore them with your latest travel photographs or something.

Windows Media Encoder

Windows Media Encoder was included with Vista but has been available to anyone as a free download for quite some time. Again it may lack some of the power of alternative applications, but I think you’ll find it does a fairly decent job.

You can use Media Encoder to capture audio or video, convert files, screen capture and more. The capture is particularly useful if you want to create a video of a program demonstration, etc.

Resizing Icons

Icons can be resized anywhere in Vista by simply holding down the control key and scrolling your mouse. Even though the ‘view’ options only list seven icon display sizes, there are actually nearly forty which you can scroll through via this method. It also works on your desktop icons.

Show Windows Side by Side

Ever got annoyed with Windows Explorer? Haven’t we all. Shankar offered some tips a few weeks back for the power user, but if that’s a bit much then there is one simple thing you can do to make moving your files around a bit easier.

Hold down the control key and select two windows on the task bar. Right click and select “Show Windows Side by Side”. You’ll now have the two windows aligned next to each other. This isn’t just for Explorer windows of course, it’ll work on any application. Especially useful for comparing documents or online research.

What are your favourite tools in Vista?

(By) Laurence John finds himself way over his head on the Internet. Too many places, too much people. But that’s okay, being a Uni student he already has too much time on his hands. Read his blog over at Not Waving But Drowning

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• The Ultimate Extension for Windows Explorer (9)
• Give your Desktop a Fresh Look with MyColors (6)
• Your Computer, Your World – How to Keep Out the Mindless (51)
• Windows Registry Tweaks (Part 2) (8)
• Vista Utilities Makes Configuring Windows Vista Easier (19)

Frankly, I hate to share my own, private laptop, however for a long time it was inevitable. Over that time people lost respect and thought it was OK to use my computer, just to look something up real quick.

It annoyed me to no end, so I unconsciously developed a few strategies to make it very unattractive to use my laptop. Let me share…
1) No Desktop Icons

You wouldn’t believe how many people are stunned by an empty desktop. They’ll rather leave it alone than mess with the start button or some funny looking menus.

2) Different Interface
Even an alternative Windows theme is unsettling for the standard user. Macs are not commonly used around here, and I found that transformation packs can do wonders. People seriously believe my computer is a Mac, which makes it seem very complicated to use, and thus unattractive. Let me say the laptop case looks nothing like a Mac and the keyboard gives it away with the infamous Windows key. Yet all they see is the interface and it stops them dead in their tracks. I installed FlyakiteOSX for the slightly different look, but there are a few alternatives..

3) No Taskbar

Now that’s a killer! Something must be seriously wrong with this machine and I’d say it deters close to 90% of people. Unsolicited users that keep their hand firm on the mouse in hopes of uncovering a hidden secret must be very curious. Those that have the bright idea to use the Windows key, are true pros.
I hide my taskbar with XNeat Windows manager. Actually the taskbar is not hidden, it’s just transparent and lights up on mouse-over. It’s also a good way to hide open windows. If you want to be super smart, don’t keep the taskbar in its default location or replace it entirely with something else, for example a dock program.

4) Unusual Icons
Personally, I love to use unique icons for most folders on my computer. Before I used transformation packs I discovered that even using some of the not so commonly seen default Windows icons, makes people be wary of using my laptop, since they don’t understand what they see, if they see anything at all.

Right-click any folder, select >properties, switch to the >Customize tab, and click the >Change Icon… button, then pick an icon from the SHELL32.dll list and enjoy.

If you’re tired of the same old Windows icons, try Free Icons Download, CrystalXP.net or the Icon Archive for something fresh. Note that you will need .ico files to replace folder icons, but many icons actually come as .png files. There is an ingenious little tool called AveIconifier which can instantly transform dozens of .png files to .ico and vice versa.

5) Ultimate Protection

You can simply log yourself out when you leave your desk and use a Kensington lock at all times. However, for those times when a lock is not practicable or when you just want to go that one step further to keep obtrusive people away and efficiently protect your computer from theft, get your hands on a free copy of Laptop Alarm. It’s a small exe tool, no installation required, just download and run. You can activate up to four different actions that will trigger a very loud alarm. They are loss of AC power, shutdown or log off, unplugging of the USB mouse, and mouse movement. In Options you can set an unlock password and the sensitivity for the mouse movement detection. Unfortunately, the SMS alarm service signup is not working. Once your computer is locked with Laptop Alarm, it’s safe unless the password is hacked or both AC and battery power are removed. The tool also works on desktop computers.

Constant change has been the greatest success factor in keeping my laptop to myself. From the start all desktop shortcuts have been gone, one day the interface looks like Vista, the other like a Mac, then the wallpaper keeps changing, now there’s this funny menu, the other day there was some weird second menu, as of late the taskbar is gone and what’s next, is the damn thing going to speak to me?
In the meantime we have a separate laptop for presentations and the like at work. Mission completed.

Are you in a similar situation? Do you proudly share your computer? If not, how do you preserve your digital privacy? Please share!

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

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

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

• Give your Desktop a Fresh Look with MyColors (6)
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Stardock’s MyColors is surprisingly quick and easy to handle. The download took a while, but the installation itself was super fast. It made me wonder how well the program was going to perform. I was surprised to find that applying the included Diamond theme went just as rapid.

The new look is very pleasing. I love the the taskbar and start menu style. The Diamond theme also comes with a fresh wallpaper and new icons. There are no apparent compatibility issues, not even having FlyakiteOS installed gave me any trouble. The switch from the FlyakiteOS Tiger theme to MyColors’ Diamond was smooth and thorough. Going back to the default Windows XP Desktop is easy as pie. However, in order to restore my previous custom look, I had to go into Display Settings and load the Tiger theme under Appearance.

Most themes revolve around sports teams and brands, hence the name. The program is freely available for Windows XP and Vista (32-bit). Unfortunately, there are only two free themes, all others must be paid for. Quest, the second free theme, comes with a calendar and clock widget, and the icons are very nice. The paid themes come with many more gadgets such as a media player.

MyColors doesn’t make any permanent changes to your system. It’s very simple, not allowing for many changes, but also not requiring users to be tech-savvy at all. In other words, it’s safe to use, but potentially boring. You could call it conservative. And so I recommend trying this tool only if you like one of the free themes, they are pretty cool.

What do you think? Would you pay for any of the MyColors themes?

(By) This post was written by one of our regular authors, Tina from Recommended.

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

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

• Your Computer, Your World – How to Keep Out the Mindless (51)
• 3 Ways To Remove The Windows Vista Taskbar (11)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• Tweak Windows XP/Vista/7 to Your Taste with XdN Tweaker (10)
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