Most installations on a Windows system leave files behind. This can be temporary files, files that have been created after installation, configuration files or files that have been added by patches. The default file uninstallation routines regularly leave files behind. This can be avoided by using specialized uninstallers (like Revo Uninstaller) that scan a computer system for leftovers and remove them automatically.

These files can be deleted manually as well but this usually puts the effort and time solely on the user. A third possibility would be to run Atomic Cleaner which comes with a mode to clean game leftovers from a computer system.

Atomic Cleaner looks like the usual system cleaners. It can not only clean game leftovers but provides access to a temporary files and Internet cleaner as well. It offers four buttons to start the three different cleanups and one that will initiate a full system cleanup.

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Tags: atomic cleaner, ccleaner, clean windows, internet cleaner, revo uninstaller, system cleanup, temporary files, windows software
Categories: Windows, software

Living in the United Kingdom surely has its bright sides, you got the IT Crowd, Cider and James Bond. On the downside British government officials have been known for their lax data privacy behavior. More than one incident came to light where data of millions of British citizens landed in the wrong hands.

James Bond on the other hand would be ashamed of the most recent incident. A 28-year old delivery men thought that he made the bargain of his life by purchasing a Nikon Coolpix camera for roughly $30 on eBay.

Imagine his surprised look when he found out that the camera was filled to the brim with top secret information from Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. According to Techcrunch the camera was filled with information about “al-Qaeda cells, names, images of suspected terrorists and weapons, fingerprint information, and log-in details for the Secret Service’s computer network, containing a “Top Secret” marking”.

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Tags: data privacy, data protection, ebay, james bond, mi6, united kingdom
Categories: Security

The Google Translate service was known for a long time to translate text and websites from one language to the other. The current version features 34 languages from English over German to Vietnamese. Chances are good that Google Translate can translate the text or website into a language that the visitor can understand.

What most users do not know is that Google expanded the service recently offering not only on the fly translations but also translated search results. The new feature is called Translated Search and it works the following way.

The user enters a search term in a language of his choosing, picks his language and the language of the websites that he wants to search. Google will automatically translate the words that the user entered and perform a search on the search inventory that meet the locale requirement.

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Tags: google search, google service, google translate, search engine, translate, translated search, web search
Categories: Google, Search Engines

Tag Galaxy is one of the Flickr Tools that visualizes Flickr image browsing utilizing tags and planetary constellations to show their related tags. A search for night for instance displays the related tags light, sky, dark and city rotating around the central tag. The interesting aspect of this display is that a click on any other tag other than the main tag will combine the old tag with the new tag to include only pictures that have been tagged with all tags.

Clicking on the central “star” will close in on that star and fill it with exactly 235 picture thumbnails. The planet can be rotated with the left mouse button and zoomed with the mouse wheel. A click on a preview image will load that image in front, another click will load information about the picture like the name of the artist, a description and a link to the Flickr page.

The Flickr page of the selected photo are loaded in a new tab. The user can use the navigation on top of the screen to load another batch of thumbnail pictures from Flickr which replace the old photos shown on the planet.

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Tags: find photos, flickr, flickr browser, flickr tools, Online Services, photo browser, photos, tag galaxy, web services
Categories: Cool, Online Services, The Web

Windows Vista Ultimate comes with the Dreamscene extra which can turn videos into background screensavers. Several other applications like VLC offer this options as well. A tip was posted over at Tech Recipes today that mentioned a hidden setting in Windows Vista that makes it possible to use any screensaver as a Windows Vista wallpaper.

This hidden setting works in all versions and editions of Windows Vista. All that needs to be done is to execute a single command to execute the screensaver as the Vista wallpaper. The best method is to test run the feature with the default screensavers that are shipped with Windows Vista and use custom ones after making sure that everything is still working properly.

Open a command prompt by pressing Windows R and typing in cmd. Now execute the command aurora.scr /p65552. It can take a few seconds before the changes become apparent. What you should see is the screensaver as the new wallpaper in Windows Vista.

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Tags: background screensaver, screensaver, vista screensaver, vista wallpaper, vista-tips, vista-tweaks, windows-vista
Categories: Cool, Windows

It is common knowledge among computer experts that computer memory optimizers do not work. This has a lot to do with the computer memory tools that have been released back in the days of Windows 95 and Windows 98 which used a simple trick to move computer memory data into the virtual memory thus fooling users into believing that they freed up computer memory. For those who do not know, virtual memory is hard drive space that has been assigned as virtual memory. It’s commonly known as the pagefile in Windows.

What if there was a tool that would optimize the computer memory without using the virtual memory trick? A tool that would use the Windows API to reduce the computer memory use of any running process without interfering with system performance or stability?

Cleanmem (via Easily Reduce Memory Usage on All Running Processes in Windows) is that software program. The software developer provides a portable and a installation version of his computer memory optimizer on his website. Both versions work fine on 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

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Tags: clean computer memory, cleanmem, computer memory, computer ram, memory optimizer, microsoft-windows, windows software
Categories: Windows, software

AutoSave Essentials is a new commercial backup software developed by Avanquest which can be used to backup important data easily with minimal user interaction. That is the biggest selling point of the software. It comes with three predefined backup plans for music, documents and photos minimizing the time a user needs to configure the backup software if he stores his data in the My Documents directory in Windows (because files in that location will be backed up in those plans).

Additional options are available to save the complete My Documents folder in one backup plan and to save Web Settings which will essentially save Firefox and Internet Explorer cookies and user data. Those predefined backup plans are great for inexperienced users who don’t feel like configuring a backup software.

Custom backup plans can be added which offer two additional options. The first is to create a backup plan for specific folders, partitions or drives of the computer while the second creates a backup plan for specific file extensions. The latter will backup all file extensions of the type on all connected drives. Configuring those custom backup plans is a breeze compared to other backup solutions on the market. Everything can be configured with just a few clicks.

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Tags: automatic backups, autosaves essential, avanquest software, backup software, backups, ghacks, offer, software promotion
Categories: Operating Systems, Windows, software