Dreamscene is a technology introduced by Microsoft in Windows Vista Ultimate that made it possible to display videos and other animations as the desktop background of the operating system. Other Windows Vista editions and previous Microsoft operating systems are not supported by Windows Dreamscene officially.

A third party alternative for Windows XP to Windows Dreamscene is XP Scene. It is an elegant solution that can turn videos into desktop backgrounds in three simple steps. It does so by creating a html file with an embedded Windows Media Player control that can be used as the background in Windows XP.

XP Scene is a portable application that can be run from any location. It displays all three steps of the process in the main interface.

(more…)

Tags: desktop background, dreamscene, dreamscene xp, microsoft dreamscene, portable software, windows dreamscene, windows software, windows-vista, windows-xp, xp scene
Categories: Windows, software

CSV (Comma Separated Values) files are used to store tabular data with each line of a csv file corresponding to one row of the table. The columns of each row are separated by commas which makes it an easy process to create a table out of csv files.

The most common use of csv files is data export and import. Many applications provide an export to csv option which will store the selected data in a csv file which can then be imported into another application that supports csv import.

Problems can arise if the generated csv file becomes very large as some applications or computer systems might run into limits. That’s where CSV Splitter (via Technospot) would come into play. The portable application can split large csv files into multiple files limiting the newly created csv files by the number of lines.

(more…)

Tags: comma separated values, csv, csv file, csv splitter, portable software, split csv, split csv files, windows software
Categories: Windows, software

Autobahn – a German word for motorway – is a software application for Windows and Mac OSX that can speed up downloads and streams of several popular services including Apple’s iTunes service, the video portal Veoh and MySpace TV. The developers are not revealing lots of information about how the application is speeding up the transfers. They do give only one example.

Autobahn speeds up iTunes downloads and transfers by establishing multiple connections to the iTunes server. This stabilizes streams and increases downloads from iTunes which is especially important for large downloads or streams.

The only indicator that Autobahn is running is a system tray icon after its installation. It depends largely on the Internet connection if the service is able to speed up the transfers noticeably. It is obviously not possible to achieve higher transfer rates than possible.

(more…)

Tags: apple itunes, autobahn, itunes, itunes downloads, itunes streams, myspace tv, speed up itunes, veoh
Categories: Windows, software

Maximizing the download rate of an Internet connection might be a good way to download a file the fastest way but it can put a strain on all other network and Internet activities in that time. A user wanting to play an online game while downloading with full speed will notice high ping rates which is not desirable. It can also lead to disconnects or temporary load errors in general.

One way of dealing with this situation is to run a traffic balancer to ensure that the other activities are not affected by the downloads or uploads.

Netbalancer (via To The PC) is not limiting the bandwidth of the applications directly. It is instead changing the network priority of applications to control the Internet traffic. The network priority of a software that is demanding lots of bandwidth would be reduced by Netbalancer to ensure that other applications with a higher priority get their share of the bandwidth.

(more…)

Tags: bandwidth, internet, internet traffic, netbalancer, network priority, network traffic, Network Traffic Balancer, traffic balancer
Categories: Windows, software

The Ghacks Christmas Giveaway is starting tomorrow with a bang. I though that it would be nice to keep you in the dark about the software packages that will be reviewed and offered on each day but I make an exception this time so that you know what you can expect in the coming weeks.

We will start tomorrow with a review of Kaspersky Internet Security 2009. Yes that’s right, you can win copies of this excellent software program tomorrow.

We have 20 confirmations so far from software companies who have donated their software for the Christmas Giveaway and are confident that we will be able to fill the last four spots easily. Those users who suggested software programs to include in the last article will be delighted to hear that we were able to get some of them for the giveaway.

(more…)

Tags: Christmas giveaway, ghacks Christmas giveaway, ghacks giveaway, giveaway
Categories: ghacks

Microsoft Messenger variants, such as MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger or Windows Messenger, sometimes cause difficulties during uninstallation throwing error messages such as “Another version of the product is already installed”, “Your computer has a newer version of MSN Messenger than the one you are trying to install”, ““Your computer has a newer version of Windows Live Messenger than the one you are trying to install” or “The feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailable”.

It can be quite frustrating to discover the root of the problem especially when the user wants a clean uninstall to install a newer version of the product again. Keith over at Techie Buzz discovered the Zap Messenger application which can completely uninstall MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Messenger from a computer system.

It solves all kind of problems that prevent the uninstallation of those products and is not limited to the ones mentioned in the first paragraph. Zap Messenger is a portable application that does require the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0.

(more…)

Tags: instant messenger, msn, msn errors, msn messenger, uninstall msn, windows live, windows live messenger, windows messenger, zap messenger
Categories: Windows, software

Windows does seem to have the habit of changing the default browser back to Internet Explorer from time to time. Many web browsers do also ask the user during installation if he wants to change the default browser. The difference between the default web browser and an installed browser is that the default browser is being used to open html and htm files on the system. Clicking on a link in a application will launch the link in the default browser.

Browser Tray Switch by Mouser has been designed with a second aspect in mind. Mouser is using the software program to define a default browser in Windows that is not allowed to connect to the Internet. This ensures that malicious software programs cannot launch the default browser. If he needs to access the Internet with the default browser he simply switches it using his software program for the time it is needed.

Another simple application for the program would be to set the default browser in Windows. Many users do not like fiddling around in the Windows Registry and this application provides an easy intuitive way to do that.

(more…)

Tags: browser tray switch, default browser, firefox, google chrome, internet-explorer, opera, system-tray, web browser, windows default browser
Categories: Browsing, Windows, software