Xmind is a multi-lingual and portable Open Source mind mapping software for various operating systems like Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Macintosh. The mind mapping software comes with an impressive set of features that produce professional looking mind maps in short time. Here is a short explanation of the mind mapping concept. A mind map is a diagram representing ideas and related words that center around one central idea or word.

It is widely used to collect all aspects of a topic and put those aspects into relation. It could be about a company and all of its products, a website and its category or a tv series and its cast. Xmind can be used to create basic mind maps in minutes. It does come with advanced options to include images, relations, attachments, hyperlinks, notes, boundaries and structures to create advanced mind maps that can be used for presentations.

Xmind comes with the possibilities to share the mind map online but also enough options to export the mind map into another format like images, html or text. It is also possible to save the mind map as a template to reuse it for future projects.

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Tags: mind map, mind map software, mind mapping, mind mapping software, mind maps, multi-lingual, multi-os, Open Source, portable software, xmind
Categories: Linux, Mac, Operating Systems, Windows, software

Windows Mobile Wallpaper Pack 1 and 2 are collections of wallpapers in the formats 480×640 and 240×320 that have been specifically designed for Windows Mobile devices. Both Windows Mobile Wallpaper Packs are available for download at the Deviant Art profile page of the creator. The downloads have a size of 14.6 and 10.8 Megabytes and contain a selection of 133 wallpapers that spice up the look and feels of the mobile device.

The wallpapers have to be unpacked and transferred to the Windows Mobile device after downloading them from the website. Each package will unpack into two directories that refer to the sizes of the wallpapers contained within. While the wallpaper packs have been specifically designed for Windows Mobile devices they can basically be used on any device with a screen resolution of either 480×640 or 240×320.

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Tags: cell phone wallpaper, mobile devices, mobile wallpaper, smart phone wallpaper, wallpaper, wallpaper packs, windows mobile, windows mobile wallpaper, windows wallpaper
Categories: Cool, Mobiles

If you perform a Google search at the moment you will notice that Google is flagging every website that it returns as malware. The sentence “This site may harm your computer.” appears below the title of each website in the Google index including sites like google.com, whitehouse.gov, yahoo.com and yes, even ghacks.net.

There is not even the possibility to load the website as a click on a link will lead to a page entitled Malware Warning which will tell the user that visiting the website will harm his computer.

The only real possibility at this moment is to switch to another search engine or copy and paste the url into the address bar and load the website manually.

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Tags: Google, google malware, google problem, google search, search engine
Categories: Search Engines

Software companies that release specialized tools to remove their software programs from a computer system are usually regarded with suspicion by many users. Many feel that there should not be specialized uninstallers as the regular uninstaller should be able to handle the uninstallation as good. The question that comes up is why they do not make the specialized uninstaller the default one.

AVG Remover has been specifically designed to remove the antivirus software program AVG Antivirus from a computer system. It will remove all parts of the AVG installation from a computer system including all Registry settings and files on disk. The program has been designed by AVG software developers as a last resort. They let us know that the AVG Remover tool “is the least option to be used in case the AVG uninstallation / repair installation process has failed repeatedly”.

The software program could therefor prove to be useful to remove AVG after a system crash or some other catastrophe that rendered the default uninstaller useless.

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Tags: antivirus, avg, avg remover, kaspersky, kav remover, norton, norton removal tool, norton uninstaller, symantec
Categories: Windows, software

The first language that you need to learn if you want to start with web development is HTML. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, a set of tags and attributes that can be used to create websites. HTML comes with a limited amount of tags and a basic form that is always the same. It basically comes down to learning the general layout of a HTML document and the tags that can be used to create the website.

HTML Playground provides the means to play around with all HTML tags (and a bit of CSS). It does not require any prior knowledge although that could be of an advantage. The website makes use of an interface that is divided into four columns. One holding all HTML tags, another that is displaying “live” examples of a selected tag and a third that is displaying valid HTML code used to create the example. Valid HTML code meaning a full html page making use of that code. Each HTML and CSS tag is clickable in the example code leading directly to an example page of that tag.

It would not really be a HTML Playground if the website would not offer the means to edit the example code. This is excellent to test changes to the code to see how the tags work.

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Tags: html, html playground, hypertext markup language, learn html, web development, website development
Categories: Web Development

If you need another reason why DRM does not make sense whatsoever read on. The PC version of Gears of WAR apparently has a expiration system build in that ran out on January 28, 2009. That’s right. If you legally bought the game you cannot play it anymore because the digital certificate expired. Does it make sense to specify an expiration date? Not really unless you would not sell but make the games available for rent.

Probably as disturbing is the fact that it is possible to overcome the problem by changing the date of the system to one prior to January 28. If this was supposed to be some kind of protection it was more than useless considering that the system data is checked for the data and not some server on the Internet.

It does look more like a blunder of someone forgetting to renew the certificate for the game. That again leaves the question unanswered why the game needs a certificate in first place.

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Tags: digital rights management, drm, epic, epic fail, game drm, Games, games drm, gears of war, pc drm
Categories: Games

Windows 7 changes the appearance of the taskbar quite drastically. One of the new visual changes to taskbar items is the height of each item. While it is possible to change the height of the Windows Vista taskbar it is not possible to change the height of individual items in the taskbar even after making enough room on the taskbar by resizing it.

Taskbar Resize Tool is a small program for Windows Vista that can alter the heights of individual items in the Windows Vista taskbar. The software requires the installation of the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (download) before the program can be executed. The software itself comes with a English and Chinese interface.

The software is portable and will display a slider after execution which can be used to change the height of the taskbar items.

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Tags: multi-lingual, portable software, taskbar resize, vista, vista taskbar, windows software, windows vista taskbar, windows-vista
Categories: Windows, software