Those of you who follow my articles with any regularity will know that one of the biggest arguments I make about the modern technology industry is their insistence on playing Patent tennis with each other. This back and forth of legal battles, and the scrabbling by technology giants to buy up valuable patent libraries only [...]
Eraser Has Stopped Working, Fix Inside
For a while now I received an error message whenever I tried to run the file deletion software Eraser. Eraser, which I reviewed in 2005 for the first time here on Ghacks (see Securely Delete Files), can delete files so that they are not recoverable anymore on the system. When you delete files regularly in [...]
Notepad++ Not Starting Up? Try Disabling Plugins
I just wanted to test the Light Explorer plugin for the notepad replacement Notepad++ on Windows. The plugin itself adds a folder browser sidebar to the Notepad++ interface which can speed up the opening of documents in the program significantly. I previously was using Windows Explorer to open new text documents in Notepad++ because if [...]
Mozilla Firefox Will Become More Memory Efficient
The Mozilla Firefox web browser has quite the bad image when it comes to memory efficiency. You see claims all over the Internet that the browser is eating up more memory than other browsers. Comparisons often are not entirely fair to begin with, considering that most Firefox users have their fair share of add-ons installed [...]
Keolah Learns Japanese, Japanese Language Tutor
You may remember that I started learning Japanese some time ago. Especially the multitude of different characters make it difficulty to learn the language. Compare learning English with its 26 language characters to learning Japanese which has thousands. Even if you do not have to know all of them, you are still stuck with learning [...]
Google Reader Minimalistic Style
While I have not used my Google Reader account for a long while, thanks to the awesome desktop RSS reader RSS Owl, I have been following recent news with interest. Especially the latest Google Reader update has infuriated part of the service’s user base. The update has been part of a larger scale redesign of [...]
Desktop Alarm Clock for Windows
It felt kinda strange to me all this years that Microsoft never improved the clock in the Windows operating system. All you can basically do with it is to set the time, date and timezone. Sure, you can add additional clocks if you like (limited) but where are common features like alarm or a stopwatch? [...]
Hide, Delete or Customize Libraries in Windows 7
The Libraries feature in Windows 7 provides an easy interface to manage multiple file locations from a single location. Four default libraries are displayed in Windows Explorer: Documents, Music, Pictures, and Video. Many users only utilize one or two of the libraries. You can easily remove any of these libraries from the Navigation Pane and [...]
Disable Google Chrome’s Native PDF Viewer, Flash Plugin
When you look at Google Chrome’s feature set and compare it to that of other browsers like Opera, Internet Explorer or Firefox, you will come to the conclusion that web browsers are more alike than they are different. Two items that will definitely be on the list are the built-in PDF viewer and the native [...]