I have talked to several Windows Vista users and all told me that they did not use the Vista sidebar because of the lack of good gadgets that could be shown there. Sure, some are really nice but the majority is utterly useless. Why would I want another clock in there for instance ?

The Amnesty Generator (Windows, Macintosh) tries to fill this gap by providing a clever way to convert thousands of web widgets to Vista gadgets that can be placed in the sidebar. The program is free and absolutely easy to use. All it needs is the html code of the widget to automatically convert it into a Vista sidebar gadget. The html code is displayed when you select a widget from the many databases that offer them.

It is for instance possible to add Google Gadgets, feed from Grazr, Youtube videos or games from several arcades to the Vista sidebar.

continue reading "Convert Web Widgets to Vista Sidebar Gadgets"

If you are looking for a rather unique screensaver for Windows 2000, XP or Windows Vista you should take a look at Flitter which is a mashup from Flickr and Twitter at the moment. What it does is that it is retrieving realtime data from both Flickr and Twitter to display those when the screensaver is active.

You obviously need a computer that is connected to the Internet to use this screensaver but it is very well worth it. The default setting for the screensaver pulls data from the public timelines of both Flickr and Twitter but you have the possibility to customize this further.

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I’m using some folders over and over again in my daily work routine. My mp3 folder for instance, my profile folder and the folder that contains most of my applications stored on my computer. I have been using shortcuts to access them until now but today I found a free software that adds favorite folders to the right-click menu.

Folder Guide makes it possible to reach any folder that you have added with just two clicks. Adding folders is pretty easy as well. You click on Add in the main program interface and choose an alias which is the name that will be shown in the right-click menu and a path to the folder that should be opened when you select it.

It is furthermore possible to sort the folders in the right-click menu to create a structure that you are comfortable with. You can add folders from removable drives or network drives which is nice if you are connecting those to your computer.

continue reading "Use Favorites to access Folders faster"

I’m always looking for new free softwares out there and although I already found an automatic wallpaper changer called Wallpaper Juggler I decided to give the wallpaper changer ScrollWall a try. It is always good to be able to choose from more than one program that has a similar functionality.

ScrollWall offers a very clean interface with only a few options to choose from. You can choose if you want to stretch, center or tile wallpapers that do not fit your resolution and select the frequency of the change.

The option here is to either change the wallpaper automatically at startup or choose the amount of time passed before the wallpaper is changed. This can be anywhere from 1 second to 59 hours. You can add multiple wallpapers at once if they are in the same directory but it is not possible to add folders that contain wallpapers for instance.

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Spyware Terminator is a free antispyware software which can be downloaded in several versions. The main version contains the Spyware Terminator program which scans your system for spyware plus the so called Web Security Guard which assigns threat levels to websites in the search results. Both applications can also be downloaded separately from each other and I decided to download the Spyware Terminator without the Web Security Guard.

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