I recently had to clone a hard disk so I naturally turned to solutions such as Acronis True Image, but I discovered these did not work (the start-up disk claimed the clong was ‘complete’ when it blatantly wasn’t) and I also tried copying the partition using gParted in Ubuntu but this froze at about 3%, [...]

You just downloaded the newest version of your favorite Linux distribution but you remembered the first time you did it you were in Windows where you had Nero (or some similar application) to help you burn the ISO image onto a CD or DVD. Now you’re in Linux…what do you do? Simple. You turn to [...]

After only a couple of articles about The GIMP it is clear there are many users that are still unhappy with the interface. With that in mind I thought I would help users see how simple it is to clean up the interface to make usage even easier. One of the easiest ways to simplify [...]

animoto is a site which allows video presentations to be made in a minimal amount of time, claiming to be the killer of slideshows (although in reality they are slideshows!). The end result is an extremely slick slideshow. The site makes creating a video presentation easily: to create one, all you must do is simply [...]

I almost hesitate to offer up any sort of review for the Linux version of Photoshop. Why? I’ve been using it for so long it almost seems unfair to “review” something so familiar. But then I have to step back and remember that not everyone has given The Gimp a go and most probably don’t [...]

The traceroute command lists the servers – which are also called hops – that the connection uses to reach the destination. There is basically never a direct connection to a regular website, it will always use a number of servers before it reaches the destination. Windows users can use the tracert destination command to display [...]

An app I’ve been using on and off for a while is Joe’s Goals, which is a goal tracking application designed to motivate you and help you visualize and accomplish your goals. You can create a list of goals like “Drink at least 0.5L of water instead of Coke”, “Write at least 2 posts a [...]

Martin showed you a nifty time tracking app for Adobe Air called Klok in a previous post, and now I’m here to tell you more and to show you the changes and improvements that are making Klok better every day. First of all, head on over to the Klok website and grab a copy of [...]

If you do any collaborative work you know how difficult some collaboration tools can be. With both MS Office and OpenOffice you can collaborate with notes and track changes. But what about collaborating in real time? What if you are wanting to quickly collaborate on a simple text document with multiple editors? Fortunately there is [...]

I like my tools to be efficient. Part of efficiency is opening quickly, not sucking up all of my systems’ resources, and saving in various formats. When considering office needs one of the first tools that pops into my mind is word processing. Naturally the masses will first turn to either MS Office or OpenOffice. [...]

One of the most talked design changes – or additions – in Windows Vista is Windows Aero. Microsoft calls it a more dynamic user-interface system compared to the basic interface system known from Windows XP. Windows Aero is actually a set of interface enhancements in Windows Vista. One of these is called Windows Aero Glass. [...]

I have to confess I am rather into money management apps, although I never actually got into any of them, except for one of the best, Clearcheckbook. Let me state right from the beginning that this is not an automated service, so it won’t pull stuff from your bank account. The reason I found it [...]

Martin showed you an application for removing ID3 tags from MP3 files not long ago, so let me quickly add to that by introducing an application that does the opposite, allowing you to add and edit (and remove) the tags for your files. Mp3tag has always been my favorite, since it not only allows tag [...]

For those of you who like a little more power behind your tools you will certainly appreciate the Aptitude front-end for the apt package management system. Aptitude is based on the ncurses computer terminal library so you know it’s a pseudo-hybrid between console and gui. Aptitude has a powerful search system as well as an [...]

I’ve only been using 2.7 for a but, since I’m more building sites than blogging nowadays, but I have to say I love it. It looks much, much better, navigation is a bit unusual but overall easier, the whole structure is more logical than ever. However, as a coder working with WordPress on a day [...]

There are two types of Internet users out there. Those that despise anything that has to do with clip art, animated gifs or funny PowerPoint presentations and the ones who love them and cannot get enough. If you are of the latter kind you might also like the royalty free clip art gallery which comes [...]

The first thing to do when connecting a new computer monitor is to calibrate it properly to ensure that it displays the best possibly image. Most computer monitors come with a CD that can be used to calibrate the monitor. Most of the time those programs are not the best possible way to calibrate the [...]

Video analysis is an area that we have not covered before here at Ghacks. Kinovea is an Open Source video analysis software for coaches, athletes and medical professionals. It can be used by anyone else obviously since it is freely available from the program’s homepage. It can be used to analyze virtually anything from Wii [...]

Windows’ built-in CD writing software lacks the ability to write a disc image (such as an ISO) to a disc, which forces people to have to buy software like Nero Burning ROM or find a freeware equivalent. This can be very annoying if a file generally distributed as an ISO, such as an operating system, [...]

Sometimes I find a free resource wich is just so much higher quality than most paid sources it’s astounding. I mean if someone can design 9 free fonts that look this good, how does his commercial work look like? Judging from the webpage and the fonts, this person truly loves typography, and the free fonts [...]

It’s not every day I run into a recipe manager. However, if you really think about it, Gourmet Recipe Manager is one piece of software which could probably affect your daily life more than any other. You want a recipe with chicken, but no paprika or tomatoes, and at the same time be ok with [...]

eudcedit.exe is a font editor built in Windows 2000, XP and Vista, which allows private Unicode characters, which can be easily inserted into any file, to be created. Private characters are symbols which only work on machine on which they’re installed and correctly allocated. This may be useful if like a company logos or foreign [...]

Compared to Linux, it is extremely difficult to customise the appearance of Windows. The most popular, and definitely the most effective, piece of software is Stardock’s WindowsBlinds, which allows Windows to be skinned. Thousands of skins are available, ranging from Star Trek-themed ones, to OS X-themed ones and even to superhero-inspired ones! Whilst changing the [...]

GnuPG allows you to encrypt data so only the intended recipient, with a key and a password, can decrypt it. It also provides a mechanism for verifying data is from the person who has claimed to send it. GnuPG can also provide a way for you to securely prevent your files from being opened without [...]

Speed Reading is a reading technique that tries to increase the reading rate of the reader without severely affecting the comprehension. Readers at the World Championship Speed Reading Competition (yes there is such thing) are able to read between 1000 and 2000 words per minutes approximately 50% comprehension according to Wikipedia. Speed Reading is not [...]

Estimating the value of a website is no easy task for a script because it has to take many factors into consideration and cannot access the most important ones which ware obviously website traffic and monetization. The script can pull data from third party information like Alexa, Compete and Quantcast but those are not as [...]

Website Caching is a technique to reduce the server load by sending visitors of the website static pages instead of dynamic ones. A normal request would query the database of the website and run all the commands references in the php files. That’s usually not a huge problem unless your website gets hit by a [...]

NetTools is another server monitoring software that shows promise. The main advantage of NetTools is at the same time its biggest disadvantage. The software program runs on a Windows computer which means that it’s virtually impossible to let it monitor servers 24/7 unless the computer is always on. The Server Monitoring Software however is offering [...]

Yahoo Pipes is a very sophisticated online tool which might look intimidating at first glance but which provides a great interface that requires minimal input to create astonishing results. One major use of Yahoo Pipes is the customization of RSS News Feeds. It does not really matter if one RSS News Feed or multiple should [...]

Each webmasters has fears that his websites are getting hacked or that the server goes down. Happening usually in a moment when the webmaster is unaware of the problem (sleeping time). Server Monitoring can ease the mind of webmasters quite a bit. I have already covered the server monitoring service that I’m using to monitor [...]

The page rank of a single page on a website can be identified through various means. Users can use the Google toolbar – or a similar product -, website scripts that check the page rank of that page and even page rank tools that do that. Most however do not offer the option to check [...]

As I read my feeds each day I see a whole lot of great little tech tips coming through, and often I want to share them, but that would mean either stretching a whole post out for just one little tip and that’s pretty lame. So I decided something along the lines of what Martin [...]

Scanning the computer from an online location provides several advantages over the classic local scan. The most prominent one is that the risk of a virus infection of the virus scanner is not present and that the engine used by the scanner is usually up to date. A local virus scanner needs to be updated [...]

Dropbox is a file hosting solution with a few nice features that make it stick out of the masses of file hosters. It provides its users with a client for Windows and Macintosh computers which can be used to upload files to Dropbox. The transfer of those files works in the background while the user [...]

Graphic card drivers for notebooks are usually not updated that often by the manufacturer of the Notebook. Nvidia on the other hand does not provide access to many graphic card drivers for Notebook graphic cards on their website and the desktop graphic cards cannot be installed on notebooks. The guys from Laptop Video 2 Go [...]

It is really annoying that Skype does not come with an option to pause and resume music playback in the background when the user receives an incoming call. The VOIP client Skype 4 currently does not provide a way to automatically pause and resume music on the PC and the previous version of Skype offered [...]

If you’re a fan of skinning your apps you probably already know all about user styles for web pages. There’s a great plugin for Firefox that enables you to change the look of webpages using css called Stylish. Once you have it, you can download (or create) user styles and change the look of any [...]

I don’t know how many of you have tried Google Sites, which is a Wiki like application available for Google Apps users. Although the application itself lacks a lot of features (more on that a bit later), the framework, the development and the way things are going is awesome. You can use Google Sites for [...]

My defragmenter of choice has always been Auslogic Defragmenter, I have no idea how effective it is compared to other programs but it’s simple enough and looks pretty. However I came across Piriform Defraggler the other day and I was interested in one feature it had… individual file and folder defragmentation. At first I thought [...]

I reviewed the icon editor IcoFx about a month ago which offered the function to create an icon from an image that would be loaded into the software. It offered some benefits like different sizes and a configurable color range which made it one of the best tools for that purpose. Shell City mentioned the [...]

The newest version of Windows Live Writer has been released as a technical preview, primarily to showcase changes to the SDK. That isn’t to say this build is simply internal changes, you’ll find a number of new features and even some UI modifications. In fact I think once you have a bit of a poke [...]

You can do a lot more the simply changing your background and Screensaver in Windows Vista. Unfortunately you’ll need some 3rd party applications to do it. Microsoft decided nearly a decade ago that to protect their brand’s image all Windows themes must be signed by Microsoft. Since then all of 9 themes have been given [...]

A few years ago the idea of cloud computing seemed vaguely absurd to me. I infinitely preferred using desktop software to any kind of online alternative and I hated the idea of having my data floating off somewhere in the "cloud". I liked it here, at my desk… safe. 2 years later and I still [...]

Pidgin is an Open Source multi-protocol Instant Messaging client that was formerly known as Prince Gaim. It works with many popular Instant Messaging clients like AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo!. Normal conversations with Pidgin, or most other Instant Messaging clients are not encrypted which means that the text is transferred in plain text which means [...]

Retrieving all mail headers from the emails that are currently stored on the mail server can be necessary for several reasons. The first is that it is possible to delete mails without having to retrieve them completely. This can come in handy if mails with huge attachments are blocking the retrieval of other emails which [...]

Depending on the task ahead I work best in complete silence, with Internet Radio or ambient sounds. It really depends on my mood and the level of concentration that is required to get the task done. Today I discovered the software Atmosphere Lite which more or less brings nature to your desktop. The application provides [...]

The function to undo closed tabs in Firefox comes in very handy and I make use of it regularly. That got me thinking that there has to be a similar function in Windows that allows me to undo closed folders as well. It probably happens as regularly as accidentally closing tabs in Firefox and normally [...]

Mix2Stix was primarily designed to copy random mp3 files from the hard drive to an USB stick or mp3 player to ease the pain of selecting the music manually. It provides a one click solution with a few comfort functions which I will explain later in this article. The user has to set four parameters [...]

I usually do not care that much about the icons on my computer. Sometimes however I encounter an icon that looks so ugly or misplaced that I have to change it. One possibility would be to use an icon editor like IcoFx to create a new icon, makes only sense if you are somewhat talented [...]

It is extremely important for some businesses and individuals to have the latest weather information at hand. These weather information can be retrieved numerous way, for example by listening to Radio, watching TV or calling a weather hotline. Something that was missing in the picture was a reliable live weather forecast for computers. Most PC [...]