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 the official signature; Luna, Silver, Olive, Classic XP, Royale, Royale Noir , Zune (modified Royale Noir), Aero and Classic Vista.

It’s not really a great selection and probably more the once you’ve wished you could give your desktop a nice new look. Luckily there is a way to get free 3rd party themes in Vista (and XP), although you’ll need to patch your system using a free tool called Vista Glazz. Once you’ve downloaded it’s as simple starting it up and pushing a button. You’ll need a reboot and then you should be able to install new themes.

continue reading "Customize your Vista Desktop"

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 prefer using desktop software but have slowly made my data accessible to me anywhere over the Internet. I manage my email through a desktop client but it’s also all stored online (Gmail, Hotmail), my bookmarks are all kept in del.icio.us, I use FeedDemon which synchronises my feeds to NewsGator online, my documents are stored in a couple places including Live Mesh and Office Live and all my photos are backed up. I have almost a dozen social network profiles and 5 different email accounts.

In fact the only thing that I hadn’t moved online was my actual desktop itself. After trying out the tech preview of Live Mesh my interest became aroused in the whole subject as I wanted something more fully featured.

continue reading "Choosing an Online Desktop"

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 that any technologically inclined user can snoop on the conversation which is probably something that you would not want. I’m not only talking business situations here but also the daily chats at work with your friends or wife that you better keep secret. It could also come in handy if you are of the paranoid kind and prefer to tighten security on anything that you come in contact with.

The Pidgin Encryption plugin adds encryption to Pidgin by generating a public and private key during activation. Let me give you a short rundown on that encryption scheme. The public keys are accessible by all of your contacts which can use them to encrypt their messages. The only person who can decrypt those messages is the one with the private key that builds a pair with that public key. It comes down to swapping the public keys so that messages can be encrypted and decrypted on the fly.

Thankfully Pidgin does most of that automatically. There is no need, like in other applications, to transfer the public key on a different way to the other users. The keys are automatically created and the public key is automatically transferred to all contacts. There is however the possibility to exchange the keys using different way to increase the security. Meet your friend at a secret location and hand him the self destructing disk with your public key..

continue reading "Encrypt your instant messages with Pidgin"

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 can be nerve wrecking especially on slower connections. Very helpful if you use your mobile phone to go online with your notebook and pay by the amount of Kilobytes that have been downloaded.

A second application would be to fight spam before it is retrieved and downloaded to a local PC. Pal Mail is a tiny secure application that can retrieve the mail headers of an unlimited number of accounts with the main option to delete mails right on the mail server. Retrieved are the mail headers and the messages but not the attachments of the mails.

Every mail can be marked for deletion which effectively deleted it from the mails server. The consequence is that your primary mail client will not retrieve the messages that have been deleted before.

continue reading "Quickly check mails without downloading them"

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 different sound sets and graphics that go along well with each other to provide artificial nature right on your desktop. The lite version of the application is completely free to use and comes with ten different settings like Rainy Day, Deep Forest, Thunderstorm and Oceans Edge.

The quality of the sounds is pretty good and does not become boring or repetitive after a while. Each setting makes use of different sound samples that work well together. Samples can be added or removed during playback, like Light Wind and a Campfire to your Ocean sounds ? No problem.

continue reading "Experience nature on your desktop"