Enter Hotkey Resolution Changer. It is a small portable AutoIt software that can be used to configure keyboard shortcuts for monitor resolutions.

The program places an icon into the system tray upon launch. A click on the icon displays the program interface that is used to configure the different screen resolutions and their assigned hotkeys.

A total of nine different monitor resolutions and hotkeys can be configured in the program. Supported are resolutions of 800×600 and above with maximum frequencies of 100 Hertz. Users who need lower resolutions or more Hertz can edit the source code of the program and compile it to have those values at their disposal. The color depth can also be defined for each configuration individually.

The software will automatically retrieve the supported resolutions from the operating system. Pressing a hotkey on the desktop will automatically switch to that resolution.

It has to be noted that the application does not support multi-monitor settings at this time. Hotkey Resolution Changer is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. It can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website. The program source code is available there as well.

Update: The latest program version supports resolutions of 640×480 and larger, and frequencies up to 120 Hertz. Several new versions of Hotkey Resolution Changer have been released in the meantime, which mostly consisted of bug fixes. No new program functionality has been added.

Ugolog is one of these services that can turn a webcam into a basic home video surveillance system. It has its limitations obviously as this is usually limited to single room surveillance unless multiple webcams are connected to the computer systems of the home. One of the major advantages of Ugolog besides offering a free version is that it requires no software installation. The full service is started and controlled on a web interface.

The limitations of the free service are a maximum utilization of two webcams, 500 snapshots and 5 minutes of video per day. Those are fairly acceptable values for a video surveillance system. Interestingly enough the premium plans are freely usable during beta phase with the state of the art plan allowing to add unlimited cameras with 15K snapshots and 4 hours of recording. These plans will eventually turn into subscriptions.

Everything is controlled on the web interface of the service which is only available to registered users. Users can access previous recordings, watch a full day in fast access mode or record videos or snapshots. The main advantage of Ugolog is that it is operating system and web browser independent and that its only requirement is a webcam that is connected to a computer system. Grabmotion is a similar software that can be used to monitor a room.

Each entry consists of a url that will be monitored, a descriptive title and the choice of monitoring a website for any changes or for specific keyword appearances. Some sources that can be monitored can only be monitored by keywords. If keywords are selected it is possible to set the free website monitor to monitor the website for single keyword appearances or only if all keywords are found. The frequency can be set to seconds, minutes, hours or days with the default being 15 minutes.

The monitoring software will display alerts if changes are detected on any of the selected websites. Alerts can either be sounds, popups or both simultaneously. It will also add all alerts to the list of alerts which comes in handy if changes have been found during absence.

Websites are opened directly in a popup window with the keywords or changed parts highlighted for easier discovery.

The website monitor will run on most Microsoft operating systems. It ran fine on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system.

The wavemon tool is a very handy tool to have in your arsenal that will help you gather information you might not otherwise have. With wavemon you can see Signal levels, Noise levels, Signal to noise ratios, frequencies, TX power, sensitivity (if available), bitrate, and so much more.

One of the only issues that might turn you off of wavemon is that it is an NCurses tool. This means the tool is run in a terminal window (I have found it runs best under Eterm) and uses ASCII to create the information it offers. Don’t let this cause you not to want to use wavemon because it is a very useful tool.

Getting and Installing

Wavemon is downloaded and installed from source. Download the tarball from the Wavemon site and save it to your hard drive. The installation steps are simple:

• decompress wavemon with the command bunzip2 xvzf wavemon-current.tar.bz2
• untar the archive with the command tar xvf wavemon-current.tar
• cd into the newly created directory with cd wavemon-current
• generate the make file will ./configure
• install wavemon with make ; make install
• start wavemon with the command wavemon

Wavemon Info Window

As you can see, in the image on the left, the Wavemon info window offers a lot of information.

At the bottom of the screen you will notice there are 10 possible options (of which some have no entries). Each of these options are different screens you can view.

The list of windows is:

• F1: Info. This is the main window that opens upon start up. This is where you get most of the information from wavemon.
• F2: Level Histogram. This displays a real-time bar-graph of Signal level, Noise level, and Signal-to-Noise Ratio.
• F3: Access point list. This feature has not been implemented yet.
• F7: Preferences. Configure Wavemon.
• F8: Help. Like a lot of Linux applications, wavemon shows the developer has a sense of humor. When you hit F8 for help it displays the message “don’t panic”. That’s it. There is more help by reading the man page (issue the command man wavemon).
• F9: About. Get all the information you need about the current wavemon release.
• F10: Quit.

You can also start wavemon with a few handy options. Those options are:

• -i This will override auto detection and use a specified network interface.
• -l Use linear level scales instead of logarithmic scales.
• -r Generate random levels for testing.

Final thoughts

If you need more information than your standard networking tools offer, and do not want to dump any extra cash into a third party offering, wavemon is just the tool for those looking to know everything there is to know about their networks. It’s easy to use, offers a ton of information, is open source, and has a tiny foot print.

Screensavers nowadays are more for showing off than to really save the computer screen. Many users prefer to turn off the computer monitor whenever they will leave the workspace for a longer period of time.

Still, if you like screensavers you might fall in love with the ones listed below. If you got or know of an extraordinarily cool nerdy screenshot let me know in the comments.

TwittEarth (Windows XP, Mac coming soon)

A Twitter world map mashup. The screensaver is displaying Twitter messages of random Twitter users in their correct location on the world map. Each user is displayed as a avatar on the world map which gets crowded pretty fast.

Mapped Up (Windows, Mac OS X)

Unfortunately dead since 2006 a screensaver at least what’s the latest blog post dating back to Aug 18, 2006 suggests. The screensaver is displaying a world map RSS feeds mashup that is showing updated news in the world. The original website allowed for customization for registered users. Registration is unfortunately not enabled anymore. The default news on the other hand are still displayed fine in the screensaver.

You can use the mouse to hover an entry to read the title. Clicking on a title will load the news item in the default web browser.

Twingly Screensaver

A visualization of the state of the blogosphere according to Twingly. If that does not sound nerdy enough I do not know what does. Twingly is a blog search engine. The screensaver displays updated blog posts in real time. It comes with an interactive mode which gives the user more control over the items and enough time to actually read what it happening.

System 47 (Windows, Mac OS X)

It is pretty common knowledge that Star Trek fans are some of the nerdiest humans in this planet. System 47 should be the best possible screensaver for their computer systems. It comes with sounds and all kind of schematics that they will surely love.

Cities of Earth

Geography seems to be another favorite topic among nerds. The Cities of Earth screensaver displays a wonderful rotating real time image of earth. It highlights cities on the planet and provides basic information such as names and the population count.

The specialty of the Online Monitor Test is that it comes as a online service but also as an application. Both versions are divided into different test areas: Color Range, Trailing, Homogenuity, 1×1 pixelmapping and Text. Each section is accompanied by a info panel that is explaining the test at hand so that the user understands what the test is about. The info panel can be turned off once the user knows what the test is about to have full access to the screen without obstruction.

Both versions can be run in full screen mode for maximum effectiveness. The Color Range test is basically testing the color reproduction of the computer monitor by displaying color gradients and percentage screens.

The trailing test is testing movable objects on the computer screen. The speed can be altered as well as the color and position of the box that is moving on the screen.

The third option is to test the computer screen for homogenuity. It fills the screen with one solid color. This can also be used to test the monitor for dead pixels.

The 1×1 pixelmapping test is mostly useful for televisions and not computer monitors. The test displays a 1 by 1 checkboard of white and black pixels.

The last and final test is about text display on the computer monitor. The website contains a second service which can be used to test input lag on two computer monitors.

There is not much information about the software application that can also test the computer monitor. It worked fine on a Windows XP Service Pack 3 test system.

Many computer monitor manufacturers provide a data disk with a free monitor calibration software but there are also multiple free alternatives that can be found on the Internet. One was covered today at the Lifehacker blog. Calibrize is only taking care of the black, white and color ratio of the computer monitor and works on flat screen computer monitors but also on CRT monitors.

It does so by displaying two easy to follow steps. Step 1 is being used to adjust the contrast and brightness settings of the computer monitor. Each step consists of a description that tells the user what to do, a test image and example images that display how the images should not look. The description mentions how the test image should look like.

The second step which is also the last step adjusts the gamma settings of the computer monitor. Another test image and a few sliders are shown that can be used to adjust the settings for red, green and blue values. The settings can be saved after calibrating the monitor.

An alternative is the online tool Screen Check which provides the means to adjust the same monitor settings.

One usually thinks about a faulty monitor immediately but after researching the topic for a few hours I came up with a better solution that eliminated that background noise completely. The noise is directly related to the brightness setting of the LCD monitor. Reducing the brightness of the monitor will start the buzzing sound while a brightness level of 100 will stop it.

I’m not a technician but I suspect that the noise is coming from the power supplies that power the small fluorescent tubes that are responsible for the backlight. Setting the brightness level to 100 eliminated the noise completely on both LCD displays. It was called Back Light and not brightness in the LCD television’s options.

Setting the brightness to 100 resulted in a very bright computer monitor display which I was able to turn down by using the brightness settings of the video card. The LCD television provided two independent settings for brightness and backlight to adjust the display.

Winsplit Revolution is a split monitor application that can split the computer monitor exactly like the user wants it. It comes with a few default layouts like splitting the computer monitor in half either horizontally or vertically or dividing it into quarters. A nice feature of the program is that it is flexible enough to accept user defined schemes so that the computer monitor can be split exactly like the user wants it.

Each scheme can contain various layouts. The default left and right theme for instance contains layouts to assign 50%, 33.3% or 66.6% of the computer monitor screen to a window that is moved in the area.

The software program is hotkey driven and supports drag and drop as an alternative way of moving windows in the right spot. Hotkeys usually consist of CTRL ALT and the numpad. Pressing the same hotkey a second time alternates between the defined layout schemes. Additional hotkeys are available for various operations like maximizing or minimizing windows.

Windows Fusion is another interesting feature. It can be used to move two windows into an exact position on the monitor screen.

Winsplit can be installed regularly or as a portable application. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP and Windows Vista and requires roughly 8 Megabytes of computer memory while running.

It was mentioned at the New Morning site which had a short article about it and a link to the developer’s website. Monitor Test is a portable application which makes it a handy tool to include on an USB Stick that contains all kind of tech support tools.

Once executed the application starts in full screen mode showing all the tests that can be performed. Each test can be selected with a left-click of the computer mouse. The utility offers a wide variety of monitor tests like colours, gradients, geometry, speed and text tests.

As you can see lots to test and explore. Some monitor tests span across several screens which can be switched with another left-click of the mouse.

Monitor tests works well with aspect ratios of 16:9, 16:10 wide screen monitors and 4:3 monitors. No information about operating system compatibility is available on the author’s website. Monitor Test runs fine on Windows XP.

Once you want to change it again you have to go into that menu again to do so unless you keep it open all the time which is probably not such a handy solution.

QuickRes comes to the rescue. It adds an icon to the Windows System Tray that provides right-click access to all compatible monitor resolutions that can be changed with just another click.

The user selects a resolution and a click on the refresh rate changes the resolution to the selected one. It is advised to make sure that Windows is only displaying compatible modes in the Display Properties because that’s the source where QuickRes is pulling the information from and it can come to errors if resolutions are selected that the monitor or video card are not capable of displaying properly.

Frankly, the one makes the other irrelevant, although I would have been very, very impressed if 360 Desktop worked across two displays creating a huge scrolling desktop. In fact I hope its a feature they consider introducing.

"Give someone a second monitor, let them use it for while, and then try to take it away. It just isn’t going to happen.",

Suzanne Ross, Microsoft Research

I couldn’t agree more.

I had a quick Google and found Display Fusion, a awesome little application to customise your dual monitors, either by having different wallpapers on each, or by having one stretched across the two.

I favour the latter, as nothing looks better then a huge, high resolution image displayed like so. For some truly amazing dual monitor images try Mandolux and Digital Blasphemy.

After the initial buzz of using two monitors I also found myself getting annoyed with the fact you have to share one taskbar between the two.

The pretty self-explanatory Multi-Monitor Taskbar puts a taskbar on the second monitor and lets you have programs minimise to this instead of the one on the main display. gHacks has covered this before and this is where I found it.

As some people pointed out in the comments for that article, Ultramon is possibly a better alternative and a beta for Vista is available, but unfortunately its shareware, not freeware.

The software has grown since then and some interesting features have been added to it. Resolution Changer can now change the desktop height, width, color depth and refresh rate on single or multi-monitor systems temporarily or permanently via the command line.

There are two main applications for this software. The first is if the monitor is always starting in the wrong resolution. This can happen with LCD TVs that the computer is connected to for instance. Just run Resolution Changer at startup to force the right screen resolution.

The second is applications that require a specific screen resolution. The temporary switch could be used to change the screen resolution before the application starts and turn it off once it is closed. The game toy.exe could be run in 640×480 using the following command:

reschange.exe -width=640 -height=480 "c:\toy.exe"

Additional switches are -depth=x -refresh=y which set the color and the refresh rate of the monitor while running the application. Monitors in multi-monitor systems are controlled with the -monitor=”name” switch. The program is compatible to most Windows operating systems from Windows 95 to Windows Vista.

It can also happen that dead or stuck pixels appear after using the LCD monitor for a while. It’s a good idea to test the LCD monitor before or immediately after purchase with a software that can reveal stuck or dead pixels. The best case scenario would be obviously a test before buying the monitor to be sure that it does not contain dead pixels.

The tiny application Is My LCD OK [via Shell Extension City] provides several test color schemes that reveal if pixels on the monitor are not working properly. It can be run from any location on the hard drive. The first start uses a German interface, press E to switch to the English interface.

The different test patterns can be loaded by pressing the corresponding button on the keyboard. If you press [1] the screen will change to a white background. If you should find a pixel that is not white you discovered a dead or stuck pixel. By viewing all test patterns you will be able to find all dead or stuck pixels on the LCD monitor.

Hopefully though there will be none or that much that you can return the monitor for a new one.

Notebook users normally do not have a power button for the monitor and that’s probably the main application for the shortcut to turn off the monitor. It might also be useful for users with old huge CRT monitors that have the power switch on their back.

I have tried several programs that can be used to turn the monitor off on a system and only one was working perfectly on my Samsung 19″ LCD monitor. I tried NirCmd which worked fine during the first test but not in consecutive ones. The monitor turned off in the first test but all other tests had the result that the monitor turned automatically on again after pressing the shortcut.

It could be related to my system though. The application that did the trick for me is called Wizmo. It’s a small command line utility that provides a multitude of features, among them the option to turn off the monitor with a shortcut.

The command to turn off the monitor is wizmo.exe monoff. The easiest way to create the shortcut is to right-click wizmo.exe and to select Create Shortcut from the menu. Right-click the new shortcut afterwards and select Properties from that menu.

The Target parameter should contain the path to the executable on your system. Add -monoff after that path so that you get ..wizmo.exe -monoff

Now move the shortcut to your desktop or any other location that you want it to be. Double-click the shortcut to test it. The monitor should turn off. It takes a few seconds depending on the type of monitor that you have. My Samsung LCD monitor is seeking for connections on the other monitor ports for a while before the monitor is finally turned off.

Today’s monitors however are not prone to those burn-ins which makes screensavers for that purpose obsolete. If you want to save energy you should therefor turn off the monitor. I have set the Energy Saving options to turn off the monitor after fifteen minutes of inactivity.

Moving the mouse turns the monitor on again and work can resume afterwards. Screensavers these days serve mainly two purposes. The first is entertainment. A wide variety of possibilities exist including video screensavers, virtual tours or graphic demos. The second is a basic protection of the computer which can be configured to ask for the user password before work can commence.

How is your computer configured to handle inactivity ?

No one can manually check his websites 24 hours 7 days a week which means that some service is needed that monitors the websites automatically. In addition programs that are run on a local computer can be used to check the websites periodically to make sure they are still up and running. That’s the only convenient way to check if you own more than a few websites.

The tool hpObserver is one of those programs that can monitor the status of a website. You can configure it to run in intervals of 1, 5 and 10 minutes or manually. Four methods are available that check the website, they are: ICPM (ping), TCP / IP, Imitate Browser, XML HTTP.

The method defines largely which data can be collected from the website. An ICPM cannot for instance return the size of the website while the Imitate Browser method can.

The application has some shortcomings though. The feature it is lacking the most is in my opinion a way to notify the user if he is not near his computer. At the moment the application is only useful if run constantly and if a user is present to take a look at the results regularly.

Another thing that I really missed was a help file or documentation. There is none whatsoever and it is kinda hard to figure out what the settings and different methods do and how you can take advantage of them in the best way. Lastly you can only select one method which will be used to check all websites. It is not possible to configure individual settings for each website.

The software Monitor Calibration Wizard [homepage] tries to aid the user in calibrating his monitor correctly by walking him through several steps that configure the monitor’s brightness, contrast and color settings. These settings can be saved as profiles which can be started during Windows startup.

Every part of the calibration process displays patterns that can be used to find the best setting for the connected monitor. The first test deals with the monitor’s brightness and contrast setting, after that the three colors red, green and blue will be tested before slight corrections can be made during the final test.

It does not take that long to calibrate the monitor. If you do not want to start another program during system start you can still use the calibration wizard but use the settings of your graphics card to make the changes.

The 7-inch monitor can be attached to the 22″ monitor by plug and play, just plug it in and you are ready to go. The main question however is who would shell out $500 for a 22″ monitor with the little satellite monitor if he could purchase two 22″ from Samsung (or any other monitor manufacturer) for just a $100 extra.

You can only display those applications on that monitor that do not require much space. Many would suggest Photoshop palettes or the like but I think it could be perfect for Instant Messaging, Email, Chats and even Stats of some sort. It maybe is an alternative for workplaces with not enough space for two monitors of the same size.

What do you think, could this be a new trend or is it just a geeky plaything that will not survive for long on the market ?

Screen Check, discovered by Uneasy Silence, is a page that helps check two different parameters: Brightness and Color. It’s by no means a full calibration software but it aids with those two parameters. Both are shown as bars on the same screen. The first displays a range from white on the left to black on the right, all should be visible on screen. If they are not you need to adjust the brightness and contrast setting.

The suggested settings at the website are not optimal for all monitors. The settings for my Samsung Syncmaster 19″ flat screen monitor for instance are perfect at +45% Brightness and +38% Contrast. If I set the contrast to a higher value the darker parts of the bar become black as well.

The second bar displays red, green and blue colors which should be fluent from left to right. If they are not you might need to adjust the color setting of your display adapter to display a higher color quality.