Easy Peasy, which was formerly known as Ubuntu Eee, is a optimized (unofficial) version of Ubuntu for Asus Eee PCs and other netbooks. Netbooks have become very popular in the last two […]
Fourth day of the Ghacks Christmas Giveaway. We already handed out Kaspersky Internet Security 2009, Newsbin Pro, Giganews Accounts and MediaMonkey Gold licenses. Today's giveaway is Display Fusion Pro, one of the […]
Hot Corners is a relative small Open Source application for Windows operating systems. It was written in the Auto It language which means that some virus scanners detect it as a virus […]
If you have to pay per Megabyte transferred or only have a limited amount of free traffic until you have to pay for additional Megabytes transferred then you might want to use […]
I'm not a huge fan of those visual tooltip applications no matter if they are integrated in the operating system or in other applications like Opera. The main reason for me personally […]
MakoButton is a small application that can create buttons for Internet Explorer that launch external applications or URLs when you click on them. While the second option is not that useful in […]
Yes, we could chuck a lot of ones and zeros at each other (which would probably be fun), but until I have those in production, let me show you a cool desktop […]
Have you ever asked yourself if it is possible to add another horizontal or vertical barrier to the screen in Windows? With another I mean that the taskbar is already something that […]
DisplayFusion 2 has just been released. The software can be used to manage multi-monitor systems with ease, the key areas are wallpapers and window management with a few extras thrown in. DisplayFusion 2 lets you easily set a wallpaper - either an image or solid color - for each monitor separately or one that spans across all monitors. Wallpapers can be set on timers to change after a certain amount of time has passed (pro version only) and the integrated Flickr search helps in finding new wallpapers. Images that are to large can be positioned to display the part of the image that the user wants.
I was testing the software Tidy Start Menu which offers users a way to move start menu entries into several categories like Office, Games and Internet when it occurred to me that I did not need that program at all to do the same. The only advantage that I could see in using it was that I did not have to create the main folders in the startmenu by myself.
I seldom come upon a software that is small and packed with so many useful features that should have been integrated in Windows in the first place. What I really do not understand is that Microsoft does not seem to look at those applications and put the most thought after functionality into their next Windows.
The Show Desktop shortcut in the quick launch bar minimizes all open windows upon pressing the button. If you accidentally deleted that shortcut from the quick launch bar you might face a hard time getting it back there because there is no obvious way to create a Show Desktop shortcut.
While Windows XP and Vista offer a way to pin files to the Start Menu both operating systems do not offer a way to pin folders to it. You might have noticed that a right-click on a file on your hard drive does not give the option to pin it to the Start Menu as well, it only appears if you press the shift key while right-clicking the file.
If you experience troubles playing movies using the DIVX codec that is installed on your computer you might want to take a look at a bundle of fixes for DivX that is called All In One Fix. This is not intended for users who use ffdshow for instance to play movies, only for those who are actually using the DIVX codec.
It is sometimes important to concentrate on a task at hand and blend out everything that is not related to it. This could be the case when reading an interesting article, editing a Microsoft Word document or playing a flash game. Everything around the needed area could be a distraction.
Windows does not handle Wallpapers for Dual Monitors very well. If you ever tried to use different wallpapers on each monitor or stretch a wallpaper across both you know what I mean. We - again - have to rely on third party softwares to add functionality to Windows.
I like to move many applications that are currently running in the background into the system tray instead of the task bar to avoid that the task bar gets cluttered with applications that I do not need to access. One of the programs that I like in the system tray is Winamp. I listen to Internet radio most of the time which means I just let it play all day long without having to load playlists or song into Winamp. There is no need to have it open at all in the task bar.
If you are an early adopter and don't want to wait a few more days to download and install the email client Thunderbird you could head out to the Mozilla ftp and download it for your operating system and language right away. The Mozilla team is usually upping the latest version of either Thunderbird or Firefox on their ftp mirrors to ensure that they can serve the server load when they publish the links on the official program pages. This is indeed a good way to download Thunderbird 2 fast because the servers will not be that populated at this time.
I bet that you have many icons on your desktop. I do and I'm sure that the majority of users will have many icons on their desktop as well. It is convenient to have them there to be able to quickstart the programs right from the desktop. Some icons might be there because you forgot to disable the option to remove the icon on the desktop while installing the program.
Did you ever want an shortcut bar for programs you tend to use allot?
There are a few different programs that do this, and rocketdock is one of them.
The freeware Auto Window Manager adds additional functionality to the way windows manages the windows it displays. You could for instance customize that whenever a program opens it opens in maximized, minimized or default state. This setting should work with most programs and windows, i tried it with firefox and thunderbird for example.
Jedi Concentrate is a very usefull application that fades out every part of the screen that does not belong to the active window. You can download it from the great website an app a day. The application is open source and uses only 44 Kb unpacked. All you need to do is unpack the application to any place on your hardrive and run it from there.
I´ve written some articles on Pandora before; For those who have not heard of the service let me shortly explain what it is all about. Pandora is a music service thats looks at your choice of music and tries to find music that matches this taste. You are free to add a song title, a album or artist and Pandora creates a radio station that plays music that is like the music that you have chosen. The music plays then in your browsers window until you close it.
This freeware tool is so sweet. I hate when dozens of windows clutter my precious taskbar space with no means to minimize them to the tray. I especially don´t like it when I´am not using the program for a long time but want to keep it running, for example transcoding large video streams.
Microsoft Groupbar is a freeware application for windows xp that offers an enhanced window management capability. Groupbar does not need to be installed, just download the file and start GroupBar.exe. The tool automatically appears as a sidebar on the left of your screen but can be placed in the other three corners as well. The sidebar displays all running applications, you are free to sort them anyway you like.
Quicklauncher is a freeware application for Windows that gives you fast access to selected programs either by clicking on them or defining keyboard shortcuts for them. The tool itself is entirely in German, I´am not sure if there is an english version available as well. Right click on the upper drop down menu to add categories to quicklauncher. You can use the same way to add additional categories to quicklauncher.
Streamripping means saving mp3 files from internet radio streams to your hard drive. All you need is the right tool that does the work for you and your favorite radio station that broadcasts on the internet and uses a format supported.
This article will give you a tutorial on how to start streamripping and legally download all the latest mp3 files to your computer. I can´t speak for all countries though so you better check out if recording music from radio is legal in your country.
