April, 2009 Archive
XP’s old looks have first been beautified with Vista’s sleek, shiny looks, and now it’s time to upgrade them with Windows 7’s set of visual improvements.
With Vista’s failure to capture the market’s attention, Microsoft didn’t want to reiterate that mistake and did its best to make out of Windows 7 what Vista should have been: a success. Even if 7 has raked a plethora of accolades from well known, trustworthy testers, there is still a percentage of skeptics that, although long for the sleek looks of the newer OSes released by Microsoft, cling with the utmost stubbornness to old, reliable XP, which for many has become obsolete or is rapidly heading towards this state.
The Windows 7 beauty session for your plain-looking but great-running XP takes 10 steps in which you have to opt for different enhancements, addressing aspects such as screen resolution, DPI setting, installation type, general system user interface for the Windows 7 look, system applications’ UI, Windows interface, installation of third-party apps necessary to bring XP’s looks closer to the latest OS fashion trend. Desktop enhancements and user account personalization are also present in the transformation procedure. Read More»
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It’s time once again for another episode of our Windows XP optimization series. In the past few months, you’ve seen tweaks that helped you change the Start Menu, Desktop, Display Properties, Control Panel, Folder Options, and so on. Most optimizations could not be made the old-fashioned way (from the Control Panel or any other native Windows configuration utility). As you might have guessed already from the title, this article isn’t any different: today, you’ll find out how you can easily customize the way your Internet Options window looks. So, if, for one reason or another, you need to remove a few tabs from Internet Options and have no idea how to go about in order to accomplish this, you’ve come to the right place.
If this is your first encounter with the Microsoft Windows XP registry tweaks saga, here’s a quick tour on all the highlights: we provide an absolutely free, easy tutorial on how to activate hidden tweaks inside your XP operating system, just by using good-old Notepad. You can start by reading the first article that not only provides a full insight into the highlights, but clearly specifies the few steps that must be taken before heading on. Read More»
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1. Delete items from address bar history
While it’s very handy to have your recently visited pages autocompleted as you type, it’s not always desirable. Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited. You can highlight and delete these at will, for maximum privacy.
2. Protect your PC from malware
You don’t have to visit the seedy side of the web to pick up a virus – even the best social networking sites regularly host all kinds of malware. But you can reduce the chance of infection by installing NoScript. This handy add-on blocks Javascript, Java, Flash and other executable content from running unless you explicitly allow it, and is a great way to keep yourself safe online.
3. Speedily search for images
Browse Google images and your results are split into blocks of 21. But use CoolIris and you’ll get all your results displayed on a 3D photo wall, a much faster and easier way to find the images you need. It only works with some sites, unfortunately, but as these include Google, Flickr, Picasa, Yahoo, Photobucket, Facebook and MySpace then you’ll still have plenty to browse. Especially as it searches and displays YouTube videos, too. Give it a try. Read More»
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Mouse gestures
1. Control Firefox with your mouse
A massive time saver, Mouse Gestures enables you to navigate with a quick flick of the mouse while holding the right mouse button down.
2. Go one page forward in the browsing history
Hold the right mouse button down and move mouse to the right
3. Go back a page in the browsing history
Hold the right mouse button down and flick mouse to left
4. Close the active tab
Hold the right mouse button down and move the mouse down and to the right in an L motion
5. Open the link crossed by the gesture in a new browser window
Hold the right mouse button down and flick the mouse downwards Read More»
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Rapidshare to Megaupload:
1. Log into your Premium or Collectors account. Click on Remote-Uploads button.
2. Open the Megaupload / DepositFiles / etc. link in your browser. Input the CAPTHCA and wait to generate your download link. Once it is generated.
For Megaupload:
a) Right-click the Download Link button and Copy Link Address.
For DepositFiles:
b) Start the download. Then stop it right away. Copy the url from where the download is coming from.
3. Quickly, paste the download url from the other file host into the Rapidshare form and click Start Remote Upload button. Read More»
Posted in Internet | 2 Comments »
Our colleagues over at What Laptop are in the middle of posting useful tips and Q&As for solving all sorts of common notebook and netbook problems, for beginner to more experienced users, so we’ve collated 12 of the best for your reading pleasure.
1. Clean and speed up your laptop OS
It’s all too easy to fill your laptop’s hard drive with files and applications, and the more software you add the slower it’s likely to run. Traces of programs are even left behind after you’ve uninstalled them, potentially slowing your laptop further. Thankfully, it’s easy to spruce things up using an application called CCleaner. Read on to discover how to download and use it.
2. Protect your laptop’s data
Due to the portable nature of laptops and netbooks, the data it holds is unfortunately always at risk of both theft and loss. While it’s impossible to keep your laptop 100% safe at all times, you can ensure that your data is kept safe, even if your laptop is stolen or lost, by encrypting it. One particularly easy free solution you can use is TrueCrypt. Read on to discover how to download and use it. Read More»
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1. Firefox Companion for eBay
The eBay Companion shows auctions in the sidebar and alerts you when anything happens, helping you to strike at the right moment.
2. Amazon Shopper
Amazon’s prices change from day to day, so tell this nifty plug-in what you’re willing to pay. When the price drops, it’ll let you know.
3. RetailMeNot
Discover whether discount codes are available for the site you’re visiting. RetailMeNot is a collaborative effort, so the more people that use it the more useful it gets.
4. Yapta
Flight finder Yapta includes the main European carriers, although it’s best for transatlantic or US travel. The tracking feature lets you know if any flights drop in price. Read More»
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Watcher version 1.1.0 is now available for download from Microsoft’s repository of open-source projects. The Redmond company is not the author of Watcher, but it is certainly recommending the tool via its online hotspot dedicated to the Security Development Lifecycle. Put together by Casaba Security, Watcher is designed to enhance Fiddler proxy, a tool developed by Eric Lawrence, IE program manager. In this context, the plug-in from Casaba Security complements Lawrence’s web debugging proxy, closely monitoring and analyzing HTTP traffic.
“Watcher is a plug-in for Eric Lawrence’s Fiddler proxy aimed at helping developers and testers find security issues in their web-apps fast and effortlessly. Because it works passively at runtime, you have to drive it by opening a browser and cruising through your web-app as an end user. For the developer, the tool can provide a quick sanity check, so you can find problems and hot-spots that warrant further attention. In the hands of a pen-tester it can assist in finding issues that lead to other attacks like XSS and CSRF,” revealed Chris Weber of Casaba Security. Read More»
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1. Auto-complete websites
Go to the address bar (Control-L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Press Control-Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there. For .net addresses, press Shift-Enter, and for .org addresses, press Control-Shift-Enter.
2. Turn your bookmarks into keywords
Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.
3. Speed up your downloads
Download Manager Tweak Extension adds extra functionality to the existing Download Manager to help you download faster.
4. Search faster
To search with lightning speed just highlight the word or phrase with your mouse and drag the highlighted text into the search bar. Firefox will then automatically load up the search in a new tab, so you can stay informed faster. Read More»
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1. Enable pipelining
Browsers are normally very polite, sending a request to a server then waiting for a response before continuing. Pipelining is a more aggressive technique that lets them send multiple requests before any responses are received, often reducing page download times.
To enable it, type about:config in the address bar, double-click network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining so their values are set to true, then double-click network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set this to 8.
Keep in mind that some servers don’t support pipelining, though, and if you regularly visit a lot of these then the tweak can actually reduce performance. Set network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to false again if you have any problems. Read More»
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