By default, the Unread Mail Count is derived by looking at all accounts that have been checked within the last three days, including Outlook, Outlook Express, Hotmail, and the MSN browser client. The problem is that it includes all the accounts of other people who have checked their email under the same user name.

Image Source: Poremsky

There are two ways to get rid of the unread mail messages line under the user name in XP: edit the registry or download the Microsoft Tweak UI Power Toy and change the setting there. I’ll go ahead and describe both methods since they are pretty easy.

Remove XP Unread Mail Count - Registry

Before you modify the registry, always be sure to make a backup! If you don’t know how to make a backup of the registry, then don’t use this method! First open the registry editor by clicking on Start, choosing Run and then typing in REGEDIT.

Now navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMail

Note that you will not see this key if you are in a domain environment, so it won’t be there on office or corporate computers most likely.

Once there create a new DWORD Value (right-click on the UnreadMail key in left-hand pane, New > DWORD Value) and call it MessageExpiryDays.

Double click on the MessageExpiryDays value you just created and set the value to 0 though it should be the default value already.

That’s it! You’ve now disabled the unread mail message count in Windows XP! Now you’ll just see the usernames without all those useless unread email counts.

Turn off login screen Unread Mail Count using Tweak UI

Ahhh so let’s just do it the easy way! Download the Tweak UI Power Toy and install it. Now open it up and go to Logon at the bottom. Under that you’ll see the option Unread Mail.

Go ahead and uncheck the “Show unread mail on Welcome screen” option to disable the Unread Mail count. That’s it! A lot easier right!? The next time you log on, the screen will not display your unread message count like shown above. Enjoy! Source: Poremsky

Technorati Tags: unread mail count, unread mail messages, disable unread mail count, xp unread mail count, logon screen unread mail messages, turn off unread mail count

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How to get rid of Unread Mail Count in Windows XP

ScreenHunter 5.0 Free is available for download at http://www.wisdom-soft.com/sh/sh_free.htm and offers great features including:

• Ability to change your hotkey for activating the screen capture program.
• Ability to change what is captured (including options such as a rectangular area, the entire active window, or the full screen)
• Easy access to change where the image is stored (either to your clipboard or to a file or both).
• Additionally, you can change the file type to match your needs - choosing from JPEG, Bitmap, or GIF.
• You can automatically name your files or you can have the program ask what you would like the file name to be each time you take a screenshot.

Whether you are taking screenshots in order to convey your message to someone or you want to preserve something in its current state, this program is a perfect one to help you accomplish your task.  It is free to download and does not take long to install.  Additionally, it has a stand-by mode so that you can have the program virtually disappear from your window, but still be able to use the hotkey to enable a screen capture.

For those who want increased functionality, there are “Plus” and “Pro” versions of the software available as well.  (Currently priced at $19.95 and $29.95 respectively.)  The table below shows some of the features - for full features list, visit the download website.

However, for all of my screen capture needs, I have found that the free version is sufficient and meets my needs.  It is easy to use and best of all, the price is definitely right!

This is a guest post by Karen Worthy, a tech enthusiast.

Technorati Tags: screenshot, screen capture, ScreenHunter, ScreenHunter 5.0 Free, software review, web capture, image capture, internet browser image capture, screen, image, freeware, free download

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ScreenHunter - Free screen capture program

Now you would have to re-open your browser window and load up all of the pages you had open previously, if you can even remember what was there! Pain in the butt! Wouldn’t it be nice if you could recover any accidentally closed program for up to 60 seconds? Yes, you could re-open it manually like normal, but why not save yourself time and energy, right?

GoneIn60s is a nitfy little freeware app that takes care of this small, yet annoying problem. What does it do? Basically, whenever you click the X button on any program, GoneIn60s tells Windows to not kill it for 60 more seconds, thereby giving you a chance to instantly load it back up with no loss of data or settings.

Once you have it download, just run the EXE and  you’ll see a small icon in the system tray, which you can right-click to see the list of programs that you can recover (will only show stuff that was closed in the last 60 seconds).

As you can see, I had closed a Firefox window while on the Google AdWords tab. I had several other tabs open and was able to simply click once to get my window back! Sweet! The program basically acts like a middle man for you. Close the program, it’ll capture your request before the operating system does, wait 60 seconds, and then send the close request to the OS.

There are also some settings for the program that you can change, including the shutdown delay, which is by default 60 seconds. Just right-click and choose Settings to customize.

You can also add programs in that you want it to ignore, which means it will not delay the shutdown of the program. Go to the Task Manager to see the name of the process for the program if you want to add it to the ignore list.

There is also an option “Kill Windows”, which basically means that after the 60 seconds time expires, the program will not ask you to save any changes you may have made. I would recommend keeping it unchecked!

I would definitely use this program if you are someone who has lots of stuff open all the time and especially if you use programs that don’t prompt you when you close them, like browsers, email, etc.

Note I just thought of another great way to use this program! If you’re at the office browsing the Internet or watching a video in Windows Media Player, you could close it out quickly so that the program would be hidden and after everything is safe, you can bring it right back up from where it left off! So it’s useful for hiding programs or windows quickly without having to close them! Enjoy! Source: Tech Xpress

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We’ve all ripped CDs that we have legitimately purchased which did not give accurate and complete metadata tags in the extracted tracks. You know, the ‘track 01′ of album ‘not indentified’ conundrum. And it’s a tremendous problem when you are converting large numbers of CDs.

There are many tag editors available, and within iTunes you can update tag information as well, but not with the ease-of-use tools that mp3tag includes gratis.

With mp3tag you can:

• select all files within a nested directory structure at once - useful for instance to update the Artist and Genre tags when you have all their albums as subdirectories under one directory
• rename sets of files based on meta data tags in user-definable ways
• set metadata values based on filenames in user-definable ways
• gather metadata tags from freedb or Amazon
• gather album art from freedb or Amazon
• mass update tags for selected files
• create playlists from selected files
• load tags from a text file

Getting Started

Download mp3tag v2.41 for free here, and install it on your PC. Its XP and Vista compatible. I’m going to illustrate how to complete and correct metadata for several album tracks that I purchased online. I need the cover art, genre and the correct names of six album tracks I purchased online.

After you’ve installed the application, you can peruse the default settings within the Tools – options menu. For now, leave these as they are. What you’ll want to do is use the directory navigation to open a music directory that you want to work on.

The application will open all nested subdirectories, so if for instance all your music is in a directory labeled ‘iTunes’ you can just open that directory. Warning – if you do this it is going to take mp3tag a while to scan all the files and metadata. So you may want to navigate down to the artist or album. In the example I will use, I navigate down to thealbum that I want to fill in data for:

Mp3tag gives me a window showing all tracks within the selected directory.

I select all my album tracks. You can use the normal Windows key combinations to select subsets. The window is divided into two panels. In the right-panel, you see the existing metadata. You can see that my metadata is incomplete for Genre. Four tracks have a null value and two have ‘Pop’. I want to change all to Disco.

The left-panel can be thought of as the ‘control’ panel – it shows the values that you want to update into the tags for selected files. You can see in the example that mp3tag understands that for the selected tracks the metadata for the Album, Year, and Artist are consistent. It defaults the control panel to keep the existing values. The literal <keep> is used whenever multiple values currently exist in the selected fileset. Otheroptions are to type in a single new literal value to replace all the existing values for the tag, or use the <blank> literal to remove the metadata.

So for instance in my tag for Genre I can use <keep> and the hodge-podge in my current audio files of empty tag or ‘Pop’ will be retained. Or I could type in ‘Disco’ in the Genre field and set all the instances of the tag in the selected files to ‘Disco.’ So that’s what I will do. But first I will access an external source to help clean up track titles, check all other tags, and try to obtain cover art.

Updating from external sources

A powerful feature of mp3tag is its ability to pull in metadata from outside sources. So, as I start to make my adjustments the first thing I do is to access either Freedb (which is configurable) or Amazon. I use Amazon in this example, and mp3tag pulls the following options for me:

The highlighted row matches my album. I click OK and mp3tag downloads album art as well as metadata from Amazon. The software is smart enough to realize I have not bought the entire album, and matches as best it can based on my track titles with the album metadata.

I click OK after reviewing the track match ups. Mp3tag now updates my metadata. Notice for instance that my song titles are corrected (Staying Alive is now Stayin’ Alive;How deep is ur love is now How deep is your love, etc). In addition, I now have album art and an updated album title and release year. I will use the drop down for Genre and classify this as disco (rather than Pop). And the resulting: cleaned, consistent, complete song tags:

Now, I’m not yet done. I will go ahead and rename the files, using the new tags. You can see above that my filenames still have the old track title spellings. I also want to put the artist and album directly in the filenames.

I determine how I want my filenames standardized. Mp3tag will do it in all-at-once (how I like it!), or one-by-one if you so choose. It also gives you a preview, of the new filename based on the current filename / metadata parameters:

Update tags from Filenames

That’s nifty but what if you have a lot of mp3s that have album – track no – title in the filename but no metadata? Mp3tag also let’s you go from filename to tags, just as easily. You use the list of variables:

And a whole lot more actually. With these you map tags to your existing filenames. Mp3tag can give you a preview of how the metadata will be filled in – if it looks good click OK and have mp3tag complete the tags for your iPod listening pleasure based on the filenames you already have!

Other features

Mp3tag includes context menus that are very helpful as well -including the ability to play a track within mp3tag. That comes in handy for those times when you have ripped albums that resulted in filenames like track01, track02. You can right-click/play, listen a few seconds, and then type in the correct title. You can also create and export playlists easily for groups of files and directories.

So, go ahead and give mp3tag a try. After all, it’s time for spring cleaning!

Pete Kushmeider, Writer and blogger

Technorati Tags: mp3tag, audio metadata, id3 tag freeware, iTunes freeware

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Edit MP3 metadata with Mp3tag for free

Interestingly, you can also change other sounds in Windows, such as the empty recycle bin sound, the new hardware insert sound, the error sound and lots more! You can take an MP3 of your favorite artist, convert it into WAV format and then use it to replace the default Windows sound.

You can use a freeware program like JetAudio to convert audio files into WAV format. The only thing you’ll need to keep in mind is that you want to keep the size of the file quite small, less than 500KB if possible. So you may need to first take an MP3 and cut out only the portion you want. You can use an audio editing program like Audacity to chop up the music.

Step 1: Find a song and convert it to WAV format. Try to keep the file size small, max at 1MB if you must.

Step 2: Now you need to rename these files to Windows XP Startup.wav and Windows XP Shutdown.wav respectively.

Step 3: Now we’ll go ahead and navigate to the folder with the current startup and shutdown Windows sounds. Go to My Computer and go to C:\Windows\Media. Here you will find the files Windows XP Startup.wav and Windows XP Shutdown.wav along with a bunch of other Windows sounds.

Go ahead and move the two original files from the Media folder to some other backup folder. This is just in case the two WAV files you created do not work and you want to revert back to the original sound.

Step 4: Now copy the two renamed files to the C:\Windows\Media folder and restart your computer! You should now hear the new music, songs, or sounds play rather than the default sound.

If you don’t like some of the other default Windows sounds, you can change them also in the same manner. Just create a file that is named the exact same as the one in the Media folder and then either replace it or move the original and then put in your new one!

Overall, it’s really simple to change the Windows login and logoff sounds, so it’s something most people will be able to do! Also, there’s no real way you can “harm” or “mess up” your computer. Enjoy! Source: TechnoSpot

Technorati Tags: change windows sounds, change windows startup sound, change windows sound, how to change windows startup sound, changing windows sounds

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Change Windows startup and shutdown sounds

Microsoft purchased the company, and changed the GIANT Antispyware brand into what we know now as Windows Defender.  Many applauded the decision by Microsoft to make Windows Defender free to registered users of Windows XP.  Later they integrated Windows Defender into Windows Vista.  How great a move this was; to have a real-time scanning, free anti-spyware product for Windows users!

Short lived was this applause as people began testing the Defender platform.  Most tests, comparing it to other products on the market, rate Defender at somewhere in the neighborhood of 55% - 65% effectiveness at finding and eliminating spyware.  Granted, no anti-spyware program is perfect, and finding a free one my prove tricky.  Would it not make more sense to find one with a decent eradication rate and have other tools to boot?

After being revamped, Spyware Terminator 2.2 comes out strong in the Anti-Spyware arena.  While I will admit, it may not have the highest rate of catching spyware, the other complimentary tools help make up for it.  Firstly, the fact that a free anti-spyware program comes with a real-time shield feature is a big plus.  Other free programs rely on the user to run manual scans.  The real-time part is not the only useful feature though.

When the user opens up the main console to Spyware Terminator, they will notice two things right off the bat.  Large, easy to read, menu buttons decorate the upper right hand area.  These help the user to navigate between the various area of the program.

Secondly, on the left-hand side, there is a wide column with three separate menu area.  These areas deal specifically with the most important aspects of the program:  Spyware Scanning, Real-Time Protection, and Updating the program.

If one wants to run a Spyware Scan at that moment, they have but to click on Run Scan.  This will prompt Spyware Terminator to run a quick down and dirty scan of the areas of the computer most likely to be infected by Spyware; for example, the Windows directory, Temporary Internet Files, and other locations commonly targeted by malware.

Here we see Spyware Terminator running an active scan routine.  Pay particular attention, when using this program, to the Critical Objects section.  As Spyware Terminator finds bad items (Tracking Cookies, Spyware, etc.) it will be annotated here.  While this is the quick spyware scan that was run, one can choose a more through scan by clicking on the green magnifying glass icon (Spyware Scan) on the large menu bar.  Doing so will give a person the option of the Full Spyware scan (looks over the entire hard drive), and the Custom Scan; where the user chooses the specific area they want to be scanned.

If you look at the small rectangle on this screen shot, you will notice two other options marked with a red X.  These options become available if you choose to install the integrated Clam Anti-Virus option.  At that point, Spyware Terminator and Clam AV become your all-in-one Anti-Spyware / Anti-Virus solution.

Let’s look at some of the other settings and options we can manipulate within Spyware Terminator.  We know that a real-time shield can be activated to protect your computer from accidentally running spyware.  There is another feature in that menu, which people may find useful.

Within the Real-Time Settings menu, and just below the checkbox to toggle the real-time shield on and off, in an option called HIPS (short for Host Intrusion Prevention System).  The alluring feature of HIPS is how it benefits your computer’s security.  HIPS takes a “snapshot” of your currently active programs and services, and creates a bouncer’s list.  If a program is not on the list when it runs, you have to approve it (think ZoneAlarm, but slightly less annoying).

Perhaps you do not care for the occasional, or more frequent, pop-up message asking for your approval.  Maybe you just want Spyware Terminator to be silent and run a daily scan instead.  Easily done!  Just turn off the setting for the real-time feature, and navigate over to the Settings menu button on the main console.

After clicking on Settings, click on Schedule Settings.  Here is where you can tell Spyware Terminator to perform a scheduled scan (or not to), when to run the scan (Daily, or choose a day), what time of day, and to check for program updates before the scan is run.  There are no oddball options like on the 13th full moon of each leap year, if gas is cheaper than $2.98, when… well, you get the picture.

However, there is once choice where Spyware Terminator will run if you miss a scheduled scan.  For instance, if your computer was shut off at the appointed time, it will prompt you to run the next time you turn on your machine.

Last but not least, the program updates.  Within the Settings menu button, and just below the Schedule Settings button, lies the Update Settings button.  Clicking on this will give the user the choice of when, and at what interval, they want Spyware Terminator to update itself.

Here you can choose to check for updates at 1, 2, 6, 12, and 24 hours.  One also has the option of running it fully automatic, and quiet; notify them of pending updates, or to disable automatic updates.  This is also the locale when the user can let the program know if they use a Proxy server or a Direct connection for their Internet connectivity.

There are other options to explore, and various configurations to try with Spyware Terminator.  Once one can get past the somewhat silly name of the program, they will be surprised to find a rather sturdy application that does more than simple manual scans for spyware.  It ultimately comes across more like a multi-faceted protection suite, that just happens to be free.

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Remove spyware from your computer for free

The Mac OS X desktop interface has had the flashy and functional task-switcher Exposé since the Panther release in 2003.  Windows Vista has a limited feature called Flip3D which has some of the power of Mac Exposé.  Vista also has the freeware app called Switcher which is better, but requires Aero to run.  Now a new app for Windows XP as well as Vista, DExposE2, brings the original capabilities of Exposé to most Windows users - at a bargain price - free!  Available in both a regular installable version as well as a portable no-install-needed flavor, you can check out the download here.

Not familiar with Mac Exposé or what it can do?  Here are the basics -  and DExposE2 bring these to your XP or Vista PC:

1. Resize and display all application windows without overlap - F9
2. Resize and display all windows for only the active application without overlap - F10
3. Hide all windows and show the desktop - F11
4. Replace all windows as they were - F11 again.  (Windows taskbar won’t do this!)

What’s to like?  Well - have you got a large wide-screen monitor?  Do you work on multiple versions of documents at the same time?  The thing I love about using DExposE2 on my XP PC with 20″ wide-screen display is being able to hit the F10 hotkey and get a view of all my in-process word documents, arranged on my screen with contents visible.  I can then click on the one I need next and have it go back to full screen mode for editing.

This is a lot easier and productive than looking at the list of open documents from within Word itself, which just gives me a filename to go by.  With DExposE2 I get a live and legible view of the contents of each window.

I can view all windows for a single application (like Word or Excel), or I can get all windows - which of course means they are all a bit smaller.  To view all Windows I use F9:

That’s a lot of apps and windows!  I go back to where I was either by hitting the same Fkey again, or using Escape.  I can focus on just my Word documents, by hitting F10 when I have Word as the focus application:

Here I see just my three active Word documents, with the documents large enough for me to scan them and quickly use the mouse to pick the one I want to work on next.

There are a few other cool features such as resizing in slow motion, closing  windows from the display, and creating on-screen hotspots like Mac Exposé comes with.  So if you are the proud owner of a wide-screen monitor, maybe it’s time you head over to DExposE2, and at least give the portable version a try!  If you need more convincing, here is a Youtube video showing DExposE2 in action.  Unfortunately the production values aren’t great.  It’s actually just as easy to download it and try it out.

Pete Kushmeider, Writer and blogger

Technorati Tags: Mac Exposé for Windows, DExposE2

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Make the most of your wide-screen monitor with DExposE2

Preparing your Media

This is pretty much automatic. Just pop in your CD or DVD and Autoplay should pop up with the following options:

Just hit “Burn files to Disc” and you’re good to go. Even if Autoplay is switched off, you can just head over to “Computer” and double click the appropriate Optical drive. Click “show formatting options” and you should now be looking at this.

Now we get to the topic of versions. You can use 4 versions of the Live File system. The descriptions are provided. Go ahead and choose the one you find most suitable. I personally recommend 2.01, which is also the Windows default.

Now, make sure you have assigned an appropriate name to the media and click Next. You will be presented with the following status Window:

Let it complete, and you’re done! You now have a CD/DVD that uses the Live File System. Using it should not be an issue, as it functions mostly like a flash drive.

Disadvantages

As neat as it is, the Live file system does have its disadvantages.

• Compatibility: The Live File System was designed to be used with Vista, and certain versions are backward compatible as well. But the fact is, its certainly not as compatible as a Mastered CD/DVD.
• Free Space not recovered: This is rather a big issue. Once you delete something, you don’t actually recover the space. The deletion merely “hides” the files. It’s like having a flash drive that permanently loses the space you utilize.
• Can’t switch over to Mastered: Once you format your disc using the UDF, you’re stuck with UDF. You can’t re-format it using the traditional File System. You can change the version though.
• Close Session: When you press the eject button of you Optical drive after using the Live files System, you will get a notification like this one:

Windows takes about ten seconds to close the session. But considering the time you save by not needing to burn the disc, this is hardly a setback.

To sum it up, even though the Live File system has its share of setbacks, it is still a great new feature, and one that every Vista user must try.

This is a guest post written by Om J. Bathija, a tech enthusiast and blogger.

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Turn your CDs into flash drives using Vista’s Live File System

Just rip all your DVDs to your computer or external storage, install a plugin for Windows Media Player (if you have it), and you’ve now got a digital library of movies that you can watch at any time from anywhere! If you have an xBox 360 or Apple TV, it’s super easy to get your DVDs onto your HDTV.

The process is relatively simple, so even if you are not technically savvy, you should be able to rip all of your DVDs without an issue.

What You’ll Need

So there are a few things that you will need in order for this process to work. Technically, all of the items mentioned are not needed if you simply want to copy your movies to a hard drive and watch them on your computer. However, it’s definitely more fun to watch movies on a giant HDTV while sitting on the couch!

DVD Ripping Software

There are basically two types of software you need (possibly) for ripping and storing DVDs. Firstly, you need an application that can actually rip the DVD, as in copy it off the DVD by breaking the encryption, and a second application to compress the ripped DVD into a much smaller size.

If you have the right hardware and enough space, you can actually not shrink the DVD rips and keep them at full quality. You’ll get better quality, but you’ll also be using up 8GBs per DVD most likely.

There are many applications out there that can rips DVDs, but I’m going to only mention the ones that I know have worked and that are free.

DVD Rip - a full featured DVD copy program written in Perl. It automates the entire DVD-to-hard-drive backup process for you.

RipIt4Me - Is a tool that helps you handle ARccOS or other DVDs messed up by structure based copy protections.

DVDFab Decrypter - Is all-in-one DVD copying/converting/burning software. In just one or two steps, you can copy any DVD to DVDR/PSP/iPod/etc. You’ll need to use this one if you want to rip HD DVDs.

One of those should definitely get you going on ripping your DVDs! Now if you want to shrink the DVDs after they are ripped, you’ll need another piece of software. If none of the programs above can break the encryption on your DVD, try DVD43, a free DVD decrypter that runs in the background and decrypts DVDs on the fly.

Here are my suggestions for shrinking your DVD rips if you want:

DVD Shrink - Works in conjunction with DVD Rip and compresses the DVD image.

HandBrake - Is an open-source, multi-platform, multi-threaded, DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

If you want things to be really easy then just install DVD Shrink with DVD Rip and both of them together will rip and compress the DVD. HandBrake requires a little bit more technical knowledge since you have to tweak the settings, but it can shrink a DVD down to only 750 MB (instead of 8GB)!

Hardware For Ripping DVDs

If you’re planning on ripping a lot of DVDs, it is advisable to go out and but a huge external hard drive, preferably over 1TB. However, these are fairly cheap now, you can grab one from Lacie for only $279.

If you don’t feel like spending any money and you have a spare computer laying around, you can turn it into a NAS! Yes, you can create your own NAS server using a cool open-source software called FreeNAS. I’m not going to go into how to set it up, but it’s not terribly hard.

You’ll also need a home network setup, probably with some kind of wireless router also. This is just so that your computer can connect with your NAS and to your TV to steam media files. Also, you might want to consider a networked media player, such as an Archos or TviX. These are definitely cool devices to have!

You can also have an xBox 360 Live, an Apple TV, or a Windows Media Center computer. All of these will allow you to play your newly ripped media files to your HDTV!

Playing Your DVDs

Now that you have your DVDs ripped, you need to be able to play them. If you have used HandBrake, you can actually convert your ripped DVDs into DivX format. This is the most popular compressed format and most media players will automatically recognize them.

Note that now you should have a folder for each DVD and inside of it two folders, usually VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. The cool thing about keeping the files in this format is that you can watch the DVDs complete with menus and special features (i.e. subtitles, etc). Also, you can easily burn back these files to a DVD and it’s ready to play in any DVD player.

In order to play your ripped DVDs and browse them easily, you have to use a different application! Yes lots of applications are needed, but it’s worth it.

DVD Play is a helper application that works the media player, VLC, to help you browse and play back your ripped DVDs.

Image Source: LifeHacker

Finally, you can play your DVD library in Windows Media Center with a small little tweak. For some odd reason Microsoft disabled the feature in Windows Media Center on Vista operating system to automatically show ripped DVDs, but it can be enabled very easily. Earlier versions of Media Center show the files fine.

Check out this Microsoft KB article on enabling the DVD library in Media Center for Vista. You can also install several pluins for Windows Media Center that turn it into a cool ripped DVD browsing monster!

My Movies 2 is for Windows Media Center and is a great movie collection management and playback tool. It integrates with Media Center and matches the interface also depending on which OS you are running.

Obviously, there are lots of ways for ripping DVDs, managing them, and streaming them, so feel free to post your own ideas or methods on the subject! Enjoy! Source: LifeHacker

Technorati Tags: rip dvds, how to rip dvds, dvd rip, rip a dvd, dvd rip software, free dvd rip, dvd ripper, rip hd dvd

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How to rip DVDs to your hard drive

If the curious computer user has MS Word on his Windows PC or OS X Mac, he can pull together a printable list of all the keyboard functions in his word processor. This amazing feat can be accomplished with MS Word 97, 2000, 2002, or 2003 in Windows – MS Word X or Word 2004 will work on an OS X Mac.

Here are the quick and dirty clues to MS keyboard secrets. Click the “Tools” menu, then hit “Macros In.” Next step – pick “ListCommands” in “Macro Name.” Then, hit the “Run” button. When the “List Command” box appears, choose the “All Word Commands.” Click OK.

There it is…the list can be saved under any name and printed whenever the urge strikes. Instead of being keyboard secrets, these shortcut keys are yours to use and enjoy and share with your friends. The more word gets around about these obscure functions, the more they will enter into keyboard life and start performing the functions for which they were intended.

Note: For users with different versions of MS Word, hit F1 to access the help file and then type in “keyboard shortcuts” to see the list as well.

Now that users have the list that once was open only to Bill Gates, here are a couple of keyboard secrets for those who don’t feel the need to print off the entire list. Say, for example, that the user has been working on a Word document. He leaves it for a day or two, after which he then abridges it, adds some more material, plays around with it a little bit. Then, if the user wants to go back to where he originally left off, he can open the document and press Shift-F5. And there it is, another of the legendary keyboard secrets revealed.

Another former keyboard secret that’s fun to use and share is the calculator function. To use Word as a calculator, hit the View menu, choose Toolbars, then Customize. Choose the Commands tab in the Customize box. On a new, blank line, type 300 and hit Enter. Type 200, hit Enter. Type 1457, hit Enter. Select all the numbers, click Calculate. Now get this: the sum of the numbers will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the window.

Use the numbers you want and paste the result into your document by pressing Ctrl-V. No longer a keyboard secret, try this and see how it goes. And have fun revealing the rest of the keyboard secrets to all your friends so the functions can at last be put to good use.

This is a guest post by Karen Worthy, a tech enthusiast.

Technorati Tags: MS Word, Microsoft Word, Microsoft, Word, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts, Keyboard Tricks, Shortcut Keys

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Remember, there are thousands of sites already out there in cyberspace, and most are already performing a similar online service; so what to do when your top domain name choices are taken? The best idea is to use a domain name generator, which will help take the guess work out of thinking of an alternative unreserved domain name.

A domain name generator is a fantastic online tool, which allows users to either pick a random name for unreserved domain name titles, or on some sites, type in a chosen keyword and the site will generate relevant available domain names. It’s much easier than constantly having to rethink of domain name titles after repeatedly being rejected from the domain registration website; and the services are usually free.

An impressive domain name generator site called Makewords.com actually uses a keywords based search for relevant domain name titles. Say a website specializes in copywriting services, it can be assumed that the word “copywriting” in definitely registered somewhere on the web already, so the word copywriting is typed in the keyword box.

The results will generate multiple different unreserved domain names related to copywriting. Better still, it will generate a suggested list of web hosting sites from which to purchase your new domain name. This is an amazingly efficient and useful tool; and even more impressive in that it offers an analyzer for each suggested domain name-complete with a background history, list of possible past owners, and any businesses related to the name. Once again, that’s a pretty impressive service!

For those users who haven’t the slightest idea or preference on what to choose, there are random domain name generators that provide basically the same services, but without the keyword suggestion box. One site specifically creates a list of 5 unregistered random names, which usually look like nonsense words-yet for those with no real preference to the domain title, one may just turn out to be a winner for the right person.

If the domain name generator doesn’t help, there is also the option to purchase pre-existing domain names from domain name sellers like Sedo.com; which offers a list of already existing domain names for sale, usually listed in alphabetical order.

This is a guest post by Karen Worthy, a tech enthusiast.

Technorati Tags: domain name, random domain name, domain name generator, web site, web name generator, makewords.com, find a domain name

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However, finding the best method that works especially for you can be a difficult process. Purchasing numerous audio books, written texts, or enrolling in an online class are only a few of the options available for adding another language to your repertoire.

LiveMocha Beta is a useful online service that allows users to learn a new language at their own pace. The included lessons are available around the clock and it uses an interactive method that makes learning easier. If you still feel as though you need a little extra attention, then communicate with the other members in the “community” section. They will gladly help improve your understanding of their language and how to speak it flawlessly. The entire service is absolutely free for anyone interested in learning a brand new language.

Getting started in your learning process involves creating a new account, selecting your currently spoken language or languages, and then choosing the language you would like to learn. Although LiveMocha is still in Beta mode, it impressively works very well.

The interface is nicely put together and it provides a smooth transition from one step to the next. Familiarizing yourself with the different features on the site will only take a few minutes to complete. Everything is straightforward and easy to understand.

After initially signing up for the service, you will receive a confirmation email that will prompt you to activate your account. In order to customize your personal profile on the website, just follow the prompts and then enroll in your desired class. All of the courses are arranged in an online university style. Choose the closest match to your current skill level and then start your new language lessons.

LiveMocha will provide you with the basics of any language course. You’ll learn how to listen, read, write, and speak your chosen language well enough to communicate with native speakers. Once you have successfully enrolled in a language class, the learning materials will be provided to you. There are multiple units located in each class. In order to progress towards the next level, you need to correctly finish the previous one.

Being able to move at your own pace to an online course is one of the best ways to learn a subject. However, there will be times that you’ll want to slack off a bit. Thankfully, there is a large online community at LiveMocha and they can help get you back on track.

Chatting with other users can help you learn some good tips for your lessons and also encourage you to finish your language goal. LiveMocha does not give its students grades, but it does provide them with member points. Next to each user’s name, their points will be proudly displayed for all to see.

LiveMocha is definitely worth a try for anyone that has wanted to learn a new language the easy way. You won’t have to spend all of your money on learning materials because it will be provided free of charge. I love working through the user friendly language modules. So far, I haven’t encountered any issues and everything is functioning better than I expected. Hopefully, in a few months I’ll be able to speak French fluently without being embarrassed.

Ms Yokum
Tech Enthusiast & Blogger

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Either way, it can be a royal pain because you have to keep navigating to different folders or have 10 different windows open for each location you are copying and pasting from. The most annoying thing is that you can only copy one item at a time. It would be nice if there was some kind of copy paste “buffer” where you could copy 10 items from different and then paste them all at once.

Piky Basket is a freeware Windows utility that I have seriously become addicted to! Piky Basket was created to save you time and effort when working with files and folders in Windows and it does a great job!

It does three things that make working with lots of copying and pasting a lot easier:

Copy, Copy, Copy, Paste, Paste, Paste

Piky Basket allows you to select files/folders into a virtual “basket” from different locations. Once you are done copying, you can paste them all at once to the target folder. It also allows you to selectively paste the files to the target folder.

Piky Basket is very useful in the following situations:

• When copying same set of files to different locations
• When organizing files on your hard drive
• When taking backup of files and folders from different locations
• When burning a CD which requires copying of files and folders from various locations

In Windows Explorer, select the files and folders you wish to copy/move. Right click and choose “Piky Basket | Drop into the Basket“. Continue dropping different files and folders in the same manner as you desire.

Now go to the target folder where you wish to copy/move the files. Right click on the white area and choose “Piky Basket | Copy All” or “Piky Basket | Move All“. This action will copy/move all the files in the basket to the target folder.

Copy File Paths to Clipboard

By default in Windows, you can only copy the folder path to a file, but we often need to copy and paste the entire path. For example, if I am browsing files in My Documents\My Pictures and I want to copy the path to one of photos, I have to copy the folder path from the address bar and then append the file name to the end of it in a text editor.

With Piky Basket, you can get the file paths of the selected files/folders in Windows Explorer. Another cool thing is if you are copying the file paths from a mapped network drive, Piky Basket will prompt you if the paths must be in Universal Naming Convention (UNC) format (eg. \\servername\sharename\foldername ). It is a quick way to allow your coworker to access the files\folders over the network.

Command Prompt Anywhere

If you work with Windows command prompt (cmd.exe or command.com) very often, then you will really like this feature.

You can launch the Command Prompt from a selected folder in Windows Explorer with the current directory set to the selected folder.

Overall, it’s a great utility program for Windows if you find yourself copying and pasting a lot in Windows! So if you’re looking for how to copy and paste in Windows, this tool is for you! Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: windows copy paste, windows copy and paste, copy and paste in windows, windows xp copy paste, windows xp copy and paste, copy paste in windows, how to copy and paste in windows

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The ability to download and compose emails offline, when no Internet connection is available is one of the primary reasons why some of us still prefer to use an email client instead of being fully dependent on web mail. Another advantage of using an email client is that you have a single point of access for all email accounts and contacts that you have. There are many cool email clients out there that you can use, such as Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, Incredimail and others.

i.Scribe is yet another email client that is fast, safe and portable - so you can take your emails with you, anywhere you go.

i.Scribe Features

i.Scribe is a lite version of the Scribe email client but that doesn’t necessary means that it is light in features. Here are some good reasons on why you should choose i.Scribe as your email client:

• Free to use with no nagging advertisements asking you to buy the full product.
• Easy to use - the interface resembles and works like other popular, desktop email clients so it won’t be long until you get to know how to use it.
• Fast - i.Scribe takes less than 3 seconds to start and shut down. The flat file format that it uses to store emails makes displaying your emails much faster.
• Portable - you can install i.Scribe on a portable device such as a USB Flash drive and use it to access your emails on any computer. All of your emails will be stored in one single, transferable directory so moving emails between computers won’t pose any problem at all. This makes it even easier for users to copy and backup all their emails at another safe location.
• Safe from viruses - i.Scribe protects you from the danger of email viruses such as Klez and Bugbear by using its own HTML engine, instead of using Internet Explorer. It also prevents viruses from spreading by hiding your email contact list from other malicious programs. Additionally, i.Scribe prevents automatic opening of file executables (e.g. .exe file attachment). To open them, you have to download them first to your hard disk and open them at your own will.
• Small in size and requirements - the download size for i.Scribe is only 1MB and it takes only about 3-4MB of memory to run on your computer. That means that you can run i.Scribe on really low end computers.
• Comes with built-in Bayesian spam filter to help you tag, monitor and filter spam / junk email effectively.

• Built in calendar and contact list / address book.

• Cross platform - support for Windows, Linux and Mac OS.
• Constantly updated by its developers to accommodate new user requests and functions.
• Plugins support - for example, Aspell for spell checking, Autozip for automatic compression of file attachments and more.
• Import and export emails and contacts from and to multiple formats such as mbox, MAPI, MBX and more.

• Multi-language support.

Overall, the best part of i.Scribe is that I can download, read and compose my emails anywhere, anytime that I want to. The fact that it is built with the ability to secure your emails and contacts from viruses are also a big plus. Try i.Scribe today!

This is a guest post by Syahid A. from TechMalaya

Tags: email client, desktop email client, portable email client, fast email client, free email client

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However, there are times when you end up signing up for a newsletter or buying something online and forgetting to un-check the option for sending you product updates, deals, and so forth. Those are usually not spam in the traditional since, but if it’s sent to you on a regular basis, it can be quite annoying.

Image Source: UVSC

Most companies that do this have the option to unsubscribe, but there are many that do not. In that case, there are a few Gmail hacks that you can use to help sort out spam email or email that you do not care to have in your Inbox!

1. The Dot Hack

If you didn’t already know, Gmail does not really look at dots in your account name when processing email. So for example, I could write out an email address as the.dark.dragon@gmail.com instead of the normal thedarkdragon@gmail.com. Pretty neat eh?

You can add as many dots as you like and it won’t matter, you’ll still get the email. So what’s the point of this if the email is still coming to your Inbox? Filters! You can give out an email address with dots in it and then setup a filter later on to have it automatically archived or deleted, if it ends up being very spammy.

If you’re part of many email groups, etc, you can use this to automatically filter out those emails from your Inbox, so it’s not cluttered up. It’s always safer to give out an email address that’s slightly different than your normal one in case spammers get  hold of it later and start sending you crap loads of email.

2. The Plus Hack

This Gmail hack has been around for a LONG time and most people already know about it. However, I don’t think that many people use it! Simply place a “+” after your account name and add words to uniquely identify that email address, so you can again create filters, etc.

For example, I can change my email address to thedarkdragon+Amazon@gmail.com when signing up at Amazon.com. Now I can create a filter and have it automatically labeled whenever I buy something from there. Amazon is safe, but if you’re signing up for a free game download or free music download, etc, you might want to do something like this in case they give your email out to third parties.

The plus hack is useful, but it sometimes might not be allowed since it’s not a normal symbol in an email. In that case, use the Dot hack or the Googlemail hack I’m about to mention.

3. The Googlemail Hack

Finally, you can change the last part of your email account to googlemail.com instead of the normal gmail.com! It’s another nifty way to no give out your main email address and can seriously help clear your Inbox of spam or junk email.

So thedarkdragon@googlemail.com is exactly the same as gmail.com. So if you want to keep your account name consistent, without all of the dots or pluses, then you can just use googlemail.com instead.

That’s it! Three very useful Gmail hacks that you should definitely try out if you find yourself getting lots of email you don’t want in your Inbox. Enjoy! Source: