Suppose you have a set of pictures which you took on your holiday. You get down to work, meticulously renaming each picture with the place of visit or the tourist spot you were visiting when you snapped it. After three hours of tedious work you realize with horror that you forgot to include the year. You can’t sit through another three hours renaming those pictures. This is when you will feel the need of a better file renaming tool.

Flexible Renamer is a portable program that will allows you to rename files and folders, change file attributes including dates and also apply and change tags for different file groups like music, photos, docs, etc, in bulk. Flexible Renamer’s wide range of options and renaming rules, combined with pre-defined presets makes bulk file renaming a lot more intuitive.

With these rules you can perform such file renaming operations like:

• Append date or time, a number or a string(text) to a group of files.
• Insert any number/string/date/time at any position of the file name.
• Insert the folder name into the files
• Insert the extension into the file name
• Remove numbers or strings from file names
• Replace numbers or strings from the file name with a specified one
• Change case or capitalize file names
• Swap the position of names with a ‘-‘
• And more

Flexible Renamer has filters that allow you to search for files on which you will apply these renaming rules. This means that you no longer have to manually look for the files and select them. By applying filters you can

• Automatically select a particular type of file like music files, or document files or image files.
• Select files with a specific combination of characters
• Select files created on a particular period, etc

Flexible Renamer allows you to save these rules and filters for further renaming sessions. It also has a large number of presets for quicker and easier operations.

Flexible Renamer also has an attribute changer that enables you to make mass attribute changes to files and folders. The tag renamer is another useful tool of this wonderful application. Using the tag rename tool you can modify:

• ID3 tags of MP3 files
• EXIF information of image files
• File properties of DOC files
• File properties of HTML files

As if these were not enough, the developers decided to throw in a rather strange tool into the lot – Create Numbered Object. This tool lets you create a number of serially named text files of a specific size. You can copy an existing file or create a new file object. I’m not sure how to put this to use, but someday somebody will. :)

When you create an account on The Day Site, you are given 1 or 2 “free days”. You are allowed to pick any date from the calendar, depending upon their availability, and reserve it. On your chosen date, your uploaded image along with a description and a link will be displayed on their homepage. You are free to display whatever you desire, as long as it doesn't violate any laws. You can advertise your business, your websites, display a message for your loved ones, bash a bully friend or announce your birthday. Once you have exhausted your free days, you can purchase more days, but the price is yet to be disclosed.

The website plans to limit it’s registered user base to 100,000 accounts globally, the initial 10,000 accounts of which are going to be free. The remaining 90,000 accounts will be on invitation basis or be paid accounts.

The idea is new and innovative and can be an attractive free advertising solution for new businesses, provided it can overcome the initial hurdles. If they can sell their idea, it has the potential to kick off a new trend in advertising.

Vertor (short for VERified TORrents) is a newly launched torrent site that provides users with links to verified torrent files. All the torrents collected at Vertor are checked for viruses, passwords, DRM protection and others. Music files are cut to give users a 20 second preview before downloading albums. For video files screenshots are provided at regular intervals. If the video is protected by DRM, screenshots will be blank. Contents of included text files like NFO, usually found with application and games torrents, are also posted.

If you already downloaded a torrent file from another website or in the process of downloading it, and want to know its quality you can do so by entering the hash of a torrent file and see the results of the check, provided the torrent was previously checked by their system.

Vertor currently indexes over 140,000 torrents.

[via Download Squad]

Related: Preview contents of archive files before downloading

Daphne’s most interesting feature, as I have already mentioned, is the ability to control processes with your mouse. In order to kill an application you drag a “crosshair” and point it to the application you want to kill and release it. This will shutdown the process instantly. Another useful tool is the Find. Sometimes you are unable to determine which process in the list represent which application window because they are named differently. In such a scenario, simply drag the Find tool over the application window and the underlying process will get highlighted in the process list. By using the same drag and drop method you can hide application window, put them always on top or set transparencies.

Daphne introduces a new feature called Traps. Traps are pre-specified rules to modify or kill processes whenever it encounters it. You can set traps to automatically hide or kill an application whenever it launches. Other controls that you can apply includes setting priority level, transparencies, always on top etc.

Other notable Daphne features are:

• Display list of installed software (damn fast) from where you can uninstall them. In other words, an uninstaller tool.
• Display processes in a tree enabling you to identify parent process name and other process' properties.
• Detailed process list, including full path and arguments. Per process detail including: Windows tree, thread list, modules, environment variables.
• Kill all by name: Kill all process using a given name.
• Kill menu: Customizable menu, each menu item has a process list to kill upon activation.
• Process list highlighting with colors for custom, system and high CPU-consumption processes.
• A Control inspector where you drag a magnifying glass and hover it on the application window to see details and reveal hidden passwords, if any.
• Run processes as administrator while logging into a limited user account.
• Its free and portable.

Daphne is an unusual process manager, very unique and very good. There are some very powerful task managers out there and Daphne is one of them. The additional functionalities thrown into it combined with the ability to kill processes with the mouse makes it one of my favorite.

In order to avoid this and conserve disk space, we can instruct Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 to share a same single paging file among all installed instances of the operating system.

To do this, the user first has to decide on which partition the paging file will be located. This partition can be an existing system drive of an operating system or a newly created partition and must be accessible to all the operating systems installed.

Now all you have to do is, move the paging file to this partition and disable paging file for all other drives. Here is how to assign a paging file to a partition.

Go to Control Panel>System. Then click on Advanced system settings (in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, go to Advanced tab). Click on the Settings button in the Performance section, then go to Advanced tab. Under the Virtual memory section, click on Change button. For all drives that you don’t want pagefile.sys to exist, select them and then set as No paging file to disable paging file on the drive. Select the drive that contains the shared pagefile.sys, set it as Custom size (and enter the value for initial size and maximum size), or simply set System managed size.

Repeat the process for each operating system installed. Remember that the drive letter for pagefile.sys may be different under different booted OS, especially when user installs each operating system on different partition.

Once done, Windows will automatically begin sharing the paging file.

(via My Digital Life)

Related: Disable Windows Page file, save your hard disk

PDF Unlocker is a free application that can remove the restrictions set by the creator. Simply drag the PDF file to the shortcut of application and it will automatically create a non-protected copy of the PDF file. (Thanks GHacks)

If you want an online solution, then try this free PDF unlock utility. The maximum size of the uploaded PDF file should be less than 5MB.

HighC is a graphical music creation tool that allows users to “draw sounds” on a continuous time-frequency diagram. I have experimented with graphical music creators earlier, where you create music by placing musical symbols (♫ ♪) on a music sheet. It requires you to have a good knowledge on music theory, but it was possible to create music of high quality with these tools. HighC has a different approach.

In HighC, you use a paint brush or a pen to draw waveforms on a sheet. Add peaks and valleys, add straight lines, add slopes, add dots. You can pick different waveforms from the box on right and make more strokes on the sheet. Finally, click the play button to hear the resulting music. My first try sounded like a wolf howling and an old radio tuning in between stations, combined. Successive tries didn’t show much improvement. There is a detailed tutorial that I will have to read, I guess, if I want to create any decent music out of it.

After making strokes on the music canvas, you can select the waveforms and modify it or cut/copy/paste. The tone of the music can be changed by selecting different waveforms and envelopes from the box on the right and applying it to the waveform through Edit>Apply Waveform or Edit>Apply Envelope.

You don’t have to download this application right now, for there is a Java Applet based demo on their site. There are also some sample waveforms that you can play. Try it.

The entry-level version of HighC is free and targeted at educational uses, but the playback is limited to 22 KHz. The pro version, which comes at a price of 29.99 Euros, allows professionals to use higher quality playback rates and to export their production to standard file formats for editing and remixing using their tools of choice.

HighC is pure fun. Though with skill, you can even compose beautiful music, at least according to the publisher.

Red Button’s main interface contains just one big red button, clicking on which does all the system optimization work all at once. Before you push that red button, go to the Feature section to customize your optimization settings. The CPU and RAM section basically consist of a number of registry tweaks that increases the response of the system by disabling certain services that are known to hog system resources. For instance, disabling Dr Watson, disabling diskspace warning, disabling error reporting, disabling window animation, disabling file association services and so on.

The HDD tab allows you to remove from the disk certain Windows application that you perhaps never use – desktop bitmaps, sound recorder, games, MSN explorer, sounds etc.

The Garbage is a junk file cleaner, though not as powerful as CCleaner or WinXP Manager. It can clean Internet temporary files, temp folders, prefetch folder, recycle bin, run history, recent document history etc.

The simplicity of Red Button is it’s best part. A small but useful collection of tweaks organized into three sections with just one big button to execute it.

PC Pandora is computer monitoring software that records all activity on a computer. It has the ability to take sequential screenshots of anything that has been happening on your PC, thus allowing parents to see first-hand everything their child does both on and offline. Further details of user activity are made available in text-based files, including instant messenger chats, emails sent and received, websites visited, peer-2-peer files shared, keystrokes logged, programs accessed, Internet search queries and more. The IRIS feature will even send those text-based files right to a parent’s email – invaluable for working moms and dads who can’t always be home when the kids are online.

How to get the free license code for PC Pandora 5.2

1. Visit http://www.pcpandora.com/order/ select PC Pandora Pro but uncheck the Backup CD.
2. Enter PCPANDORAHOLIDAY or SLICK8 as the Promo Code and click on Proceed to Step 2
3. Submit the order form to receive your free license key along with download instructions.

The problem with short URLs is that you have no idea where they take you until you click on them. Is the URL useful? Is it safe to view? Will it be offensive? Any clues that you might have got from the actual URL are lost when they are replaced by a short URL like http://tinyurl.com/xyz.

Long URL Please is an experimental Firefox plug-in that works in the background when every web page loads, and replaces short URLs with the proper ones, so that you can tell exactly where links will take you. Take a look at the screen shot below.

Without Long URL Please installed, you see this

After installing Long URL Please, you see this

The Tinyurl link was automatically replaced by the actual URL. So even before you click on it, you learn that it will take you to YouTube. This is great to sites like Twitter where everybody uses short URLs.

Long URL Please supports the following 30 short URL services so far: adjix.com, bit.ly, dwarfurl.com, ff.im, idek.net, is.gd, ln-s.net, loopt.us, ping.fm, piurl.com, piurl.com, poprl.com, qlnk.net, reallytinyurl.com, rubyurl.com, short.ie, smallr.com, snipr.com, snipurl.com, snurl.com, tinyurl.com, tr.im, twurl.nl, ub0.cc, ur1.ca, url.ie, urlx.ie, xrl.us, yep.it, zi.ma, zurl.ws

The idea is simple: The user specifies the URL of the page they wish to edit, and TypeRoom creates a copy of the page and loads it on the browser for editing. You click on the element you want to edit and it loads in a WYSIWYG editing window which is like any HTML editor. Once you are done with the editing, you can download the edited page to your computer or upload it directly to your site via FTP from TypeRoom itself.

TypeRoom is different from online HTML editors and make-websites-online kind of services, which mainly focuses on creating websites from scratch. TypeRoom assumes you already have a site and just want to make changes to it.

There are limitations to it, of course there will be, considering the complexities involved in editing sites. TypeRoom doesn’t work with CMS driven sites. Now that’s a big problem since most websites run on top of one CMS or the other like Drupal, Joomla or even WordPress. TypeRoom‘s yet to be released Professional edition, however, hints at some kind of CMS support.

For now, TypeRoom is just the right tool for non-techie users owing simple template based HTML websites, who doesn’t want to get into the intricacies of CMS. You will be surprised to learn that template based websites are quite popular among many small businesses even today.

If you click on the thumbnails, the site opens inside a frame <iframe> and a toolbar displaying the list of URLs remains visible at the top. You can open all links at once or copy them to clipboard.

http://sharetabs.com/?instantfundas2

Here is one way to use ShareTabs: create a ShareTab URL with your bookmarked sites and use the URL as a homepage for your browser, a sort of like Speed Dial.

You can configure Download Mover to monitor several directories at once for new files. Specify the time intervals for checking, apply rules for different file types and you are set. With Download Mover you can apply filters say, for moving zip and rar files to one folder, exe files to another and images to yet another. This will keep your download folders tidy and well organized and you won’t have to do a thing.

Download Mover is no longer developed but it still does a good job.

Krunchd allows you to bunch several URLs into one and create a single shortened URL for the bunch. So if you need to share several URLs, you won’t have to shorten each of them individually. Group them together and create only one URL which you can share with your peers. 

Apart from URL bunching, Krunchd offers some additional luxuries.

• You are able to name your link and customize it into something recognizable rather than an auto generated jumble of characters.
• You are able to edit/add/remove URL from the bunch after you have created the link.
• There is also a bookmarklet that will enable you to generate short URLs from any page.

Another similar URL shortening service is LinkBun.ch that also allows you to create a single link from a bunch of URLs. LinkBun.ch doesn’t allow you to customize the link nor add/remove URLs from it. But it has two features that Krunchd lacks.

When you open a Krunchd link, it displays the list of URLs contained within it. You have to view them by clicking on each of them. LinkBun.ch also displays the list of bunched URLs when you click on the shortened link and it provides an additional option to open all the links at once on different tabs. It saves you from having to click each of the URLs individually.

The other feature of LinkBun.ch is the reverse of the above mentioned feature. LinkBun.ch can create a shortened URL for all the tabs opened in your browser with the help of a Firefox addon.

Both Krunchd and LinkBun.ch are useful and unique from the rest of URL shortening tools. (Thanks KillerStartUp for Krunchd)

Lotus Symphony Documents

l

Lotus Symphony Presentations

Lotus Symphony Spreadsheets

IBM Lotus Symphony is available for Windows, Linux and Mac and is a hefty download at around ~200MB. If you are low on bandwidth, then here is a chance to get a free CD delivered to you free of charge, only if you are in India.

Free CD request form.

[via Digital Inspiration]

Most pen drive viruses infect by executing itself the moment the pen drive is inserted into the PC. They do it by creating an autorun.ini file that is configured to run these viruses. So the first line of defense is to prevent the execution of the autorun.ini file. Here are two software that does it.

USB Firewall runs silently in the background and alerts you immediately in case of an intrusion attempt. The application detects whenever any program tries to launch itself via the autorun.ini file and informs you. You can then remove the autorun.ini file along with the malicious files before they have the chance to infect the PC.

USB Firewall is not an anti-virus application and cannot distinguish between malicious and legitimate files. It just prevents the auto play of pen drives and the files on it. However, in most cases an autorun file on a pen drive is a sure sign of a virus, unless the owner has created it himself for some added functionality. Also, the pen drive may still contain infected files not configured to autorun but waiting for the user to execute. You need to have an anti-virus application guarding your PC to prevent such infection.

Another application similar to USB Firewall is iKill. iKill scans removable drives for the presence of the autorun.ini file. If found, it parses the autorun.inf file for the executables it may run and if AutoProtect is enabled, it automatically delete the files present on the drive. Otherwise, you will be asked if you want the suspected files deleted.

In case, you want to completely disable the auto run feature in Windows, this is how to do it.

1. Go to Start> Run and type gpedit.msc to launch the Group Policy editor.
2. Select ‘Computer configuration’ from the left tree and then go to Administrative Tempates>System
3. In the right panel look for ‘Turn off Autoplay’. Double click on it and select ‘Enabled’ and then select 'all drives'.

PodMail is an application that allows you to send and receive files of unlimited size via email. The integration of this service with email is seamless – the recipient can download the file right from their browser as if the file actually came attached with the mail.

The Podmailing Network uses two kinds of method to deliver the file to the recipient - via Peer-To-Peer and via centralized servers. In the Peer-To-Peer method, data moves directly between the PCs of the sender and the recipients. In the centralized method, data is delivered from their server where the files remains for up to 30 days.

To send files you compose a “podmail” the same you compose an email in your email client. Select the files or folders you want to attach and send the podmail. The composed message gets delivered to the recipient's inbox and the attached file gets transferred to PodMail’s servers. Not only you get to send large files, you also prevent the recipient’s inbox from getting clogged since all the attachments are stored in PodMail’s servers and not on their mail box.

The recipient will receive a mail such as the one shown below.

He can now download the file either directly from the browser, or through a torrent client or using the PodMail application. PodMail also supports resume, so you can download very large attachment in parts without having to download it all at once.

I have seen many file sharing application in the past but PodMail blows them all. It’s the best solution I have seen so far. It’s easy, it’s simple and it’s free.

There are two ways – fix it manually or fix it through a software. We will look at the manual method first because knowing how to do it without any tools will allow you to fix any stuck printer anywhere.

Manual Method

1. Click on Start>Run and type services.msc to launch the Services manager.
2. On the list of services locate the "Print Spooler" service, right-click on it and click Stop.
3. Open the C:\Windows\System32\Spool\PRINTERS and delete all files inside this folder.
4. Re-launch the Services manager and start the "Print Spooler" service by right-clicking on it and clicking Start.

The print queue is now cleared and you can start printing again.

The manual method is easy and you don’t really need any software to do it, but anyway, here is one application that purges the stalled printer jobs for you. Stalled Printer Repair (Mirror)is a portable application that displays a list of all stalled printer jobs and allows you to delete them with just a click. Nice and easy way if your printer gets stuck much too often.

In order to participate you must be a registered member of Reddit and dedicate at least 2 hours on a Feed A Need charity project before the deadline on February 14th, 2009. There are several prizes to be won which include Xbox 360, games, Intel Atom Processor powered PC’s, discount coupons, T-shirts and such sponsored by the project partners.

If you want to volunteer, you need to fill up a form and mention your skills. According to the skills you have you will be matched up with a project for a needy charity. Currently, there are about 50 non-profit jobs lined up and waiting for your help. Free Software Foundation, Seeing Hands
(a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing reading material to blind children in a format that both the sighted and the visually impaired can enjoy) and GNOME Foundation, to name a few.

You can vote up your favorite or even submit one of your own non-profits.

Related: Lend your computer's spare CPU time to scientific research

First we have to change the date format. Here is how to do it:

• Open the Control Panel and double-click Regional And Language Options.
• In the Regional And Language Options dialog box, click the Customize button on the Regional Options tab.
• Select the Date tab. In the Short Date panel select the Date Separator drop-down field and select a dash (-) because Windows doesn't allow slashes in file and folder names.
  
  
  
• Click the Apply button and close the dialog boxes.

Keep in mind that any change you make to the Short Date Format setting will affect the way the date is displayed throughout the entire operating system. You can make all kinds of changes to the date format as long as you use the dash (-) as the date separator for this hack to work.

Now we have to create a special command on the context menu to create new folders based on the date.

• Launch Windows Explorer and select Tools>Folder Options.
• Select the File Types tab and in the Registered File Types list, select Folder, and click the Advanced button.
• In the Edit File Type dialog box, click the New button.
• Now type “New Date Based Folder” (without quotes) in the Action text box and CMD.EXE /C MD "%1\%%DATE%%" in the Application Used To Perform Action text box.
  
  
  
  
• Click OK and close the dialog boxes.

Now, whenever you want to create a new date-based folder name in Windows Explorer, simply right-click on the folder in which you want to create the folder and select the New Date-Based Folder command from the context menu. The new date based folder will be created inside that folder.

This is different from how you create new folders in Windows. The usual procedure is to right click on any empty area in Explorer and create a new folder inside that folder. But in this new method, you have to come out of the parent folder, right-click on the parent folder (not empty area) to create the date based folder.

There is one flaw in this method. On any given day you won't be able to create two identical date-based folder names within the same folder. [via Tech Republic]

If this seems too much work for you, then try this software called Custom Folder. Custom Folder allows you to create custom dated and time-stamped folders and even deals with incremental naming in case there is already a sub-folder with the same name. All you have to do is right-click on Windows Explorer and select “Create custom folder name” to open this dialog box. Then choose a name using a any of these supported formats.

• Static text - Place static text anywhere in the mask to define your default folder name
• Date - Chose from a two or four digit year mask; two digit month mask and two digit day mask
• Time - Chose from a two digit hour, minute and/or second field and add an optional three digit millisecond field
• Increment - By adding a simple switch, Custom Folder will automatically add a three digit incremented identifier to a default mask, making it ideal for backups or version control.
• Trim - Helping you to keep your filing tidy, the "trim" switch instructs Custom Folder to trim any blank spaces from either end of the default folder name, ensuring that subsequent searches or batch operations are not bugged by unseen leading or trailing spaces.

Integrated Gmail is an easy way to access all your favorite Google services from one place. Access Google calendar or read feeds or browse maps right from your inbox. If you don’t like the collapsible interface and rather have tabs, then wait for the next release of this addon, when this feature would be added.

Integrated Gmail works with Google Apps too.

The trouble with printing covers is figuring out the right size of it. UndercoverXP is an application that makes printing covers easier. You load the image into the application and it automatically scales the image to the correct size to fit into the selected format, which includes front covers, back covers, front + inside, inlays, DVD Boxes, Digital Pictures and CD/DVD labels. You can load separate images for the front and back cover, select the format from the drop down menu and print it from within the application. It also prints dotted lines showing you where to cut and fold the paper.

Apart from CD and DVD covers, UndercoverXP can also print Playstation, Wii, Blue Ray and HD DVD covers.

UndercoverXP also comes with a cover editor that allows you to modify the existing cover formats and even create new ones. If you want to change the orientation of the image before printing it has to be done from the editor.

Xpadder has the ability to emulate a mouse and/or keyboard using a controller or joystick by mapping the keys of the keyboard to the buttons on the gamepad controller. Xpadder also lets you map mouse commands to your gamepad, or map sequences of keys to a single button press. Xpadder supports the use of up to 26 controllers simultaneously, if a controller supports it.

Here is a nice tutorial that will guide you through the process of configuring your controller and mapping keys to it.

Unfortunately, the developer has decided to stop the development of Xpadder. The last stable release of Xpadder (v 5.3) will be it’s final version. Even their website is up for sale.

Download from BetaNews

This is where AntiFreeze might be able to help you. AntiFreeze is a utility that sits on the system tray, waiting for you to press the hotkey combination (ALT+CTRL+WIN+HOME by default) in the event of an emergency, i.e. your system becomes unresponsive. As soon as you press the key combination, you will hear a beep indicating that AntiFreeze has taken over your system. It will then suspend most of the running programs, except the critical ones, so they stop hogging your systems resources. AntiFreeze then launches their own task manager, allowing you to terminate the processes which brought the system down and hopefully recover your computer.

AntiFreeze works when

• One or more programs are doing very intensive tasks, they consume so much processor cycles that the system becomes unresponsive
• One or more programs consume so much memory that the swapping file is heavily used, overloading the system
• Programs are running with a scheduling priority which is so high that they consume all processor resources
• Too many programs are running at the same time and they all have to compete for attention from the processor

If your computer becomes unresponsive because of a hardware problem or the mouse cursor is not updated when you move it or some piece of kernel software or device driver is busy at an elevated priority level then AntiFreeze is not likely to offer you a solution. A good indication when AntiFreeze might work is when the mouse is moving but the applications are unresponsive. If the mouse isn’t moving, the reset button could be the only solution.

AntiFreeze should be used only when everything else fails. DO NOT try to invoke the application to test while you have unsaved work running, because it will suspend all running processes and all your open windows and applications will stop working.

A 3D scanner is a device that analyzes a real-world physical object, collects data on its shape and appearance and then constructs a digital, three dimensional model of the object that can be used in a wide variety of applications. These devices are used extensively by the entertainment industry in the production of movies and video games, industrial design, orthotics and prosthetics, quality control/inspection and documentation of cultural artifacts.

3D scanners are sophisticated and expensive instruments. True, but that doesn’t mean you can’t create a cheap 3D scanner at home. All you need is a camera, a line laser (starting from about 10 Euros) and the free software DAVID-Laserscanner.

DAVID-Laserscanner produces surprising good results as seen from the images below. You don’t need expensive hardware to get good results. But a sensitive, good resolution and low noise camera is essential. A digital camera is perfect, but a webcam might not work. The laser can be bought from their online shop.

You can even scan texts and export them as 3D. The final digital model can be saved in .OBJ which is supported by all 3D modelling applications.

Chromifox, called “coat of Chrome for Firefox”, is a bright and soft blue theme for Firefox 3 on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, inspired by the appearance of the Google Chrome web browser. Chromifox gives Firefox the almost Chrome like appearance except the tab bar and title bar which is fused into one in Chrome. This is fixed by another addon called Total NoChrome.

Total NoChrome is a modification of the Total ReChrome addon which places the tab bar at the top and changes the appearance of the title bar  bringing it closer to the Chrome look.

That will take care of the looks. Now for the functionality. To get Chrome’s features in Firefox, get the following extensions.

1. Stealther or Distrust for incognito mode or private browsing. Private browsing is available in Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 though. (Original post)

2. Download Statusbar to put the download manager on the status bar. (Original post)

3. Speed Dial to fill up the empty tab page with thumbnail to your favorite bookmarks. You can also try Auto Dial that displays the most frequently visited pages. (Original post)

4. Locationbar2 to highlight domain in address bar.

5. New Tab Button on Tab Right to put newly opened tabs next to the parent tab.

ViSplore is an application for Windows XP that brings Vista’s Explorer to XP. ViSplore doesn’t modify Windows XP’s explorer to implement these changes. Many applications had tried it unsuccessfully in the past. ViSplore is a stand alone file manager that is almost a clone of the real Vista’s explorer – the same Aero look, the same buttons, the same breadcrumb navigation. ViSplore doesn’t require any installation and doesn’t make any changes to XP’s explorer. It runs in the system tray and can be launched by clicking on Explorer from the tray menu or pressing Win+W. If you check the ‘Default File Manager’ option in the tray menu, ViSplore becomes the default explorer for Windows. All folder and drives from then on, will open in ViSplore.

Another application that you might want to take a look is ViStart from the same developers. ViStart brings Windows Vista’s start menu to Windows XP with the same functionalities. It’s a perfect replacement for XP’s start menu and from the viewpoint of looks and functionality, both ViSplorer and ViStart are one of the best clones of the real thing.

Oget enables integration of more than 27 download managers with Opera, with provisions for adding your custom download managers to the list.

List of supported Download Managers

BitComet
Download Accelerator Plus
Download Master
FlashGet
FlashGet 2
Free Download Manager
FreshDownload
GetRight
GigaGet
HiDownload
InstantGet
Internet Download Accelerator
Internet Download Manager
LeechGet
Mass Downloader
NetAnts
Net Transport
Net Transport 2
Orbit
ReGet
Star Downloader
TrueDownloader
Thunder
WellGet
wxDownload Fast
RapGet
Universal Share Downloader

How to install and use

Close Opera and run the installer. Choose the directory where Opera is installed and complete the installation. After that, launch Opera and under the Tools menu you will notice a new item – Select Download Manager. Click on this item to launch Oget’s window. Here you will find a list of all supported download managers and the ones installed on your system. Select the download manager you wish to use. If your download manager does not appear on the list, click on Custom and locate the application you want to integrate.

Now whenever you click on any file to download your chosen download manager will take over.

There is an option in Oget’s window called “Catch links via Ctrl+Click”. If you check this option, the download manager will launch only if you press Ctrl while clicking on a link. Otherwise file downloading will start with Opera’s inbuilt download manager. This way you have access to two download managers. The disadvantage of this trick is – the default keyboard shortcut for opening links in a new tab stops working, because it use the same Ctrl key.

Music MP3 Get searches and downloads music from free music sites like IMEEM, Last.fm, etc. All you have to do is search for the artist or song and download it to your hard disk. The software can also be used as a streaming music player if you prefer to only listen music without downloading. The downside of this application is that it downloads only one file at a time which is such a waste of time.

The software has two versions - a basic one which is free and a Pro which provides more search results and faster download.

And yes, downloading and keeping music is never legal even though Music MP3 Get’s publisher claims to be. But who cares RIAA?

Related: FrostWire - The open source alternative to Limewire

Saavvii, previously known as Natural Word, allows the user to command Microsoft Word using their own words. Saavvii integrates seamlessly into Microsoft Word and remains hidden until you need to implement an action or edit your document. Press a hotkey (the menu key, by default) to launch Saavvii and type your command in natural English and Word will do it for you. No training is required.

If you have good typing speed, you will find that typing commands are easier and faster rather than searching through menus, lists and dialog boxes. For instance you can highlight the text or simply click on the word, launch Saavvii and type “georgia” instead of scrolling down the font list. Similarly, just type “12” to set the font size to 12; “line spacing 1.5” will set line spacing to 1.5. It saves time by bringing these simple and frequently used commands to your fingertips.

On my test, it understood simple commands like “justify”, “bullets”, “insert picture”, “bullets”, “spell check”, “word count”, “drawing”, “subscript”, “superscript”  and even slightly crafted commands like “insert pound sign”, “table 4x3”, “merge cells”, “numbered bullets” etc. You can even implement multiple actions at the same time. For example, “arial 14 bold italics”. However, I couldn’t get it to change the background color. Also it didn’t understand any commands for editing an inserted picture. Otherwise, it did almost everything I commanded it to do. A wonderful application.

Recently, PeekYou released one of the coolest addon for Firefox. This addon adds PeekYou to the browser’s status bar and whenever you visit a page, it will retrieve information from their directory and tell you who is behind that website. It’s unobtrusive and very informative. For instance, when I visit Yahoo.com the status bar tells me “Jerry Yang from Sunnyvale, CA”, who is the CEO and co-founder of Yahoo. When I open Google, PeekYou’s status bar displays the name “Larry Page from Mountain View, CA”, who is the co-founder and President of Google. A click on the status bar takes me to this person’s profile page on PeekYou.

PeekYou also integrates with search engines like Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask and inserts these helpful information into the search results page.

At the time of writing this, there are 163,479,978 indexed profiles on PeekYou. Interestingly, last night when I checked (about 12 hours ago), this count was 80,000 less. 80K new profiles in 12 hours is whopping.

If you are active on social networking sites and if you have a website or an online business, you might want to create profile at PeekYou, if you don’t already have it, and let PeekYou addon users know about you whenever they visit your site.