Download and install Spicebird. After you start it for the first time, you will be asked to set up new accounts. If you have skipped it at the start, go to File -> New -> Mail/News Account.

Adding a Google Apps Mail Account

I will be adding a Google apps account. Follow the steps below to configure it for your account.

1. Login to your Google apps email account. Now go to “Settings”.

2. Now in the “Settings” page, go to the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.

3. In the “POP Download” section, select “Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded)” and then press the button Save Changes.

4. Now start the Account adding Wizard, select “Email Account” and press Next button.

5. Enter your name and email address and press Next.

6. Now in the next step where you are asked to configure Server Information, make the following changes :

• Select the type of incoming server you are using : POP.
• Incoming Server : pop.gmail.com
• Outgoing Server : smtp.gmail.com (In the screenshot, there is no such thing as I had configured it earlier. If you are adding it for the first time, it will be there.)

Now press Next to proceed.

7[a]. Now enter your usernames in the following window. Say your mail address is xyz@your_domain.com then your user will be xyz@your_domain.com. Press Next.

7[b]. Enter a name for the account. I will be naming it MTE Mail as this is my MakeTechEasier account. Press Next.

8. Cross check the details in the next window and press Finish if they are alright.

9. Now as the account gets created, go to Tools -> Account Settings. And click the item, Server Setting below MTE Mail in the left pane. Now make the necessary changes as shown in the screenshot below.

The account is now successfully added to Spicebird. Now every time you wish to fetch mail from that account, Spicebird will ask for the password of the account. Provide the password and all the mails will be fetched.

Adding a Gmail Account

1. I will be adding a GMail account now. Follow the steps below.

• Login to your Gmail account. Now go to “Settings”.

• Now in the “Settings” page, go to the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab.

• In the “IMAP Access” section, select “Enable IMAP” and then press the button Save Changes.

2. Open the Account Wizard, select Email account and then press Next.

3. Enter your name and email address and press Next.

4. Now in the next step where you are asked to configure Server Information, make the following changes :

• Select the type of incoming server you are using : IMAP.
• Incoming Server : pop.gmail.com
• Outgoing Server : smtp.gmail.com

Now press Next to proceed.

5[a]. Now enter your usernames in the following window. Say your mail address is xyz@gmail then your username will be xyz@gmail. Press Next.

5[b]. Enter a name for the account. I will be naming it “hsoumen@gmail.com”. Press Next.

6. Cross check the details in the next window and press Finish if they are alright.

7. Now as the account gets created, go to Tools -> Account Settings. And click the item, Server Setting below “hsoumen1985@gmail.com” in the left pane. Now make the necessary changes as shown in the screenshot below.

The account is now successfully added to Spicebird. Every time you wish to fetch mail from that account, Spicebird will ask for the password of the account. Provide the password and all the mails will be fetched. There is also an option to save your password.

That is all, if you face any problems configuring your own accounts feel free to ask via comments.

How to Configure Gmail And Google Apps For Spicebird originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

If you do not already have Gimp (available by default in current Ubuntu versions) it’s freely available for download here for Windows, Linux, and Mac. This tutorial will be using Gimp 2.6.7.

Creating the Stars

We will, of course, want to start with a layer of stars. With Gimp open, go to File -> New. At the minimum, you will want your image size to be your desktop resolution, such as 1024×768 or 1440×900. Under Advanced Options, choose Fill With: Foreground Color (black).

Now it’s time to create our stars. On the canvas window, go to Filters -> Noise -> Hurl. Select Randomize and click OK.

To remove color from the stars simply click Colors -> Desaturate -> OK. We can always add in color later if desired.

To thin out the dots, set your image zoom to 100%, then choose Colors -> Levels. In the first text box, enter a number from from about 220 to 240 to get a medium density star field.

To improve the stars’ appearance, click Filters -> Light and Shadow -> Sparkle. Set Flare Intensity to somewhere between .10 and .15 for a fairly subtle sparkle effect.

Save and minimize the star field canvas for now, because we’ll be creating a new image for the planet.

Creating a Planet

First we’ll want a good looking high-resolution texture. Since we’ll be warping the texture with a lens to make it look better on a sphere, it’s very important you find a large, high resolution image even for a small planet. You can find many such images here.

Open your new texture in Gimp and use the Crop tool to make it an even square shape. Just click the Crop tool (Shift+C) and drag a square box around the area you want to keep.

To make it look properly spherical, click Filters -> Light And Shadow -> Apply Lens. Choose Set Surroundings to Background Color and click OK.

Some image types may leave a white background like in the example above. To remove the white space, first right-click your planet layer and choose Add Alpha Channel. Then pick the Fuzzy Select tool (or hit U on the keyboard), click any white space, and hit the delete key.

For our shadow, create a new layer above the planet, and choose the Ellipse Tool (or hit E on the keyboard). Drag a box from one corner of your image to the other, creating a circle roughly the same size as the planet. Use the bucket tool to fill this selection in with solid black.

Click Layer -> Scale Layer and increase the shadow layer to about 150% of its current size.

Next, click Filters -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. I’m using a 2000×2000 texture, so with my image the blur had to be set to 500 to achieve the desired effect.

To drag our big black blurry shadow in to place, click the Move tool (or hit M) and drag the shadow wherever it looks good.

Now save your planet image as planet.png. Make sure you do not use JPG as it will not properly handle the transparency.

Now we’re ready to combine our images. Back in the star field canvas from the first section, choose File > Open as Layer and pick your planet file. It will be big, so shrink it down with the Scale tool (Shift+T) to the size you like and place with the Move tool.

Adding Nebulas

For a nebula effect, start by creating a new transparent “nebula” layer. Now pick Filters -> Render -> Clouds -> Plasma. Select Randomize and hit OK.

Colors can be adjusted by opening Colors -> Color Balance.

To make it look a little smoother, choose Filters -> Blur -> Motion Blur and set to an appropriate level for a smooth, cloudish look, probably at least 20.

Now just set the opacity on your nebula layer to the level you like from the Layers window..

To top off our image, we’ll use Gimp’s Supernova filter. First create a new transparent layer called nova. Then click Filters -> Light and Shadow -> Supernova. Set color, size, and placement options as desired and click OK.

And now we’ve got a passable space scene created in just a few minutes. If you’d like to improve on it further, I’d suggest using a similar method to our shadow creation to create a atmospheric “halo” around the planet, setting up layer masks to get finer control over the nebula, and adjusting color saturations for a more cohesive look. This basic method can be expanded dozens of ways to create space scenes of all types.

How to Create Space Scenes Quickly and Easily in Gimp originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

The human mind can be a beautiful thing. Great human minds have constructed towering structures, synthesized cures for diseases, and created works of art that inspire millions with hope and compassion. But even the best of minds need a little help, and often times, the more a person has floating around in his/her mind, the more likely it is to become a jumbled mess.

Mind-mapping is a way to organize one’s thoughts before taking action. One excellent free and open source mind-mappoing solution is XMind. Whether you need to brainstorm, create an outline, or even design an organizational chart, XMind is the perfect tool for the job.

Getting XMind

XMind is currently available for free download for Windows, Mac OS X, Debian/Ubuntu Linux, and in source code. The website also offers a portable version for Windows, Mac, and Linux all in one package, convenient for USB drives, and optional “XMind Pro” subscription services that add some advanced features.

Getting Started

Once you have XMind installed, you can get started right away. It will first ask you if you want to log in, enabling some of its participatory features. This is completely optional, and XMind will work whether you are connected to the Internet or not.

The initial screen will present you with the default balloon with the title “Central Topic”. To change the title, press the Spacebar. Type in the new title and press Enter.

To make a “main topic” press enter again. You will see it branch off from the central topic. If you press enter again, another main topic will appear off the central topic. Press the tab key to create a subtopic under one of the main topics. You can also make numerous subtopics using the same method. All of this makes it easy to get your mind juices flowing without taking your hands away from the keyboard.

Features

XMind comes with a number of useful features:

• Several different structure options, including map (the default), fishbone, spreadsheet, org, tree, and logic chart.
• Style elements such as font type, size, weight, color, alignment, shape of topic balloons, line type, and numbering.
• Global style elements like wallpaper, legend, branch colors, and tapered lines.
• The ability to add special notes to topics.
• Relationship markers to show topic correlation.
• Topic attachments for various file types.
• Topic summaries.
• Multiple sheets in a “workbook” with sheet thumbnails for easy identification.
• Predesigned templates for brainstorming, meetings, organizational charts, project management, reading journals, and personal management.
• Markers with both icons and color coding to categorize and classify.
• Export support for multiple formats, including HTML and Images.

Participatory Component

XMind takes mind-mapping a step beyond individual mind-mapping with its online services and features. One of its useful free services is called XMind Share, which allows users to upload their mind maps and share them freely with the public. Other users can then view, comment, and even download those mind maps.

Mind-mapping Made Easy

Overall, XMind is easy to use and has certainly helped me organize my thoughts better, particularly when I am writing something that is longer than a few pages and/or requires research. It is also very useful when planning events or organizing a group of people on a project. For students who need help brainstorming and outlining for writing, XMind can take their work to the next level. Ultimately, the ability to use it in presentations or share it with the world sets XMind apart from other mind-mapping software. Best of all XMind is free and open source.

What other mind-mapping software do you use?

XMind: A Cross-platform Mind-mapping Solution originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Just to refresh your memory, Tonido is a free software that turns your desktop into a personal server. It allows you to access and share your files, media, calendar and apps from everywhere. Be it Windows, Mac or Linux, you simply install the software and have your own personal cloud server up and running in no time.

Features found in the Tonido software include Jukebox, Photos gallery, Blog, Torrents download, WebShare (simple file sharing with anyone), Workspace and ScreenShare (share your computer screen with anyone via web browser). The latest addition to the family include Money Manger, 1-click sharing and backup. Let’s take a look.

1. Browser based Money Manager

The popular Money Manager EX (MMEX) is now integrated into Tonido. This useful money management app has been the favorite software for plenty of users, as it tracks your finance and provides a comprehensive report for all your income/expenses. Existing users can also import your database into Tonido without any hassle.

2. Tonido 1-Click Sharing

Albeit this feature is only available for the Windows version, it is still an useful feature. With a simple click (actually it takes several clicks, but it is definitely not complicated), you can now share your file with others. Click on the Tonido icon at the system tray and click on the files that you want to share. A window will pop up and show the URL to share. You can then copy and share this URL with your friends. As simple as that.

Update: Venkat just verified that it requires only a right click to get the file sharing URL, so the 1-click sharing claim is still valid.

3. Tonido Backup

We have discussed plenty of useful software to backup your computer. One caveat to those software is that they only work for a particular platform. If you have a great backup software for Windows, you won’t be able to get it working in Linux or Mac.

Tonido has just make things simpler for you. With Tonido Backup, you can now backup your data from any computer to any other remote computer running Tonido, regardless of its platform and its location. It works both in your LAN and across internet. There’s no reason for you not to backup your computer now!

Free giveaway

Venkat from the Tonido team has gladly sponsored 2 TonidoPlugs (99$ plug computer, read here for its full review) and 20 WebSharePro ($14 value) licenses for MakeTechEasier readers.

Here’s how you can win the prize:

First, be our Facebook fans (skip this if you are already our fans).

Second, share this post in Facebook.

Third, leave a comment in this article with a link to your Facebook profile.

We will randomly pick 2 + 20 winners from the list. Make sure you leave your correct email address so we can contact you and send you the prizes.

This giveaway will end on 12th Mar 2010, 12pm, Central Time.
The giveaway is now closed. Check out the winners announcement here.

MakeTechEasier would like to thank Venkat from CodeLathe for his generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us.

Get 1-Click File Sharing And Backup Features With Tonido + Free Giveaway originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Given the fact I was working from a clean slate, I thought I would try a new back up program. Don’t get me wrong, Easeus To-Do Backup did exactly what I needed it to do. I just like to see what else will work. Enter Paragon Backup and Recovery.

Backing Up Options

Differential Backup

What caught my eye was the differential back up. If you aren’t sure what this is, the easiest explanation is it backs up only the files that have changed. This is a must to schedule every couple days or every week. That way you will have minimal loss of information if something happens.

Full Backup

This is what you expect it to be. It makes a backup of the whole drive or area you ask it to. This is great for the initial back up and the occasional full back up. If you choose to, you can have it make an exact copy of your hard drive or partition, OS and all.

Add to Archive

The add to archive feature is pretty neat. It allows you to add a file to a backup archive even though it wasn’t part of your back up.

Cyclic Backup

The cyclic backup feature allows you to have a revolving back up. There are two settings, basic and differential. The basic backup will make multiple base images, where the differential backup will make one base image and the other(s) will save any compared to the info in the base image.

Restore

Restoring has equally as many options as backing up does. Having a multitude of ways to restore is helpful for those times you may not need a full restore.

Bootable Disc or Drive

Making a bootable drive feature built in is super handy. With a lot of the computers coming sans optical drive, having a USB drive with your OS on it is a huge timesaver if the need ever arises. I made a test backup in a couple minutes and was easier than the one I recently used.

Partial Restore

Being able to restore only a portion of your saved file is a feature you don’t think you will need until you accidently delete an important folder or have a corrupt file. You don’t need to replace everything, just the part that’s messed up.

Full Restore

A full restore would be used when disaster strikes and you need to revert back to a point where everything was working. It is good practice to have a full backup at least monthly if not more frequently.

Partitions

Paragon gives you the ability to create, hide, format and delete partitions. In many cases you would need an extra piece of software to do this.

Personally, I am impress with Paragon Backup software as it comes with plenty of useful features not found in other software. The basic version is free and should suffice for general usage, but if you are looking for more sophisticated features like copying the whole partitions/HDD, disk wipe etc, there is a premium version that you can purchase ($69.95)

What is your go-to free backup tool?

Paragon Backup: Another Great Backup Software For Windows originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Getting FrostWire

Windows, Mac, and Linux packages are available from the FrostWire download page. Depending on your platform, the package may include the Java runtime as well.

Linux users can run the package by double-clicking the .deb file from within your file manager.

Configuring FrostWire

Once installed, FrostWire should show up in the appropriate menu location. On first run, you’ll be asked to set the locations for incoming files and outgoing shares.

Downloaded files do not necessarily need to be shared to everyone else, and incoming files are often in an incomplete state, so it’s recommended to use two separate locations.

Next we have a few additional settings to get things tweaked just right.

Most people should be fine leaving the connection type at Broadband. The nickname section near the bottom will come into play if you decide to participate in the community chat feature.

Next, we choose exactly which type of files FrostWire will include and which to ignore when creating shares. This is an important feature, as it allows you to only share things like audio and video files while keeping documents, programs, and other potentially sensitive files private.

After a checkbox agreement that you will not use FrostWire for copyright infringement, you’ll get the main screen.

Getting Content

Chances are, the first thing you’ll want to do is get some files. The Search tab will perform a standard Gnutella network search, and results will trickle in as they’re found.

You can search for specific types of files (including torrents) and you’ve got plenty of filtering and sorting options to choose from. The panes on the left side will allow you to filter the results by different sets of criteria, based on what you’re searching for.

If you’re not in to the Gnutella side of things, Bittorrent is fully supported in FrostWire. While LimeWire may be the Gnutella backend, Azureus is the core of FrostWire’s torrent capabilities. The program itself shows little difference between the two download methods as they show up more or less identically in searches and the download pane.

FrostClick

FrostWire’s content site, FrostClick.com, doesn’t so much host content as collect it. Of the multiple categories available (audio, video, software, e-books, etc) you’ll find the most content in Audio. That’s not to say there’s a whole lot there, but the current count of 287 legal, DRM-free music torrents could make for a nice treasure for those who like to experiment with their music.

The software section is full of a fair amount of games, as well as a lot of free (open and closed source) applications like Hydrogen, GNU Solfege, and Paint.NET. All of which are, of course, available elsewhere. All this seems to make FrostClick less about providing something unique and more about having a single place to browse for interesting content. This would be better if there was more content overall, but as the popularity grows, the content usually comes along with it.

Have you ever used FrostWire? How does it stack up to LimeWire or other GNutella or Bittorrent clients? Let us know in the comments below.

Smarter P2P with FrostWire originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Download the Software

When you go to the site, you will see a Download Now button that you will need to press. After you download the software, double-click the pulpTunes icon. A startup message will appear with some basic instructions on how to quickly launch the app. If you decide you no longer want to see that message, check the Don’t show this again at startup check box. I would leave this to come up when the app launches because it provides useful information that you might forget. For instance, what to do if you are unable to launch pulpTunes with your browser.

Check the Settings

The next thing you want to do is check the app’s settings. Regardless of what system (i.e. Windows, Mac, or LInux) you are on, you will see the pulpTunes’ icon on the system tray.

If you click on the icon, you will see a box with options. If you check out the Settings link, it defaults on the General tab. You can set up the automatic playing, the iTunes library file location, and your preferred language.

If you click on the Advanced tab, then you can change the server port, timeout time, and turning on/off logs. It’s a very simple process to customize pulpTunes to your liking.

Manage User Accounts

If you want to add more security to your music collection, or restrict who has access, then you would want to enable user accounts that is under User Management. When you first come in, you will need to create an Administrator account. This will be the way to control all access on pulpTunes.

When you open the pulpTunes’ site again, you will see a login link where you can set up the user groups and customize their access. You can restrict the ability to rate songs, view your playlists, and/or have access to pulpTunes.

After creating the user groups, you can go to the Accounts tab, and create your user accounts. Note: You have to place users into user groups, so always start with the Groups tab.

Time to Check it Out

After customizing pulpTunes to your liking, it’s time to check it out. You are able to test it by clicking the Test Locally link before launching it. I recommend that you do that. One thing about pulpTunes that is interesting is that you don’t need to have iTunes open in order to run the app. You are able to run searches, check out your playlists, and even select a certain genre.

Overall, pulpTunes is a quick and easy app that will give you access to your music without needing to download iTunes or buy a MP3 player. You might have to do some tweaking to your firewall settings in order to allow the app to run seamlessly. However, after doing that, you will be pumping to your music in no time.

How to Access Your iTunes Music From Anywhere originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

1. Picture2Life

Nice tool to create awesome collages. With an inventory of almost 300 pre-defined collage templates, it actually makes the job practically effortless. All you have to do is select the images and select a template to order the images in a collage. The best part is that the service also offers a Picture2life Mozilla Firefox Addon. Here are some of the collages I created using Picture2life.

Score : 4.5/5

2. PhotoVisi

Photovisi is a tool to create collages online. Presently you have 18 collage templates to choose from. You can select custom background and also rearrange images in the collage. You can read our detailed review on Photovisi. Below is a demo collage that I created from the online service. You can also try Photovisi on Facebook by using Photovisi Facebook app.

Score : 3.5/5

3. Shape Collage

This is a shape based collage tool that accumulates a collection of images(or image URLs) into different shapes. You have to use image URls in the online free version of the tool. Shape collage desktop tools are also available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Java platforms. The offline version is free and can create collages directly from images i.e you won’t need to use image URLs for this. Shape Collage has also got its own Facebook app. The screenshot below is a shape collage created using Shape Collage.

Score : 3.5/5

4. Picasa

Picasa is a much known Google product that can organize images with a Picasa Web Albums server sync feature and also offers a free server space of 1Gb. But this is not the reason it’s enlisted here. Picasa also lets you create nice looking collages using the desktop tool. The tool is one my most favorite while creating collages (after Picture2life) and thats because of the awesome templates and controls that it offers and you do not have to be online to get all these. Check out a nice tutorial by Google on how to create collages using Picasa. Check out two nice collages created using Picasa.

Score : 4/5

5. Fotonea

The collage creation is not simple here, but its a great tool as you can customize the arrangement of images in the final collage. To get started, just select and upload images(only six allowed), choose a background and size for the collage. You can then rearrange the images as you prefer. You get to customize the size, alignment of all the images. But as I had told at start, not everyone has got skills to innovate, this becomes the last option to opt while creating a collage and hence this is last but not the least option.

Score : 3/5

Its obvious, that not every list contains all that is available and I know there are still many other tools out there, but those are the tools that I preferred over the others as they did the job pretty easily and simply. If there are any other tool that helped you creating collages please share them via comments.

5 Free Tools To Create Collages From Your Pictures originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Note: Following are some workarounds to read the content of your documents that are of docx file format. You can also use the same method to read other Office files like xlsx, pptx etc

1. View .docx file in older Office version

Microsoft has released a compatibility package to run the newer documents file in older version of Office. Just download the Microsoft compatibility pack. After installing the compatibility pack you will be able to read the .docx files in your current installation of Microsoft Office.

2. Install OpenOffice

For those who are not using Windows as their main operating system Microsoft Office as their main office suite, they can install OpenOffice and get it to open .docx file.

If all you need is a lightweight solution, you can also install the OpenOffice.org Portable app onto your USB drive.

3. Using Google Docs

If you don’t want to install any software in your computer, then you can upload the .docx file to Google Docs. You can then use Google Docs to read, edit or print your documents. All the content of the document will be saved in your Google account.

4. Using ThinkFree

Other than Google Docs, ThinkFree is another online based word editor that allows you to view your .docx file. Open the the website and upload any office file. It will show you the document content. Generally Thinkfree does not require registration to view a document file, but if you want to edit that document or share in the internet, you will have to sign up for an account. One thing though, you can avoid the sign up process by logging into your Gmail account.

The first time you login with your Google account, you have to grant the permission to ThinkFree to access your Google account.

5. Convert the docx file to your preferred format

There is another hassle free method to view a .docx formatted document. You can use a converter to convert the .docx file. There are several online tools that you can use to convert a .docx file.

• Zamzar – It is a fast online tool and easy to use. Just sign in to Zamzar and start to convert your docx file in your preferred file format.
• Docx converter – With Docx converter, you can convert the docx file to many file formats such as doc, pdf etc. Docx converter also comes with a desktop widget to allow you to convert the files directly from your desktop. Download Desktop widget.

What other methods do you to use to view your .docx file?

How to Open .docx File Without Microsoft Office originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

1. Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop is one of two Adobe Air apps that help you keep on top of your Twitter and Facebook accounts. It supports Twitter lists, so you can keep up with your own, and the ones you are following. Another great feature of this application is that you can add the URL shortener and/or image sharing applications that you usually use. Seesmic bought Ping.fm late last year, so soon you will be able to update more than 50 social media sites in an instant. It is definitely a must-have Adobe Air app to have.

2. aSnippet

aSnippet is a great way to store snippets of code while sharing it with others. If you create an account, you are able to add other users and chat with them while using the Adobe Air app. It’s great because if you are stuck trying to figure something out with your code, you can use social networking to find the answer. Also, it supports various programming languages, so it provides versatility.

3. Klok

Klok helps you keep track of where your time goes. It can be used for personal, business, or both. You are able to create multiple projects, and within these projects, you can further break them down into sub-projects. It automatically keeps track of your time by pressing the Start/Stop buttons. The reports are a good way for you to view what areas need improvement.

4. Ora Time and Expense

Ora Time and Expense helps you manage your time and create invoices. This is a great Adobe Air app that has a variety of reports that you can use to see where your time has gone. It works with Projects and Types, which are similar to sub-projects. In addition to managing your time, it also gives you a way to track your expenses. A great app that provides a variety of functionality.

5. GmD

GmD brings all the Google applications (i.e. Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Reader, and Picasa) in a standalone application. The Adobe Air app also allows you to add another Google app rather than the regular ones by adding the link. It would be great if the developers would allow the different Google applications to be viewed at once.

6. Snackr

Snackr is a RSS ticker that allows you to see the RSS feeds that you are subscribed to. There are four ways to pull in RSS feeds:
1. Google Reader
2. Import OMPL file
3. Snackr suggested feeds
4. Manually enter feeds.

It’s a great way to view your RSS feeds without having to log into any application.

7. Flickroom

Flickroom is an Adobe Air standalone app that allows you to view photos on Flickr beautifully. One of the great things about this application is that you do not have to authorize it to your Flickr account, if you choose not to. This is something many other Flickr apps do not give an option for. You can view your photos in three ways (i.e. Grid, Filmstrip, or Map). It has a search function very similar to the one on the Flickr site. It’s a great application for photo lovers.

8. uvLayer

uvLayer allows users to discover, share, and watch videos throughout the webosphere. You can add RSS feeds from various sources, even other users’. The format is great because you can drag the different video windows around, so you can organize it any way you want.

9. Polaris

Polaris provides a way for you to view your Google Analytics right on your desktop. There used to be a Google Analytics Adobe Air app, but unfortunately, the links no longer work. Therefore, Polaris is a good alternative to use. You are given all the options you would get if you were on the Google Analytics site. Polaris also offers various reports that you can use to check how well your site/blog traffic is. It would be great if you could view different views of your web traffic at the same time. However, just being able to view Google Analytics on your desktop is useful already.

10. inPreso Screens

inPreso Screens is an Adobe Air app that allows you to create mock-ups for web site and blogs. It has tons of different tools that you can use to aid you in creating a design that will improve usability with users. There is a premium version that will provide you access to additional tools. However, the free version has an abundance of features that you can easily create a great mock-up.

As I stated before, there are new Adobe Air apps popping up every day, so this list will probably change, if the developers do not upgrade their applications to the newest and latest features. If you want to view more, you can go to RefreshingApps and Adobe Marketplace to search and find other Adobe Air apps.

Which are the Adobe Air apps you can’t live without?

10 Best Free Adobe Air Apps to Have on Your System originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Now, if you have lost the CD case (high chances that you would), the product keys can be extracted from Windows registry. Wouldn’t it be wise to first extract all the product keys of software and keep them at a safe location? This ensures full installation of programs after a system format. This article shows you ways to extract the serial and product keys of application software in Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

1. Magical Jelly Keyfinder

Magical Jelly is the best product key finder for Windows. It’s free and portable, hence you can use it without installation or modifying the Windows registry. It can be used to extract the product keys of paid software like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio, Adobe Photoshop etc.

Using Magical Jelly is pretty simple as double-clicking the program extracts all the available product keys from your Windows registry. This key finder program works with all the major versions of Windows (Win 95 -Win 7).

2. WinKeyFinder

WinkeyFinder is another great program to find the CD keys of installed software as well as the operating system. You can use this program to

• Find product keys of Windows XP, Vista, Windows 2003, Windows 98 and Windows ME editions
• Find serial keys of Microsoft Office 2000, 2003 and Microsoft 2007.
• Change or copy the volume serial number.
• View .NET key.

Apart from viewing the product keys, this keyfinder program lets you save your software product keys in an encrypted format. You can use this program to generate unique passwords by entering the combination of any serial key code.

Some FAQ regarding Serial and Product Keys

Note that you need to run the key finder program before formatting the system. If you format the system and try to retrieve the keys, you would find nothing as the registry would be completely fresh with no data stored. Hence, use any of the above key finder programs and save the serial keys in your computer. A better option would be to print a hard copy of all the serial keys and keep it in your shelf.

Following are some common questions regarding serial and product keys of Windows:

1. The product key retrieved by the Keyfinder is different from the one I purchased.

Ans: Some computer manufacturers use generic product keys provided by Microsoft, so that they can manufacture products at a large amount. If the key extracted by the key finder program does not match with the one that came with the Windows CD, then be rest assured that your version of Windows is not completely “Premium”. Generic keys expires after re-installation Windows while premium keys don’t.

2. If I use different Keyfinder programs, will I get different keys?

Ans: The answer is NO, you won’t. As I earlier said, serial keys are stored in Windows registry and the Keyfinder program is just a way to recover that. Thus, using different key finder program would not alter the result in any case.

3. I uninstalled a program long ago and forgot the serial key. Can I recover the serial key using a Keyfinder software?

Ans: It depends on the software itself. During uninstallation, some application programs completely remove the registry entries while others do not. You should try with a Keyfinder program and see whether the serials are still available or not.

4. I cannot boot Windows because my Operating System has crashed. How do I recover the CD key?

Ans: The keyfinder program works only when Windows is running fine. If Windows crashes, you can not use any Keyfinder to extract the serial key.

Do you have any more questions regarding Windows serial keys? What technique do you use to recover CD keys of Windows or other applications? Please share your ideas with us in the comments section.

Find Product keys Of Microsoft Softwares and Serial Keys of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

We will first create a wallpaper with cloudy colored effects follow by adding a shine effect to it. Lastly, we will wrap it up with a lighting effect.

1. Open Adobe Photoshop. Click on “File” and then “New” (Ctrl+N) in the toolbar to open a new blank page.

2. A new window will appear. Select 1024×768 as the Preset Sizes. This is required for a high resolution output (You can change to a bigger image size to match your desktop screen resolution, but the minimum should be 1024×768). Under the “Contents” section at the bottom of the window, check the “Background Color” option. Now hit the “OK” button.

3. As soon as you have created a blank page, click on the “Filter” menu and then “Render” option in toolbar. Finally select “Difference Clouds” option to get a cloudy effect of different colors.

4. You will get the wallpaper with cloudy combination of two colors. You can further reset the color combination. Click on the two colors in the left side tool pane and select your favorite colors.

Add Sun-Shine effect to the wallpaper

1. Once you have created a cloudy wallpaper, click on “File” and then “Render” option in toolbar. Now choose the “Lens Flare” option to get effects of Sun-shine.

2. A small window will appear. Here is where you can change the sun-shine position. Drag the sun-shine to your desired position. You can also change the brightness of the Sun-shine effect by dragging the brightness cursor. Finally hit the “OK” button to save the change.

3. Your editing job is over and it’s the time to save the output. Simply click on “File” and then “Save As” option in toolbar and save the output in PNG format (PNG provides the best image quality). Look at the final result below:

Add Lighting Effects to the wallpaper

1. Click on the “Filter” and then “Render” in the toolbar. Now select the “Lighting Effects” option.

2. The lighting adjustment window will appear. You can see the output preview in the left pane. Now drag the oval shaped cursor in the left pane, attached with the output and set the direction of light source. It’s also possible to change the intensity, focus area etc by clicking on the tools in the right pane of that window. Click on the “Style” at top to get a bunch of different types of lighting effects. Finally hit the “OK” button to apply the changes.

That’s all to create high definition wallpapers with Adobe Photoshop. Have you created your own wallpapers?

How to Create a High-Definition, Abstract Wallpaper In Photoshop originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Download MaComfort

Once the installation is complete, you will see a tooltip icon in Windows system tray. Right click on it and you are ready to tweak MaComfort and enjoy some Mac features.

There are 4 panels in MaComfort namely – Keyboard, Quicklook, Active corners and Spaces where you can tweak the controls and bring the Mac environment into life on your PC.

The Keyboard

The keyboard hot keys are now mapped to match with Macomfort. Although, Windows hot keys would work as they normally should. You can toggle mute with F3, lower the volume using F4 while increase the volume with the F5 key. Mac specific application shortcuts are now accessible from the Windows key so if you want to quit a program, hit Windows key + Q. The key combination acts as a replacement of Apple + Q in Mac.

The Spaces

Spaces enable virtual desktops in Windows so that you can run different set of applications on different environments. You can have 4 virtual desktops enabled at maximum. Use Ctrl + Left arrow to show the previous desktop while Ctrl + Right arrow to show the next one. The impressive part of Spaces is that it lets you drag and drop application windows from one virtual desktop to another.

For example, let’s suppose you are working in a Word document in desktop 1 while an Excel spreadsheet is kept open in desktop 2. You want to bring the word document and the excel spreadsheet in the same virtual desktop. To do that, just drag the Word window and move it quickly towards the edge of the screen.

Bingo! The program window is moved to desktop 2 instantly. In the same way you can switch application windows to multiple virtual desktops.

Active Corners

Love this feature and never thought that the corners of my PC screen can be so productive to do so many tasks. The active corners panel lets you choose custom commands which gets activated once you move the cursor to that corner. Lots of functions are supported which includes the following:

• Start Screensaver.
• Show desktop.
• Show active window.
• Shutdown computer.
• Log off.
• Switch off monitor.
• Start Application.
• Stand by

So if you want to quickly see the desktop, just move the mouse to the top left corner. In the same way, if you want to hibernate windows – move the cursor to the top right corner of the screen. This feature is very useful as you can open custom application shortcuts of programs by just hovering the mouse to a corner of the screen.

Quicklook

You can quickly preview files by selecting them and hitting the space key. This works with images, audios and video files. You can also choose to animate the preview of Quicklook feature from the options in Macomfort settings panel.

Macomfort is free but with limited options, skins and plugins. If you want to try out all the features of Macomfort, you have to buy the paid version (starting $15). Do you know of any other program which brings Mac’s functionality to Windows? Let us know your ideas in the comments.

Get Mac OS X Features On Windows With Macomfort originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

GIMP has two different types of plugins, Script-fu and Python-fu. Right out of the box, you can add Script-fu plugins. To add Python based plugins, there is some additional steps and add-ons needed.

Get Some Plugins

To find more plugins than you can shake a tick at, go to the GIMP Plugin Registry. The different plug-in scripts are tagged pretty well so you can type in the keywords for what you are looking for in the search bar to the right side of the page.

When you find something that catches your eye, download it by clicking on the link usually at the bottom of the page. The file should end in [.scm].

How to Install

Installation is super simple. Locate the downloaded file and drag it to this folder C:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\share\gimp\2.0\scripts. If you have GIMP open, simply refresh the scripts by going to Filters then Script-fu and click on refresh scripts.

1. Pencil Draw

Pencil Draw is a a pretty cool effect. It is fun for the occasional profile picture. In a nutshell, the pencil draw plug-in traces the outline of the main shapes and fills in the open areas with a gray shading.

To use this effect, select the area you’d like to change then select Pencil Draw from the filters menu.

Before:

After:

2. Auto Rotate

Auto Rotate is a handy plug-in to fix your photographic faux pas. If you need to straighten a picture quickly this is is what you have been looking for.

All you need to do is trace a  line in the picture using the paths tool. Go to the tools tab and scroll to and click on Auto Rotate.

The middle picture shows the line.

Before:

During:

After:

3. Motivational Poster Maker

I know you have all seen these online, funny pictures with an even funnier caption underneath. This plug-in gives you an easy way to create them.

Load a picture into GIMP. Click on Filter then Moti-Maker. In the pop-up, you can fill in the caption, then add something clever to go in the second line.

Before:

After:

4. Phoca Save Icons

Whether you make icons for your website or your desktop, or you simply need to resize a picture to multiple sizes; this is you will love this plug-in. With one click, you can save your final product to the 8 different sizes listed below at the same time.

- 512 x 512px
- 256 x 256px
- 128 x 128px
- 64 x 64px
- 48 x 48px
- 32 x 32px
- 22 x 22px
- 16 x 16px

5. Draw Arrow

This may seem like a really simple tool. However, if you do not have it in your arsenal of tools, it will be missed.

Using the Path Tool, make a line. The first point will be the head of the arrow, the second is the end of the tail.

When you click the Arrow option in Tools, you will see all kinds of settings to tweak the size and shape of the arrow.

What plugins have you added to GIMP?

Intro image: alternatePhotography
Image credit: missbossy, Dan Dickinson

5 Useful and Fun GIMP Plug-ins originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

CodySafe is a menu app for Portable Applications. This software tool turns any portable drive from a simple data carrier to a computer-on-stick. You can easily organize all your portable applications into a menu where you can access it quickly and easily.

Configure CodySafe USB Drive

1. Download the portable tool CodySafe. Its only 2.08 Mb in size and pretty light-weight too.

2. Insert the drive in the USB port and double-click the application file, to install the app. Follow the guidelines, as instructed during the installation. I would recommend you to select all the tools when prompted to choose.

3. The setup will automatically locate your drive and will ask you to proceed. If you have multiple drives inserted, then please choose the appropriate drive where you want to install CodySafe and proceed.

4. In the final step of installation you will get an option to give your newly created CodySafe Drive a name (optional). Try something new. Press Finish, when done.

Add Programs to Codysafe Dock

Now that you are done installing the CodySafe, you will find an icon in the Windows tray. Click on it and you will see a dock opening. This is the CodySafe Dock. It looks somewhat like the Windows Start Menu. Its empty at the start. Let me show how to fill it up.

I’ll be adding a portable Chromium Browser for demonstrating. Download the portable app and copy the whole pack to a folder named “Program Files” in my USB drive’s root directory.

1. Start CodySafe by clicking its tray icon. As the dock opens, press “Options”.

2. In the Control Panel, click on the section named “Applications Manager”.

4. Now as it opens, go to the tab, “Add Application” and locate the application(chrome.exe) within your USB drive. Use the “Browse” button. Now press the “Apply” button to save the changes.

4. In the “Application Management” tab you can manage your applications. You can also configure CodySafe to auto-start some applications. You can add those in the “Autorun Management” tab.

Others Things Worth Noting :

Find If Lost :

This is a useful feature that creates and saves your identity information in the USB drive as a readme.txt file. So, in case, you have lost your storage device and if someone have found it, they will get to know about its ownership. The Codyssey team (CodySafe developers) offers bounty to the person if he/she returns the drive to you. Well, I do not know, how good this works in reality, but I must say, its obviously a nice initiative.

Disk Doctor :

We are all aware of the fact that, USB drives most generally get infected by some common viruses like, conficker, backdoor trojan etc. This Disk doctor is nice addition to the CodySafe suite which prevents such intrusions. But this is not all, apart from virus protection (ViruSense) it also offers disk diagnosis tools that performs disk check and also attempts for recovery of data from bad sectors if found any.

Codysafe – Carry Your PC Wherever You Go originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

We have spent a great deal of time sourcing these software for all of you. So if you love the list, don’t forget to share it with your friends.

System Monitoring and Maintenance Tools

1. Mactracker – provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported Mac OS versions and many other information.
2. Maintenance – a system maintenance and cleaning utility
3. xMod – a system tweaker that allows you to change some of the hidden settings.
4. iStat Menus – monitor your Mac from the menubar
5. Mini Usage – displays various data like CPU usage, amount of network flow, battery status and process names
6. SMARTReporter – warn you of some hard disk drive failures before they actually happen!
7. Onyx – verify the startup disk and the structure of its system files
8. atMonitor – system monitor and process explorer tool
9. Omni Disk Sweeper – hard disk analyzer
10. Secrets – A database of hidden settings for Mac OS X

System Enhancement Tools

1. Preferences Cleaner – a utility which aims to simplify the task of deleting preference files.
2. Wallsaver – use any screen saver as wallpaper
3. SizeWell – better window resize and zoom options
4. TrimTheFat – remove PPC architecture from applications
5. Lock-UnMatic – unlock locked files
6. QuickBoot – make it quick and easy to boot another drive/partition
7. Hide-unhide – show hidden files
8. Flying Windows – work in single application mode
9. What’s Keeping Me? – empty the Trash or eject a disk
10. BumpTop – 3D desktop

Office Suite/Word Processing/Text Editor

1. OpenOffice.org
2. NeoOffice – a port of OpenOffice
3. IBM Lotus Symphony
4. Siag Office – a free office package for UNIX
5. Beans – a small, easy-to-use rich text editor designed to make writing convenient, efficient and comfortable.
6. Editra – a multi-platform text editor with an implementation that focuses on creating an easy to use interface and features that aid in code development. Currently it supports syntax highlighting and variety of other useful features for over 60 programming languages.
7. TextWrangler – a powerful general purpose text editor, and Unix and server administrator’s tool.
8. Komodo Edit – a free and open source cross-platforms text editor.
9. Smultron – an open source text editor for Mac OS X that is designed for both beginners and advanced users.
10. Aquamacs Emacs – an Editor for Text, HTML, LaTeX, C++, Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, and more

Image Viewer/Image editor

1. GIMP
2. Inkscape – an open source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X
3. LiveQuartz – a simple and powerful free photo editor based on non destructive layers and filters.
4. Phoenix Slide – a fast full-screen slideshow program/image browser, for flipping through folders or disks full of images.
5. Image Trick – a freeware application for editing your photos and images using Mac OS X Core Image filters.
6. DrawBerry – If you don’t want applications such as illustrator or Inkscape and you want to create some simple (or less simple) illustrations, DrawBerry is for you.
7. Paintbrush – a simple paint program for Mac OS X
8. ialterImage – you can, crop, scale, size, rotate, convert and rename a single image or a folder of images by just dropping them on it’s icon.
9. Acorn – an image editor built for the Mac with simplicity in mind. Acorn provides the tools you need to alter and enhance your images, without any overhead.

Software complementing iTunes

1. iTunesShut – shut down your Mac after playing the music
2. BravoTunes – put iTunes on your menubar, with scrolling or stationary track information for both the current and upcoming songs.
3. SizzlingKeys – control iTunes without leaving the current app
4. Get Lyrical – Auto-magically add lyrics to songs in iTunes!
5. Tune.Instructor – informs you about actual track information and allows you to keep a quick access to ratings and further basic functions without having iTunes in the front
6. iTunes Menu – displays the current song artist, name, and/or album right in the menu so you can see what song is currently playing easily.
7. youcontrol: tunes – a simple app that allows you to control iTunes from Menu
8. iTunes Doodad – instantly switch playlists, skip tracks, or pause iTunes, all without using the iTunes interface, or bringing up a pokey Dashboard widget.
9. Bowtie – allows you to control iTunes with shortcuts, submits your songs to Last.fm, and change themes
10. GimmeSomeTune – an application that extends iTunes’ functionality. You can download lyrics and album covers without the user having to do anything

Productivity Tools

1. EasyFind – an alternative to or supplement of Spotlight and finds files, folders or contents in any file without the need for indexing.
2. Quicksilver – A unified, extensible interface for working with applications, contacts, music, and other data.
3. Think – enables you to get back to what you should focus, and get back to thinking.
4. Isolator – When you’re working on a document, and don’t want to be distracted, turn on Isolator. It will cover up your desktop and all the icons on it, so you can concentrate on the task in hand.
5. Spark – a powerful, and easy Shortcuts manager.
6. FlyGesture – use your mouse to control a single action, or chains of actions such as opening applications.
7. KeyRemap4MacBook – Remap your Mac shortcut key to your own preferences.
8. MagicPrefs – useful preferences for magic mouse
9. Self Control – an application which blocks access to mail servers and websites for a predetermined period of time, keep you focus on your work.
10. Caffeine – prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers.
11. Spirited Away – Spirited Away checks each running application’s activity, and if an application isn’t active for a certain fixed time, Spirited Away hides the application automatically.
12. Task Till Dawn – a free task scheduler which can execute your repetitive tasks at specified times or intervals.
13. App QuitTimer – Quit any application automatically using a time delay of your choice.
14. iSofa – remote control your Mac with your iPhone/iPod Touch
15. MacTimer – a free all-purpose timer app for Mac.

Backup and Synchronization Tools

1. Carbon copy cloner – create a carbon clone of your hard drive.
2. iBackup – iBackup backs up the data, system and applications settings of a user.
3. Sync!Sync!Sync! – helps you to make copies of your data by synchronizing two folders.
4. Fruux – a lightweight and convenient system preference pane, that syncs your Address Book, Calendars, Tasks and Bookmarks between different Macs
5. Filesync – a simple utility for updating copies of your current work.
6. Backuplist+ – a powerful backup application that is simple for novice users and offers many choices for the more advanced user.
7. WinClone – Clone your XP/Vista bootcamp partition
8. SilverKeeper – automates backups to external storage devices
9. MozyHome – Backup your data to online server.
10. MaBuRe (English translation)– Backup mail.app and Thunderbird

Instant Messaging

1. Adium – the most popular IM client in Mac
2. Nimbuzz – another popular IM client. Support multi IM protocol.
3. Messenger for Mac – access native MSN in Mac
4. Canary – a Twitter client that is beautifully designed, fun to use and has everything you’ll ever need.
5. ChatX – a collection of minor modifications and additions that make using Apple’s iChat more enjoyable.
6. Yoono Desktop – an easy to use application that allows you to connect to all your social networks and instant messaging services

Archiving Tools

1. Slices – an application that allows you to split and combine files.
2. TarPit – allows you to easily create tar archives by drag and drop
3. The Unarchiver – is designed to handle many more formats than the default Archive tool in Mac, and to better fit in with the design of the Finder.
4. 7zX – a file archiver with high compression ratio
5. YemuZip – an easy-to-use application for making zip files. Just drag, drop, name your zip file and you’re done.

Screen Capture Tools

1. SimpleCap – Quick, easy and powerful Screenshot utility. SimpleCap runs on menubar.
2. Capture Me – a flexible screen capture and recording utility for Mac OS X which features a floating capture window, several saving options, and resize ability.
3. Skitch + Skitch.com – Skitch.com is a webservice that works hand in hand with Skitch to give you 1-click uploading of images for fast and fun image sharing.
4. Jing – a popular application that allows you to take screenshots, screencast, edit them and share them instantly over the Web.
5. InstantShot – offers classical screenshot functionality for capturing the whole screen, a portion of it or a window and also the option to make timed screenshots or to make delayed captures over time.
6. SnapNDrag – lets you take a screenshot by just clicking a button and dragging the resulting screenshot off.

Uninstaller Tools

1. AppCleaner – a small application which allows you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.
2. AppTrap – when you move an application to the trash, you’re automatically asked if you want to move the associated preference files as well.
3. DesInstaller – a simple tool that reads the receipts generated when you install a pkg file with Apple’s Installer. Every file installed by this package is removed, even if it has been modified, and archived if you ask the DesInstaller to.
4. Permanent Eraser – provides an even stronger level of security by overwriting your data thirty-five times, scrambles the original file name, and truncates the file size to nothing before Permanent Eraser finally unlinks it from the system.

Desktop Note taking app

1. SlidePad – a convenient note-taking application that allows you to unobtrusively take notes without ever leaving your keyboard.
2. Sidenotes – appears in the form of a multi-document drawer that will hide in the corner of your screen (left or right).
3. JustNotes – a simple, beautiful and powerful notes app.
4. QuickNotes – a combined stickies and clipboard manager, useful to quickly jot down ideas and todos, store quotes, code snippets or whatever.
5. MacNote3 – a light-weight and fast notepad for Mac OS X

Image credit: cgauthier2112

100 Free Software For Mac OS X originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Choosing a Linux Distro

There are a few criteria to look at when deciding exactly which to go with. We’ll want something fairly small, runs well from USB, auto-detects local hard drives, and able to work with a persistence file so we can save our new programs and updates directly to the USB stick.

I’d recommend Crunchbang Linux. It meets all of the above criteria, it’s Ubuntu-based, and it’s just a very slick distro that would work well for this purpose. Also, whichever distro you decide, choose the 32 bit option. Your computer may be 64-bit ready but Cousin Stan’s might not, and we need this software to be as portable as possible.

Installing Linux to USB

This is a topic we’ve covered before at MakeTechEasier, both for Windows with Lili USB Creator and Linux with UNetbootin.

Of the two, I’d actually recommend Lili, the Windows software, to create your USB stick. Lili makes it easy to create a persistence file so your changes can be saved on the USB stick so you won’t have to reinstall and update your AV every time you use it.

Linux Antivirus Software

A number of commercial and independent AV vendors make Linux versions, with various amounts of hassle and levels of functionality. A few of the more well known ones include…

We’ll be using Clam Antivirus because it’s the simplest install, requires no registration, and does an excellent job of detecting and removing infected files. It should be available for download for just about any Linux system from the Clam website or your distro’s online repositories. Ubuntu users can also install it by clicking here.

Running the Scan

For starters, you’ll want to run an update once Clam is installed so that our scan will have the newest virus definitions. To do this, open a command prompt and run

sudo freshclam

While there is a GUI called Clamtk available for download, we’ll be using the command line interface. This is because Clamtk lacks some of the configuration options that we’ll be passing to the antivirus.

To run the scan we’ll need to know a few things. First is the location that you intend to scan. If you’re scanning a Windows drive from a live Linux system as intended, you can find this by clicking that drive from the left pane of your file browser and looking at the path shown in the address bar.

Then we’ve got a few options we may want to pass to Clam regarding how to perform the scan. Some options worth considering are:

-r                   #perform recursive scan - good for a whole drive
--exclude=.mp3       #set exclusion pattern to skip things like music and videos
--scan-mail=yes/no   #include mail files in system scan
--remove=yes/no      #delete infected files, yes or no.  Careful with this.

So when you’re ready, your full command will look something like this:

clamscan -r --exclude=.avi --remove=yes /media/disk

When all’s said and done, you’ll get a fairly detailed report.

If all went well, you’re set until next time Stan clicks a popup.

How to Remove Windows Viruses with Linux originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

OpenShot is a non-linear video editor for Linux. It can easily combine multiple video clips, audio clips, and images into a single project, and then export the video into many common video formats. Things that you can do with OpenShot include creating photo slide shows, edit home videos, create television commercials and on-line films, or anything else you can dream up.

Installing

There are several ways to install OpenShot in your Linux machine. If you are using Ubuntu Karmic, you can add the repository and install from the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonoomph/openshot-edge
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openshot openshot-docs

There is also deb/rpm installer and also a LiveDVD. You can even compile from source if you want to.

Usage

Open OpenShot from Applications -> Sound and Video -> OpenShot Video Editor

Import in your video/picture/audio files.

Drag the required files to the timeline at the bottom. Move them around to the desire position.

Click on the Transition tab. Drag your favorite transition effects to the timeline.

At the timeline toolbar, select either the Razor, Resize or Snapping icon to manipulate the video effects.

Click the Play button to preview your creation.

Once you are happy, go to File -> Export to Video. You can now select the format that you want to export the video to. There are two tabs: Simple and Advanced. The Simple tab contains the pre-configured setting for some of the popular format, including BlueRay, DVD, Device and Web.

In the Advanced tab, you will be able to customize the video/audio format and quality.

Click Export Video to complete the process.

Other Features

Image sequencing

You can either import images sequence based on the filename pattern or you can export your video into a series of images. What it will do is to take a snapshot of each video frame and save them as PNG file.

Support for multiple timelines (akin to layers in Photoshop)

You can add/remove as many timelines as you want. Each timeline can be used for different purposes: 1 for background audio, 1 for video, 1 for transition effects, 1 for watermark etc.

Support many video, audio and image formats

Thanks to FFmpeg, OpenShot is able to support all multimedia formats that are supported by FFmpeg. Unless you are using some weird out of the world codec, the video format you are using are most likely to be available in OpenShot.

Digital video effects

Other than the transition effects, OpenShots also include various digital video effects like brightness, gamma, hue, greyscale, chroma key (bluescreen / greenscreen). One thing that I like about this is that they are easy to use and you can easily and quickly produce a great video without any skill or experience.

Conclusion

If you are looking at this software from an expert point of view, OpenShot is not definitely not up to par with professional video editing tool like Final Cut Pro or Cinelerra. However if you just want a simple, easy to use video editor that comes with plenty of useful features, then OpenShot will be the one for you.

OpenShot – An Easy-to-use Video Editor For the Average Linux User originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

TotalFinder is a free application that adds tabs to your native Finder. It is still in alpha mode only works in Snow Leopard.

After the installation, you will immediately see your Finder in a Google Chrome like interface. You will also notice a new icon for the Finder app. Yes, a sunglass wearing Finder. Look cool, isn’t it?

Add and manage tabs like Google Chrome

TotalFinder was coded using the Chromium codebase, so it is no surprise that it looks and functions like Google Chrome. You can open a tab (by clicking the +) and move your tabs around by clicking and dragging it. You can also drag the tab out of the Finder window to open it in a new Finder window. Similarly, drag the tab from one window to another to combine them into one window.

Keyboard shortcut such as Ctrl + Tab to cycle through the tab is also available.

One thing that is still lacking is the availability of a “Open in new tab” option in the context menu. In addition, middle-clicking of the mouse to open in new tab does not work as well.

Support for Visor

With the support for Visor, you can now assign a custom shortcut key and call TotalFinder up whenever you want. There are also several animations effects that you can play with.

.DS_Store support

Ever been frustrated that Finder create a .DS_Store file in almost all the folders in your Finder? Now you can have more control over this and send a redirect to the cache folder instead of getting it to create a .DS_Store file. You can also prevent it for creating a .DS_Store file in all remote network drive.

Tweaks - Toggling hidden files

Of all the tweaks, “Show Hidden Files” is my favorite. In the original Finder, there is no way for you to view hidden files. The only way is to go to the terminal and type in command line to edit the plist. With TotalFinder, you can now get it to show hidden files quickly and easily. One thing though, you have to restart your Finder to activate the “Show Hidden Files” function.

Uninstaller

This software also comes with an uninstaller that allows you to remove it easily.

Conclusion

For a product still in alpha mode, I would say it is pretty impressive. Of course it is not bug free, but I am sure that can be iron out when it reach the final release. One thing though, TotalFinder is currently free for its alpha mode. According to the developer, it will not be free anymore once it reaches beta (and final release). There is no mention of the costing at the moment. Meanwhile you can use and enjoy it while you can.

TotalFinder Adds Tabs Functionality to Your Finder in Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Picture Stitching

Picture stitching allows you to take a screen capture of a full webpage or at least more page than can be viewed on a screen with out scrolling. The way it works is by pressing the default hot key combo of Ctrl + Shift + Print. A selection window appears; stretch it to fill the area you want to capture minus the side scroll bar. Once the area is selected, using the browser scroll bar, scroll down a little at a time, making sure to stop periodically. The screens need to overlap so the software knows where to stitch the pages together.

Editing

One of the features I was really happy to see was the built in editing window. It can do the basics like resize and crop. Some of the additional features that set Screepresso apart are things such as:

Annotation

Some applications have basic markup tools, this application is not all that different there. You can add shapes like circles, an ellipse, squares and arrows. What IS different, is the resizing of the shape. As simple as it sounds, this is a nice touch. Instead of clicking undo and repositioning the arrow, you can grab either end and move it. The same can be done with the other shapes as well.

Blur Tool

This feature caught me by surprise. Normally, I would use some sort of image editor to blur out personal information in a screen capture. By having this feature built into the screen capture program, it saves steps and therefore saves time.

Numbering

Numbering is not something I personally use a lot. However, there are times when there are needs to place numeric place markers on the captured screen. If you are making an owners manual or giving feedback on a website for example, this would be extremely useful.

Text

Adding text can be done in two ways; the standard text box or a text balloon (think comic book text bubble). Again, this is handy if you are adding comments and need the words to point at something specific. Sure you could use an arrow then add a text box to the tail of the arrow. This is just a cleaner looking way.

Resizing

Like many other apps, basic resizing is available. The coolness in this application is, you can set it to auto resize and are given a multitude of selections to do so. When you are in the edit window, click on the image tab. If you choose the maximum width setting for example, any screen capture will automatically be reduced to that width.

Sharing

Once you have everything marked up and ready for people to see, you are given the option to send to Twitter. If you would rather not tweet it and send it via email, you can simply drag it into your desktop email program. If you are using web based email such as Yahoo or Gmail, you can brag the file onto your desktop and attach it to your email like normal.

Pro Version

Right now, there is only a free version. It does however look as though a pro version is in the works. Right now it looks like the features they list on the comparison grid are all the same. In the settings window are grayed out tabs for audio and video capture. I did not see a specific mention about these features only accessible in the pro option, but I would venture to guess that will be what happens.

How much time will an all-in-one program like this save you?

Screenpresso: A Powerful All-in-one Screen Capture Tool originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)