Quick Cliq makes a minor adjustment to something you already do hundreds of times a day. By using a slight variation of how you currently use the right-click menu, you can save a lot of time and clicks.

How-to use Quick Cliq

There are a couple ways you can activate Quick Cliq. The first is by holding the right-click button and dragging up, down, left or right about an inch. This will open one of several windows. The most used is probably the main menu which is dragging down.

The other way you can activate the different features in Quick Cliq is by using keyboard hotkeys. If you primarily use a notebook, you are likely using a lot of shortcuts already. You can create personalized hotkey combinations or use the defaults. Windows key + Z opens the main menu.

What can you add to your right click menu?

You can easily add any file, folder or system applications to your menus. I use the calculator and my Dropbox folder all the time, so I added both of those right away. If you want to organize the menu, you can add separators and sub-folders. By taking a little time to organize, you can really customize the contextual menu to your needs.

Setting up your shortcuts

The setup is really easy. Once you have the options menu open, you can add things to your personalized menu by dragging the file or folder into the main window.

Alternatively, you can add an application, files or folders by using the buttons and drop downs. This way takes a bit longer, but is also the easiest way I saw to add an application like the Windows Control Panel.

1. On the right side of the window, you can click on Item, Menu or Separ in the create box.

2. Near the bottom right, you will see a target bar and a drop down with Choose type next to it. In the drop down you can choose what you want to add.

3. You will see a pop-up with the files or folders or whatever you chose. Pick the item you want to open or start from your personalized right-click menu.

4. If you would like to create a hotkey combo, you can do so on the left of the window.

5. Press OK and you are all set.

Examples of how to use Quick Cliq

As I mentioned, I use my Dropbox folder a lot. Usually I am working on a specific project. Because of this, I am loading and accessing files in a specific folder a lot. I can quickly add a shortcut to my clients folder or even the specific project I am working on for that client.

Email

If you use a desktop email application like Thunderbird or Outlook, you can create an email template and invoke it from your new right-click menu. This is ideal if you need to reply to emails repetitively asking the same questions or giving the same answers.

URLs

By setting up a few URLs in your Quick Cliq menu, you can quickly open up your default browser and jump right to the site with less clicks and typing.

Folders

Being able to jump right to the depths of the labyrinth of folders you use to organize things will greatly save you time. I like to have shortcuts to specific folders I am using at that time.

If you want to, you can add separators and sub folders to help you keep things grouped in a way you will use. To use the sub-folders, you need to start a new Menu item in the main window.

Applications

Applications can also be started from your new right-click menu. System apps like calculator or control panel are 2 things I access regularly. There is a pretty long list of applications that you can choose from.

Even something like an easy access utilities menu consisting of Control Panel, Disk Cleanup Utility, Task Manager and a few others would be handy at times.

Conclusion

In the short time I have been using Quick Cliq, I have been a lot less irritated while using my Windows-based netbook. I haven’t dug deep into the  memo or utilized the recent clip option either. Try them and let me know what you think.

What are your tips for better efficiency?

image lytebyte

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How to set up Predator

1. Download Predator and install it.

2. Now insert in a freshly formatted flash drive.

3. You will now get to see the “Preferences” window for the tool. You can now set it up based on your requirements or consult the following screenshots for the references.

4. Once you have properly configured the preferences for the tool, go down to the “Flash Drive” section that can be found in the “Main Options” tab. Now press the button “Create key” to create the key. You can see the “Creation in progress…” during the process and “Creation Complete” once its done.

How to enable the guard

Once everything is done you will be asked to restart Predator to enable monitoring (only necessary in the first run). After you restart the application, you will notice a (animated) green bubble in the notification area. You will notice the bubble going red at times notifying the key has been accessed. That is all. You are all set to test the app.

How Predator works

Remove the flash drive now and wait for a while as your PC screen turns complete black. This means that your PC is now locked. You can go around and have your lunch break (without worrying about your boss checking your PC for your secret job applications :) or your colleague simply trying to get a look at your project file). Be sure to carry the flash drive safe in your pocket.

Once you are ready to log in, insert the flash drive and wait. A login screen flashes in where a timer (20 seconds) is running and an password field is present. Enter your password that you used while creating the key and hit enter. If the password is right, you get logged into your PC with all windows (you were working on) minimized.

What if the password is not right? That’s when someone else is trying to log in. Right? That’s when Predator throws a movie-style “Access Denied” screen with an awkwardly irritating intruder alert which is enough to alert you.

How to disable the tool

This is pretty simple. All you have to do is right click on the notification area icon and click “Pause Monitoring” and you will notice the bubble has turned yellow (with no animation).

NOTE: To use this option you have to enable pausing in the tool “Preferences”. To do that open “Preferences”, go to “Advanced Options” tab and select the checkbox named “Enable Pause”.

Other advanced features

Predator has also got one professional version (worth $29) which supports many other features like Twitter Log (that notifies you of any breach via direct message in Twitter, enabling you to keep track of your machine from a remote location), SMS and email alerts, multiple keys and many more.

WORD OF CAUTION :

Two things to be taken care of in Predator are,

1. Be sure to remember the password. You can disable the password check if you have a tendency to forget password. Open “Preferences”, go to Main Options tab and uncheck the checkbox “Always Required” under “Password” field. Disabling this doesn’t mean that the protection is not there. The USB key is still valid i.e without the USB the computer is still inaccessible.

2. I noticed my laptop keyboard wasn’t working when I tried to enter the password to log in using the flash drive. But using an USB keyboard, I was able to enter the password. I do not know if the problem happened for me only but I think you should know about it.

If you are overly concerned about your PC security, this tool is definitely worth paying price for. For me, I am pretty happy with the features offered by the free version.

If you know of any such software that serves the similar purpose, share with us. And also if you face any problem regarding this software let us know.

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Wine-Doors is an application designed to make installing windows software on Linux, Solaris or other Unix systems easier. Wine-Doors is built on top of the Wine package, and it provides a easy to use GUI with a one click access to download/install the most commonly used Windows app.

Download the installer file from the Wine-Doors download site. If you are using Ubuntu, download the deb file. Double click on the downloaded deb file to install it in your system.

Open the Wine-Doors application (Applications -> System Tools -> Wine Doors)

When you run it for the first time, it will prompt you to enter your name and company and verify that you have a valid Microsoft Windows license.

Once you click Proceed, it will then download and install a series of compatible font to your system.

When the installation is done, you will see the main screen where you can choose a series of applications to install.

Applications that you can install right within Wine-Doors include:

• Visual C++ Libraries
• Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 (anyone know why is there a need to install a older windows version of Firefox in your Linux?)
• Internet Explorer 6
• Opera 9
• Quicktime 7
• Winamp5
• Windows Media Player 6 and 9
• 7zip 4
• DVD Decrypter 3
• Dreamweaver 8
• Flash 8
• Total Commander 7
• Eudora 7
• CDex 1
• 3DMark 2000
• MetaTrader 4 (Forex trading platform)
• Notepad++ 4
• Irfan View 4

And even some games:

• Soldat
• Prey
• Steam
• Half Life 2
• World of Warcraft 2
• Warcraft 3
• Call of Duty
• RollerCoaster Tycoon2

and many other applications. If the list of applications is not sufficient for you, you can also add extra repository to it.

Scroll down the list to find the application that you want to install. Click on the Install link on the right to add it to the Queue section. (Note: Clicking the Install link does not install the app. It only adds to the Queue)

Go to the Queue section.

Highlight the applications that you want to install and click Apply at the bottom. Wine-Doors will then proceed to download the applications from its repository and run the installer.

Once the installation is completed, you will be able to access it from your menu bar.

If you install commercial Adobe apps like Dreamweaver 8 or Photoshop CS2, Wine-Doors will download the demo version (valid only for 30 days) and you need to have a license key to unlock it. Dreamweaver CS3 is not available in the repository (perhaps it is because it doesn’t work out of the box), nevertheless you can still follow the tutorial here to install Dreamweaver CS3 in Ubuntu.

Other features

Manage Wine processes

Wine-Doors allows you to view all the currently running Wine processes and give you the option to kill all processes or reboot wine. This is useful for resetting/terminating an application when it crashes.

Support Cedega

If you are a subscriber of Cedega, you can import your Profiles into Wine-Doors and install game from here.

No uninstaller

Unlike CrossOver, Wine-Doors does not provide a way to uninstall the applications. If you are looking for ways to uninstall applications, you have to do it the Wine way:

Open a terminal and type:

wine uninstaller

You can then select the applications that you want to uninstall.

Refer to the guide here to uninstall applications in Wine.

Have you tried WINE, CrossOver and Wine-Doors. Which one do you prefer?

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This handy addition to your software toolbox offers the ability to download YouTube videos in multiple file formats which include .flv, .avi and .mp4.

One of the nice features of this downloader is that it gives you the option to download in High Definition formats if they are available on the site.  In this short tutorial, I’ll show you how to download a YouTube video with this easy to use software application.

To demo the YouTube Downloader HD product, I decided to download a copy of one of my favorite amateur videos – How to be Ninja.  This comical home video sets out to show you what it takes to be a ninja, which is the ultimate goal of any geek.

You can get started by launching the YouTube Downloader HD application.  As you can seen in the screen capture below, the interface is very straight-forward.  Within the main window, you can select the download type, set the video URL, select a save location, update the application, and control the download process.

The default download type is AVI, and I would recommend that setting for the average user – unless an HD version is available and you require high def resolutions.  Copy the URL of the video you wish to download from the address bar in your browser and paste it into the Video URL field.  The default save location is your documents folder, however I changed mine to my Desktop for the sake of this demo.

Once you have your settings adjusted to your liking, click the Start button, located in the lower right corner of the app.  The options in the window will become disabled and the progress bar will begin to increase.

Eventually, when the download completes, you will get the following prompt and the status bar will indicate that downloading has finished.

That’s all there is to it.  Now you can navigate to your download folder and play the video in your favorite media player software whenever you want.  If you want to check for updates to the application, simply click the Update button located on the right-hand side of the window.

Download your copy today!

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What is WINE?

WINE stands for Wine Is Not Emulator. Here is what it is about:

“Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris.”

Still don’t understand? What it simply means is that with Wine, you can basically install and run your Windows applications (though not all of them) on your Linux platform. All the supported applications are documented at the Wine Application Database (AppDB). At this moment, there are 8237 Windows applications in the AppDB verified to run under Wine, and it includes some of the popular software such as Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver 8, World of Warcraft, Starcraft and Microsoft Office 2000.

(Click the screenshot to enlarge) Sources from WineHQ

To install Windows application, you must first install Wine on your Linux platform.

To install Wine under Ubuntu Gutsy, open up your terminal,

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install wine

Once installed, you need to configure the Wine “C:” drive to link to an easily accessible folder. First create a “Drive C” folder in your home folder. In your terminal, type

winecfg

In the window that popped up, click on the “Drives” tab. Click on the letter C:, then follow by the “Browse” button. Navigate to your “Drive C” folder and press “OK”. Once done, press the “OK” again to close the window.

Now you are ready to install your Windows application. Here I will install my favorite text editor – PsPad with Wine

In your terminal, type

winefile

or go to System -> Preference -> WineFile. In the window that appears, navigate to the folder with your installer file.

Double click on the installer file.

Follow the instruction and install the application the way you did in Windows

After installation, open the winefile again and navigate to your “C:” Drive Program file folder. Under your application folder, double click on the .exe file to execute the application.

Done!

Here are some useful resources on Wine

http://winehq.org/
http://frankscorner.org/

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