Posts

But first, how would you know if an system has hung? The three cardinal symptoms are the spinning beach ball, increased CPU usage and systemic unresponsiveness. So the first option when faced with a frozen or unresponsive utility is to kill it. Not literally, of course! We can make a run at kill or “terminate” the program. Usually, by forcing an software to quit, we lose any unsaved work. Waiting for the program to resolve itself is a better alternative if you could afford the time....

Related My mother and I have a tradition. Video file merging can be done easily and quickly with a piece of free open source software calledVirtualDub. VirtualDub is the video equivalent ofAudacity. It’s worth taking some time to explore VirtualDub in depth if you’re serious about video footage editing. I use VirtualDub, for example, to edit my videos after filming on my video camera. Today I am going to show you how to merge two or more video files together....

Audacity is used to cut the MP3 down. Your average MP3 is around 3 minutes in length and is around 3 megabytes in size. So here’s how to edit your MP3 using Audacity. I chose the first 60 seconds. You may want more, you may want less. But be honest, when your phone rings, how long do you wait before you pick up? Do you really need more than 60 seconds?...

Related It is no secret that I LOVE me some SysInternal Tools. I have coveredAutoRunshere at MakeUseOf.com and a ton of others over at my website. Since Microsoft bought Sysinternals there have been some really cool new tools. The newest one on the scene is Virtual Desktop Manager. Virtual Desktop Manager might be a foreign concept to Windows users. It is a simple 384kb download that gives you multiple, easy to switch to desktops....

Related I have used many different email addresses in my 10+ years on the Internets. I started with a email address from Brooklyn College, moved on to Hotmail and then several custom domains. I would ping-pong between different corporate emails and amusingly geeky personal ones. But being an Admin by profession I have kept all mycraptastic forwardsgeektacular jokes"Historical Emails". I have folders with email messages dating back to 1996. Now I try and stay neat and productive, creating necessary folders for projects or contacts....

Related Even though I’m not much of a photo person, I do manage my photos. I also have a Flickr account but therewasonly 3 photos inside it. Then comesJetPhoto Studio, an all-in-one photo tool (available for Mac and Windows). This tool is a bit unknown because developed by Chinese programmer. But unknown doesn’t mean bad because this app has tons of good features. What’s Inside The JetPhoto? It also let user manage their photos by dates - which to many people is easier....

Related Have you ever wanted to create your own wiki site? Maybe something likeWikipediabut on a smaller scale? Wikis are often used to createcollaborativewebsitesand to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopediaWikipediais one of the best-known wikis. “Wiki” (/wiEkiE/) is originally aHawaiianword for “fast”. It has been suggested that “wiki” means “What I Know Is”. [4]However, this is abackronym. “Wiki Wiki” is areduplicationof the same word. Now why would you want to create your own wiki?...

Related Have you ever wanted to send sensitive information to someone else over the internet? I’m sure you must’ve felt a little paranoid about your details getting stolen along the way. Ever wished there was a way to send messages across to a friend without others knowing? Or even not having the slightest hint that you’re sending a secret message? Magicians often use this method to distract their audiences away from what is really happening – it’s calledmisdirection....

Related In the previous installments we discovered the two major real estate search engines,Realtor.comand Craigslist. Yahoo Real Estate puts a different spin on things. Remember that Realtor.com is Realtorcontrolled and Craigslist is totally uncontrolled, except by the community and system moderators. So you end up with a pretty good representation of what is available from real estate professionals. Let’s choose the top one and see what we can learn about the property....

But there are some drawbacks to installing with Wubi. burned and booted from the CD). So, the other option is to useUNetbootin. It then makes your flash drive bootable, and makes it behave just like a regular Ubuntu CD. Download UNetbootinhere, insert your flash drive, and spin up the program you downloaded. Then hit OK and let the program work its magic. Once it’s done, head to the next step....

Related It may sound like a threat, but the internet is not quite everywhere, yet. So what do you do when there’s no internet available to you? First, take a deep breath! The answer is actually quite simple. You plan ahead and take the internet with you. Or at least parts of it. I have two alternatives for you, and I will start with the smaller solution. ScrapBookis a Firefox addon that integrates with the Firefox Navigation toolbar....

Related Today we will be taking a look at nCleaner. It is a free Windows system cleaning utility. All for the low, low price of free… Who could say no to all of that? That is enough to keep any geek busy for an evening. These tools include: Wow that sure is a mouthful! With nCleaner you might free up to 2 GB of unnecessary disk space. Those are some pretty awesome claims, don’t you think?...

Now how about we look into what your machine does when it starts up? Both of these tools shows you what starts up with Windows and allows you to change it. AutoRuns just has a lot more options to help you out than its Microsoft predecessor. Some stuff is necessary but others are not. Why shouldn’t we be in control of what our machine starts up and when? Of course we should!...