via Wikipedia

With all the less pleasant verdicts about Vista, Windows 7 is perhaps PC users’ next best news. Codenamed Blackcomb, this new Microsoft operating system is surely a successor over it’s predecessor Windows XP and definitely Vista. With Microsoft to end their support for Windows XP in 2014, we figured Windows 7 will be completely taking over things in the next year or so.

If you are a Windows users it’s probably time for a change, or at least tryout this new operating system. Here are some shortcut keys to help improve your productivity and user experience with Windows 7. Full list after jump.

General Windows 7 Shortcuts

Shortcuts for Ease of Access

For: Windows Explorer

For: Taskbar Modifiers

For: Dialog Box

For: Photo Gallery

Logging In And Out Windows 7

Providing printscreens or screen captures is probably one of the easiest way to discuss, understand and deliver any information over the Internet. Major operating systems like Windows and MacOSX comes with default keyboard shortcuts to perform screen capturing, but are you using them to the fullest?

Looking for more keyboard shortcuts? Here’s some you might be interested:

• Keyboard shortcut for Photoshop CS2 Toolsbox
• 100 Windows Keyboard shortcuts
• 80 Keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Outlook

Full content after jump.

Windows Printscreen Shortcuts

By default, there isnt too much option in doing screen capture but enough to get the basic job done. Here are the keyboard shortcuts to do screen capture (printscreen) in Windows.

• PrtScn – The Print Screen button will save the entire screen in clipboard. You will then need to further edit it in some image editing programs or Microsoft Words.
• Alt + PrnScn – By holding Alt key while pressing PrtScn button, it captures only the active window. That means the window screen currently in view.

Windows Vista

Together with Windows Vista, an utility call Snipping Tool was introduced. It gives much more flexibility for screen capturing. Learn how to use Sniping Tool.

Mac Printscreen Shortcuts

Mac OSX covers more different ways to do screen capturing. It allows you to print screen active/non-active windows, full screen and selective area.

The following screen capture shortcuts print and output images on desktop in the format of .PNG (Portable Network Graphics)

• Command + Shift + 3 – Prints the entire screen, everything inside your monitor screen.
• Command + Shift + 4 – Prints the screen according to user selection. By using the following shortcut, your cursor will turned into a cross-hair and allows you to select the area you want to capture.
• Command + Shift + 4 then Space – By holding down Command + Shift + 4, your cursor will turn to cross-hair. Then hit the space bar once it will turned to a camera icon. This allows you to capture any opened windows, regardless of active or hiding behind.

If you want your screen capture to be kept in clipboard so you can paste them in image editing tools (eg. Photoshop) instead of output as .PNG, just include Control while using the shortcut.

• Control + Command + Shift + 3 – Captures entire screen, hold image in clipboard.
• Control + Command + Shift + 4 – Captures screen according to user selection, hold image in clipboard.

Changing the output format

By default, Mac outputs screen captures in .PNG (Portable Network Graphics) format if you did not include ‘Control’. If you prefer JPG, GIF, TIFF over the default .PNG, here’ how you can it manually. Launch Mac’s Terminal and insert these 2 commands.

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
killall SystemUIServer

The above commands change your output to .JPG. Simply change that to any format you want. Remember to include the second command ‘killall SystemUIServer‘ that basically does the restarting to make sure your changes will work.

Assuming that you have plenty of accounts for emails, social networks, ftp accounts, banking services, Instant Messaging and etc. Technically you might be able to register a same ID for all of these accounts but we bet you are not using only 1 password to access all of them.

You determine the most appropriate passwords for particular accounts but the problem is – “how do you remember all of them?” For this, you can try KeePass.

Before we’re diving in, you might be interested in our previous privacy security related articles:

• How to Hide Folders More Efficiently in Windows
• How to Delete / Erase Sensitive Files Permanently
• How to Encrypt Data or Files
• How to Clear All Traces of Your Internet Activity
• How to Hide Confidential Hard Disk Drive In Windows
• How to Encrypt USB Flash Drive
• Generate Unique and Pronounceable Password – Xyzzy

What is KeePass

KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. It allows you to put all your password is a lockable encrypted database. To unlock the encrypted database, you only need one master key or a key file.

Besides being FREE, it is very simple to use without bells and whistles. Alternatively you can use key files. Key files provide better security than master passwords in most cases. You only have to carry the key file with you, for example on a USB stick, or you can burn it onto a CD.

Other bonus features like strong security, portable, easy database transfer, multi-language support and support of password groups are provided too.

Download KeePass Password Safe (1.3Mb)

Getting a solid good password is important, that’s a no-brainer. However really making your password unbreakable, that’s the hard part. So what makes a strong password?

A strong password should contain:

• Regenerated frequently
• Do not contain personal information (DOB, phone numbers, Identity Card numbers, spouse’s name)
• Not easily guessed, and yet
• Easily remembered

For the reasons above, we found a free tool – Xyzzy, which able to provide you a strong password with the above 4 elements.

For your information, Xyzzy is a pronounceable password generator which able to create a password as random as possible, but still easy to type and remember.

Without doubt, pronounceable passwords are easy to remember. The passwords generated by Xyzzy are more secure simply because they are not dictionary words. A number can also be randomly added to increase the passwords strength against brute force attacks.

Download Xyzzy for free!

• MacOS 9 and MacOS X
• MS Windows

For the maximum security of files on your computer, it is essential to have a powerful encryption tool. A powerful encryption tool means it must at least provides several encryption algorithms and smart handling.

For this, Blowfish Advanced CS does a good job is cryptographic implementations. In short, Blowfish Advanced CS is a file-encryption solution which offers multiple algorithms, efficient data compression, and safe key handling for content protection.

Blowfish Advanced CS is an advance encryption tool but still very handy and user friendly. It actually encrypts megabytes of data per second and allows data compression at the same time.

So if you’re looking for a free encryption tool with powerful features, try Blowfish Advanced CS.

Download Blowfish Advanced CS

[Windows only] Duplicate images are redundancy and they causes extra hard disk storage space. Find and delete them manually is tedious and requires absolute patient. Imagine all the searching, compare and delete. Dup Detector in a Windows software developed by William L. Hunt that can detect and delete duplicate images intelligently.

But how does Dup Detector manage to find the duplicates? Here’s the recipe:

Dup Detector creates a data file by opening and reading image pixel data for each image in your collection. It then finds duplicates by % match and displays matching pairs from a log file.

Dup Detector supports checking on these following image file formats – jpg, bmp, png, tif, pcx, tga, wmf, emf, psp. It’s free, so you don’t have to pay a penny to clear some extra space for your hard disk.

Download Dup Detector.

One of the biggest obstacles for web designers/developers (or at least for me) is to cater our interface for those who are still using Internet Explorer 6 and below. Whether we like it or not, there’s still a big crowd out there hanging on IE6 or worst, IE 5.5 and IE 5.

To develop and test on these outdated browsers, it’s tedious. Here’s how you can install different versions of Internet Explorer (let it be IE3, IE4, IE5, IE5.5, E6 or IE7) on Windows, Mac and Windows.

IE3, IE4, IE5, IE5.5, IE6 on Windows – MultipleIEs

MultipleIEs allows you to install all different version of IEs, except IE7 on Windows. Everything works with a little bit of drawbacks:

• Developer tool bar from Microsoft WILL NOT work in IE6.
• Sometimes IE5, IE5.5 and IE6 crash unexpectedly.
• Multiple IE doesn’t work on Windows Vista.

Download MultipleIEs

IE7 (Standalone version) on Windows

MultipleIEs did not come with IE7, to add IE7, download Internet Explorer standalone Installer.

IE5, IE5.5, IE6 on Mac – ies4osx

The better alternative to install Internet Explorer on Mac is to use Parallel, VMWare, or any other application that allows you to install Windows on Mac. However if you are not ready to pay just to get IE running on your Mac, try ies4osx. It’s supports running IE5, IE5.5, IE6 on Mac. Read more about ies40sx.

IE5, IE5.5, IE6 on Linux

Folks at simplehelp has a step to step guide on installing different version of IE on Ubuntu Linux using IEs4Linux. Click here to read more.

[Windows only] When it comes to uploading files online, it’s either shell commands or select -> drag & drop to ftp applications. Rightload is kinda the otherwise, it allows you to preset the upload destination and you can then browse to and upload within one click. [Watch a demo video]

Rightload requires an initial effort, which is creating and organizing all possible upload destination. And when it’s done, it really makes uploading files to server/web hosting account effortless. Rightload is a freeware, but donations are welcomed.

Download Rightload now.

With the storage capacity of a USB flash/thumb drive growing rapidly fast, it’s no longer just for file storage. Instead, people are installing OS (Operating System) into it. LiveUSB Creator is a cross-platform tool that makes installing operating systems on USB flash drives easy. It’s free and it runs on both Windows and Linux. Click here to find out how to install liveusb-creator on your thumb drives.

[Windows only] TVU Networks offers free TV service, that means with a computer running Windows (XP or 2000), you can download their Player software and watch TV shows and programs that you can only get from cable TV and satellite. TVU is free, and no registration is required, however it’s encouraged to do so.

TVU Networks Channels

TVU covers too many channels to be listed here. If you just check out the channel page, they guys covers more programs that you can imagine; from news to sports, musics, lifestyle, networks, cartoons, etc. There’s even a chinese network too. That means you can watch channels like Star TV, CCTV, Phoenix Movie, TVBS, ETTV Entertainment News and more. Oh did I also mentioned you can watch Euro Cup 2008 live?

Getting Started

All you need is just the player (download here), install and off you go. Do check with the system requirements though.

System Requirements:

1) Broadband Internet service (cable or DSL)

2) Windows 2000, XP or Vista

3) Windows Media Player (version 9+)

4) Microsoft IE (version 6+)

[Windows only] Everyday we perform hundreds of activities on Internet and each activity actually has been recorded down in a form of cookies, logs or temporary internet files. Some of these files are useful, but some actually do harm. It would be safe to clean out unwanted traces of your online journeys and keep you Internet privacy after accessing some security website, for example, online banking website.

IE Privacy Keeper takes the burden of sweeping up the crumbs by making sure no one will know the web sites you’ve visited, or the search queries you’ve made.

Regardless you are using Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, IE Privacy Keeper automatically cleans up the browser history once you are done surfing the net. The program will correctly clean up all index.dat files without the need for a Windows restart.

You can specify custom files and registry keys to delete. IE Privacy Keeper has secure deletion feature to prevent data recovery and conceal the cleanup.

You can keep selective items in the browsing history and hide the program form the list of running applications. Secure deletion will make any attempts to recover deleted items fail.

Here are some key features of “IE Privacy Keeper”:

• Cleans up Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox history
• Cleans up index.dat files without the need for a Windows restart
• Keep selected items
• Cleans up your offline activity traces
• Cleans up custom folders and registry keys
• Automatically cleans up when IE or Firefox exits
• Various notification methods
• Secure deletion

Did I say that IE Privacy Keeper is absolutely free?

Download IE Privacy Keeper (1Mb)

Technically speaking when you hit the ‘Delete’ button attempting to remove any files from your computer, these files are not really removed from your hard disk. What the delete action does is un-link the file so it is not visible nor accessible. These deleted files have a high chance to be recovered with hard disk recovery softwares. So if you want some files to be really removed from your hard disk, you need something more than just deleting them.

Erasing, in the other hand means wiping its entire data beyond recovery. When you want to get rid of sensitive files or folders permanently, try this user friendly software – Eraser. It’s free so you don’t have to pay a penny

Erase Sensitive Files Permanently with Eraser

Eraser is a secure data removal tool that allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns (Gutman, USDoD and others).

What Eraser erases:

• Files and Folders
• Files/Folders that were only previously ‘deleted’
• Index.dat on Reboot
• Contents of the Recycle Bin
• Windows Temporary Files
• Internet Cookies and Cache
• Encrypted Files and Drives
• Free space on 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and DOS
• Paging (swap) file

You can simply drag and drop files and/or folders onto the on-demand eraser and use the convenient Windows Explorer right-click extension or use the built-in scheduler for automated wiping of unused disk space or browser cache files.

*Be careful when execute this program because the erased file will be gone forever.

Download Eraser (8.53MB)

More

Click here for more articles about useful tools.

You got a DVD, or any DVD quality video that you want to rip and you need an application that handles all kinds of output; whether a iPhone/iPod compatible format, Apple TV, normal TV, PSP, etc. You are indeed looking for Handbrake. Handbrake is a open-source, GPL-licensed DVD-MP4 converter that you can download and use cross platform, regardless of Windows, Mac or Linux. Best of all, it’s free.

Handbrake is fairly easy to use. All you need to do is insert the DVD (or manually locate your source), select the format of output and click ‘Play‘. The application will do the rest.

Supported sources:

• Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (encrypted or unencrypted, but protection methods other than CSS are not supported and must be handled externally with third-party software), and some .VOB and .TS files
• PAL or NTSC
• AC-3, DTS, LPCM or MPEG audio tracks

Outputs:

• File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM
• Video: MPEG-4 or H.264 (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
• Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

By the name of the application, you might think it’s something Web 2.0 yet has got something to do with foods. Snackr, in fact is a RSS reed reading application developed with Adobe AIR. What makes Snackr so special is the way it display feeds. This feed reader displays feeds in the form of ticker running at the sides of your desktop. You can further customize where you want it to appear; let it be top, left, bottom or right.

The speed of the ticker can also be further adjust; if you are a fast reader, consider running the ticker at higher speed. While you are at work, you still can keep an closed eye on sites you subscribed to. For news that catches your attention, simply click on the title to expand the excerpt or click ‘view post’ to go directly to the post. Everything looks good with Snackr, but it would be better if it allow scrolling back to the RSS ticker that left the screen. It’s a bad feeling knowing you’ve missed something if you are away from the screen for few seconds.

Download Snackr for your desktop.

via TechMalaya

The USB flash disks of today are a very efficient and excellent solution files sharing, carrying around or even backup. However, each coin has 2 sides Because USB Flash Drive are designed to be small in terms of size (and light too!), it is also easy to misplace or worst case, get stolen. With TrueCrypt encryption on USB flash drive, all these problem can be handled with ease; best part of all, it don’t cost a penny.

Encrypt USB Flash Drive with TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt enables you to encrypt an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys.

Basically it’s pretty easy to encrypt an USB flash drive with TrueCrypt. Upon install, you’re required to create a TrueCrypt volume on a removable drive with preferable encryption option. After that, create a set of password for your TrueCrypt volume and format it. Then, mount your TrueCrypt volume and start using it.

You will be prompted for your TrueCrypt password whenever you access it. Click here for a complete step by step tutorial with print screens.

Download TrueCrypt (2571kb)

We can reach the purpose of protecting some private files by hiding a certain folder. But what if we have 1000 confidential folders in a hard drive? It would probably take us a whole day to browse, select and hide it one by one. In order to get through with these tedious works yet have our files remain hidden, we can play a little tricks to hide confidential hard drive in Windows with a few clicks.

One of Microsoft’s PowerToy – TweakUI, gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface and alter most of the routine behaviors of Windows XP.

How TweakUl Works

Download, install and run TweakUI in your computer. Then, go to “My Computer – Drives“, uncheck the drive that you want it to be invisible and click “Apply”.

A hard disk drives will be disappeared immediately after the command is applied.

To quick access your hidden drive, type in the drive letter in address bar.

Download Tweak UI (147Kb)

[Windows only] Most people have private files or folders on their computer which they want it to be invisible from the others. As we previously mentioned how you can hide files in Mac, we thought Windows users are not exceptional so here’s one free software to hide your files and folders for Windows. Free Hide Folder as the name suggest, is a freeware that helps you to keep your personal data away from others and protect your files avoiding them to be being modified, seen or erased by other users. A hidden folder can even be protected by a password that you can change or remove at any time.

Free Hide Folder is fairly easy to use. Upon install, you can hide folders simply with a few mouse clicks. Firstly, run Free Hide Folder. Then, browse and select the folder you want to hide, and click “Hide Folder button” to hide folders. A password is required in order to run Free Hide Folder. Therefore, 1 more layer is added to shield your folder.

Download Free Hide Folder (743Kb)

[Windows only] Instan-t messenger is like Adium for Mac, it allows you to add all your instant messaging account under one so you don’t have to open multiple chat software. Instan-t messenger supports MSN, Gtalk, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ and AOL and you can even conduct a video chat across different IM clients.

Instan-t messenger has no ads and it’s free to download. There’s also a web version on the website. Give it a try today.

Spaz is another free Twitter client for desktop worth checking out. It is open-source, and because it runs using Adobe AIR you bet it’s cross-platformed. Spaz performs most of the functions a normal desktop Twitter client would (send/receive tweets, stream public tweets, etc) but extra customization support. It comes with 4 themes/skin to choose from, or you can even define your own using CSS.

Did I mention it’s also ads free? Download Spaz now.

Think of Google Analytics AIR beta as a desktop version of Google Analytics. Thanks to the multiple-platforms supports of Adobe AIR, this cool application is able to run in most operating systems – Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Google Analytics AIR beta allows you to add multiple profiles of multiple Analytics accounts under one roof. If you previously need to logout from one Analytic account to get in another, now with this desktop client you don’t have to. Google Analytics AIR supports most of the functions of the web version. It’s also lighter and greatly enhance the experience in statistics analyzing.

Installing Google Analytics AIR Beta

Google Analytics AIR Beta runs on Adobe AIR, so you might want to make sure you have the platform installed. Click here to download/install Adobe AIR.

Download Google Analytics AIR Beta