Entries tagged with app - Channel 10

Gestures…The New Touch?

sarahintampa — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:42:00 GMT

Gestures are getting hot, are they not? Lately, I’ve noticed a bunch of apps that let you use mouse gestures to execute predefined commands or actions. But this is hardly a new trend…apps like StrokeIt, the Windows-only global mouse gestures app were getting attention as far back as spring 2007. So why the resurgence now, I wonder?

I’ve recently come across freeware like Mazzrick, a portable mouse gesture utility that lets you create your own custom gestures, and the full-featured gMote which, in addition to being portable, supports over 30 actions.

Given the usability of these freeware/donationware programs, I’m not sure why someone would pay for a mouse gestures app, but mgLaunch ($29.95) is hoping you will. Their app launcher is skinnable, so maybe that’s what makes it worth it? I’m not sure, but it also crossed my radar not too long ago, so it may be worth a look.

Another gesture-based utility is the IE plugin called simply “Mouse Gestures for Internet Explorer.” With this software, you can control various tasks related to your web surfing – like opening and closing windows - just by drawing a simple symbol on the screen. (Works with XP/Vista/64-bit, too).

But with computers getting smaller and more portable, I would think more people are using the touchpad than the mouse. Still, the netbook phenomenon may have people starting to pack a mini mouse to go, too, since those netbook touchpads are crazy small.

Are you a fan of mouse gesture applications? If so, feel free to share which ones you like and recommend in the comments.

Aero Shake For Your Vista PC

sarahintampa — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Have you been eying the new Windows 7 features with envy? Well, now you can get at least one of them on your Vista computer: Aero Shake. Over at LifeHacker, they’ve released an app that lets you shake your active window to minimize all the other open windows, just like in Windows 7. Shake again, and the other windows will be restored. Simply called the Shake app, the software was written in AutoHotkey and the source code is available for addition to your main AHK script if desired. But for most of us, the downloadable .exe file will work better.

Before you download, though, be aware that this app is still a little “rough around the edges” they warn, and some commenters have reported issues with its use. In our tests, it worked OK, but maybe a little slow. It also hid the sidebar! However, it definitely gets us excited to get our hands on Windows 7 so we can finally enjoy the real Aero Shake and all its other cool features too. (Image via)

Snooze UAC With A New App

sarahintampa — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:16:00 GMT

We’ve heard that Windows 7 will bring us a kinder, gentler version of Vista’s User Account Control (UAC), a security service which pops up windows asking for permission when you try run .exe files, make system changes, access restricted files, or perform other actions that could impact your computer’s safety and stability. However, until we have Windows 7, Vista users can take advantage of a new utility for temporarily disabling UAC – without a reboot!

The new app UAC Snooze lets you temporarily shut off UAC prompts by clicking on the icon it installs in your system tray. The app is available as a free trial for 30 days, then, to continue using it, a one-time fee of $5 is required.

UAC Snooze provides the following features:

Temporarily turn off UAC prompts by clicking on the UAC Snooze icon in the system tray
Can be configured to start automatically with Windows and not require a UAC prompt
Clicking on the icon can turn off UAC prompts or snooze for 1, 5, 10, 30 or 60 minutes (or user-defined time)
10 user-defined snooze intervals can be defined
Right-click on icon to bring up menu to select action other than the default
When prompts are off, click on icon again to turn prompts back on
Options to modify prompt action when program opens and closes
Tooltip shows time remaining until prompts will be turned back on
Icon changes based on state (Prompts On: UAC Shield , Snooze: Shield with a Z , Off: Shield with an X)

UAC Snooze works on both 32 and 64 bit systems and can be downloaded from here.

(via AskVG)

TweetyBot: A New Twitter Client For Windows PCs

sarahintampa — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:51:00 GMT

I just came across TweetyBot, a new Twitter desktop application for users of Windows XP or Vista. This small app includes a lot of features – even more than my everyday Twitter client, Twhirl. Across the top of TweetyBot are several tabs which allow you to see the usual views – your tweets, replies, directs, etc. However, TweetyBot also includes several additional options for managing your tweets. For example, there’s an “Ignore List” tab where you can enter in someone’s Twitter username and ignore them without actually blocking or unfollowing them:

But one of the best features is the “Alert List” tab. Here, you can enter in your favorite twitterers' usernames and you’ll get pop-up desktop alerts when they update their status. The client includes a few other features, too, like separate “Following” and “Followers” tabs and tweet threading for following individual conversations.

Still, there are a few issues with this app that it’s worth noting. For one, the “Options” tab and “Tweet Manager” tab appeared completely blank for me. I don’t know if those are upcoming features or if this is just a bug, but I found that odd. Also, links always opened in IE and there didn’t appear to be any options for setting an alternative browser (or maybe there were, but I just couldn’t see them in my empty Options tab!). The client is ad-supported and features a somewhat large banner at the bottom of the app's window. I understand the need to make money, but I found the ad just a bit obtrusive.

According to the TweetyBot homepage, there are a few upcoming features that look interesting, though, like a tweet auto responder, a tweet scheduler, and an auto-follow option. There’s also a cool auto-UNfollow feature coming which will automatically unfollow someone after you follow them and they don’t reciprocate. You’ll be able to set the time frame for this option.

Although TweetyBot is new, it has a lot of features that could make it a great, feature-rich client for Windows users. Hopefully, they will iron out some of the kinks I experienced before too long. If so, I’ll definitely take another look at this one. I might even switch from Twhirl…maybe…

Keeping a Clean Desktop With TrayEverything

sarahintampa — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:09:00 GMT

I read about a new app called Tray Everything, which lets you minimize any program to your system tray, but I didn’t think I would really have a use for it. A few days later, though, I had a number of apps open including Windows Live Writer, Excel, IE, Firefox, my FTP program FileZilla, and an AIR app called Doomi (for to-do lists), which seemed to have no “minimize to tray” setting. I then realized that Tray Everything might just be something I needed after all. The clutter of having all the apps at the bottom of my screen was finally starting to bother me.

I then remembered Tray Anything and decided to give it a try. I was happy to find that the app is very simple to use. After you install it, you just double-click on any of your running applications listed to minimize them to the system tray. That’s it in a nutshell. But beyond that, you can also configure more advanced options like hiding certain apps’ icons from appearing in the tray, password-protecting apps, configuring hotkeys, or turning on auto-minimizing to the tray after an interval you specify. And if you plan on using Tray Anything to minimize a bunch of instances of the same application, you can tray them all with just one icon. (Did I just use “tray” as a verb? Hmm.)

According to the application’s homepage, Tray Anything works on Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP, but I’ve been running it on Vista without any issues yet. You can download Tray Anything for yourself from here.

How To Recover Lost Email Passwords

sarahintampa — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:23:00 GMT

I’ll bet you can already think of a handful of times when you could have used this next tool: Mail PassView. I recently came across Mail PassView when surfing through my techie RSS feeds. The program is a freeware utility that helps you recover passwords from both Outlook and Outlook Express as well as other mail clients like Eudora, Thunderbird, Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, IncrediMail, and Windows Live Mail. When I first saw the application, I thought that the interface looked a lot like that other incredibly handy password recovery tool: WirelessKeyView. As it turns out, they’re both from the same developer, Nir Sofer. Although on the one hand, these sort of tools make me nervous as they so easily expose the passwords you think are safe and secure, on the other I’m very grateful that they exist. I can’t even count the number of times I helped others move their files, email, and apps from one PC to another and the biggest stumbling block was always that they didn’t remember their passwords for their ISP-assigned email addresses. If only I had known about Mail PassView then…I could have saved so much time! You can download Mail PassView from here.

CraigsPal Brings Craigslist To Your Desktop

sarahintampa — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:49:00 GMT

Are you a heavy user of the online classified website Craigslist? If so, then you definitely have to look at CraigsPal, a desktop software program designed just for searching Craigslist. The application is available in two different versions, one free and one paid. The free version lets you search across cities, states, and countries, filter content, use negative searches (-keyword), preview listings/photos, sort by price or date, flag spam, and has several keyboard shortcuts.

The paid version, however, is for the true Craigslist fanatic. With CraigsPal Pro ($29.99), you can receive mobile SMS and email alerts, save favorite searches, backup your user data, automate searches, and you have access to free updates for the life of the program.

Of course, if you just want to search all the Craigslist sites, you don’t need an app to do so: Search All Craig's lets you do that from one simple web page. And if you really want to delve into all that is Craigslist, Lifehacker has the definitive Craigslist Power Users Guide.

A Simple Tool To Change Your Icons

sarahintampa — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:20:00 GMT

Although changing an icon is something that’s built into the Windows OS, avid desktop customizers are always on the lookout for better ways to make changes on the fly. A new tool that helps you quickly update your drive icons is Drive Icon Changer. All it does is update icons, nothing else, but sometimes a simple tool is just what you need.

To use the tool, you simply select the drive from the top drop-down box and then browse for the icon in the second box. Click “Save” and you’re done! This app was built by Taimur Asad in C# using Visual Studio 2008. He’s tested it on Vista only, but it may work on older versions of Windows, too. You can download the software for free from here (zip file).

TVUPlayer Delivers Live TV To Your PC or Mobile Phone

sarahintampa — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:09:00 GMT

You don’t have to have a Media Center PC to have access to TV on your PC. In addition to web sites like Hulu and Joost, there are desktop programs like Livestation and AnyTV which can bring TV shows right to your Windows desktop. Recently, the How-to-Geek featured another application which does the same. It's called TVUPlayer and it lets you watch channels from all over the world.

If you’re running XP or Vista and have Media Player 9 or later installed, you can access TV programming, including live channels, right from your PC. I was surprised to see that the big channels like NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX were supported. But what’s even cooler is that there’s a mobile version of this app which works on Windows Mobile 5, 6, or 6.1 phones (they recommend the Samsung i780, HTC Diamond, HTC Touch Cruise, and ATT Tilt). There’s a video of the mobile version on YouTube if you want to see this software in action.

So, easy to use and free? Seems like this one might be worth checking out: download here: TVUPlayer For Windows

360Desktop Now In Beta

sarahintampa — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:33:00 GMT

In December, we told you about 360Desktop, a new software application for Windows that lets you see your desktop in a 360 degree format. As you open programs and windows, you can spin to a virtual “other side” of your desktop to have more space. Although we were excited for the program back then, the software was not yet available for download. But just recently, 360Desktop introduced their first public beta. The app can now be downloaded from the 360Desktop homepage.

In addition to being able to spin your Windows Desktop around, you can also easily make desktop widgets from various parts of the web. You can clip anything – RSS feeds, games, videos, parts of web pages, or whatever else you want and then make them a part of your desktop. You can even clip anything that features an embed code - like a blog widget or online video and turn these into widgets as well, just by copying and pasting the embed code into the “Add Widget” box. The end result is nearly unlimited desktop space featuring your favorite content from the web.

At the moment, the program only features two 360 wallpapers, and I didn’t particularly care for either of them. However, the next release of the software will allow you to create your own canvases and share them with others. These canvases will also allow you the ability to mashup multimedia content and integrate it right into the photo background. A 64-bit version will be available soon, too.

You can download 360Desktop for free from here: 360Desktop.com.

Fleace: Use Flickr Images To Decorate Your Desktop

sarahintampa — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:34:00 GMT

Here at Channel 10, we’re big fans of John’s Background Switcher for rotating our desktop wallpaper. The software is highly customizable and pulls in images from photo-sharing sites like flickr, Phanfare, smugmug, picasa, and Yahoo image search. But for those that are looking for a lighter and simpler solution, there’s now a new app to try: Fleace.

Fleace, which stands for Flickr-Enabled Automatic Changer for Everyone (ha!) can’t access photos from anywhere except flickr, but that may be just fine with you. You can have the app display wallpaper based on the tags you specify and you can customize a few options like size, layout, and a countdown timer for previewing images. The timer displays an image for a set time while you decide whether or not you want to use it. After applying the wallpaper, you have the option to shut the program down which is great for those of us who don’t like having apps runs in our system tray.

Fleace is compatible with all versions of Windows and is a free download available from here.

(Thanks gHacks)

UltraExplorer, An Awesome Alternative to Windows Explorer

sarahintampa — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:51:00 GMT

This weekend, I decided to look for an alternative to Windows Explorer. Although Windows Explorer gets the job done, there’s just a lot that it doesn’t do that I wish it would, and frankly, I miss XP’s version. Well, now, I have it back and then some! That’s one of the great things about Windows actually – you don’t have to be stuck with the way things come out of the box. If you don’t like something, you have the power to change it. Tweak, customize, download new software, whatever – you can really make Windows your own.

I decided to go on the hunt for a new version of Explorer. I heard a rumor someone out there is creating an XP version of Windows Explorer for Vista users, but I couldn’t find it. (If you know, please leave a comment! The closest I found was Explorer XP, which is similar, but not the same.)

Instead, I found something nearly as good, if not better: UltraExplorer. This alternative Windows Explorer program has it all: a completely customizable interface, tons of configurable toolbars, lots of different views, favorites, a temporary holding area for moving files around called “Drop Stack,” and, of course, the long-lost “up” button. (Don’t tell me about Alt+Up, I know - I want a button!).

Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the program except that I would like to customize the defaults for the views depending on the folder I’m accessing, and it seems that you can only set defaults for the whole program. However, the app does remember your most recent settings, so this hasn’t been a huge problem.

If you want to try this alternate version of Window Explorer, you can visit the app’s homepage here or download it from Download.com here.

Dashwire 2.0 Launches: Backup Your Phone and Sync Content To Social Web

sarahintampa — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:19:00 GMT

On Tuesday, mobile phone app Dashwire released Dashwire 2.0, a much improved version of their mobile phone backup and sync service. With Dashwire 2.0, you can backup your phone’s content – like photos, videos, text messages, ringtones, bookmarks, speed dials, contacts, and call logs – to Dashwire’s site on the web. This syncing is done automatically, so if you make a change to your phone, that change is reflected on the web, and vice versa. In addition, the app lets you share your content across several social networking sites. You can easily and automatically send photos and video to flickr, Facebook, bebo, and Twitter and you can also update your Twitter and Facebook status from the app. The Dashwire website also offers you a public page where you can share your mobile uploads with others who can then leave comments on the items. Dashwire 2.0 is free for Windows Mobile users - just go to m.dashwire.com from your phone’s browser to sign up.

AIM App For Windows Mobile

sarahintampa — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:55:00 GMT

Earlier this month, AOL released their first custom-made IM application for Windows Mobile phones (versions 5 and 6). The application, AIM for Windows Mobile, lets you IM your friends, update your AIM status, manage your buddy list, insert emoticons into your updates, and more. In a variation on tabbed conversations, this AIM client shows the buddy icons for the people you're in conversation with on the left hand side of the screen instead. Those icons are overlaid with the user's status (busy, mobile, away, etc.) as well the number of unread messages from them. Another interesting, but yet to launch, feature is the ability to send out updates via SMS instead of IM - great for those with unlimited text messages but tight data plans as well as for communicating with friends who aren't signed in.

This app does not currently have an auto-updating feature, so you'll need to keep checking beta.aol.com to find out when new versions become available.

Troubleshoot Network Connections with Your Mobile Phone

sarahintampa — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:17:00 GMT

From Enterprise Mobile, there comes an application for Windows Mobile users that allows you to troubleshoot network connections right from your Windows Mobile device. The app is called the Windows Mobile IP Utility and it lets you run the following commands: ping, trace route, ping sweep (ping a sequential range of IPs), speed test, and ipconfig. The utility will also log all your results into a text file which you can then save or share with others. The Windows Mobile IP Utility works on both Windows Mobile 5 & 6 devices that have the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 installed. (Thanks to Jason Langridge for the tip!)

Zine - Your Online Magazine on Facebook

sarahintampa — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:03:00 GMT

A new Facebook application called Zine is an online magazine of articles and videos that you can add to your Facebook profile. You can completely customize the magazine so you only see the topics that are interesting to you, whether that's News, Sports, Entertainment, Lifestyle, or anything else. Each main category is further divided into sub-categories that allow you to further customize your Zine. For example, you can choose to see just NFL news from the Sports category or just U.S. News and Politics from the News category, and so on. Your Zine is then loaded up for you, with each main category available as a tab at the top which you can click on to easily move through the content.

One thing I noticed right off the bat was that there was no "technology" news section listed. However, there is a feature called "My Topics," which lets you add the latest news stories for specific topics. For example, you could create a custom topic called "Olympics." I, of course, added a topic called "Twitter." I was happy to see a bunch of articles returned on the subject from big news sources like the NY Times, News.com, SFGate, and, of course MSN.com, which helps power this app.

When browsing through the categories, you can click "Prev" and "Next" buttons to scroll through the virtual pages or click "Expand" to have a particular section spread out across the page. You can also send a story to a friend or post it to your Facebook profile.

With all the talk of how newspapers and other print media are fading businesses, Zine stands out as a useful "new media" kind of way to get your daily news...right there in Facebook.

New Fantasy Baseball Gadget

sarahintampa — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:44:00 GMT

I just saw this over on the Windows Experience blog: a new baseball-themed gadget for the Vista Sidebar. The Fantasy Baseball Gadget lets you check your Fantasy Baseball news, player stats, and create your own roster, and the categories update every 10 minutes. Brandon points out that the gadget requires Adobe Flash, so Vista x64 users will need to run their sidebar under 32-bit to get it going. The gadget is available for download here.

For non-Vista users, the same gadget is available on Windows Live and Facebook, too.