Windows 7 Downloads (Free Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows 7 Visual Styles, etc)

Windows 7 How-To

Windows 7 Performance Tweaks

Windows 7 Security Tweaks

Windows 7 User Interface Tweaks

There is free software, Tweaks.com Logon Changer for Windows 7, offered by the site allows you (EASILY) to change Windows 7 logon screen background.

The site – www.mysterygoogle.com – says that “you get what the person before you searched for”.

Top 10 features that Apple stole from Windows | Windows - InfoWorld

Using MySql in ASP.NET project, cofiguring, exaples with SqlDataSource, GridView, etc

Posted by Tihomir Ivanov on 07 May 2009 04:37

Rating: 8.00

It may sound strange but using MySql database in ASP.NET is really easy. I spend few days trying to create ASP.NET site that uses
MySql DataBase and in this post I'll try to explain all points for that, also how to use MySql in SqlDataSources and GridViews.

more >

Repair Windows Vista Sidebar

All of a sudden my Windows Vista’s Sidebar stopped working and while I don’t care much for the many “Shiny” Gadgets found on http://vista.gallery.microsoft.com/vista/SideBar.aspx , I find the CPU Meter and Network Meter gadgets.

I searched the web and non of the suggested solutions worked….EXCEPT  “Solution 3” listed below…

Solution 1

• Click Start.
• Type Sidebar in Vista’s Start Menu Search bar and press Enter.
• Now you should be able to see the sidebar.

Solution 2

If this doesn’t work try this other trick:

1. Click Start.
2. Type Sidebar in Vista’s Start Menu Search bar and press Enter.
3. Click Windows Sidebar Properties.
4. Make sure  that Start Sidebar when Windows starts is checked.
5. Click OK.

Solutions 3

If this doesn’t work as well, try this last trick here:

1. Click Start.
2. Type CMD in the Start menu Search and press Enter.
3. Click on the CMD icon and click on Run as Administrator.
4. In the Command prompt copy and paste this piece of code and press Enter: regsvr32.exe atl.dll
5. Copy and paste these codes too, one after another and press Enter after each of them:
6. cd /d “%programfiles%\Windows Sidebar”
7. sidebar.exe /regserver
8. regsvr32.exe sbdrop.dll
9. regsvr32 wlsrvc.dll

Source (Windows Sidebar doesn’t start in Windows Vista | Web Talk)

When I ran the Disk Cleanup wizard I accidentally checked “Hibernate Files” to be deleted. The next thing I know was that Hibernate Button was gone from Windows Vista power options and start menu.

This was easy to fix in Windows XP but needs a bit digging to fix in Windows Vista.

I ran the Command Prompt windows as Administrator and typed :

powercfg /hibernate on

If you have UAC enabled, follow these steps:

Click the Start button.

2. Select All Programs.

3. Select Accessories.

4. Right-click on Command Prompt.

5. Select Run as Administrator.

6. When the UAC prompt appears, click Continue.

7. Type powercfg /hibernate on and press Enter on your keyboard.

8. Close the Command Prompt window.

9. Reboot your PC.

Thanks to http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2106/vista_restore_hibernate_option/ for the tip!

Download it from here!

Some useful features (from IE Team Blog):

2. (Visual) Search Box

2. Favorites bar

Download details: Windows Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

When you try to install Microsoft Office 2007 installation stops and you get a message “Office Source Engine has stopped working”

The Solution is provided by Microsoft KB article 928218  [http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218]

Fed up with Internet Explorer 8 which is unstable at best? Windows Live Mail (WLM) doesn’t work well with IE8 Beta 2 and there are reported cases where WLM Photo E-mail doesn’t work as expected (images are not included in the message)

In Windows Vista, Windows Internet Explorer 8 is not considered to be a ‘program’. Instead, IE8 is categorizing as an ‘update’. Thus, users will not be able to find Windows Internet Explorer 8 in “Programs and Features” of Windows Vista.

To uninstall Internet Explorer 8, go to Control Panel, and click on Uninstall Programs link or Programs and Features icon. Then on Tasks pane on the left, click on View installed updates link. Locate and select Windows Internet Explorer 8 in the list of installed updates, and then click on Uninstall button. Click on Yes when asked that are you sure want to uninstall the update.

How to Uninstall Windows Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) in Vista

Just take a look at the screenshots and will understand what I mean. From within the Windows Explorer one can search for stuff locally or from the Internet.

There are already a handful of providers (Search Federation Providers) written out there such as the ones I found in SevenForums.com (Google News, Google Blogs, Flickr, MSN,…)

And it is very simple to create one yourself, just take a look at the code (found in SevenForums.com):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/" xmlns:ms-ose="http://schemas.microsoft.com/opensearchext/2009/"> <ShortName>Sevenforums</ShortName> <Description>OpenSearch SevenForums via MSN using Windows 7 Search.</Description> <Url type="application/rss+xml" template="http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}+site%3asevenforums.com&amp;num=10&amp;format=rss"/> <Url type="text/html" template="http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q={searchTerms}+site%3asevenforums.com&format=rss"/> </OpenSearchDescription>

Visit http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/742-windows-7-search-federation-providers.html and follow a 3 simple steps to creating your own search provider (a .osdx file)

Plug-ins

Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Movie Maker (Beta) make it simple to add publishing support for 3rd party sharing services. Simply download and install a plug-in and start publishing. Please note: plug-ins only work with the new versions of Photo Gallery and Movie Maker (Beta) available here.

LiveUpload to Facebook - Created by Will Duff.  LiveUpload to Facebook is a plug-in for Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta that makes it easy for anyone to upload their photos to Facebook. The plug-in takes advantage of the new people tagging feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta to persist your people tags onto Facebook.

LiveUpload to YouTube - Created by Will Duff.  LiveUpload to YouTube is a plug-in for Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta and Windows Live Movie Maker Beta that makes it easy for anyone to upload their videos straight to YouTube.

Publish on SmugMug - Created by Omar Shahine. Publish on SmugMug is a plug-in for Photo Gallery & Movie Maker that supports publishing photos and video to the photo sharing site SmugMug.

Publish on Flickr - Created by Windows Live.  Did you know Flickr is already supported in Windows Live Photo Gallery? Look on the Publish menu!

Picasa Web Publisher - Created by Mark Steeves. Picasa Web Publisher is a publishing plugin for Photo Gallery. Picasa Web Publisher enables you to publish your photos to your Picasa Web account.

Drupal Publisher - Created by Chris Charabaruk. Drupal Publisher for Photo Gallery provides a quick and easy way to post your photos on a Drupal web site. Some experience with setting up Drupal modules may be required.

... We will be updating this page with links to more great plug-ins as they come available. Keep checking back!

Windows Live Photo & Video Blog : Plug-ins

Sometimes Windows Vista folder views gets messed up and you seem to lose the customized view of the folder(s). For example, Pictures folder view changes from Thumbnail view to Icons view and the sorting order of the files changes from Order by Last Modified to Type.

For the solution, visit My Digital Life Blog for the full explanation of how this is done.

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Free Windows Applications - Great Tools for Everyday Use Absolutely Free

 Free Screen Capturer

Download Download Now

 Free Disk Usage Analyzer

Download Download Now

  Free Extended Task Manager

Download Download Now

 Free Video Converter

Download Download Now

Visit Extensoft for more information

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10 Useful Plugins for Windows Live Writer

Posted By: Sarah Perez | Jan 4th @ 4:48 AM

 

Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish content to your blog. I've been using Windows Live Writer for a long time to write my blog entries for the various websites I author. The software is intuitive and powerful, but, every now and then, I found something that it couldn't do or that I wished it could do in a better way. However, over time, I've found the solutions to all of my Live Writer wish list items in the Windows Live Gallery thanks to the developers who have taken the time to extend the application via the SDK. The Gallery is filled with Live Writer plugins that enhance what Live Writer is capable of. The ten plugins below are my favorites and, in my opinion, must-haves for any blogger:

1. Digg This Plugin for Live Writer: The Digg This plugin inserts a "Digg This" button to your Windows Live Writer posts and provides seamless integration with Digg.

2. Social Bookmarking Tags: Using this plugin, you will be able to add automatic social bookmarking tags to your blog posts like del.icio.us and Technorati. (Check out this URL for an example.)

3. SkyDrive Attachment Plugin: The SkyDrive plugin lets you upload, manage and use a SkyDrive file within your blog posts.

4. Amazon Book Lookup Plugin: This plugin helps you locate books in the Amazon store and now includes a thumbnail image of each book found.

5. Insert Website Image: This plugin inserts a thumbnail image of a website into the Live Writer window.

6. Insert File Plugin: This plugin lets you insert a file into a Live Writer post.

7. Insert Quick Link: Instead of having to click on the Insert Link in Live Writer, you can now bring up those options just by pasting a link into Writer with this plugin.

8. Imtech Word Count Plugin: This plugin counts the number of words in the selected text.

9. Flickr4Writer Plugin: Flickr4Writer is a plugin that enables interaction with the Flickr service. You can browse by tags, photosets, or a photostream. After browsing, the plugin enables inserting the image reference into a post. (Since I use Flickr, this is my favorite, others of you may enjoy these other photo plug-ins more: Polaroid Picture plugin, Live Spaces Photo Album Plugin, or Live Image Search Plugin)

10. Code Snippet Plugin: Great for techie geek bloggers, the Code Snippet plugin lets you interactively review the sample code before inserting it into your post. It also allows for formatting and/or applying syntax highlighting to the sample source code.

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10 Useful Plugins for Windows Live Writer | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

I am not very good in keeping promises, but this time I will make an exception :) I promised a while ago that I will create a WLW plugin for the Social Bookmarking Tool that would ease the process of creating social bookmarking tags automatically for the blog posts. So, finally... I release this version of Social Bookmarking Tags generator which will be a plugin in Windows Live Writer.

Once you install it, you will need to reopen your WLW, and you should be able to see the following icon in your WLW Insert section...

Click on it, and you should see the following...

The only two things you need to enter are URL and Title. Unfortunately, you won't get it until you publish the blog post using File -> Publish to Weblog in WLW!

So, here are the steps which you need to take now...

1. Compose a blog in WLW, and click on File -> Publish to Weblog
2. Once you publish, you should be able to view your post automatically (ensure that File -> View Post after Publishing is checked). Go back to WLW and point the cursor to the end of the post.
3. Now copy the URL from your browser and click on the Insert Bookmarking Tags link in your WLW
4. Provide URL and Title in the dialog box which comes up and click on Done. You should now be able to see a bunch of icons as shown in the end of this post.
5. Publish again!!

Whenever any visitor likes your blog post, he will be able to click his favorite icon and bookmark your post without any hassles now!

Also, you can get a nice effect when you hover over the links if you modify the stylesheet in your blog site (a one time configuration). Please check this link and see the CSS and Javascript configuration section... http://blogs.msdn.com/rahulso/archive/2007/04/14/social-bookmarking-tool-1-1.aspx
Until next time
Rahul

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Rahul Soni's blog : Social Bookmarking Tags for Windows Live Writer

Sometimes viewing pictures in rows and columns can be dull. Luckily, there are a number of services dedicated to making the photo search and viewing experience more interesting. Here are 8 resources that provide a new approach to searching and looking at pictures online.

Which are your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

PicLens

PicLens is a neat Firefox addon that lets you search through thousands of images and videos on a stunning 3D wall or on full screen mode from sites like YouTube, Google, Yahoo, Picassa, Facebook, Photobucket, Flickr, DeviantART, and more.

Once you launch the PicLens application on your browser, you can search for images and videos by keywords and by selecting the site you want to search. You can also simple click the ‘Discover’ button to let PicLens bring you the latest images, news, and videos from around the Web. You can zoom into pictures by clicking on an image or by using the scroll button of your mouse. There is also a new beta version of PicLens, rechristened Cooliris Beta, that lets you share pictures and videos from its 3D wall to your friends through email. For Wordpress bloggers, there is a plugin for creating picture and video slide shows on a blog.

Imagery

Imagery is an image search engine that displays search results in a whole new way. Whenever you search for something using a particular keyword, you will see the resulting thumbnail images in an online Web album gallery style and text free. Mouse over each picture and you get the option of going to the source page of that particular image or of opening the image in a new window. If you simply click on an image, it will open below the thumbnail gallery (see screenshot above).

You can set the number of image results Imagery will show you per page, or define the type of files like small, medium, large, black & white, grayscale, color, or on file extensions such as jpg, png, etc.

Zleek

Zleek allows you to create photo albums called Zleek Books, in amazing layouts and share them with your friends and family for them to comment on your pictures. What makes Zleek special and different from other online photo albums is that it allows you to go beyond the rows and columns positioning of your pictures and create collages in a manner that you choose. You can resize and rotate your pictures on the Zleek Book page, choose from multiple backgrounds, and set the album sharing permissions settings.

Interestingness

Interestingness, as the name suggests, creates stunning collages of up to 500 pictures from Flickr that you can feast your eyes on every day. Just keep the site as your homepage and rest assured you’ll be greeted with pleasant images every time you open your browser.

WebMynd

WebMynd is a Firefox addon that tracks the sites you visit and displays them in an attractive visual playback, whenever you want, online or off. WebMynd stores the screenshots of websites you visit on your computer hard drive and the text is sent and stored in its server. You can choose which websites WebMynd stores on your computer and which ones to ignore.

WebMynd provides a reel view in which you can see the screenshots of your visited sites one by one or the grid view wherein you can see the thumbnails of the various sites you visited. WebMynd also integrates into the Google search results page whenever you run a search and displays its results alongside the Google search results on the same page.

Compfight

Compfight is a Flickr search tool that displays images from Flickr without any frills. So if you are just looking for pictures without descriptions, Flickr user names, comments, and other details, you might just want to use this tool. You can search by tags or ‘all text’. The tool also has some features like filtering by Creative Commons or commercial use pictures, safe search, and displaying picture dimensions on mouse hover.

Blackr

Blackr is a neat bookmarklet that you can use to view a Flickr picture on a black or white background, without any of the text, comments, and other details that come with it on the Flickr site. You can choose to have a white or black border on the picture as well.

When you are viewing a picture on Flickr, just click the Blackr button on your browser bookmarks toolbar and viola, you will see just the picture minus everything else. If you want a search engine that displays pictures on a black background, try Flickriver.

Photoree

Photoree is to pictures what StumbleUpon is to websites. You can set your preferences about what type of pictures you want Photoree to show you. You can also rate the pictures and those that have been up-rated by you will automatically get included in your personal gallery.

8 Cool Tools for a Different Photo Viewing Experience

Sometimes viewing pictures in rows and columns can be dull. Luckily, there are a number of services dedicated to making the photo search and viewing experience more interesting. Here are 8 resources that provide a new approach to searching and looking at pictures online.

Which are your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

PicLens

PicLens is a neat Firefox addon that lets you search through thousands of images and videos on a stunning 3D wall or on full screen mode from sites like YouTube, Google, Yahoo, Picassa, Facebook, Photobucket, Flickr, DeviantART, and more.

Once you launch the PicLens application on your browser, you can search for images and videos by keywords and by selecting the site you want to search. You can also simple click the ‘Discover’ button to let PicLens bring you the latest images, news, and videos from around the Web. You can zoom into pictures by clicking on an image or by using the scroll button of your mouse. There is also a new beta version of PicLens, rechristened Cooliris Beta, that lets you share pictures and videos from its 3D wall to your friends through email. For Wordpress bloggers, there is a plugin for creating picture and video slide shows on a blog.

Imagery

Imagery is an image search engine that displays search results in a whole new way. Whenever you search for something using a particular keyword, you will see the resulting thumbnail images in an online Web album gallery style and text free. Mouse over each picture and you get the option of going to the source page of that particular image or of opening the image in a new window. If you simply click on an image, it will open below the thumbnail gallery (see screenshot above).

You can set the number of image results Imagery will show you per page, or define the type of files like small, medium, large, black & white, grayscale, color, or on file extensions such as jpg, png, etc.

Zleek

Zleek allows you to create photo albums called Zleek Books, in amazing layouts and share them with your friends and family for them to comment on your pictures. What makes Zleek special and different from other online photo albums is that it allows you to go beyond the rows and columns positioning of your pictures and create collages in a manner that you choose. You can resize and rotate your pictures on the Zleek Book page, choose from multiple backgrounds, and set the album sharing permissions settings.

Interestingness

Interestingness, as the name suggests, creates stunning collages of up to 500 pictures from Flickr that you can feast your eyes on every day. Just keep the site as your homepage and rest assured you’ll be greeted with pleasant images every time you open your browser.

WebMynd

WebMynd is a Firefox addon that tracks the sites you visit and displays them in an attractive visual playback, whenever you want, online or off. WebMynd stores the screenshots of websites you visit on your computer hard drive and the text is sent and stored in its server. You can choose which websites WebMynd stores on your computer and which ones to ignore.

WebMynd provides a reel view in which you can see the screenshots of your visited sites one by one or the grid view wherein you can see the thumbnails of the various sites you visited. WebMynd also integrates into the Google search results page whenever you run a search and displays its results alongside the Google search results on the same page.

Compfight

Compfight is a Flickr search tool that displays images from Flickr without any frills. So if you are just looking for pictures without descriptions, Flickr user names, comments, and other details, you might just want to use this tool. You can search by tags or ‘all text’. The tool also has some features like filtering by Creative Commons or commercial use pictures, safe search, and displaying picture dimensions on mouse hover.

Blackr

Blackr is a neat bookmarklet that you can use to view a Flickr picture on a black or white background, without any of the text, comments, and other details that come with it on the Flickr site. You can choose to have a white or black border on the picture as well.

When you are viewing a picture on Flickr, just click the Blackr button on your browser bookmarks toolbar and viola, you will see just the picture minus everything else. If you want a search engine that displays pictures on a black background, try Flickriver.

Photoree

Photoree is to pictures what StumbleUpon is to websites. You can set your preferences about what type of pictures you want Photoree to show you. You can also rate the pictures and those that have been up-rated by you will automatically get included in your personal gallery.

8 Cool Tools for a Different Photo Viewing Experience