Windows 7 wasn’t designed for the touch screen of a tablet PC.  The buttons and scroll bars are far too small to easily use Windows 7 on a tablet PC. It’s all too easy to click the small Close button rather than the small Minimize button.   Thankfully,  there’s a couple of easy tweaks to make the buttons and scroll bars much larger on a Windows 7 tablet PC.

To get to the tweak to increase the button size and scroll bar you need to drill through a few layers of windows.   First right click on the desktop and chose Personalize.   The window below should appear.

You can only increase the size of the buttons on Tablet PCs with a non-Aero theme so select Windows 7 Basic Theme and wait for it to be applied.  Select the Window Color link and the following window should appear.

From this window select Advanced appearance setting… and the following dialog box will appear enabling you to increase the size of the buttons and scroll bars for your Windows 7 tablet.

Select the Active Title Bar and set the size of the title bar to something larger – 50 works well.  Select the Scroll Bar item and set the size of the scroll bar to something larger – 50 works well. Click apply.

Choosing a home page for a browser is a very personal affair.  For a Touch Screen it needs to have large buttons and load quickly.   For a Touch Screen browser we’ve grown to love the 200Linx homepage.

200Linx provides a delicious menu of 200 supersized links to the most popular sites making it ideal for a Touch Screen browser. It loads quickly and gives access to common great sites at the Touch of a finger.  Browse from a Touch Screen homepage specially designed for the US, UK, Canada, Mexico, Spain, Germany, France, Russia, Australia and Brazil. 

I was strangely interested in what’s popular in India,  but let down by a dysfunctional link. 

Visit 200linx.com

Select the file to share, copy it into the Public folder inside the Dropbox folder, and wait for the file to sync up with the web storage.

On completion, right click on the file, and select the Dropbox menu option, followed by the option to “Copy Public Link”, as displayed below. Simply copy that URL into an email, and IM message, and hey presto.

Here’s one we prepared earlier.

Epressr is a neat web application that lets you quickly create online Flash content for your website, or rich presentation material. 

You can upload your own media assets such as video, audio, images and animations to the Empressr media library, import them directly from other sites like Flickr, Google, Yahoo and Photobucket or link to digital media from around the web.   It’s ideal for creating engaging content with charts, tables and audio.

Empressr is a Flash application so it’ll run happily in any web browser.  Simply point your web browser to Empressr, and create yourself a free account.  You can then start a new blank presentation or import an existing one.

One the left of the Empressr window are the slides,  the right contains the property and object panes, and in the centre is where you can create your content.

On the right you have access to tools to create Text, Shapes, Tables and Charts.  

The text properties are fairly limited and allow you change the font, colour and alignment. You can also create links to web pages.

The shapes object in Empressr allows you to create circles, rectangles, triangles and stars.  But that’s about the lot.

The table functionality is also fairly limited, and you’d be better using an HTML table if this is all you need in your page.

The real gem in Empressr is the Chart functionality. You can create very quick column, pie, line, area and bar charts.   It’s also really easy to edit the data by using the pop-up dialog box.  Here you can add rows and columns of data, swap the axis, and change the colours of the bars.

Empressr also allows you to add a background image, and an audio file which is ideal for voiceovers and background music.   You can also changes the transition between slides from a range of swooshes,  squeezes and stretches.   You can change all these by selecting the Master Properties from the menu bar.

If you already have a Powerpoint presentation which you want to publish, Empressr allows you to import those also. You can upload a PowerPoint file to Empressr and use its slides as pictures (One slide equals one picture) or as a fully editable presentation in Empressr (with some losses.) There is currently no support for any download functionality, but they say it’s planned in the near future.

There are several ways to share your creations. You can make a presentation public on the Empressr site, email or embed the code, or simply use the share button to grab the embed code or select the auto embed into a number of social network sites like Facebook and MySpace or even place it on your own site.

At the moment,  Empressr is still in beta stages but you’ll be able to access your presentations once Empressr launches.

There is currently no limit to the the amount of storage you have. In the near future, however, they may introduce limitations on storage and bandwidth and will roll out pricing plans for these.

Here’s an example we prepared earlier using Empressr.  We’d prefer it if the content started immediately, but I guess we can’t have everything.

Other Options for Flash Web Content

Microsoft Office Live is great for online editing of Powerpoint,  but it doesn’t support embedding of the material in a web page. No support for Google Chrome either.

Google Docs has great support for creating and editing online presentation material, and also allows you to quickly embed the material in a web page using an iFrame. Using the Spreadsheet functionality, you can publish great looking charts of any type including scatter and radial.

Zoho Show also has really good support for creating and publishing online presentation material, and also allows embedding in a web page.

Visit Empressr.com

• Backup your laptop to the internet using Mozy.com so you’ll never loose any precious work
• Transfer all your tasks to an online task manager such as RememberTheMilk.com 
• Download a News Reader like FeedDemon  to subscribe to work related news feeds.
• Setup a Project plan to track the tasks using ClockingIT.com and share the schedule with colleagues.
• Setup an online collaboration workspace using Zoho.com enabling your team to work more effectively
• Install a light-weight desktop search engine like Everything so you’ll be able to find your work more quickly.
• Create a quick and light-weight website using hubpages.com
• Move all your working files into a file syncing tool such as DropBox.com so you can work anywhere, anytime.
• Sort out your expenses by using an online tracker such as spendingdiary.com
• Backup your cell phone data including contacts and ringtones using bitpim.org
• Free up some storage space by using TreeSize Free to find and remove large files.
• Setup a blog to promote yourself and company using wordpress.com.
• Register your personal splash page at about.me and link to all your social media sites.
• Download and install the HP Universal Print Driver to give you quick access to a range of HP printers
• Check the security of your precious passwords at howsecureismypassword.net
• Create yourself a Virtual Desktop PC using Opendrive
• Clean up your PC to make it faster using CCleaner
• Download and install yellow sticky notes tools to remind you of important tasks
• Download and install a free mind-mapping tool such as Freemind and amaze colleagues with out-of-the-box thinking.
• Sign-up to an online tutorial site like lynda.com to learn anything and everything.
• Make some extra money by selling some of your old technology and gadgets on gumtree.com
• Get a URL shortening account like bit.ly to use for posting URLs into chat sessions and emails.
• Setup an account with Ping.fm so you can post across all your social media accounts at the same time without copy and paste.
• Learn some basic HTML skills from w3schools.com.
• Get yourself a Web Dashboard like netvibes.com to see everything interesting in one place.
• Setup a free online sales and customer tracking tool such as simplesalestracking.com
• Learn some mental arithmetic tricks
• Send eCards to your colleagues and staff to say thank you using bluemountain.com
• Sign up for a service which allows you to send large files to colleagues.
• Use a service like ADVFN.com to find financial information about your employer.
• Learn to develop a basic ASP.NET, PHP or Ajax application using coderun.com
• Register with an email spam filter like spamarrest.com
• Install the StumbleUpon toolbar to pick an random website to view.

Windows and Mac. Even password-protected and encrypted public wifi connections aren’t as secure as you think.  There remains the potential for a 12 year old prodigy to steal your passwords and credit card details.  Also,  with ISPs being forced by government agencies to publish details of your surfing habits, you may want to think about securing all your browsing and downloading habits.  With this simple secure VPN solution from Hotspot Shield, you can be sure your browsing and socialising is secure from prying eyes, your ISP, and even your employer.

Use the comments below to say about your use of public hotspots.

Hotspot Shield is completely free and protects your entire web surfing session; securing both your home internet connection and public internet hotspots. It can be used to secure both wired and wireless networks.  Hotspot Shield protects your identity by ensuring all web transactions (shopping, filling out forms, downloads) are secured through HTTPS. Hotspot Shield also ensures your identity is invisible to third party websites and ISP’s

Hotspot Shield creates a virtual private network (VPN) between your laptop or iPhone and their Internet gateway. This tunnel prevents snoopers, hackers or ISP’s, from viewing your web browsing activities, instant messages, downloads, credit card information or anything else you send over the network.

Simply download the small application from Hotspot Shield, and wait for it to install.   Once completed, a small icon will appear in your system tray indicating if you’re connected or not.

Click Connect/On and a browser will open up, and start to establish a secure connection. Hotspot Shield uses a secure VPN (Virtual Private Network) tunnel to encrypt all your internet traffic from anyone (including your ISP) who may be listening for it.

Once connected with Hotspot Shield, you’ll be able to see further details of the connection including your secure IP address.  This new IP addresses means no one will be able to see your real IP address, determine your identity or hijack your session.  Given the importance of online security, I wouldn’t leave home without Hotspot shield.

Hotspot Shield runs on:

• Windows 7
• Windows XP
• Windows 2000
• Windows Vista
• Mac OS X (10.4 Tiger)
• Mac OS X (10.5 Leopard)
• Mac OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard)

Visit Hotspot Shield

Use the comments below to say about your use of public hotspots.

In this post I’ve rounded up the very best sites on the internet to download free apps giving you access to over a 1000 free applications.  These download sites for free software contain really good lists of tried and tested applications.  The download sites below have links to the very best free applications, utilities, system tools and online apps. If you can’t download the free app you need from these lists, it probably doesn’t exist.

The Best Free Software of 2010

Legendary PCMag already boasts the very best software of 2010 to download.  Covering a whole ranges of free downloads  including media management, search, video, graphics and just about every category you can think of.   All free applications are organised into 30 different categories.

Best Free Online Applications and Services

A huge page and collection of the very best free online applications and services.  Since they’re all online you don’t need to download anything to your machine.  Neatly organised into 11 categories covering home, office, image viewing, disk tools, internet, email, programming, security and many more.

99 of the best Windows freeware programs you may not know of

The title says it all here.   99 of the greatest free Windows downloads which you may have overlooked.  It isn’t categorised,  but well worth looking down the page for some golden free software.  This list focuses on the little-league of software developers who usually don’t get the headlines.

TopFreeware.net

This is an extensive and well categorised list of free downloads. It’s got virtually every category you can think of including screen capture tools, education, multimedia, security, games, backup and loads more.

The 70 coolest free applications in existence

This is Stephen York’s list of the coolest free downloads around for those people who are more fortunate to spend less time on the internet. Applications are neatly organised into 12 categories including video playback, web development, operating systems, remote access and many more.

I want a Freeware Utility to … 450+ common problems solved.

This self-claimed list of  “Extremely useful free utilities that do specific jobs really well and save time and money.” does what it says on the tin.  This no-frills web page contains over 450 direct links to some great downloads,  all neatly categorised and easy to find.  Download categories include notepad replacements, files and folders freeware, graphics, imaging, internet tools, keyboard utils, recovery solutions and many many more.

Lifehacker Pack 2009: Essential Free Windows Downloads

This is lifehacker’s bundling all the best free downloads for new computer owners, re-installers, would-be geeks, or anyone who wants to save time installing the best stuff out there. It’s all a bit common, but useful all the same.

The Best Applications.com

The Best Free Applications for Windows and Mac. Sporting a user interface which would’t be out of place at a Las Vegas casino,  this web site gives access to dozens of free applications to download.  Hover over each of the Icons to find the name of the free software, or change to List View to give you a scrolling list of free apps to download.

Free Fun Files

FreeFunFiles has a good selection of free software to download for Windows.   It has a good choice of hobby tools, children games, video games and  pda software. The is also quite a bit of paid for software too download also.

Keeping a grip on how the web sees you is more difficult than ever with the proliferation of social networks.

With this great website from Yasni,  you can find out exactly how the web sees you.  With more and more recruitment agencies turning to the web and Facebook to check job applicants,  it’s a good idea to make sure they only see what you want them to see!   You can also discover alter-egos and celebrities with the same name as you.

Yasni aggregates all publicly available personal information on the web from a variety of sources including Twitter, MySpace, Amazon wish lists,  Bebo, IMDB, Google, Bing and many more. Yasni claims to be the world’s leading people search engine with 50 million page views per month and approximately 22 million monthly visitors in five countries.

Simply type your name into the search box, and wait for the results.  You’ll quickly see results of personal interests and contacts, Amazon wish lists,  business profiles, private homepages and websites, publications you may have “written” (or claim to have written!), video and audio files, news and reports, celebrities and politicians, postings on Bebo and MySpace and more.

Yasni also gives a list of what they call “bad news”, i.e. criminal activity, deaths and bereavements.  So you’ll be able to tell if someone is claiming you’ve already popped your clogs!

Protect your reputation – create your own online profile

The Yasni Exposé feature allows you to create a personal online profile which brings together all your legitimate activity across Twitter, MySpace, Amazon,  Bebo, IMDB and Google.

With the Yasni Exposé, you can organize your web links, profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Bebo etc) and photos ensuring the best impression on new employers, partners or business contacts. People looking up your name will be directed to your Yasni Exposé – and you decide which links are listed there!

I can’t say I like the overly intrusive pop-up advertising, which does somewhat spoil an otherwise excellent web site.

Visit yasni.com

Other similar sites

Reputation Defender

If you need to send a large file over the internet, email is probably not the best way.  To send a large file voato towers has been using this fantastic free web app for quite a while now and can really vouch for it.    iSendr is an on-demand direct file transfer system to send large files over the internet.  It makes sending any size file between two people as simple as clicking a link.

iSendr is completely secure as it only facilitates the direct connection, but all file transfers take place between the two parties.  They do not monitor or capture the large files sent.

iSender offers security through obfuscation and you can set a password to protect the large file.  Once started, transfers use 128-bit AES encryption.  However, you should still be cautious when transmitting highly sensitive data over a connection you do not control.

Simply point your web browser to isendr.com and you see the landing page as below.  Here you can chose to send a large file or receive a large file.

Select the large file to send, and wait for the peer link to be displayed.  You’ll see the holding paging below waiting for a recipient to collect the large file from you. 
 

You then need to send the peer link to the lucky recipient using either email, IM, or good-old telephony.   They need to simply point their web browser to the isendr.com address and enter the peer link from the sender.   Simply make a cup of tea and wait for the large file to be downloaded your computer. 

Visit isendr.com

I came across this great little feature in Windows 7 to add folders and locations to the “Favourites” in My Computer / Explorer.   With this neat little shortcut,  you can add any folder you use often,  and save you having to continually hunt around for it.  The favourite folder is always available when you open or save a file in any other application – ideal for opening and saving files in Office applications.

In order to use this Windows 7 feature,  simply open up any folder in Explorer and on the left of the folder view you’ll see a section called “Favourites”.

Next, navigate to the folder you wish to add to this list of Favourites.  Once you have the folder in view, Right-Click on Favourites and select “Add current location to Favourites”.  A shortcut link will then appear to your favourite folder.  Every time you open Explorer in the future,  this shortcut will also appear.

The displayed Icon can be changed by right clicking on the shortcut and selecting Properties. From the box which pops up, you can then select Change Icon.

Not only does the link appear in Explorer,  but the shortcut will also appear in the Open and Save dialogs in any other application.  This is perfect for opening and saving files to a favourite folder in Excel or Word, for example.

Throw the post-it notes away and replace them with virtual sticky-notes on your desktop. Sticky-notes complement your to-do list by nagging you to do the tasks you really need to do today. I give you five of my favourite free desktop sticky-notes tools.

AT Notes

The benefit of ATNotes is its simplicity and low screen footprint. This is probably one of the least intrusive sticky-note app there is.  I’ve been using it for years now and it’s not let me down yet. ATNotes lives in the system tray and takes very few system resources. It’s actually discontinued now (booo!),  but you can still download it – see the links are the bottom.

PNotes

PNotes is my current favourite sticky-note app. I love it.  You can skin it to a whole range of designs including the classic post-it yellow.  You can group notes, hide groups, and dock them to the sides of your screen.  It’s got loads of features and easy on the eye.

Sticker Lite

Sticker Lite has one additional nice features not found in the other sticky-note apps. It allows you to send the note to anyone else on your LAN who might happen to use  Sticker Lite also.  A nice feature if you are a team working closely together and need to assign a task to someone!

Note-It

Note-It is one of our favourite Sticky-Note apps. Each Note is stored as a separate file on the file system, and supports images and spell checking.   Note-It also allows you to have RSS feeds in the sticky-note, and also the latest stock-market prices.

DeskNotes

Desknotes is unique among this group as its the only sticky-note app to allow sync up with Outlook.  It also supports images and advanced formatting features.  You can also set reminders, add timestamps and hyperlinks.

Download Sticky-Note apps
ATNotes
PNotes
Sticker Lite
Note-It
DeskNotes

 

Tell me what you think and if you use a better sticky- notes tool?

This guide shows how to rip and download DRM-free music from Spotify.   The music we’ll download from Spotify is DRM free so you can play the tracks on your favoured MP3 players. In order to rip from Spotify you’ll need a piece of $20 software,  plus an Open (free) account with Spotify.  There is some reported success by decoding the Spotify locally cached files but the method we’ll use is to simply capture the music stream from Spotify.

Ripping from Spotify is still an area of legal contention,  but unlike downloading using PTP file sharing, ripping from Spotify can’t be detected.

The Spotify Open account provides 20 hours of free music per month enabling you to download 20 albums a month from Spotify.   With the Spotify Open account some of the latest albums are initially blocked so try checking back in a couple of weeks.  In addition,  you can sign-up for different Spotify accounts and enjoy an unlimited number of 20 hour streams. Sign up for an Open Spotify account here.

I recommend Total Recorder or Replay Music for capturing the Spotify stream.  Replay Music has the advantage of automatically detecting gaps to split the Spotify stream into different tracks. You can get Replay Music for $21,  and Total Recorder for  $18.

In addition, I recommended disabling the Windows sounds to stop these appearing on the Spotify recorded audio stream.  Do this in Windows 7 by right clicking on the desktop > Personalize > Sounds.  Under sound scheme select “No sounds“. Under Windows XP, follow this simple guide.

I’ll use Replay Music to capture the Spotify stream,  so you need to download and install a copy.  You must open the Replay program before opening Spotify and make sure Spotify is not running in the system tray. 

Open Replay Music and first check some settings by selecting Settings.

Under the Input settings, ensure Input Source is set to Audio Driver, and under Splitting check Automatically Split Tracks is selected.  Finally,  under Output, select a decent output format – MP3,  256Kbps.   Select OK.

Next, cue up the music you want to rip from Spotify, so open up Spotify and search for the album you want.  Now, go back to Replay Music, and select Start Recording, and another dialog box will appear. Enter the name of the Artist, Album, Genre, and also choose to add the tracks to iTunes or Windows Media Player.  Click OK to start the recording.

Flip back to Spotify, and ensure that the Volume level is at max.  Right click on the Album and click Play to start the Spotify stream.  By starting to play the album in this way, it ensures all the tracks are cued up in the correct order.

Sit back and listen to the Spotify stream – we’ll remove the adverts shortly.

Because this is recording from your internal sound card,  you can change the volume on your speakers without affecting the recording.  

Replay Music will try to automatically tag the downloads from Spotify.  Sometimes this works, other times it doesn’t and it depends on which album you download from Spotify.  Replay Music will also automatically split the Spotify stream when it detects a silent part.  In addition, you’ll probably see some tracks as “Not recognized”, which are the adverts played in the Spotify stream.

The folder where the Spotify files are saved is displayed in the green box at the top of Replay Music. 

How to remove the ads from the end/beginning of the track

There are certain occasions where Replay Music fails to split the advert from the Spotify stream.  If this happens, I recommend a free utility called MP3splt.  Listen to the MP3 in your favourite player and note down the time that the track should have been split.  Assuming you’ve installed MP3splt into “C:\Program Files\mp3splt”, copy the offending MP3 file to this folder.  Use the following command to split the file at the right time.

mp3splt trackwithads.mp3 0.00 MM.SS EOF

This command tells mp3splt to split the file called trackwithads.mp3 into two parts at the time MM.SS – minutes and seconds. The 0.00  denotes the beginning, and EOF the end.