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.

Google Chrome + chromeTouch

Out of the box Chrome does not support touch screens on Windows 7. When you touch any text,  Chrome assumes you want to select the text, rather than scroll the page.  However,  I can recommend the chromeTouch plugin which gives you iPad like smooth scrolling on a Windows 7 touch screen.  Chrome Touch has two modes of operating – Full Dragging and Auto – but I strongly recommend the Full dragging option. Chrome Touch also has quite a nice bounce effect for touch screens.

Go get chromeTouch

SwiffOut

SwiffOut is a great extension to play flash games in full screen on Google Chrome or Firefox. It’s ideal for playing Flash games with a touch screen on Windows 7.  It hides the browser, the taskbar and all Windows UI while playing and switches the resolution to the closest from the game to get the best performances. Swiffout works with flash games that can’t be scaled and you can also save desktop shortcuts to your favorite flash games.

Get Swiffout for Windows 7 Touch Screens

Amazon Kindle Reader

Amazon Kindle Reader works extremely well on Window 7 touch screens and gives access to a wealth of free books.  To move forward a page simply touch-drag your finger from right to left,  and left to right to move back a page.   Full screen mode is excellent as it remove all the browser furniture and menu bars. It’s very intuitive and brings the power of the Kindle to your Window 7 touch device.

Go get Amazon Kindle Reader for PC

Paint.Net

Paint.NET is one of our favourite graphics apps for the PC, and works well with a Windows 7 touch screen.   It’s great for doodling and one for the kids to play with the touch screen.

Go get Paint.NET

BBC iPlayer Big Screen

BBC iPlayer Big Screen is more commonly used for TV media centres,  but works extremely well with a Windows 7 touch screen. The buttons are huge making navigation and search really easy.   It gives access to all the latest BBC television and radio on your Windows 7 touch screen. Simple point your web browser to the link below to enjoy full screen media at the touch of a finger.

Go to BBC iPlayer Big Screen

YouTube XL

YouTube XL is an interface designed for TV media centres and also works incredibly well with a Windows 7 touch screen. The large buttons make it a joy to use on a touch screen.

Go to YouTube XL

Bubble Shooter

This classic Flash game is superb for the Touch screen.  The aim of the game is to fire a colored ball into the stack and make it stick next to the same color.  A great game that will keep you occupied for hours with a touch screen.

Go to Bubble Shooter

DX Hockey

Pit your wits against the computer in this classic game of ice hockey.  This works extremely well with a touch screen if you install the Swiffout plugin for Chrome as mentioned above.  First to 7 wins!

Go to DX Hockey

Simon

This is a geeky fusion of touch screen and 1980’s retro.  Follow the pattern of lights and sounds for as long as you can remember them.  The lights show up faster the more sequences you correctly recall. Fantastic fun when in full screen mode.

Simon made by Neave Games

The Virtual Keyboard

Everyone with an iPad always demonstrates the Piano app. Why is that? Here is a great virtual keyboard app for your Windows 7 touch screen , complete with drum beats and steel drums.

Go to the Virtual Keyboard

• 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. Slouching over a laptop blogging all day will eventually take it’s toll on your wrists and back.  And if you’re like me, it’s not always top of your priority list to take 10 minutes out to do some stretches to loosen things up. With this great little free app, you can set up some reminders to force you to take a break every so often.

Big Stretch Reminder will sit happily in your system tray until a predefined time period of your choice arrives at which point an alert will appear offering either RSI tips or a message of your choosing.

You have the option of choosing an alert mode which can be either a discrete bubble allowing you to continue working, or a Micro Break which blocks the desktop.  You can also set a sound to accompany your alert and the tray icon can act as a countdown indicator to the next break.

If like me, you tend to push on through the day,  this little Micro-Break message can save the aching hands from getting worse.

Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7

Download Big Stretch

I love little utility programmes like this. Let me know if you have any RSI prevention tools and apps.

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.

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.

If you have some large archive files (zip, rar, iso), and just need to extract or update one single file,  it can be a little painful to have to extract the whole folder.  However,  with this free Windows tool you can easily mount the archive file as a folder,  and explore or write to it just like any normal folder.

Pismo file mount allows you to mount ZIP, ISO, CISO, CFS, ISZ, DAA, and PFO files as virtual folders within Windows.

Download the 1.5MB file, and simply install the program.   You can either mount an archive file by selecting the file in Windows Explorer and selecting Quick Mount.

Quick Mount will simply mount the archive file as a read only virtual folder within the parent folder.  This is by far the easiest way to use Pismo.

However, for more control over the mount point, and read/write access,  the control panel is provided, which also provides a list of all the current mounts.  Very useful if you want to unmount a file without having to hunt around for it.

To use the control panel,  select File > Open and select the file to mount.

From the control panel, you can alter the mount visibility to make the archive visible to the entire system, or a specific user.  The archive file can be mounted as Drive letter only if  you select to mount the file for the entire system.    You can also set the mount as read only, or with write access.

Batch Mount of Archive Files.

If you have many different archive files which you regularly access,  Pismo also provides a great command line feature which can be used in batch files.

To mount and unmount an archive file use the following commands:

pfm mount archive.zip
pfm unmount archive.zip

Download [via Pismo]

The Best Bulk Installers

Bulk installers simplify the process of downloading and installing all your favourite free applications.   Bulk-installers often work by providing all the necessary installation files in a neat package which can be installed on different PCs.  You can also select precisely which applications you want in the bulk install package, and make sure you have all your favourite freeware.

In this post I give you the best bulk installers on the web.   You can send me your suggestions using the comments at the bottom.  The choice of which one you favour depends on which one offers most of the applications you’ll use.

FreeApp

Simply select all the programs you like,  and then download the installer (approx. 1MB).  Once the bulk download tool has loaded,  Freenew then provides you with a neat list of applications to install.   If you want to download additional applications,  then you can also select them through the installer.

FreeApp will also identify if you already have some applications installed and prompt you to upgrade.

The FreeApp installer is a great way of selecting which applications you want to bulk install.

Ninite

Select the applications you want to bulk download,  and then download the Ninite bulk installer (approx 220KB) onto your machine.  This bulk installer contains details of all the applications you selected on the web site,  and then proceeds to download all the applications you requested.    Unlike FreeApp, there doesn’t appear to be an option to change your mind after you’ve downloaded the installer.

The bulk installer for Ninite simply downloads all the applications you requested on the web site.

Allmyapps

Quick and easy setup for Windows 7. Allmyapps gives you a range of ways to download the free applications.  You can either select the individual applications and click on Install, or you can add each application to your shopping-cart-style list. The catch is the shopping-cart will cost you a penny-pinching £3 to access the bundle of free software.

Having selected your apps, you then need to register which is a long winded. Click Install and sign in using your Google, Twitter, Facebook or Windows Live account.  Or you can register a new account.  Allmyapps then send you an email (check your junk mail folder) and directions to verify your account and password. Unfortunately,  by the time I’d registered and verified,  my shopping cart was emptied, so I’d recommend you register before you select your apps.

After registration and selecting your apps now comes the crunch.  You have to send an SMS message to the web site to get a special download code. You guessed it, this isn’t free and will leave you £3 out of pocket.  It’s your choice whether you think it’s worth it.

ZEUAPP

ZEUAPP takes a different approach requiring you to download a small (900KB) application first. The tool is neatly divided by tabs for each application category along with a screen shot of each application.

You need to click Download next to each application, select a save location, and wait for the download to finish. Unfortunately,  we couldn’t find a easy way to Bulk download all the installation files, which kind of makes it less useful. But is does mean you don’t have to hunt around the web for precious free applications.

What’s your recommended bulk installer? Have you got a question about them? You can send us your comments using the form below.

We’ll use the OneNote Guide as an example to demonstrate how easy it is to share any notebook online.  We’re also going to make use of the Microsoft Office Online Web Apps and SkyDrive.  You’ll first need to create yourself a Windows Live SkyDrive and Office Web Apps user ID.  If you already have a .NET Passport / Windows Live account then you have everything you need.

Share Your OneNote notebook.

Open up your notebook in OneNote 2010 and select File > Share.  This will take you to the screen below.

Looking at the section  “3. Web Location” above, if you already have a SkyDrive account you simply need to Click Sign In. Otherwise follow the Sign-Up process to create an account.  After you Click Sign-In you’ll be asked to enter your Windows Live ID credentials.

Once you’re authenticated, OneNote will display the list of folders for your account so choose the location to share your notebook. It’s best to choose “Documents”.

Select the folder your want for the share and then click Share Notebook. Wait a few moments and depending on the size of the notebook you’ll be shown the following dialog.   Click Yes to email a link and your favourite email client will open with a pre-prepared couple of links.

One of those links will enable you to open the notebook in OneNote and the other using a Web Browser.

Edit your OneNote notebook using a browser

Simply copy and past the http URL into a web browser and enter your login credentials when asked.  Your OneNote document will open using Microsoft Office Web Apps.    This will allow you full control over your OneNote notebook on the web. Any changes you make will automatically be synced with your “local” copy of the notebook.  I found that some larger OneNote notebooks took several minutes to synchronise with the web when they are first shared, so don’t be surprised of not all the content appears straight away.  Patience.

Down the left hand side of the browser window you have access to all your sections and pages.  You may find that some pages display the yellow warning banner at the top saying “This page contains items that cannot be displayed in OneNote Web App”.   This usually occurs if you’ve used the Draw functions in OneNote to create lines and shapes which aren’t part of an image.

Now, if you make a change to the OneNote notebook using the browser,  wait a few moments and the change should be automatically updated in your local version as if by magic. We found that you have to click onto another tab or page before the syncing in triggered.   Once you make any change,  the green synchronisation icon next to the notepad name will begin to spin. Once the synchronisation has completed, a small green tick appears next to the icon. This also works if you make a change in the OneNote client application.

Finally,  you might want to create yourself a desktop icon with a link to the OneNote Web Application. To do this,  copy the HTTP URL from the email you prepared earlier and then follow the instructions here.