5 (+1) Great Free Windows Tweaks

I’m often looking and coming across great feature-laden, time-saving tweaks for the many computers I use on a day-to-day basis (i.e. home, work, laptop, media center, etc).  Here’s a small collection of what I consider to be some of the best free little system-tweaking apps I’ve come across thus far.  Some I may have already mentioned in my earlier Windows Must-Have Apps posts but I’m including them here because they fit the bill, and well, they’re really worth mentioning again.
Clicking on the titles or images will open the app’s homepages and allow you to download the apps.

Media Tab

If you’re a regular media-hound like me, this little gem will help access your media file’s embedded information in a jiffy.  It quickly provides access to information including but not limited to bitrates, resolution, metatags, encoding options, languages, etc.  Moreover, all this information is easily accessible from your right-click (or Alt + double-click) Windows File Properties dialog, and easily copied to your clipboard or exported to HTML.

Best of all, it’s free, quick and easy to install, and weighs in at 3.14MB in filesize so you can be set up and ogling your files’ stats in no time.

Read more >>

In which I justify my iRespect

I’ve never been a big Apple fan.  I’ve always thought such people —MacTards or iSheep, as they are often referred to— were gullible hipsters and/or drooling sycophants who religiously hung on every word Steve Jobs uttered, and were willing to spend thousands buying every latest magical Apple product that was announced at their overhyped conferences.  Watching videos of these conferences has often made me sick with revulsion wonder in bewilderment at the dedication and adoration these people seem to pour out on the company, its founder, its events, and its products.  I simply couldn’t grasp it.

But since the introduction of their touch mobile products (iPods, iPhones, iPads —or collectively, iDevices), my mind has been somewhat transformed. Read more >>

Windows Must-Have Apps (Part II)

As a follow-up to my previous article highlighting some extremely useful Windows tools, Windows Must-have Apps, I give you another selection of apps you should not be without:

ObjectDock 2 or RocketDock

For a great solution to snappy and efficient application launchpad, check out either of these applications. Both function in similar fashion, by giving you access to a Mac-like dock anywhere on your screen (usually at the bottom) from which you can launch and access your favourite and current applications, and can potentially completely replace the Windows taskbar without the loss of function or productivity.

Although both applications boast similar features and configurability, as a long-term ObjectDesktop subscriber I’m partial to ObjectDock 2 (Plus) simply because I find it a breeze to set up and use, and support from Stardock is great. But my limited experience leads me to believe that RocketDock is just as good, especially considering you get the full-featured app for free.
Put simply, if I wasn’t using OD2+, I’d be using RocketDock.
Read more >>

Windows Must-have Apps

The Windows (2000/XP/Vista/7) interface is well established and pretty much usable, for the most part.  It offers a good platform upon which to accomplish tasks quickly and easily without too much time wasted, but that isn’t to say that it can’t be improved upon.  There are certain areas that, for some reason or another, leave the user wanting more.
Thankfully, there are individuals and companies out there that are clever and willing enough to extend the functionality of the Windows interface to make things even better for the rest of us.

Below are just a few of the applications I simply would hate to do without…  in fact, I wonder how I lived without them in the first place.  Read more >>

…of Twits & Tweets – Tools for your Twitter toolbox

So I’ve been using Twitter for quite a while now.  It’s short message format is easy to follow, keep up with, and use on a daily basis.  I’ve found it to be not only convenient and fun, but useful and on occasion even very informative.

For those who’ve been living under a rock  in ignorance of the popular trends in modern communication, Twitter is:

…a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Overall, it does the job quite well, and as I said before it’s so simple to use that even a child could own and manage an account.

But apart from being a good place for keeping in touch with other people who don’t subscribe to using instant messengers, Twitter is also a good repository for your random thoughts and ideas, useful online finds, and your perhaps sporadic but precious pearls of wisdom. 

Also, you may find it useful to know that a twit is the term used to refer to the owner of a twitter account, and tweet is the term used to refer to a short message posted on Twitter.  With that in mind, read on.

Read more >>