If you are someone who are searching for ways to make your desktop beautiful, what about using a video as your desktop wallpaper. You can use a video as your wallpaper in XP.
First install VLC media player. VLC media player is a lightweight media player that can play a wide range of audio and video formats including streaming audio and video formats.
Then continue the following steps:
1.Open VLC media player.
2.Navigate to Settings>Preferences>Video>Output modules>Directx
3.Check the option that says “Enable wallpaper mode”.
4.Press the “Save” button to save your changes.
Now to remove the taskbar do the following:
1. Navigate to Settings>Interface>Main Interface>wxWidgets
2.Uncheck the “Taskbar” option.
Enjoy!
There are lot of ways to improve the speed of your browsing. The simple thing you can do is to stop using your mouse to control your browsing.
Firefox is the most widely used browser now. So I will tell you about some useful keyboard shortcuts that will help you save more time and your browsing more “fast”.
1. CTRL+L: This is a very useful shortcut you must use. This will help you save a lot of time. You can use this shortcut to jump to the location bar. Now type the URL of a webpage and press Enter. You are done.
2. CTRL+SHIFT+R: Sometimes we have to reload webpages. Instead of using the mouse to click on Reload button you can use this shortcut.
3. ALT+Enter: A very useful shortcut you must use. You can use this shortucut to open the selected link in a new tab. First, select the link on a page using TAB in your keyboard. Now press ALT and Enter together to open the selected link in a new tab.
4. Ctrl+1-Ctrl+9: If you have a habit of opening a lot of tabs then this shortcut will be of great help. By using this shortcut you can easily switch between tabs in Firefox. You can use Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown to change tabs.
5. Ctrl+H: Use this shortcut to view the history of visited webpages. Now you can use Alt+W key which will shift the focus from history search box to View button next to it. Press the Spacebar and select appropriate option to arrange the history based on different criteria available.
6. Ctrl+Shift+Delete: Use this shortcut to delete browsing history. Clearing browsing history will improve the speed of your browsing. Now in the window that appears, you can use Tab and spacebar to check and uncheck options available. Now press Enter to delete your browsing history.
7. Ctrl+Shift+B: Use this shortcut to organize bookmarks. You can tab to switch between menus and text boxes.
8. Alt+Enter: If you use this shortcut you can save the time you need to open links, right-clicking the mouse, selecting the save as option etc. Just use TAB to navigate between links and press Alt+Enter to save a selected link. When the download is complete press Ctrl+W to close the download window.
9. Ctrl+Shift+T: Use this shortcut to reopen closed tabs. This I think also will help you save time while browsing.
10. Ctrl+T: Use this option whenever you want to create a new tab.
11. Miscellaneous: There are lot of other keyboard shortcuts you can use. Crl+K, this will make the cursor jump to the search box on the upper right corner of Firefox. You can enter a term to search here instead of going to a search engine. To select a search engine press Ctrl+E and use Alt+down arrow. To easily bookmark a web page you can press Ctrl+D. To increase and decrease font size you can use Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- respectively. Ctrl+F will open the Find window. In the Find search box enter the text you want to find and press enter. If the entered text is in the web page it will be highlighted. Use Ctrl+W to close windows and tabs. Press Ctrl+U to see the HTML code of a web page.Use Alt+left arrow and Alt+down arrow to move Forward and Backward. Press Ctrl+R to refresh webpages.
Installing a package in Ubuntu.
To install a package in Ubuntu use the command
$ sudo apt-get install package name.
Upgrading Ubuntu
To upgrade all the packages installed in Ubuntu use the following command:
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
Upgrading Ubuntu to a new version
To an old version of Ubuntu to the latest release use the command: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Npte: This command may remove some of the packages or features of the version from which you are upgrading.
Clean up the disk space in Ubuntu
There may be traces of cached packages that may hog a large portion of your hard drive.
To remove these cached packages use the following command: sudo apt-get clean
To list all packages installed in the system.
To see all the packages installed in Ubuntu run the following command:
apt-cache pkgnames
To remove a package in Ubuntu
Here is how to remove a package in Ubuntu
If you want to remove a installed package in Ubuntu run the following command:
sudo apt-get –purge remove
To download a package in Ubuntu
To download a package use the following command:
sudo apt-get -d install
This command just download a package and places it in the /var/cache/apt/archives.
If you need to download and install a package use the following command:
sudo apt-get install
Note: There are mainly three ways to install packages in Ubuntu. First you can use APT which is most commonly used in almost every debian linux distributions.
Secondly, you can use aptitude which is another tool used to install packages from online repositories.
Thirdly, you can use dpkg which is used to install debian packages from CD’s or DVD’s.
To install packages with aptitude replace apt with aptitude in the above commands.
Set a strong password for Linux and forget it is my hobby. So what to do if you lost your password. First,boot from Linux and press e. This will bring you an option to edit the boot line.Append a “single” to the boot line.Now to boot with the modified boot line press b.Now you have the root file system mounted to you as read only. Just remount it using the command “-o remount,rw” .Change your root password using the command passwd.
If you cannot be able to do this then follow the first step by booting into Linux and press e to edit the boot line and append it to “init=/bin/bash”. Now boot again with the new boot line.Then you have the root file system to your disposal and then remount it using the “-o remount,rw”.
The best thing you have to do is if any of the steps don’t work is to simply reinstall Linux,that is what I do usually.
Apple Leopard is the nest generation Operating system from Apple. We will just look at some of the great features of this OS.
Time Machine: It is the greatest feature of Leopard. It will automatically backup your Mac. To use this you can plug in an additional hard drive and then it is automatically detected and configured and Time machine will start backing up your system. Time Machine takes the snap shots of your system and then displays it on a browser window. If you want to restore any file that you deleted accidently then just browse through your system snap shots of your system and then restore the file you want to restore. It allows backing up your system and you now need not have to worry about system crashes and time machine allows backing up your system to a hard drive or a server.
Spaces: It is a new feature in Leopard. This allows you to run multiple applications at the same time. When you are running these applications, each application can be adjusted on a “space” and you can easily switch between them. This is a nice feature which allows managing several virtual desktops.
SpotLight: The Spotlight is the search feature in Leopard. It allows not only to search in your own computer but also to search in computers connected to your network. There are many advanced search features added in Spotlight which allows you to search and find files using queries involving Boolean Operators and you can launch applications right from Spotlight.
Core Animation: It is yet another feature of Leopard which is intended to boost the multimedia capabilities of Mac. It has advanced features including a great animation engine and you can create stunning effects using core Animation.
Mail: Apple has improved Mail, the email application for Leopard. “Stationary” is a nice feature added to the Mail. It has so many nice templates which allow you to create nice emails. Another feature allows you to create a to-do list called the “TO-DO”. Another major feature is the “Notes” which allows you to create special messages.
I-Chat: It is the famous chat application of Apple. Some of the new features like the I-Chat theatre. This allows you to create a slide show during a chat session and then show it to them as a keynote presentation. Another noted feature is the addition of video backdrops. To do this just drag a video that you want to set as backdrop into I-Chat.
Dashboard: The newest feature added to the dashboard is the “Dash Code”. This allows creating dashboard widgets. It has so many templates to start creating the widgets and we can modify these templates to create our own widgets. It also includes a nice Quartz library to help creating your widget. Another feature is the web clip which allows you to convert any part of a website into a widget.
Here is how to download and view Youtube videos on a Mac. In order to download Youtube videos to a Mac you need a software called “Tooble“.It allows you to search, find play and download Youtube videos to a Mac.Tooble can automatically download Youtube videos and then Convert into Mp4 format. It has a nice browser Interface and you can simply start the application and enjoy downloading and viewing Youtube videos.It allows batch download so that you can select and download number of videos at a time.So just select the video you need to download and press the download button.You need install Periam, a collection of QuickTime components and several other libraries in order to install Tooble.
Flip3D: It is one of the nice features of vista. Here I will show you how to get used with Flip3D. To use flip3D you just have to press the option key+Tab. Then you got a “3D view” of all the open windows. We can use the arrow keys to navigate through the open windows. Then press the Enter key to switch to a particular window. You can also use your mouse to navigate and select a particular window.
Using the Quick Calendar:
It is yet another cool feature of vista. You can view the quick calendar by left-clicking on the clock in the System Tray.
Disabling User Accout Control: Here I will show you how to disable the UAC: First, go to the Control Panel -> User Accounts and Family Safety -> User Accounts -> Turn User Account Control On or Off.Then restart your system for the change to take place.
Opening a Command Prompt:
First, right-click on a folder while holding down the Shift key. Now you can see “Open Command Window Here “option. Select this option to open a command prompt.
Taking a snap shot:
To create a snap shot in vista press the mouse button trice. For this first type “snip” in the search box which will start the snipping tool. Now from snipping tool select either Full screen or Portion of the screen. You can use “Option” tab to customize the settings.
Adjusting Fonts:
First, go to control Panel and then type “adjust font size” in the search box. Now you can see the “DPI scaling Utility” .Here you can click on the “custom DPI” button to customize the font settings. Just adjust the slider to create a custom DPI setting and then press the OK button.
Adjusting the Sound output settings:
First, go to control panel and select “Speakers”. Now click on the “properties” button located on the right side of the speaker window. Here you can see four tabs. Select the “Enhancement” tab to adjust the various sound effects.
Slow Down Aero Animations:
The Aero Animation in vista is normally fast. We can slow down the speed of these animations. For this,
Click on the Start button and type regedit in the Search field and press Enter.
Click Continue if you see a User Account Control Prompt.
Then go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM
In the right hand pane, right click on an empty space and from the context menu choose New > DWORD Value.
Give the new DWORD Value as AnimationsShiftKey
Double click on the AnimationsShiftKey value and give it a value of 1.
Speed up NERO in XP
Go to “administrative tools” in the control panel, and in the “services” list, disable the IMAPI CD-Burning COM service.
Now, Nero will start up much quicker.
Change the Registered Owner and Organization.
In XP in the Run dialogue box type “regedit” and then navigate to the following Key:”[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion]
Modify the strings values of ‘RegisteredOwner’ and ‘RegisteredOrganization’ to equal the required owner and company names.
REG_SZ (value not set)
RegisteredOwner REG_SZ “Yourname”
RegisteredOrganization REG_SZ “your Organisation, Inc.”
Create an exe to delete files in the temp directory.
You could create a batch file that has the following commands in it:
@echo off
cd %temp%
del *.* /Q
Note: Type this code in a notepad file and just save it with the extension of .bat .Now double click on it and you are done.
When it comes to image editing or graphic design then Photoshop is the ultimate choice.But there are many image editors and graphic designing tools that can be used instead of photoshop and are also free.
GIMP: GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is the software that is a good alternative to Photoshop with almost every feature of Photoshop. It is a freeware but I think is a program that has the potential to become yet another standard program in Image Editing. It is not simply a image Editor, you can use it to create text effects and stunning graphics. You will need to download and install GTK+Runtime Environment before installing GIMP.GIMP also has a version called GIMP shop which has the look and feel of Adobe Photoshop for those who are Photoshop crazy.
Paint.Net: Another software making waves in Image Editing is Paint.Net.It is also a freeware. It is a powerful application with a nice Interface. The important feature of this program is its extensibility.It has plugins for different effects and so if you have the plug-in and the image then can easily creates the desired effect. If you want to create a Orb then if have a plug-in called “Orb Generator” you just have to enter the various parameters and the plug-in will automatically create a beautiful Orb for you. You will need to install .Net Framework before installing this program.
Inkscape: Inkscape is a vector graphics and it is free.It is a good alternative to Illustrator. It can be used to create professional vector graphics. It has so many nice features and it is a nice software to create Illustrations. It has so many advanced features like the blend mode and various transforms which you can see in some commercial software like Coreldraw.You can create shapes , paths ,clones,grouping,Bitmaptracing and so many other features that you expect from a professional Graphics Editor.
InsightPoint: It is yet another notable graphics creating and illustrating software that will never disappoint you. It is a very simple application and is easy to learn. You can create stunning layouts and Illustrations with InsightPoint.It is nice software which has so many powerful features which will help you find the designer in you.
Serif DrawPlus: Serif DrawPlus is another powerful graphics editing and animating software. It can be used as a graphics editor as well as a animating tool. It has a wizard interface that will help you create your masterpieces in a matter of minutes. There are so many templates that you can start editing to ultimately create your own artwork. You have to register at the serif website in order to start using it. It has a commercial version available with some additional functionality. But the old versions are free to download.
SMN PARTICLEDraw: it is a simple yet powerful application that you can use to create stunning particle effects. I have created so many stunning graphics using its dynamic particle brushes. It is a fun to use this program. You slowly notice yourself transforming into an amazing “artist”.
ArtWeaver: ArtWeaver a powerful application that you can use instead of to say ArtRage or Corel Painter! It is a nice innovative drawing program. It is so simple to use and learn but definitely need some effort and imagination to use it to its full potential. Everyday I use this program I find new possibilities. I think it also will never disappoint you.
Picasa: Picasa is the Photo management and Image Editing tool from Google. It is a nice application with a great interface and some amazing functionality. It has many advanced and noval features. Google is always one step forward than others. You can see this attitude in Picasa too. It is simply the best image management software that you can get. There are so many great features like Hello a photo sharing feature of Picasa, an option to create a web albums, slide shows, “picture movies” and so on.
Teragen: Tarragon is not a Image Editor but a “Image Generator:. It can be used to create terrains. You can generate stunning sceneries with just a few clicks. You just need to adjust the various parameters to create nice Sceneries.
