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2011 is just around the corner. Spark your New Year with the Windows 7 theme Fireworks which brings celebratory fireworks images around the world to your desktop.

A cool feature of Google Nexus One Android phone is live wallpapers or moving backgrounds. This is similar to Windows DreamScene feature (available in Vista Ultimate edition), and you can add this moving background in your Windows 7 also.

Like me, almost all of you have few most wanted websites and should be able to access them as easily as possible. But what system you’re using to access your favorite sites easily? Using bookmarks is certainly not the best option. So, what about creating shortcuts for that?

Google Shortcuts is a handy extension for Google Chrome (and also for Firefox) that lets you instantly access all Google services from your browser. This extension is pretty cool and allows accessing 150 plus services offered by Google with two clicks.

I think one of the most frustrating keys on a keyboard is the Caps Lock, because, accidently hitting the Caps Lock key breaks your typing pattern and get on your nerves. This is true, especially, when you’re typing an email or code. Then again, Windows doesn’t have any option to disable the Caps Lock key when not needed.

The new Internet Explorer 9 is an exciting browser from Microsoft, which is much faster, more secure, feature rich and prettier than its ancestors. IE 9 looks sleek, smart and simpler than ever before. A new feature for IE9 is Most Popular Sites, which displays your most frequently visited sites in a tab, so you can visit your favorite sites just with a click.

If you do a lot of writing, you already know the advantages of a distraction-free, minimalistic writing environment. It’ll help you concentrate on your writing and also reduce your eye strain. The article here shows you how to turn your Microsoft Office 2007 into a minimalistic, distraction free text editor.

Sometimes it may be necessary for you to erase personal information such as confidential documents, surfing history, pictures, or data deleted in the past from your computer in a manner that no one can recover them later using any application. East –Tec Eraser is one of the best in this category. It exceeds U.S. Department of Defense standards for the permanent erasure of digital information.

The CopyFilenames utility is a context menu extension for Windows that adds a number of commands to the context menu that appears when you right click on a file or folder. These commands provide a simple way to get the names or file path of one or more files or folders into the clipboard. This can save a lot of time (and possible errors) when writing documents that need to refer to files. This can be particularly useful for developers, technical authors and systems administrators, for example. The usage is simple. After installation, right click on one or more files or folders in Windows Explorer, and choose one of the following commands: Copy Filenames - Copies the filenames to the Windows clipboard Copy Filename and Delete - Copies the filename, then deletes the file Paste Filename - Renames the file to the text in the clipboard You can also copy the full path of the selected files by just holding down the SHIFT key while selecting a file or folder. You need to enable this from the o...

Returnil System Safe Pro is built with the end-user in mind. It uses a combination of antivirus, antimalware, system restore and a virtual system to protect your computer from all types of viruses and other malicious threats. With this tool, you can safely browse the internet, download and install any software for testing, or tweak your system. As all these are done on a theoretical virtual layer, all will be automatically erased up on the next reboot. Softpedia in association with Returnil offers you Returnil System Safe Pro for free one year license. In order to get the full version of Returnil System Safe Pro, simply access this page . You can download the product from here .

Every time you visit a website you’re unintentionally sending your personal information and search history to third parties and search engines. How about ending such activities forever? If you’re Google Chrome browser users, here is an extension called Disconnect that lets you stop such fraud or phishing activities for ever that without affecting your browsing experience much. The extension Disconnect did this by blocking identifying cookies. It stops major third parties and search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc, from tracking you. The extension comes with a toolbar button, so you can easily block or unblock services, by clicking the toolbar button. You can install Unblock in your Google Chrome browser at here.

Glarysoft Disk SpeedUp is an excellent disk defragging and optimizing tool for Windows that can solve issues like PC slowdowns, hang ups, etc by defragging fragmented file. Fragmentation is an inevitable problem that hard disks will be accumulated and cluttered with data fragments due to daily frequent operations. It’s said that, the system should be defragged once in a week or month. Glarysoft Disk SpeedUp is a totally free and extremely fast disk defrag tool to analyze, defrag computer and optimize disks for peak performance. Features Include: Quick and Optimized Disk Defrag Defrag Automatically and Intelligently User-friendly Interface and Interactive Drive Map Small and Lightweight Customized Presets It is easy to use with its intuitive interface and when comparing to the Windows default disk defragmenter, Disk SpeedUp can defrag computer more efficiently and conveniently.

Flickr has scores of interesting photos. Some of them would make excellent desktop backgrounds. But when downloading a photo, only an empty file is downloaded on your computer. This is because, if a Flickr user doesn’t want to make his photos easily available for download, he can set a corresponding setting in Flickr, which then automatically displays the transparent file on top of the photo. However, your browser downloads the photo to its cache anyway. But, you need to search through the thousands of files in the cache. If you’re using Firefox, here is a simple way to find the desired image in the browser cache without any add-on. Just right click the photo you want to download, then select the ‘ View Page Info ’ and activate the ‘ Media’ tab . The list shows all the graphics on this page. Click an entry to see the preview in the lower part of the dialog box. Keep scrolling till you find the desired image. Then click ‘ Save As ’ and save the image on the hard disk. NOTE: The user in...

Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 is one of the most popular antivirus software which offers best protection from the growing internet threats. This new version is lighter on system resources and features a revamped interface that makes navigation almost flawless. Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 normally costs $39.95 for 1-year subscription. Here is a chance to tryout free 6 month trial of KAV 2011 as a part of Malaysia’s IT fair promotion. Interested Facebook users can visit Malaysia’s IT fair Facebbok page and click on the ‘Like’ button and fill in the necessary details to receive the free serial number. The free 6 months license is for single computer and is limited to the first 5000 Facebook users that click on the ‘like’ button for the Malaysia-IT-Fair facebook page .

Panda Safe Browser is a sandboxing application from Pandasecurity that allows you to browse any Web site safely and privately, without being affected by malware or exploits that can be hidden on any site. Every time you close Panda Safe Browser, the session data is deleted, assusing your privacy and the integrity of the software for the next run. Is Panda Safe Browser completely secure against malware? Panda Safe Browser is based on multiple layers of protection that minimize the risk of an infection from the web to only a theoretical, almost impossible, chance. It’s based on Mozilla Firefox, a much secure browser, which considerately lowers the possibility of an attack. It has almost no plug‐ins that can be explored by malware to run on the system (like a PDF‐file reader, although it can read PDF files). It runs on with limited permissions, which means that even if some malware can exploit Firefox or the plugins it uses, the practical use of an attack will be close to none, because...

In a previous article we had discussed on memory (RAM) consumption of Firefox and how to reduce it. Here is one more option for lowering RAM usage of Firefox. New version of Firefox (3.6 +) loads certain plug-ins such as Adobe Flash, Apple QuickTime and Silverlight in a separate process called plugin-container.exe. Even if certain plug-ins stops working, it’ll not affect your browsing. That’s a good move, but it requires additional system memory which may cause for slow browsing. If you like to free-up this extra memory, you can simply disable the Plugin-container.exe, though not recommended. Type about:config at the browser address bar and hit “ Enter ”. Click on “I will be careful, I promise”. Now search for ipc in Filter box and locate the following five entries. dom.ipc.plugins.enabled dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll Right-click on each entry and click Toggle to chan...

The developer of industry leading security software ESET NOD32 has conducting a contest on YouTube. Every participant will get free license key for NOD32 Antivirus or ESET Cyber Security for Mac and the grand prize will receive a trip for two to New York to see the winning entry in ESET ad space in Times Square. The contest is simple. If you’ve a YouTube account (or create one), just make a 15 second video and upload to your YouTube channel. The video must not exceed 15 seconds in length ( details here ) The Contest begins at 12:00:01 a.m. ET on December 8, 2010 and will end at 11:59:59 p.m. ET on January 17, 2011. Winners will be announced on February 2, 2011. If you’ve interested, more details and official contest rules are available here . ( Via )

Recently Google has realized a virtual keyboard in their browser Google Chrome, which enables users to enter logins and passwords safely, quite useful for people who use public Computers. If you’re an Opera user, here is how you can enable Google Virtual Keyboard in Opera browser. To use virtual keyboard in Opera 11, install the extension Google Virtual Keyboard , and simply press the CTRL + Insert keys to display the keyboard whenever you need it. It supports for all keyboard layouts available and the main benefit of this extension is that it can reduce the risk of exposing login credentials to hackers in some extend. Note: This extension requires access to scripts and stylesheets located under http://www.google.com/jsapi and http://www.google.com/uds/* in order to work properly. If it's not and you are using some ad/script blockers you will have to add this URL rules to your whitelist.

PCPLUS, the UK based technology magazine has released a free eBook titled ‘300 Advanced PC Tips’ to celebrate their magazine’s 300th issue. This 31 page eBook contains 300 essential tips, which help you get more from the computer you love. Download 300 advanced PC tips for making your computer faster, better and more efficient. Direct download link .

Firefox is known for its memory consumption. If you find your system begin to slow down when you browsing with Firefox for a while, here is how you can lower the amount of memory that Firefox is allowed to use for caching. Also, you can instruct Firefox to release memory space that is no longer in use when minimizing Firefox to system tray. Follow as described below: 1. Open Firefox browser and in the address bar type about:config and hit Enter. 2. In the Filter box type browser.cache and select browser.cache.disk.capacity 3. Right click on it and lower the value (For example, lower the value to 20000, if your RAM is 512Mb -1GB, or to 10000 if you have below 512Mb memory) and restart Firefox. To reduce your Ram consumption when Firefox is minimized, type about:config in the address bar and hit enter. Right click anywhere and select New- Boolean . Name it config.trim_on_minimize and set its value to TRUE . Now restart Firefox. Note: the above tips aren’t a new thing, I have wri...

Google Lab has introduced an interesting application called Body Browser, which lets you explore the human body just like how you explore the world with Google Earth. To use Body Browser, you'll need a web browser with WebGL support. Google Chrome 9 Dev Channel, Chrome Canary Build and Firefox 4 beta are WebGL enabled browsers. Try Google Body Browser here and see how this could help anatomical education. ( Via )

AppBooster is an application that helps you to boost performance of running games and applications that requires higher CPU power. The application suspends all unneeded background processes, applications and services and releases more RAM and CPU power for you. The application is very simple to use. Run AppBooster and click on the ‘Edit’ menu under ‘My Profile’. There you can select what features, processes and applications should be disabled. You can also create different profiles with different settings. After creating a profile, choose one and click on ‘Activate Booster’ to activate it. All actions made by AppBoostre is temporary, you can simply shuts down processes and restarts them after the Booster Mode has been deactivated. AppBooster is available in free and pro versions. It can be downloaded (18Mb) at source .

Google has introduced a new feature to Gmail that lets your restore your deleted contacts to a recent date. It’s very useful, if you have accidentally deleted few of your contacts and want to restore them in your address book. Here is how you can restore deleted contacts. Sign into Gmail, select Contacts – More actions - Restore contacts. Now choose the time you would like to revert to. Note: there is no option to restore certain number of contacts; you can only restore the whole contacts.

Microsoft has released a new themepack for Windows 7 which contains 6 fantastic images from the fantasy-adventure film The Voyage of the Dawn Treader . “Install this official themepack from Microsoft to join Lucy, Edmund and friends on the Narnian ship the Dawn Treader as they return to the fantastical world created by author C.S. Lewis”.

AppJump is an extension for Google Chrome that lets you manage web apps and extensions installed in your Chrome with easy. It’s very useful; especially if you’ve lots of extensions and apps installed in Chrome and find difficult to manage them. With AppJump you can put Apps and Extensions into Groups and display specific groups of Apps in the launcher and start them right on your browser toolbar. The extension has a neat interface and can be useful if you have lots of Apps or extensions or if you’re using Chrome OS. Install AppJump from Chrome extension repository

Diff-IE is a prototype add-on from Microsoft Research for Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9 that lets you identify the changes to a web page or search result page since the last time you visited. It enables you to view and compare previously cached versions of the page. Web pages change in a variety of ways and when changes are made obvious, especially the subtle and unexpected ones, you get a whole lot more out of the web pages you visit. This add-on can be used, for example, to quickly view the price changes of products on an e - commerce website or to see the changes in the search result page, etc. Diff-IE can be downloaded at here.

What about running your favorite desktop applications without installing them on your real hard disk or USB drive? You can do this in the internet cloud with a browser plug-in called Spoon. You can run Firefox, Chrome, Gimp, 7Zip, Audacity and much, much more without installing them. The Spoon plug-in lets you run a number of apps such as text editors, zip archive, email clients, media players, browsers, image editor, games and much more from the Spoon web site and other Spoon Servers. To use it, you need to have the Spoon plugin installed on your computer. Simply download the Spoon plug-in from here and install it. Then enter here to sign-up to use Spoon apps. More details about Spoon here

iCare Data Recovery is an advanced, yet very easy to use, data recovery software for Windows that helps you recover lost data (photo, RAW photos, music, video, audio and other files ) from your hard disk, USB drive, memory card, etc. Data can be lost due to hard disk failure, formatting, corrupted MBR, bad boot sector, partition deleted, software operation failure like Partition Magic caused data loss, Ghost failure, virus attacked, etc. iCare Data Recovery normally costs $69.95. As a holiday gift you can download it free (Free until Dec. 25, 2010) from the official site .

Google Chrome users don’t need to download and install flash player separately. Chrome has built-in flash plug-in and will automatically update it for security reasons. However, if you want to try the latest beta build of flash player version, read it below. Download and install latest beta build (current version 10.2) from here . Run Google Chrome and type about:plugins in the address bar and hit enter. Click the ‘ Details ’ option (at the top right of the window) to expand the plug-in details. You’ll see two flash plug-in listed. Locate the integrated Flash plug-in ( gcswf32.dll ) (see screenshot below) and disable it. You can check which version of Flash Player you have on your Chrome by visiting here . Warning: It is for advanced users only. It’s recommended that Chrome users should use integrated flash player with their browser. [ Via ]

KidLogger is a simple software tool designed to help parents to monitor their kid’s activities on the computer. The application is meant for small kids (2 – 7years) and you can learn how your kid is working on the PC - view website that they visited, read typed text, listen Skype conversation and more. KidLogger includes a keystroke logger, computer monitor, web activity monitor, screen capturer and voice recorder. Features of KidLogger: Learn how much your Kid is working on the PC View web sites that your Kid visited View screen shots Read the text was typed on the keyboard Listen to the Skype conversation or any voices occured near Kid PC. Know what hardware (USB flash drives, etc) plugged/unplugged from PC. Monitor a few PC/Kids/workers easily on 1 location using any PC or mobile phone with intetnet. KidLogger can be downloaded at this link .

FILEminimizer Pictures is an image compressing application that can compress any images (JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG and EMF) by up to 98%. At the same time it keeps the original image quality. Previously FILEminimizer Pictures was a commercial software, but, now its developer Balesio made it as a freeware. With this tool, you can reduce the size of your images, photographs or pictures by up to 98% and can share your photos on Flickr, Facebook, etc, or email them to your friends. Main Features of FILEminimizer Pictures: Option to choose the most adequate compression from 4 different compression levels Batch Process: compress whole digital photo albums at once Advanced settings for lossless compression, handling of EXIF information, etc. Facebook Integration lets you upload compressed pictures directly to Facebook Download FILEminimizer Pictures 3.0 [ via ]

USB Dmmyprotect is a tiny utility that can protect your USB drive from virus infected computer. It is not an antivirus program; instead, it creates a dummy file which takes all free space on your USB drive and leaves no free space for virus to write into it. USB Dummyprotect is very simple to use. Download and copy the software into your USB drive. Execute the file from USB drive in a virus free environment. [at your computer for example] It will create a dummy.file and it takes all free space in your drive. Note: Of course it would not protect from everything, but help in most cases. Moreover, it useful only if you need to read files from your drive, if you need to write something to it you need free space on USB drive and viruses could use this space too. It wouldn’t work if there is more than 4GB free space on FAT drive. Download USB Dummyprotect at this link

Working on a computer for hours may create physical strains such as eyestrain, blurred vision, delayed focusing, headaches, back pain etc. A suggested remedy for such problems is taking a short rest break from the computer monitor every hour. EyeProtectorPro is an excellent eye care/RSI prevention software. EyeProtectorPro reminds you to take breaks while you work on your PC. When the time for a break comes, the program displays a screen as shown below and gives advice what to do during this time. The application is very simple to use. The wizard driven interface lets you quickly configure the tool. Though it is impossible to get rid of all computer related strains, this application can certainly lessen RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) and fewer headaches and dry eyes caused by PC use. EyeProtectorPro has paid and free versions. Free version doesn’t have options to set custom work time and break time settings. EyeProtectorPro can be downloaded at this link . Similar Free applications: E...