Showing posts with label Softwares. Show all posts

Friday, April 12, 2013

How to Create Custom Windows 8 Tile Icons for Any Desktop Program

Windows 8 shows desktop application shortcuts on its Start screen, but these shortcuts look out of place in the new, tile-based interface. However, there is a way to spruce up your Start screen with detailed tile icons for your desktop applications.

This trick also works with other types of shortcuts you can pin to your Start screen — folder shortcuts, favorite websites, and direct links to Steam games.

Download OblyTile

We will be using OblyTile for this, as Microsoft didn’t build this feature into Windows 8. You will need to download and install OblyTile (it’s free) to get started.

Creating a Program Tile

Using OblyTile is fairly simple — enter a name for the tile, select a program that the tile will launch, provide a tile image, and select some colors. OblyTile will then create a tile for you. The most work involved will be creating tile images — but you don’t have to do that yourself. OblyTile’s website contains a searchable archive of tile images for common apps, games, andwebsites.

We will test it out by creating a tile for VLC, a desktop app. We will enter “VLC” into the Tile Name box, browse to the vlc.exe file on our system, choose a VLC tile image we downloaded from OblyTile’s website, and select orange as the background color.

Once we are done, we can preview the tile with the magnifying glass icon.

Use the Create Tile button to add the tile to your Start screen. You can then drag it around, just like any other tile. When clicked, this tile will launch VLC on the desktop.

Advanced Stuff

Here are a few more tips for making the most of OblyTile:

Removing a Tile: Right-click a tile on your Start screen and select Unpin from Start.
Creating Your Own Tile Images: Custom tiles must be PNG images below 200kB in size. They must also be between 120×120 and 256×256 pixels.
Creating Tiles for Folders and Websites: Enter the address of the folder or website into the Program Path box or use the Choose Folder or WebSite Url options.

Creating a Tile for a Steam Game: You will need the Steam game’s application ID. Enter an URL like steam://rungameid/201870 into the Program Path box, replacing 201870 with the ID of the Steam game you want to run.

Tile Manager

Use OblyTile’s Tile Manager feature to speed things up. Just click the folder icon at the top-right corner of the OblyTile window to open it.

From here, you can edit tiles you have created, quickly create tiles from shortcuts already on your Start screen, create tiles for common tasks such as “Shut Down”, or view a list of installed applications for which you can create tiles. Just click the icons at the top of the Manager list to get started.

If you are using Windows 8′s Start screen as a desktop program launcher, this should help desktop applications blend in more easily, because unfortunately, Microsoft didn't make it easy for desktop applications to create their own Windows 8-style tiles when you install them.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

How To Restart Crashed Applications Automatically And Resume Download Tasks

Some applications can go wrong and close or crash on itself. If we are not present there to reopen them, task will remain incomplete so, here’s how you can employ software to monitor them constantly and restart program in case of crash.

Situation comes when applications need to be open for a long time like uTorrent or IDM when we leave computer on itself to complete download. Check out the Software listed below to resume the task in case of crashed application by reopening them automatically. Additionally, It is also possible to automate download timings using Auto-Connect Download Scheduler.

ProcessAlive

As the name says, it is a software to keep the process alive and restart in case it is stopped. Portable tool with one window interface where you have to press plus (+) symbol to add processes to monitor.

ProcessAlive continuously scans all the added programs from the system tray. If it notices that one of your selected processes is no longer running, it will re-launch the program.

Note should be taken that if you require that processes are launched with administrator rights, ProcessAlive must be run as an administrator too.

Download Process Alive

RestartMe

It is similar to above one but requires .NET Framework installed and not a portable one. Just add a Process to monitor and it will be re-opened in case of accidental exit or crash closing.

Application restarts within few seconds of closing and doesn’t require you to specify time interval to check if it crashed.

Download Restart Me

Application Monitor

Application Monitor is a light weight portable software which does what it name says. Single Window interface where you can add applications to keep watch (monitor). Time interval has to be set which defines the time period after which application should check if the monitored app is running or closed.

To Add application to monitor list. Click Browse and give location of installation directory (usually C:\Program Files).

Download Application Monitor

Not just crashed applications but if some window (not just application) gets closed accidentally, you can get it back with Gone in 60 seconds app. In case of Computer Shutdown, you can save your work and restore open windows on restart automatically with CacheMyWork.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

How to Easily Create Your Own Google Chrome Theme

Google’s Chrome Web Store offers a variety of themes for Chrome, which include background images for your new tab page and custom colors. Even better — you can create your own theme in just a few minutes.

This official Google app allows you to quickly and easily create a custom Google Chrome theme, complete with a custom background image and color scheme. You can even share the themes you create.

Getting Started

We’ll be using the My Chrome Theme app from Google for this – click the link and install it from the Chrome Web Store. It will appear on your new tab page, where your other installed Chrome apps do.

Choosing an Image

The first thing you’ll need to do is choose a background image for your new tab page. You can either upload an image file or capture an image from your webcam.

If you’re uploading an image, you can choose a personal photo or any other type of wallpaper image.

Adding Colors

On the next screen, you’ll be able to choose separate colors for the frame, toolbar, and background color. Of course, this is a Google app, so there’s an “I’m feeling lucky” button that will automatically select some appropriate-looking colors for you. The automatically selected colors will attempt to match the background image you selected earlier.

Installing Your Theme

Once you’re done, your theme will be generated and you’ll see an installation button that will add it to your browser. You’ll also get a link you can use to share it with others – just send them the link via email, instant message, Facebook, or anywhere else you can copy-paste a link. Of course, since this is Google, you can also share your custom theme on Google+ with a single click.

Now Create Your own themes and share with your friends and family. Time to show your creativity...

How to Make Windows 8′s Built-in Anti-Virus Scan Removable Drives

Windows Defender doesn't scan removable drives by default, like USB drives or SD cards, but you can quickly change a setting to make that happen automatically.

How to Make Windows 8′s Built In Anti-Virus Scan Removable Drives

To enable the scanning of removable media you need to open Windows Defender, which can be easily accomplished by typing “Windows Defender” into the Start Screen to search for the application.

Once you’ve opened Windows Defender, switch over to the settings tab.

On the left-hand side, select the Advanced settings option, and then check the box for “Scan removable drives” on the right-hand side.

The next time you plug in a USB drive it should be scanned automatically.

Friday, September 28, 2012

How To Remote Control Your Computer From Anywhere

VNC allows you to remotely access a computer and use its desktop, either over the Internet or from another room in your house. Windows includes a Remote Desktop feature, but it’s only available in Professional editions of Windows.

Some people may prefer TeamViewer or another service instead, but VNC allows you to install and manage your own server without using a centralized service. VNC clients and servers are available for all platforms, but we’ll be covering Windows here.

Install a VNC Server

First, you’ll need to install a VNC server on the computer you want to access remotely. We’ll be using TightVNC here, but there are other VNC servers you can also use, such as UltraVNC.

TightVNC installs itself as a system service by default, so it will always be running in the background as long as your computer is on. (Of course, you can always disable the service manually.) It also automatically allows itself in the Windows firewall – if you use a different firewall, ensure that the firewall isn’t blocking TightVNC or you won’t be able to connect.

Be sure to secure your VNC with a strong password, especially if you’re exposing your VNC server to the Internet!

After the quick installation process, TightVNC will now be running on your computer. You can use the TightVNC Service – Control Interface option in your Start menu to configure your server.

One important setting you’ll want to change is the ports TightVNC uses. The default port used for VNC is 5900 – you can increase your security by changing it to another port. People scanning for open VNC servers will try t o connect at port 5900, ut generally won’t notice VNC servers running on other random ports, such as 34153.

You may also want to change the Web Access port for the same reason — or disable web access entirely.

Forward Ports & Set Up Dynamic DNS

Your computer is now running a VNC server, so you’ll be able to connect to it from other computers on your local network. If you want to connect to it from the Internet, you’ll have to do a few more things.

First, you’ll need to forward the VNC server’s port on your router. This process is different on every router, but you’ll have to use your router’s web interface to forward ports.

You may also want to set up a dynamic DNS hostname for your home network. Internet service providers often change the IP address assigned to home networks, which means that you may be unable to connect to your home computer if your home IP address changes.

Connect to Your Computer

With a VNC server running on the remote computer, you can use a VNC client on another computer to connect. TightVNC includes a VNC client – you can install TightVNC on another computer and deselect the server option in the install process to only install the viewer. Once it’s installed, you’ll find the TightVNC Viewer in your Start menu.

Enter the address of your home computer to connect. You can use several different types of addresses:

Use the computer’s local IP address if you’re on the same local network as the computer.
Use your home network’s IP address if you’re accessing the computer over the Internet.
Use your dynamic DNS hostname if you set up dynamic DNS and are accessing your computer over the Internet.

If you’re using a different port for your VNC server (as you probably should be), append the port number after two colons.

After connecting, you’ll see the remote computer’s desktop in a window on your screen.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Capture Game Screenshot or Record Game Video & Directly Save to MKV Format

Recording PC Game Play or taking Game Screenshot was never a simple task. Most of the free applications available till date were either crappy or inconsistent. Well known or popular applications for recording Game video like Fraps were never free.

Now it is possible to record your Game play and take screenshots anytime you wished. Many of us are already familiar with Game Booster, a nifty application by Iobit to boost overall gaming performance for low end systems. The latest 3.5 beta released supports capturing game videos and taking game screenshots, so from now we can expect the later versions to have this feature permanently.

How to Record Game Videos with Game Booster

Game Video Recording:

Upon installation go to the FPS tab. The first thing you need to do is click the On button to activate the setting parameters. You can select the position where the game FPS will be shown. Set a location for Saving the contents recorded. Its better to select a location in the hardisk partition with highest free space if you intend to record long gameplay sessions.

You can make changes to the video recording option. Select custom hotkey to initiate and stop the recording. For video recording quality control you have options like selecting the recording resolution with the recording quality level. Optionally you can select the audio recording device to input narration to your game video on the go.

Video is directly stored in MKV format. Hence compact without large space dumping.

Couldn’t record game sound. May be the option will be included later, else may be the problem is local to me.

Game Screenshots:

There are not much options in this section. You can select the hotkey combination and set the image type to bmp, Jpeg or Png.

Game play Experience with Recording and Screen Capture

I cannot say for cutting edge gaming machines. For myself I have tested on a low end system, my catch was whenever the recording was started I got 5-10 Fps drop. While other factors were fine. There were no lags and game crashes.

Best thing I like was that if you want you can also hide the Fps display during the game. It will again show up when you pause the page or move to main menu. Screen capturing is smooth without even a jerk to your game.

Download Here : GAME BOOSTER 3.5 Beta

How To Create a Customized Windows 7 Installation Disc With Integrated Updates

Do you want to save time when installing Windows 7? You can create a customized installation disc and have it perform an installation without asking you questions, integrate updates and drivers, tweak Windows, and remove Windows components.

We’ll be using RT Se7en Lite for this – if you’ve used nLite with Windows XP or vLite with Windows Vista in the past, it works similarly. RT Se7en Lite is a sort of vLite or nLite for Windows 7.

What You’ll Need

To do this, you’ll need Windows 7 installed on your computer. You’ll also need to download and install the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for Windows 7 from Microsoft – RT Se7en Lite is a more user friendly frontend to WAIK.

WAIK is 1.7 GB, so the download may take a while if you have a slow Internet connection. After downloading it, extract it with a file extraction program such as 7-Zip.

Run the StartCD.exe file, select Windows AIK Setup, and follow the instructions on your screen to install Windows AIK.

You’ll also need a Windows 7 installation source – either a physical disc or ISO file.

Next, download and install RT Se7en Lite from here – it’s free and donation-supported. Download the appropriate version for your version of Windows — x86 if you’re using a 32-bit version of Windows or x64 if you’re using a 64-bit edition.

Using RT Se7en Lite

First, click the Browse button and provide your Windows 7 files – if you have an ISO file on your hard drive, click Select ISO file and navigate to it. If you have a Windows disc, insert the disk, click Select OS path, and navigate to the disc.

If you provide an ISO, you’ll have to specify an extraction path where the ISO’s files will be extracted to – you’ll need several gigabytes of space on your hard disk for this.

The files will be automatically extracted after you provide your ISO.

After selecting the edition of Windows 7 you’re customizing, RT Se7en Lite will load the image. If you have a Windows 7 disc without Service Pack 1 integrated, click the Slipstream Service Pack option in the “Select an image to configure” window and you’ll be able to integrate SP1.

Click over to the Task pane and select the tasks you want to perform after the image is loaded. You can manually check the check boxes or select a preset. Selecting one of the check boxes will activate the corresponding configuration pane at the left side of the window.

The integration pane allows you to integrate Windows updates, drivers, language packs, and even third-party applications into your installation disc. To integrate updates, you’ll have to download their installer files and load them into RT Seven Lite with the Add button.

On the Features Removal or Components tab, you can permanently remove components from your Windows installation disc and control which Windows features are installed by default. For example, you can remove the included games from your Windows installer disc, or force Windows to install the IIS web server by default.

The Tweaks tab allows you to customize the default settings for the Windows Control Panel, Desktop, Explorer, and a variety of other Windows components. You can even add custom registry settings to tweak other settings that aren’t present in the list.

The Unattended section allows you to create an unattended installation disc – you provide answers to installation questions beforehand and Windows will install without asking you these questions during the installation process.

For example, you can enter your product key ahead of time so Windows won’t ask you for it. The other tabs allow you to control other settings – for example, selecting the hard disks that Windows will install on. If you complete enough of these settings, Windows will install automatically without asking you any questions during the installation, allowing you to perform an unattended Windows installation.

The Customization pane allows you to add custom screensavers, wallpapers, themes, documents, and even logon screens to your Windows 7 disc.

On the ISO Bootable pane, you can create a ISO image from your customized installation disc. You can also burn it to a DVD or copy it to a bootable USB drive.

RT Se7en Lite’s developers recommend booting your custom Windows 7 image in a virtual machine and installing it in the virtual machine before you use it on a physical computer, just to make sure everything is working properly.

You can use VirtualBox or VMware Player to do this – both are free.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Combine Multiple Internet Connections Simultaneously For Maximum Speed

Connecting two GPRS mobile connections at a time to Computer with a thought that Internet speed will be doubled. Yes, I tried doing that out of curiosity but it simply didn’t work out that way. Only one connection at a time (probably the powerful one is taken into account) is possible.

Not just me but even my Friend and Loyal follower of Blogsolute, Sushil Kathpalia of Softwarezone always wanted this. A software solution to combine multiple internet connections and get the maximum possible speed out of both.

And Connectify is going make this dream come true by developing a software for the purpose called “Dispatch”.

Connectify is already known for their Hotspot product which was big success and now they have come up with idea of Dispatch.

connectify dispatch Combine Multiple Internet Connections Simultaneously For Maximum Speed

How Does Connectify Dispatch Works?

Dispatch lets you connect to multiple Internet Connections say Office Wi-Fi and 3G from Mobile at a time. So, your total speed will be the resultant of the sum of speed offered by each one of those.

For example: Wifi offers 350 kb/s Download speed and using 3G, you are getting some 200 kb/s. Then, total download speed will be:

350 + 200 = 550 kb/s

faster utorrent download speed Combine Multiple Internet Connections Simultaneously For Maximum Speed

Automatic Switching

When you are at airport connected via Wifi as well as 3G but Wi-fi connection is unreliable (disconnects often). In this case, Dispatch will continue to connect to Wi-Fi and when problem occurs, it will seamlessly switch to 3G so that your work doesn’t get interrupted.

Also, as soon as Wi-Fi becomes available, it connects back to it disconnecting 3G. In this way, it offers reliability and saves data bill too.

Support this Project to Bring it into Reality

Dispatch isn’t available for download because it isn’t reality yet. It is an idea which is pledged on Kickstarter which helps to gather funding from people for development of project.

Connectify has core technology, development idea in mind and what all they need is your help in funding. They have pledged a goal of $50,000 for this project starting today and will end on 7h Sep 2012 on Kickstarter.

Contribution can be as small as 1$ plus they have various other offerings if you pledge more than 10$. It includes free license of their existing product “Connectify Hotspot” and many more.

Project is already pledged with more than thousand in a day and it will be successfully funded only if they reach 50,000$.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

How to Record Your Desktop to a File or Stream It Over the Internet with VLC

VLC is full of powerful features, including the ability to record your desktop. VLC is great for quick captures, although it doesn't necessarily have the more advanced features of a dedicated screen casting application.

To record your desktop to a file or stream it, perform the normal transcoding or streaming process with your desktop as the capture device.

Recording Your Desktop to a File

To capture and record a video of your desktop to a file, click the Media menu in VLC and select Convert / Save.

Click the Capture Device tab and select Desktop from the Capture mode box.

The default frame rate is one frame per second, which won’t appear very smooth. You’ll probably want to increase the frame rate. After you’re happy with the frame rate, click the Convert / Save button.

Set a destination file in the Destination section. You can enable the Display the outputcheckbox to display the contents of your desktop in the VLC window while recording, but this isn’t necessary.

To adjust the resolution and video codec, click the edit button to the right of the Profile box. You can also select a profile from the profile box and use it as-is, without editing it.

Change the resolution by clicking over to the Video codec tab and using the options in the Resolution section. For example, you can use half your desktop’s resolution by typing 0.5 into the Scale box.

After specifying your options, click the Save button and click the Start button.

VLC will inform you that it’s “streaming” your desktop to a file. Use your computer normally and VLC will record your desktop. When you’re done, click the Stop button.

Open your saved file to view the video of your desktop. You can send this file to others, upload it to YouTube, or do whatever else you like with it.

Live-Streaming Your Desktop

To stream your desktop over the network instead of recording it to a file, click the Stream option instead of the Convert / Save option in the Media menu.

Select the Desktop capture mode on the Capture Device tab, select your desired framerate, and click the Stream button.

In the Destination Setup section, select a streaming method from the dropdown box and click Add. You can also control transcoding and other options from here.

Click the Stream button and you may be prompted to give VLC access through your firewall. Depending on your streaming method, you may also need to forward ports if you want to stream over the Internet. For example, if you add the HTTP streaming method, you’ll see that it uses port 8080 by default.

Making Video Smoother & Reducing Bandwidth Usage.

For smoother video, you can also try lowering your screen’s resolution. Removing your desktop background and using a flat color may also result in less bandwidth usage if you’re streaming the video.

Don’t forget the settings in VLC – transcoding the video so that it’s smaller will reduce bandwidth. You can also increase the frames per second VLC captures from your desktop to make the video smoother, although this will make your video file larger and increase bandwidth usage if you’re streaming.