Gather a Snapshot of Google in time

Google Zeitgeist provides a weekly, monthly, and yearly overview of what the Web was interested in. Turning to Google itself for a definition of zeitgeist (define:zeitgeist), there's consensus that it refers to "the spirit of the times."
And Google Zeitgeist is just that: a mirror that the Web (according to Google) holds up to us, providing a snapshot of the week, month, or year that was.

A typical weekly Google Zeitgeist, shown in fig lists the top 15 gaining queries.

(http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html)

It takes only a few moments of visiting Google Zeitgeist before you're itching to go back a little further in time: the week your second child was born, the month during which the Olympics were held, the year you graduated from high school. Click the Archive link to choose any year from the Google Zeitgeist Archive and display links for every week, month, and year .

Resize large group of photos freshly downloaded from digital camera in two clicks

Everyone likes to email digital photos, but no one likes to receive pictures that are so huge they take forever to download and require you to scroll left and right and up and down to see the entire image.

Microsoft ImageResizer PowerToy is a free utility that plugs into Windows Explorer. Download and install ImageResizer from the link at the end of this post and then browse to the folder where you stored your digital photos.

Select the photos you want to resize, right-click, and choose Resize Pictures from the context menu to get the ImageResizer dialog box. Click the Advanced button to see all of the options as shown in the pic.

From there, choose one of the ImageResizer suggested dimensions, or enter your custom width and height. Be sure to select the Make Pictures Smaller But Not Larger option if you don’t want to size up — and you won’t, because making digital photos larger degrades quality. Click OK.

By default, the ImageResizer creates copies of the files and adds the chosen size to the filename. For example, if your original photo filename was Jeremy001.jpg, and you resized it using the Small setting, the new version will be named Jeremy001 (Small).jpg.

Download here

Speed Up With A USB Stick

If you’ve got yourself a large USB Flash drive (at least 1 GB, preferably 2), you can move your system’s page file onto it for significantly better performance, because accessing flash memory is typically faster than your average hard disk.

You should also optimise the Flash drive for performance—right-click on it in My Computer, select Properties. Go to the Hardware tab, select your Flash drive and click Properties. Under the Policies tab, select “Optimise for performance”.


A few things to be kept in mind:

Firstly, if you remove this drive while Windows is running, you could cause it to crash, so be careful there.

Secondly, Flash drives are good only for limited read/write cycles, so this approach is definitely going to eat into its lifetime. Use this tip only for when you really need the performance boost rather than as a permanent solution.

Flip 3D-Reverse the order of flip

The Aero user interface adds a powerful enhancement to task switching. Alt+Tab still works—even better, in fact, because now thumbnails of each application are displayed, not just titles. But you’ll probably abandon Alt+Tab in favor of Windows+Tab, called Flip3D, which shows you a revolving set of windows at an angle so you can see exactly what you’re switching to.

You can reverse the order that Flip 3D cycles through your open windows by holding down the Shift key in addition to Windows+Tab. In my case, the Desktop window has always been displayed as the bottom-most application when I pressed Windows+Tab. To minimize all applications and display your Desktop, therefore, hold down the Windows key, then press Tab, Shift+Tab, and let go of the Windows key.

Windows Aero- How to switch it off

The new Aero interface gives translucency to the chrome that surrounds most application windows. This enables you to see what lies beneath a window, whether the foreground app is stationary or you’re dragging it to a new location.



If the translucency of window chrome irritates you, you can switch it off. Click Start➪Control Panel➪Customize the Color Scheme and then turn off Enable Transparency.

Can Translucency Help Productivity?

Translucency may seem like an unimportant feature, but a source within Microsoft’s Usability Labs tells us that the bold colors of the window frames in Windows XP were found to distract the eye from whatever material was in the main application window. Lightening up the window colors—by making them partially translucent— was found to improve how quickly a person could work with the content within applications.

Vista-New Start Menu

In Vista, the Start button is no longer called Start, and the Start menu looks completely different from the menu you may be used to in Windows XP. However, it’s still there at its place as in Win XP, here it seems a bit better organised.

The old Start button has been replaced by a lighted sphere that displays the Windows flag logo. Instead of submenus that fly out to the right of the main menu, Vista displays your most recently used programs in a primary window.

If you don’t like the new look, you can get the old Start menu back by reverting to the familiar XP submenu system. Right-click the Start Button, click Properties, select Classic Start Menu, and then click OK.

One thing you won’t find on the default Start menu is the Run option, which generations of Windows users have employed to start programs that may not appear on any menu. The omission isn’t a problem—if you know the secret. Simply type the name of the program you want to run (such as notepad) into the Start Search bar just above the Start button and then press Enter.

Disable focus stealing applications with Tweak UI

Ever been typing in a document or a password prompt and have a pop-up take over as the active window? It’s not hard to instant message a password to a stranger or unknowingly reboot your computer because a Windows Update prompt asked while you weren’t looking. An application focus thief breaks into your workflow without warning or permission. Not only can it steal the window focus, it can take over your mental focus.

A free Windows enhancement called Tweak UI can disable focus-stealing applications. Download the free Tweak UI from the link given at the end of this post. Once Tweak UI is running, under the General options, in the Focus panel, select Prevent applications from stealing focus, as shown in Figure below.

Tweak UI unlocks lots of other Windows settings as well. It’s worth a look around the software for other options to configure Windows just to your liking.

Download here