Nowadays, USB flash drive is a must have accessories for everybody. It is very common for everyone to have at least 2GB flash drive. So, why not install some portable applications to it?

Just go to app-stick.com, and you will get to know some free portable applications. In their main page, they listed out some of the popular applications such as Skype, Firefox, and Open Office. You can click and view portable applications of different category by clicking the link at your left hand side.

app-stick.com will not host any files. All the link will point you to the original website that host the application. Beside this, they provide a brief description for all applications, which is a good feature for those who don’t know about the applications.

I recommend users to download some System utilities to your flash drive. It may help you to solve some system problems. For example, you may download Avira Antivirus, “Autoruns” to detect any applications that run at startup.

Spent some times and you will find some useful applications there.

app-stick.com

The main cause of viruses are USB flash drive. These viruses tend to copy themselves to the flash drive whenever system detected new device plug in. I still remember there are some old USB drives that come with write protect feature. But unfortunately most of the new flash drive don’t come with such feature, maybe the manufacturers want to cut down the cost?

So, the only way to protect our USB flash drive is enable the write protect through our own PC. With USB Write Protector, you can turn on/off the write protect to a USB flash drive.

Open this application before you plug any flash drive into your computer. After you turn on the write protection, you will not be able to write any files to the flash drive, or delete any files from it. You must always unplug and plug your flash drive if you want to turn on/off the write protection.

Note: This utilities will not write any files to your flash drive, it just make sure your flash drive is write protected in this cumputer only. So, when you plug the flash drive into another PC, your flash drive may still infacted by viruses. So, the beast way to protect your flash drive is to install this application to all computers that you may use.

download USB Write Protector | download from MediaFire

I had cover a lot of web services which let users download movie from YouTube and other movie sharing websites. Two of the most popular are Clip Nabber and Vixy.net. But TubeZoid provide an extra feature - just replace “youtube” with “tubezoid” in the URL and TubeZoid will convert the movie on the fly!

This feature let users easily convert and download youtube movie even faster. Currently, TubeZoid supports YouTube, Google Video, Break, Veoh, Dailymotion, Metacafe, and several adult movie sites.

TubeZoid

Since i installed Windows Vista, i feel that i don’t really like the Vista Lock buttons feature. I always hope that i can replace the lock and save session button with reboot and shutdown button. As i feel that i seldom lock my computer or save the session.

Finally i found iPower, which add a tray icon so that i can quickly shutdown or reboot my PC (although i have another application which can shutdown my PC within few seconds, but this utilities allow Windows to gives any warning for unsaved application.)

iPower is a portable application. Upon launch, you may right-click the tray icon to choose either “Logoff, reboot or shutdown”. The default is “Shut down”. When you double click the tray icon, magic happen. Your computer will immediately logoff, reboot or shut down depands on what you choose.

I like to restart my PC from times to times, so i had set the double-click to “Reboot”. What about you?

download iPower | download from MediaFire

Sometimes you may want to know your computer’s installed fonts and may also wish to see the font’s render in different size or color. We may use Microsoft Word to help us, but we still need to choose them one by one in order to view result from different font type.

Hawkeye Font Browser makes viewing fonts easy. Once you launch the application, you can type some text and press the “Redraw Font List” button, so that the Font List will repaint and you can compare the results from different font type immediately.

For example, i type “You can type anything” and press the button. I can then get a list of text showing different font’s results. Click the result will show you the font type and larger display of the font render result.

This is a very handy utilities, especially you install a lot of fonts on your computer. It require .NET Framework 3.5 to run.

download Hawkeye Font Browser | download from MediaFire | download .NET Framework 3.5

We want our websites load fast, so that visitors no need to wait for a long time before can read our contents. normally, users will only wait for arround 20 seconds before the contents finish loading, unless your websites contains really interesting articles.

So, it is really important for designers to take care the loading time before publish the design. There are a lot of websites which can measure the loading time, but today i am going to introduce Webslug, which is able to compare the loading time for 2 diferent websites.

To compare the loading time, simply type the web URL to the textboxes provided and press “Compare“. The result shown that Google take2.28 seconds to load while Yahoo take 6.13 seconds. You can also measure the loading time for a single website by following the “just test one oage” link.

Webslug

To remove this feature, right click your start menu, and choose properties. Switch to the “Start Menu” tab and press “Customize“. Scroll down until you reach “Highlight newly installed programs“. Uncheck it and press “OK“.

For Windows XP, you will find same option under the Advanced tab.

This cool editor let users to write post without logging to their panel, and post the same blog posts to different blogging platform. The editor seems like having more features than what Wordpress provided.

It is totally free to use the service. As usual, you need to provide your blog post’s title and content. After that you can publish the post within the website.

Here, you can provide up to 3 blog accounts, which means you can publish your post to 3 accounts at the same time. They support Wordpress.com, Wordpress self host, Blogger.com, TypePad, Movable Type, and DotClear.

WriteToMyBlog also comes with spell checker, which is a must tool for every bloggers.

WriteToMyBlog

Edit current website is a bookmarklet button. When you press the button, you can start edit the website, within install any other plugin or extension.

The modified website will stay until you press the refresh button. It is very useful when you want to take a print screen of certain website, but you want to modify the content. Instead of edit the content thrpugh image editing software, you can now do it within your browser.

In the example above, i had modified the radio button’s text to “Search this planet?“. Cool? So, how to add this bookmarklet to your browser? Simply drag this “Edit current website” and drop it to your browser’s toolbar.

Enjoy!

Bookmarklet: Edit current website

There are a lot of methods to put other feeds to your website. For example, you can use Google’s API to do so. But, most of the methods require some basic PHP/Javascript coding, which is not suitable for non-programmers.

But, non-programmers can use Feed Source, which is a free service to integrate feeds on your blog.

Simply provide your feed URL and then customize the color and text. Press the Update Example button to view the example output. After you done, copy the code and then paste it to your blog.

Feed Source

We can send someone a note through many ways, such as email and sms. But none of these are safe. People may hack the mail account and look for sensitive data, and handphone is easy to lost due to its “small” size. So, what is the best way to send note to somebody?

Perhaps the receiver will delete the mail/sms after read. But, what will happen if they forgot to do so? So, why not send them a self destructive note?

I believe there are a lot of telco which offer self destructive sms, which will automatic delete the sms from handphone after being read (but with higher charge). Now, you can send self destructive notes through Privnote also.

Simply type your notes and press the “Post it” button. The system will generate a short link to the note. After the receive read it, system will delete the note from database, so that no one can retrieve it.

The sender can turn on the notify feature so that he/she will be informed when the receive open the note. You can click the link yourself if you found that you had send the wrong message, but make sure you click it before the receiver click.

Privnote

It is necessary for us to backup our USB drive frequently, especially if you have a huge capacity’s USB drive, or you store important information on it. With USB Image Tool, you can easily backup or restore the entire USB drive.

Simply open the application and plugin your USB drive. The application will automatic search for available drive. After that, press Backup to save the content into an image file, or press Restore to restore the image to yourUSB drive.

This is a handy application, as it may take longer time if we do our backup manually. Furthermore, this application will just create a single file, which is easier to manage.

Summary of features:

• Create image files of USB drives
• Restore images of USB drives
• Compressed image file format (take longer time).
• Show USB device information
• Manage favorite USB images

To use this application, you need to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0.

Source: Life Rocks 2.0

download USB Image Tool | download from MediaFire

A lot of Firefox 2 users complain the memory usage for Firefox 2 is too high, which cause other applications to run slowly. Although Firefox 3 seems to be load faster and consume less memory, but it still can’t fully release the unuse memory. For example, closing unwanted tabs doesn’t fully recover the memory.

So, we need extension which can clear those cache memory. After install the extension, you can press the “Clear Cacher” options from the “Tools” menu.

I wonder why Firefox developer don’t include this feature in Firefox 3? Although RAMBack extension does help us to free up the unuse menory, but we still need to manually press the “Clear Cache” button. I hope that the extension author can try to make this automatic clear the cache whenver any tab being closed.

RAMBack extension

Sumo Paint was built using Adobe Flash and it lets users to create and modify image online. It even lets users to upload image from their own computer.

Sumo Paint offers simple but powerful tools for users to create image online. The final results can be saved into your computer or store online. You can share your image to other users through the gallery feature.

Although the entire website (including its main page) was built using flash, but the loading speed is quite fast, which is an advantage compare to other flash-based application.

There are some other similar services such as Photoshop Express, Splashup, and Picnik.

Sumo Paint

Adobe Reader 9 also loads faster than its previous version. The main attraction of Adobe Reader 9 is users can view the flash content from the reader, without the need to open another applications. I am sure a lot of rich media PDF documents will come out due to this feature.

I hope Adobe Reader 9’s load speed will not affected by these rich media content, else users will go to other alternatives such as Foxit Reader or Sumatra PDF, which load faster than Adobe Reader.

download and install Adobe Reader 9 now

This small application let you to record any tasks that you want to do and it will automatic saves them into your computer. You can right-click the individual task and marks them as “Done” or “Next“. The “Next” action will always on top, while the “Done” Action will be pushed to the bottom.

It is a simple reminder tool to help users to remember tasks for short term. There are a lot of options which you can modify. For example, under the “Appearance“, you can change the Font type, text and background color, transparency, and also text alignment.

There is an interesting feature - “Jump out of the way”, if NextAction is covering up a part of the screen you need to see, just move your mouse over it and it will move to the next corner of your screen. There are a lot of cool features which need you to explore yourself.

The application is a standalone application, but it required .NET Framework 2.0 to run. Your tasks will be saved in “C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\NextAction”. So, if you want to run it as portable application, make sure you copy the files under that folder too.

Note: For Vista users, the application files are stored at “C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\NextAction”. You can always view the applications files thrpugh Right click -> Behavior -> Explore NextAction Folder.

download NextAction | download from MediaFire

Suppose you are a designer, and you found a color which you may use it in future. So what will you do? Print screen and paste the screenshot in any graphic editor and then use the color picker tool to grab the color code right? But, it is very troublesome that you need to repeat so much steps each time you want to save a new color.

Here comes a handy tool which will makes the job easy. The Color Picker, which is a free but powerful color picker. Whenever you found a color, just open the application, point your mouse to the color, and left click it. Thats all, the application will automatically save the color into the color palette and you can use it anytime.

The application provide both RGB and HEX code. The color palette will save your favorite colors and you can retrieve the color code anytime.

If you are a web/graphic designer, i think you may need this great tool, as it simplified the color capture process and it store your favorite colors also.

The Color Picker | download from MediaFire

I had cover a lot of RSS articles before, which mainly focus on how to filter RSS or create feed for websites which don’t provide RSS service. Although FeedBurner let users to subscribe through email, but there are some alternatives beside FeedBurner.

Send Me RSS

Sendmerss.com is a service which help users organize and send their favorite contents straight to the mailbox. To subscribe through email, simply provide the RSS URL and your email address. They even provide a widget for bloggers to embedded into their blogs. The widget’s design is very attractive, and it just needs a single step to subscribe through the widget.

RSS FWD

To subscribe through RSS FWD, simply provide the RSS URL and choose your delivery preferences. After that, you can preview the looks of the RSS mail before you confirm to subscribe.

RSS2Email

RSS2Email is a Russian service, and i can’t read the words. But, it is very simple to subscribe through RSS2Email. Simple provide the RSS URL at the first textbox and your email at the second textbox and hit the button.

Send Me RSS | RSS FWD | RSS2Email

There are some situations which we want to open multiple website with just a single click. For example, you may reach some websites and found some interesting links which you want to open later. So, you may want to save those links in a notepad, and then copy and paste them one by one to new tabs.

Now, you can do this with just a single click. Simply paste each link to a new line, and click “Submit“. You will then get an “Open all” button. Press it and it will open all links in new tabs. If you wish to open them individually, you can click on their respective URL.

Remember, don’t put too many URLs into the textbox. Open too many link at one time will crash your browser!

URL Opener

Before you start, you need to know the path to 7zip. Normally, it is “C:\Program Files\7-Zip”. After that, you need an application called “Resource Hacker”, which is free. You can download Reosurce Hacker from here. After you prepare everything, lets start to modify the icons.

Steps 1

Open Resource Hacker. Click File -> Open. Browse to your 7zip folder. Mine is “C:\Program Files\7-Zip”. After that, choose “7z.dll” and click Open.

Step 2

Expand the Icon Group. You will get around 16 nodes.

Step 3

Expand the first node (0). Click “1033″. You will see the 7zip icon appear. Right click “1033″ and choose “Replace Resource“.

Step 4

Click “Open file with new icon” to select your icon file.

Step 5

After that, You can select icon to replace from the right listbox. Press “Replace” when done. Repeat this step to change the other icons.

Before i start, lets talk about what is stuck pixel and what is dead pixel. Stuck pixel is a dot of colour in your LCD while the background is black. When the stuck pixel become black dot in white background, it become dead pixel. Normally, stuck pixel is easily to fix compare to dead pixel.

Now, lets share some tips on how to fix these pixels:

JScreenFix

It is a Java application and you can run JScreenFix through web browser. JScreenFix can be used to fix stuck pixels. You need to install Java Runtime in order to use JScreenFix. It take around 20 minutes to repairs stuck pixels on your LCD.

Killdeadpixel

Similar with JScreenFix, Killdeadpixel is a web solution to dead pixels. It is an animated gif image which will try to massage the dead pixel back alive again by getting it to change rapidly. Simply drag the image to dead pixel and stay there for 1 hour. Although this method doesn’t work for all dead pixels, but you may try it.

DPT

Dead pixel tester (DPT) is a free application for users to locate and identify any stuck/dead pixels. It is because most of the LCD manufacturers will replace the LCD free of charge if there are more than certain amount of stuck/dead pixels (within the warranty period). DPT include a pixel exerciser which may fix stuck pixels.

JSCreenFix | Killdeadpixel | DPT

Read more information on WikeHow

I am sure most of the Firefox users will install some addons or themes. But, do you know that Firefox 3 allow users to search addons within the Addons Manager?

As you can see in the screenshot, You can browse to the Get Add-ons tab and Firefox will show some recommended addons. There is also a searchbox so that you can search your favorite addons. The searchbox allow you to search for both extensions and themes. I am not sure whether you can search plugins or not.

Some PDF creator will add restrictions to the PDF documents to protect the contents from being copied or printed by users. Users still can print, copy and paste the PDF documents, if they have the passwords to unlock the documents.

However, with PDF Unlocker, you can easily remove these restrictions. After installing the application, a shortcut will appear on the dekstop. Simply drag and drop any PDF documents to PDF Unlocker’s icon and all restrictions will be removed.

If the PDF documents required password to open/read, you can use PDF Unlocker to remove the password. But, you need to know the password before unlock them.

download PDF Unlocker

Source: Techtrends

How many of you are Yahoo mail users? I think most of the internet users will have at least one Yahoo mail account right? But, when you try to register a new account, and you found that some one had already chosen the name, what will you do? Use the recommend name or think another one? Or you will give up Yahoo mail and switch to another Email provider?

With the new domains, Yahoo believe more users will stay with them and can get their desired username. To register with the new domains, simply click the signup button, and choose your domain when you provide your yahoo ID.

So, why not grab your desired account now?

Following Scribd, SlideShare, Docstoc, Google finally launched PDF documents sharing service. With this service, Google Docs users can upload and share PDF documents.

Currently, users can only upload and view the PDF documents, but they are not allow to edit. Also, the maximum size supported is 10MB for documents upload from PC, while 2MB for documents from web.

I hope that Google will implement the PDF editing feature in future. Furthermore, if Google let users to save documents directly to PDF format will be the best.

Source: Google docs blog

The Windows 7 desktop theme look similar with Windows Vista. However, there are some differences between them, as you can see from the screenshots below:

How to install

1. Download Windows 7 Theme.
2. Install “UXTheme Multi-Patcher 6.0.exe” from “UX Theme Patcher” folder.
3. Double click on the “Windows 7 M1 VS.msstyles” in “Theme\Windows 7 M1 VS” folder to install the theme.

Source: MegaLeecher.Net

If you have a powerful GPU, you can try Pictomio. It is a simple photo collection and viewing application which utilize the power of GPU.

Pictomio comes will a lot of features. For example, you can rate your image, image/video management, liquid-zoom, albums, categories, and much more. Pictomio also supports different language.

In order to use Pictomio, your graphic card must support ShaderModel 2.0 and at least 128MB ram. It is a free application, but unfortunately they only available for Windows machine. Perhaps Linus version will be available soon.

Pictomio website

If you like to open a lot of windows at the same time. You probably need to spend some time to close them after use, so that you won’t accidentally close the wrong window. So, why not use CloseWin to help you close the unused windows?

You will need to add some text to the list, so that CloseWin can close all windows that contain the text in the title. For example, i had added “Skype” to the list. When i click “Close selected windows“, CloseWin will close all opened windows which contains “Skype” in the title. Remember, the text is case-sensitive!

You can add different text to the list, and then click “Close all windows in list” so that you can close multiple selected windows simultaneously.The last options - “Close All Windows”, will close all windows in taskbar.

Note: There are some applications which can’t be closed by CloseWin, but most of the applications work fine.

download CloseWin | download from MediaFire

Since i switch to Windows Vista, i really like the thumbnail preview feature. Today, i found an interesting application which can enable this feature in Windows XP. It is a freeware (non-commercial usage).

Visual Task Tips is a lightweight shell enhancement utility. Upon install the application, you can start enjoying the thumbnail preview when your mouse hover to any applications in Windows taskbar. The screenshot above shows preview for “My Computer“.

There are some settings that you can done. For example, you can change the thumbnail size and popup delay. You can also change the refresh rate, but higher refresh rate will cause performance issue.

Can i start this application automatically when i launch Windows? Yes, you can start it automatically. Just check “start application automatically when windows start”. Furthermore, you can also start the application without tray icon. For more information, you may visit the FAQ page.

download Visual Task Tips | download from MediaFire

After install foldersize, you can right-click on the header and choose “folder size“. You will then get a new column to display the size of files and folders on that particular path. the red box shown new added column which display the size of files and folders. You can then uncheck the original “size” header, as foldersize will show you the size of files also.

Foldersize is a freeware and it support both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. Unfortunately, Vista users are unable to install this application.

download foldersize | download from MediaFire