MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [March 25th]” plus 10 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [March 25th]
- Become A MakeUseOf Fan On Facebook!
- Screenpresso – A Lightweight Jing Alternative With Advanced Options (Windows Only)
- 4 Ways To Email Attachments When The File Extension Is Blocked
- Start A Garden With The Help Of The Internet
- 3 Lightweight Podcast Managers For Linux
- How To Integrate A Blog With Video & Audio Capabilities
- Memtest – An Awesome Tool To Test Your Computer’s Memory For Errors
- How To Split Files Into Manageable Chunks With Slices [Mac]
- AnyBizSoft PDF to PowerPoint Converter [Last-Minute MakeUseOf Giveaway]
- How To Install Cool Windows 7 Theme Downloads For Windows XP
| Cool Websites and Tools [March 25th] Posted: 25 Mar 2010 08:31 PM PDT
These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Become A MakeUseOf Fan On Facebook! Posted: 25 Mar 2010 07:30 PM PDT
If you enjoy reading MakeUseOf and have a Facebook account, become a MakeUseOf fan on Facebook and join in on the fun! Simply click on the “Become a Fan” button on the left to get started! You’ll be rewarded with exclusive previews of future publications, what we refer to as “Sneak Peeks”; and the best posts from the day before, “Yesterday’s Bests”. We also use our fan page to inform you about premium software giveaways and discounts that are not announced on the website. We get a lot of those from software developers and distribute them mainly on Facebook. In addition to that, you’ll have the chance to participate in polls and ask our MakeUseOf writers questions or just tell everyone how much you love reading our site!
So grab some friends and become our fans today! Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Screenpresso – A Lightweight Jing Alternative With Advanced Options (Windows Only) Posted: 25 Mar 2010 06:31 PM PDT
Screenshots not only solve this problem, but they also light up an otherwise long, boring article. We have discussed convenient Firefox extensions for screen capturing, as well as desktop programs that facilitate instant uploading to media sharing sites, capturing entire webpages without having to scroll, or just make the Print Screen button archaic.
In my search for a good alternative to jing that saved me from the latter's missing features, I basically assaulted about ten free screen-capturing tools inside out, but only Screenpresso came out trumping all others. Screenpresso was introduced on MUO before in the Directory but it definitely deserves a full post for bringing in a variety of features you’d see in paid screencapture utilities, such as Snagit, for a price of $0.
In addition to the features that Jing presents, Screenpresso shines with a few others as it:
Pre-Capture
You can select whether to have Screenpresso at startup and your temporary folder to hold your screencaptures in History (1). You’ll also be able to automate post-capture actions such as the default image format (.png, .gif, .bmp, .jpg) (2), whether you want one or up to 100 images in your History (3) and file names based on numbers or date (4). Other options include the ability to open History or the image editor automatically (5) and change image border effects and resizing of capture (6). Capturing
The zooming feature is useful to see the region where you exactly start capturing so you can avoid capturing extra parts that later you might have to edit out. This is seen in paid apps, such as Snagit. What's also useful is Screenpresso's feature to pre-select regions of your screen based on your cursor's location so you can save yourself the dragging-and-capturing step.
For example, if my cursor stands on the Start button, the region around the button will be pre-selected in case you need to snap a screenshot of it. Having the program capture the region itself also ensures a precise regional capture.
There's also the scrolling feature that's worth a look. Honestly, I didn't even realize this feature existed but once I discovered it, it proved immensely useful. Basically, you can capture a whole page even if your screen only shows a portion of it. To do this, select the capture region, release by clicking on it again, then scroll and click on the page's next region to capture. When you're done, right-click to let Screenpresso merge the captures. Then you'll have a whole page. Post-CapturingAfter you have your screenshot, you can add arrows, blurred areas, rectangles, ellipses, text and numbers.
Blurring a region to conceal sensitive information sometimes looks more professional than just dropping a pixilated scratch mark or filled-in rectangle.
Screenpresso lets you customize the level of blurring by providing a scale of 1 to 20 where 1 is slightly transparent and 20 covers the region totally.
You can also customize the rectangles, ellipses, text and numbers in shadow, opacity, etc.
Another advantage of this program is the ability to change the border effects of the capture. You can select the color and thickness of the border, how round you want the corners and the intensity of the shadow. After you select these settings, you can set them as default for all future captures. You can also copy the image to paste somewhere else so you can stitch it to an empty canvas with another picture since Screenpresso can't import another picture for you to glue. Features To Catapult Screenpresso To Total ExcellenceScreenpresso is already a very full-featured screencapture utility, but a few more options would make it an absolute go-to tool for bloggers: customizable keyboard shortcuts, a feature to paste in another picture onto the capture, and support for video and audio capturing (there are already buttons for these, but once you click on them, they just indicate that the features aren't available yet). The current lack of video capturing in Screenpresso doesn’t really bother me as I prefer to use the web-based Screencast-O-Matic (review, website) tool that records your screen in unbelievably good quality and requires no signing-up. Screenpresso is a mere 2.7MB download (3.43MB once installed) that fulfills a lot of image editing needs in addition to being a great screen-capturing tool. Tell us about your favorite (better if it’s free!) screenshot editor or screencasting software! Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 4 Ways To Email Attachments When The File Extension Is Blocked Posted: 25 Mar 2010 04:31 PM PDT
Most mail servers provide anti-virus protection. This means they scan file attachments of emails you send and receive. Some providers even go as far as to block a number of file extensions per default. Gmail for example won’t let you send .exe files, even if they are archived in a .zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, or .gz file. Messages sent to you containing an .exe file will be bounced back to the sender. So do you unblock attachments to send or receive .exe files nevertheless?
1. Upload The File to A File Hosting Service
We have previously covered several file hosting services on MakeUseOf. For some of them you don’t even have to sign up.
2. Put The Files In A Zip FileIf you want to send several files and unblock individual attachments, this is the best way to go in the first place as the archive reduces the total file size. However, as I have mentioned in my introduction, if you add an .exe file to your .zip archive, it will still be blocked by Gmail and possibly other mail services. Zip files contain archived file name listings, which are not encrypted, even if you password protect the .zip file. This is different with .rar archives, which do not easily reveal their content. You can download WinRAR here. Note that this is not a free tool. However, it offers a free trial and has been known to work even after the trial period expires. 3. Manually Change the File ExtensionYou can rename the .exe file extension to .jpg for example. In order for this to work you must be able to see file extensions. In Windows, open the folder that contains the file you want to rename, go to > Tools > Folder Options… and open the > View tab. Under > Files and Folders remove the check mark for > Hide extensions for known file types. Click > OK to save your changes. Now you can change the file extension. Windows will warn you that if you change a file name extension, the file may become unusable. Don’t worry, you can change it back later, so go ahead.
4. Add An “Imaginary” File ExtensionChanging the file extension has one major drawback: it’s not obvious, so you may forget that you changed it or someone else may not recognize it. An alternative to unblock attachments is to rename the file, but instead of changing the file extension, simply add an additional one. For example, rename setup.exe to setup.exe.remove. This post was inspired by a question posted on MakeUseOf Answers. Do you have a problem you need help with? Go ahead and ask us! It’s free and you don’t have to sign up. Image credits: doctor-a, iprole Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 15,000 fans already!
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| Start A Garden With The Help Of The Internet Posted: 25 Mar 2010 02:31 PM PDT
There are several types of places on the Internet that can help you in your gardening pursuits such as online garden planners, social networks of like-minded gardening types, informational sites, and more! Let me share some sites and tools that should help.
Garden Puzzle – Create Your Design In 5 MinutesMentioned in the MakeUseOf Directory, Garden Puzzle is an online tool that makes designing your garden simple. In 4 easy steps you’ll have a design that will help you figure out how to start a garden. Just upload a photo of your garden area, indicate what kind of climate and soil conditions you are dealing with, choose plants you want to add (they also suggest some for you), and create visuals for each season you deal with.
Garden PlannerUnlike Garden Puzzle, Garden Planner gives a blueprint-type aerial view giving you a good view of the layout. In fact, it is very similar to a blueprint home design program. There are many plants and objects to choose from and you can even even download it as a program to your Windows desktop (the desktop version is a 15 day trial).
iBotanika – Discover, Connect & Share Your Life In GreeniBotanika is a site for anyone from the beginner gardener to the profession botanist. It is a place to catalog your gardening progress, find needed information and connect with other plant enthusiasts. Unlike some of the larger social networking sites, iBotanika is a focused community that is specific to plant growers. You can upload pictures of yourself and your plants, indicate the location of your plants and get your own greenhouse (virtual).
MyPlantIDMy wife and I just bought a house and this spring will be the first time we will be working on the yard and the gardens. I can see MyPlantID being useful as we seek to find out what plants are already planted. This site offers a user generated database which helps in the identification of plants. You can either search for your plant on the site or submit a photo of your plant for other users to help in the identification.
Here are a few more sites that can help you with your gardening needs:
And even more from the blogosphere: See, the Internet can be useful for the every day things such as gardening! You can find tools, sites and even blogs that help you with every part of the gardening process from plant identification, to gardening social networks and even blogs to follow and gain advice from. Since the Internet is so large, I am sure there are more tools, sites and blogs that other people find useful in their gardening pursuits. If you have a site, tool or blog that you often consult when gardening, please do share them with us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| 3 Lightweight Podcast Managers For Linux Posted: 25 Mar 2010 12:31 PM PDT
If you're a recent Linux convert, you've probably noticed you cannot install iTunes on your new system. That doesn't mean you can't enjoy your favorite podcasts anymore – there is plenty of Linux podcast software available that are capable of managing and downloading podcasts.
Note that in order to use these programs with your favorite podcasts you're going to need that podcast's RSS or Atom feed: the iTunes feed isn't going to work. Don't worry, however: most podcasts have a homepage that will feature this feed for you. BashPodder: It Doesn't Get Lighter Than ThisI love this Linux podcast software. Weighing in at a total of 1.6KB, Bashpodder is made up of a single script, an XML file and a configuration file containing nothing but your podcast URLs. Best of all, on a standard Ubuntu setup you won't need to install a single dependency to get it working. BashPodder comes with no GUI, but if you're generally afraid of command-line programs don't worry: this program simply couldn't be any easier to use. To start off head over the the Bashpodder website and download the three files necessary for the program. Put all these files into the same folder on the drive you want your podcasts to be downloaded to. Open the file called "bp.conf" and you'll see a list of podcast feeds. Delete anything you’re not interested in and add the feeds you are interested in.
Now you need to make the file "bashpodder.shell" executable, using the command line if you know how. Alternatively, on Gnome-based systems such as Ubuntu, you can right-click the file, then click "Properties," then click the "Permissions" tab. Click the "Allow Executing file as Program" button and you're good to go. Run the script from the command line, if you know how, or alternatively simply double-click the file "bashpodder.shell" and then click "Run Program in Terminal." Bashpodder will now download every file from all the feeds you just added.
The BashPodder Script is simple but very effective. Basically it downloads every file linked to by a given RSS feed, leaving the names of the file in a log called "podcast.log". Next time you run BashPodder, none of the files in podcast.log will be downloaded, meaning it will only download new content. gPodder: Simple, Straightforward
Not a big fan of bash-based apps? The gPodder Linux podcast software offers a GUI-ed approach to Linux podcasting. Installing the program is easy, as gPodder is in all likelihood already in your Linux distribution's package manager. Search for gPodder and you should be good to go, but if not there are downloads over at gPodder's home page. Start the program and you'll be presented with a list of default podcasts to choose from, including three of my favorite shows on NPR: Car Talk, This American Life and Science Friday. Pick any podcasts here that you're interested in and you've got a good start. Adding podcasts is basic: hit "Subscription" followed by "Subscribe to a new podcast URL." Then you need only paste the feed and you'll be asked which new episodes you want to download.
A neat feature of this program is the ability to add any YouTube channel as a podcast. The "Search For Podcasts" has a YouTube tab; simply search for your favorite channel and you'll be good to go. Looking for a funny YouTube Channel to follow? Tim's got some recommendations for you, and I'd also add the excellent AutoTune The News. PenguinTV: And Then Some
PenguinTV is very similar to gPodder, but functions more like an RSS reader than a podcast manager. In fact, PenguinTV is unique amongst podcast managers in that it can not only automatically download media files from podcasts but also allow you to browse your favorite text and graphic based RSS feeds: XKCD and Gnome Plant are both included by default. Don't shortchange PenguinTV as a podcast manager, however. This program can download your podcasts on a scheduled basis, and can even synchronize all your currently download files to any location you choose – handy if you have a media device you can drop files on directly.
I personally had some stability problems after adding the feed for The Bugle (Earth's single greatest cultural achievement, if you're not familiar with it.) This is probably because The Bugle's feed points to all 100+ episodes in the show's history, but it should be noted that gPodder and BashPodder both worked fine with this feed. Still, if you're not pleased with gPodder for any reason, PenguinTV offers a great alternative with support for non-podcast RSS feeds to boot. Like gPodder, PenguinTV is probably already in your Linux distribution's package manager. If not, you can find a download on PenguinTV's home page. ConclusionAll three of these programs are great for getting your podcast fix, but I personally prefer BashPodder. This program is dead-simple, lightweight and get's the job done without a lot of fuss. Don't agree? Tell me which podcast manager is best in the comments below. Also free free to share your favorite podcasts, because it's always fun to find new ones! Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Integrate A Blog With Video & Audio Capabilities Posted: 25 Mar 2010 11:31 AM PDT
However, once I did the research for a few MakeUseOf articles like using Postie to email blog updates or using Google Voice to blog, I realized that there are so many additional types of content that you can add to your blog updates to provide your readers with a richer multimedia experience. With this in mind, I started researching a few video blog ideas to integrate my blog with video and audio capabilities using applications that are simple and easy to install.
Instantly Record & Post Video With Your Mobile PhoneYou’ve probably been in those situations where something amazing is happening and you want to capture the moment, but you don’t have a video camera or even a digital camera handy. Maybe you’ve spotted a deer during your drive out in the woods, or maybe you’ve spotted that elusive UFO over the treetops behind your house. If you have an Android, Windows Mobile or iPhone and dozens of other Internet capable mobile phones, then Qik is exactly what you need.
Sign up with a Qik account, download the application to your phone, and you’re ready to start instantly sharing your videos with the whole world. This app makes it so easy to “video-blog” that it’s scary. The screen above is the video capture window, and when you press the green button, you’re recording. When you’re recording, you’re also sharing live and any of your friends with a live feed can watch your live video (if you’ve enabled “public”). When you do capture a recording, just click on the share button and you can instantly distribute the video to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or even to individual contacts listed in your phone address book.
In my case, I want to embed my recorded video into my blog. When you’re done recording the video on your phone, it automatically starts uploading to your Qik account. Once you get to a computer, you can log into your account and copy the embed code from your recorded video into your blog.
For my test video, I recorded a 20 second video of my pug. She’s cute isn’t she? Now, while this is a cool feature, there’s one more thing that you can do. In addition to auto-posting to Twitter, Facebook or emailing your friends as well as embedding your videos into your blog, you can also provide a “Live Feed Channel” to anyone running special “Qik-in-Touch” software on their PC (works on Windows, Mac and Linux).
The moment you click the green record button, you go live on the public “Qik TV” unless you’ve set your feed private. What good is this? If you think about it, it’s extremely useful. If you’re traveling, hiking in the woods or you’re anywhere far away from your friends and family, you can offer them live feeds of the cool things you’re doing. As long as they have the software running, they’ll see your live mobile feed pop up instantly. Create A Blog With Audio CapabilitiesSo, now that you can embed recorded video feeds into your blog – what about audio? Let’s say you’re at an important conference and you get the opportunity to perform a once-in-a-lifetime interview with someone extremely famous. You forgot your digital recorder – what do you do? Well, as long as you have any mobile phone, you can use iPadio to instantly record an audio update to your blog.
Once you sign up for an iPadio “phlog” account, you can call the 1-866 number and, using your pin, record your audio post. When I recently wrote about Google Voice, I mentioned a way to forward the transcribed voicemail to your blog. Well, I have to admit that iPadio has made that process a lot easier, and it appears that the transcriptions are far more accurate than those you get from Google Voice. If you have an iPhone or an Android phone, there’s also a special iPadio app you can install to initiate your recordings.
Yes – you can even stream live audio if you want to do a live “show,” but for most of my purposes, I just want to record an audio stream that I can embed into my blog, so the second option will usually suffice. If you like listening to podcasts, then you’ll love the “Latest Phlogs” screen, where you can browse the latest recordings from other users.
On the way home from work I listened to a fascinating short 2 minute blurb from a business expert who discussed how getting constructive feedback can become addictive. Some of the recordings are just junk, but if you browse, you’ll find a lot of gems from some very intelligent people. People can visit your unique URL to view your “phlog”, which is basically a text blog from your transcribed audio recordings, and the ability for visitors to click play and listen to your audio.
When you go into your phlog on iPadio and click on the small “embed” icon next to the chain-link icon, you’ll get the embed code you can use to insert the iPadio object into your blog. I embedded the widget into FreeWritingCenter and this is what it looks like when you’ve embedded your audio stream into your blog.
As you can see, the attempted transcription is posted, and at the bottom your readers can click the “play” button to listen to the actual audio file. Your blog readers can even click within the widget to follow your iPadio phlog updates. iPadio is definitely a service that I plan to continue using to stream realtime interviews or to offer a play-by-play rundown of real news as it happens. iPadio is a very fun and exciting approach to blogging using multimedia resources. Would you ever consider phlogging? Do you like the idea of embedding audio clips into your regular text blog? Share your opinions about phlogging in the comments section below. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| Memtest – An Awesome Tool To Test Your Computer’s Memory For Errors Posted: 25 Mar 2010 10:31 AM PDT
Obviously, almost instinctively I attributed the trouble to Windows. Ran a couple of scans and diagnostics and they all came out clean. Fed up of the problems and not being able to resolve them I decided to go ahead and install Linux alongside. Half an hour later I was ready to bid a much wanted goodbye to all the troubles. However, about 10-15 minutes into the session, applications started quitting unexpectedly or failed to start altogether.
Memtest as it turns out is an excellent solution for conducting a computer memory test, only its a little too advanced for the average user. Let’s attempt to demystify some of the options that you can make use of if time demands so. First off you need to download Memtest and I would suggest burning the bootable ISO image onto a CD. That is perhaps the easiest way to use Memtest. Owing to its popularity and usefulness, Memtest is also included on a number of Live CDs including the likes of Ubuntu and System Rescue CD. Once you have the CD ready, pop it in and let the computer boot from it. Depending on whether you are using the Memtest ISO or one of the other Live CDs you will be taken to Memtest directly or you would have to invoke it via one of the options. Here is how to invoke it on the Ubuntu Live CD:
In either case, once Memtest has been invoked, it starts running computer memory tests straight away without asking questions of any sort. It displays a basic memory information in the upper left hand corner, information on the currently running tests in the upper right hand corner and overall test results just below them (only errors are displayed). Towards the bottom you can find the means to interact with Memtest.
You can reboot any time using the ESC key and Lock/Unlock scrolling to view the errors if there are too many of them. Enabling the scroll lock also pauses the tests till you disable it. Hitting ‘c’ would take you to the configuration menu and allows you to customize a variety of settings and parameters. You can choose from amongst various tests. The detailed description of the tests and what kinds of issues they detect is available here.
Via the settings menu, you can also customize the memory address range that should be tested. Its best you leave it to the full memory scan especially on the first scan, then you can use custom values, depending on the errors you get to test only the bad addresses. In addition you can change error display options and redraw the screen. Frankly these are the bits that you should be concerned about. If you need to go into the advanced options, you probably already know a lot about Memtest! Memtest is an excellent tool to keep in your virtual troubleshooting toolbox. Although such memory errors like I encountered are rare, they do leave you clueless as to what’s giving way. A quick memory scan can either rule that out or point you towards the problem straightaway. Let us know what you think of the Memtest computer memory test or if you have a preferred alternative. We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Split Files Into Manageable Chunks With Slices [Mac] Posted: 25 Mar 2010 09:31 AM PDT
Anyway, the storage limitation in that era forced everybody to come up with the solution to put big-size files in to those miniscule capacity floppies. Maybe that need is the force which gave birth to the technology to split files.
How to Split Files – Divide and ConquerEven today, the era when you can easily find elementary school students with a few gigabytes of USB drive inside their pencil case, file-splitting technology is still in demand. A few of the most common scenarios behind this necessity are: sending big files via email, burning over However, doing file splitting carries its own risks. If one of the parts is missing or damaged, it’s impossible to reconstruct everything back to its original form. The same thing goes for the existence of compatible splitter-joiner apps. Imagine downloading 21 parts of 100MB only to find that one of them is damaged, or to find that you don’t have the application that can join them. But if you really need to do it, you can use one of the alternative file splitters in Mac: Slices. Slicing The Fresh OrangeThe user interface of this file splitter is plain simple. You’ll see a rectangular box with two main tabs: “Split” and “Combine” representing the two main functions of this app.
If you want to know how to split files, all you have to do is simply drag and drop the file to the dropping area called “drag file to split here” under the “Split” tab. Then decide how big the maximum size of every file chunk should be. The options are any number in KB, MB or GB.
Before you click the “Split” button, go to the “Options” first. Here is the place to decide what splitting format that you want to use.
There’s “Split & Cat” with “Checksum” option and “7zip” with “Compress” option. Choose one of them, click “OK“, then continue on with the “Split” button and decide the place to save the chunks.
The process could take some time depending on the size of the original file and the maximum size of each individual chunk.
Reconstructing DetailsJoining chunks of files is also as easy as drag and drop. Select the files and drag them to the “drag files to combine here” area under the “Combine” tab.
Hit the “Combine” button and decide the place to save the reconstructed file. Please note that unlike RAR chunks, you cannot drag only one of the chunks to combine everything even though the other chunks are within the same folder. This is the only drawback that I could find. Hopefully the developer will improve this particular issue in a future release. But in general, Slices is a solid application and can fit everyday needs of splitting files and re-joining the chunks. Do you often need to split files? Do you know other file splitting app alternatives? Share your thoughts and opinions using the comments below. And don’t forget to check out our other file-splitting articles. Image credit: oxtopus, joyosity Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 15,000 fans already!
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| AnyBizSoft PDF to PowerPoint Converter [Last-Minute MakeUseOf Giveaway] Posted: 25 Mar 2010 09:00 AM PDT
At the end, 20 lucky winners will be chosen to receive a copy of AnyBizSoft PDF to PowerPoint Converter worth $29.95 each. What are you waiting for? Join in now! Do you like MakeUseOf articles! Please do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Install Cool Windows 7 Theme Downloads For Windows XP Posted: 25 Mar 2010 08:31 AM PDT
Maybe you like the orb, the toolbar, tray icons or the quick launch buttons? Well guess what, you can have them on your XP computer FOR FREE! There are a few different themes and visual styles that you can grab. We found the best one and we will show you what you get and how to install it. It is not as easy as you would think. The theme itself is a user on DeviantArt. This user has many great themes but today we will be looking at his Windows 7 transformation pack for Windows XP.
I found the theme and instructions from TechBliss Online. They have also provided a video I will share with you at the end of the post.
Inside the archive you will find four folders. We will really only be using the Visual Styles folder but there are some great wallpapers (I say some because only one tickled my fancy and my wife liked one) in the wallpapers folder. Don't worry you can use any wallpaper you want. Next up we will have to download an application that allows us to use a third party theme. That application is called UXTheme Multipatcher and you can grab it from Softpedia. To start we will need to run the EXE and hit the button marked Patch. Don't be scared – you can always undo it by re-running this setup program again. Without UXTheme-Multipatcher you will not be able to use third party themes as we will be in the next few steps.
You need to confirm your operating system version and then you will need to restart. Once you have the UXTheme installed and you have the above archives downloaded and extracted, we can get started. Go into the DeviantArt RAR file we downloaded first and find the directory called Visual Styles. Inside there you will find a directory called Windows Se7en. Copy that entire directory to c:\windows\resources\themes. Once it is there go into the folder and double click on the theme's file called Windows Se7en.msstyles. If you have extensions turned off it will say Windows Se7en but the icon will be the same as the one in the shot below:
That will bring up the Windows theme chooser (located in display properties). There you will click apply to apply the theme. Next you will run the ViGlance OneStep.exe file within the ViGlance zip file. This file adds some awesomeness to your task bar.
When you are complete you will have a Windows 7 like system! This ViGlance also installs a system tray icon that gives you options on what you want enabled or not. You can see the options below and they are all self explanatory.
You can use and apply any of the wallpapers that you extracted or choose your own. Here is what my desktop looked like when I was finished:
This YouTube video goes over how to set this all up step by step. And sometimes a video helps immensely if you can not figure out something. Let me know if you have any issues or questions! And if you are doing something similar but different, we would love to hear about it in the comments! Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | |||||||||||||||||||||
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