At the end of the time period, Tark sweeps them away.When the expiration date has arrived, Tark simply drops the notation on the bookmark and converts it to a regular one. You can however designate a bookmark folder as a graveyard and all expired bookmarks will be dumped into it. Correction: Installing Tark does not affect regular bookmarking procedures, and bookmarks that you assign an expiration date can be converted to regular bookmarks at any time. Tark is a free download and works where ever Firefox does.
Powerful Backup That is Easy to Do! Acronis® True Image 11 Home provides the maximum flexibility to ensure you are adequately protected and can recover from unforeseen events such as viruses, unstable software downloads, and hard drive failures. Create an exact copy of your PC for a full backup or backup only your important data — your choice Description of Acronis True Image Home 2009
Features
Before you run the item back to the store though, you should try to see whether you can fix it yourself! This, if done carefully, will not hamper your warranty and might save you a lot of time and worries. So let’s see what you can do yourself.
Let me say that any new LCD or TFT monitor should be tested for pixel errors. This can be done simply by running it through a palette of basic colors and black and white in full screen mode. The software, which we’ll get to in a second, can do that.
First let me explain what you may be seeing. Is it just a stuck pixel or is it in fact dead? A stuck pixel will appear in any of the colors that its three subpixels (red, green and blue) can form, depending on their functionality and brightness. In a dead pixel all subpixels are permanently off, which will make the pixel appear black. This may result from a broken transistor, in rare cases however even a black pixel may just be stuck. So if you’re seeing a colored or white pixel, your chances are pretty good and if it’s black, there is still hope.
Let’s turn to the software now. If you’re not on Windows, scroll down for some online tools!
UDPixel (Windows)
I recommend UDPixel to quickly identify and fix pixels using a single tool. The program requires .NET Framework 2.
With the dead pixel locator on the left you can easily detect any screen irregularity that may have escaped your vision until now. Should you have identified a suspicious pixel, switch to the undead pixel option, create sufficient amounts of flash windows (one per stuck pixel) and hit start. You can drag the tiny flashing windows to where you found the pixel in question. Let it run for a while and eventually change the flash interval.
LCD (online)
This is one tool that lets you find and eventually fix stuck pixels. It packs many options into a singly tiny window, but once you have an overview it’s straightforward and easy to use.
To test the screen click the small ‘pick a color’ box. The colors you should test are red, green and blue. Additionally you should test white and black. Follow the instructions in the box to gain the best results.
Online Monitor Test (Online)
This is a very thorough test not only meant to identify bad pixels, but also powerful enough to test the quality of your monitor. You can choose between three different modes to test your monitor. This tool either requires flash (online version) or it can be installed in the executable mode.
What you will need to just test for stuck pixels is the HTML window. Toggle full screen by hitting F11. What you will see is displayed below.
Move the mouse to the top of the test window and a menu will appear. There is an info window that you can turn off with a button in the top right of the menu. Then click on the homogenity test point and move through the three colors as well as black and white. Fingers crossed you won’t discover anything out of the ordinary. In the unfortunate case that you do, you may find the following online tool helpful.
JScreenFix (Online)
Alternatively, and if you’re not using Windows XP, you can use the online tool JScreenFix which launches a Java applet to fix stuck pixel.
The tool launches a small applet in a separate browser window and you can drag the window to the respective spot or run it in full screen.
Hands On (Offline)
Should none of these tools resolve your pixel issue, there is one last chance. You can combine any of the tools and the magic power of your own hands. There is a very good description of all available techniques on wikiHow. Another great step by step guide can be found on instructables.
But let’s go through one technique real quick:
- Turn off your monitor.
- Get yourself a damp cloth, so that you won’t scratch the screen.
- Apply pressure to the area where the stuck pixel is. Try not to put pressure anywhere else, as this may trigger the creation of more stuck pixels.
- While applying pressure, turn on your computer and screen.
- Remove pressure and the stuck pixel should be gone.
This works because in a stuck pixel liquid in a subpixel has not spread equally. In combination with the backlight of your screen, this liquid is used to allow different amounts of light to pass through, which creates the different colors.
Should all of these approaches fail to fix your pixel warrior, at least you’ll now know it’s not simple to fix and the LCD may indeed need to be replaced. But please do let us know if these tips helped you to fix your pixels. In any case, good luck!
Let’s say for example that you want to write for us here at MakeUseOf (and why wouldn’t you want to? We’ll pay you with all the money, beer and fast cars you can handle! Er, well….no, not really). So, as editor I go through approximately 7-10 applications a day so over the course of a week, that can stack up quite a bit. We don’t like to keep people guessing over whether or not we’ve received their application so it’s good to set up a “thank you we have your application, we’ll get back to you soon” auto-responder email which is sent out as soon as their application hits our inbox.
So here’s how you would set it up, using Gmail’s new filter.
- First write your autoresponder message in a blank email window in Gmail. Then save your message as a “canned response”. I briefly covered how to do this a while back. You can now discard your email window and go back to your inbox.
- Go to “settings” in the top right hand corner of Gmail, then to the “filters” sub-tab. Scroll right down to the bottom to “create a new filter”
- This then brings up the “create a filter” section. This is the important part. Make sure everything in this section is BLANK except for the “to:” section. In this section, put in the email address that the autoresponder message should acknowledge all replies to. In this case, I have put our applications email address post4us@makeuseof.com which means that whenever an email arrives to that address, the autoresponder email will automatically kick in and send itself out. Then click “next step”
- We’re almost done. The last and final screen asks you to “choose an action”. This is where you tell it to choose the canned response. So….tick “send canned response” and drop down the menu to choose the correct canned response. Then click “create filter”.
That is it. Now everytime someone emails an application to that email address, they will get an autoresponder message (or “canned response” as Gmail likes to call them). You can do the same too for your blog, your company, your club, your school and much more. If your inbox is overflowing and people are complaining that your email response times suck, then set up an autoresponder message to at least confirm that “you have received their message and that you’ll get back to them as soon as possible”. OK the email is automatic, it’s impersonal and it’s bland - but hey it’s a response! You won’t even know the email has gone out as it’s all done in the background.
What do you think? Is this something you might find useful to help with your email management or does this just add to the problem?
Probably not but I have and there are lots of geeks out there so I decided to share this little find with you.
Here is an easy way to pull up detailed (AND I MEAN DETAILED) properties of any file without installing anything.
Filealyzer is brought to us by the same folks who brought us SpyBot Search and Destroy. Filealyzer is another awesome tool for your admin’s arsenal. It adds a simple method to let you find out detailed information on a specific file.
Filealyzer lets us see more information then you will ever know what to do with. Some of its properties might sound appealing to you and others might make you go “HUH? Why would I need to know that?”
Well it is actually quite easy - on your journey to becoming a proficient Windows Ninja you need to have tools like this. No, not to fool people into thinking you know what you are doing (yes this will help you with that as well!) but it gives you a plethora of information at your fingertips. Plus who knows when you will need to see the PE Header of an Executable or a full Hex Dump of a file.
I know, I know you probably don’t want to see the PE Header or the full hex dump - but how about MP3 Tags or Version information… I know, I know BOOOOORING!
So how about seeing what resources your file uses? Want to see what Bitmaps or other files that executable calls? Then this is the app for you. Let’s take a look at what it can really do.
I started by downloading the 2.9MB file and installing it. The app needed no configuration and runs right after the install. It does not install and as soon as you run it you get a Windows Explorer open dialogue like so:
I choose a file to analyze…”AAMMY.exe” - I told you about it here a little while ago. It brings up this window with all sorts of information on our file.
There is more information in here than you will know what to do with. Most of you probably have no idea what most of these tabs even mean. But hey it adds to your geek cred to know the MD5 Hash of your latest file is or its CRC-32. Most of them, you as a end user will not have a use for, but you might be interested in checking out what resources a program uses including being able to view logo images. The version tab shows you detailed version information as seen below:
You can also find out text that is displayed throughout the application from the text preview section. I would have loved this back when it was all about the text games.
Filealyzer is a great program used as a stand alone file analyzer but it also works with Spy Bot Search and Destroy to provide a safer computing experience.
Filealyzer was a mis-spelling the first time around but the authors decided to adopt the incorrect spelling for their application.
Do you have a favorite file analyzer? Let us know in the comments!
While our thanks goes out to ALL developers of ALL the free software we've featured on these pages, a few projects deserve special mention. On Monday we asked exactly what free software you're most thankful for, and thousands of votes later, we've boiled down the list to the top 40 or so. While we're offline for the day, feast your eyes and mouse on this prodigious list of some of the best free software we're most grateful for. Happy Thanksgiving! (Back to a more regular posting schedule tomorrow.)
The 46 Free Desktop Software Applications, Webapps, and Projects We're Most Thankful For
- Firefox (see also: The Power User's Guide to Firefox 3)
- VLC Media Player (see also: Master Your Digital Media with VLC)
- Ubuntu (see also: Hardy Heron Makes Linux Worth Another Look)
- Open Office (see also: A First Look at OpenOffice.org 3.0)
- Pidgin (see also: Ten Must-Have Plug-ins to Power Up Pidgin)
- Launchy (see also: Take Launchy beyond application launching)
- Digsby (see also: Digsby Improves Performance, Supports LinkedIn)
- Gmail (see also: Our full Gmail coverage)
- Adium (see also: Adium Chat Improves Menu Bar Item, Corrects Your IM Grammar )
- CCleaner (see also: CCleaner 2.0 Decrapifies Your PC)
- Picasa (see also: Organize your digital photos with Picasa)
- AutoHotKey (see also: Turn Any Action into a Keyboard Shortcut)
- Quicksilver (see also: A beginner's guide to Quicksilver)
- GIMP
- Foobar 2000 (see also: Roll your own killer audio player with foobar2000)
- Thunderbird (see also: Eight killer Thunderbird extensions)
- 7-Zip (see also: Top 10 Windows Downloads, #10: 7-Zip (file archive manager) )
- DropBox (see also: Dropbox Syncs and Backs Up Files Between Computers Instantaneously)
- uTorrent (see also: Our complete uTorrent coverage )
- Winamp (see also: Our complete Winamp coverage)
- Google Apps
- AVG Antivirus (see also: AVG Free Anti-Virus 2008 Released, Much Improved)
- Evernote (see also: Expand Your Brain with Evernote)
- IrfanView (see also: Download of the Day: IrfanView (Windows) )
- Opera (see also: Opera Updates to Version 9.6, Gets Faster, Adds Features)
- Chrome (see also: The Power User's Guide to Google Chrome)
- Google Calendar (see also: Black-belt scheduling with Google Calendar)
- HandBrake (see also: HandBrake Media Converter Gets Even Better)
- Skype (see also: Our complete Skype coverage)
- Linux (see also: Our complete Linux coverage)
- Paint.NET (see also: Top 10 Windows Downloads, #3: Paint.NET )
- Ad-Aware (see also: Cleanse thy PC with Ad-Aware)
- Avast Antivirus (see also: Download of the Day: Avast anti-virus)
- Google Docs (see also: Our complete Google Docs coverage)
- LogMeIn (see also: Use LogMeIn for remote tech support)
- Transmission (see also: Manage Your BitTorrent Downloads with Transmission)
- TrueCrypt (see also: Secure your data with TrueCrypt)
- Amarok (see also: An Early Look at Amarok 2)
- FileZilla (see also: FTP File Transfer Across Platforms with Filezilla 3.0)
- Notepad++ (see also: Top 10 Windows Downloads, #6: Notepad++)
- PortableApps.com (see also: Download of the Day: PortableApps Suite 1.0 (Windows))
- Rocket Dock (see also: Download of the Day: RocketDock (Windows))
- Spybot Search & Destroy (see also: Spybot Search and Destroy crushes evil)
- UltraVNC (see also: Tech support with UltraVNC SingleClick)
- VirtualBox (see also: VirtualBox 2.0 Adds 64-bit Support, Updated Interface)
A note on the numbers: Mozilla Firefox took first place in this exercise in gratitude with an insanely commanding lead; in fact, Firefox got more than three times the amount of votes the second-place mention (VLC) did. Here's a chart of the top eight on the list so you can see how the votes were spread out relative to one another.
About our vote count: We (ok, I) grossly underestimated how many votes we would get on this particular post. Almost 800 comments in total—many of which contained more than half a dozen free software projects—made finishing the total count (36 pages of comments) before Thanksgiving 2011 impossible. So, this represents just over 1,100 votes, only one third of the total comments we received. This list of 40 contains all the apps that received 10 or more votes. As almost 200 mentions got only a single vote, we think that even though it's incomplete, it's closely representative of the general consensus. (You can check out our complete vote count spreadsheet here.) Our apologies for the incomplete count—lesson learned. Next time, we'll use a proper survey tool.
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