Cool Stuff

Delve into the Windows 7 Personalization Gallery and you’ll find a fantastic array of sidebar gadgets that will brighten up your desktop and make it a whole lot more useful. Falling into the former category, if not the latter, is the Xbox 360 Avatar Sidebar Gadget. Spotted by Windows Observer this…

Peter Provost posted a handy tip on his blog the other day that will be useful for anyone with a Vista computer that has a dual-core CPU. In Windows Vista, there’s a setting that lets you configure your PC to use both cores upon booting up (by default, it only uses one). You can change this setting…

The popular Windows XP PowerToy, ImageResizer, has recently been updated to support Windows 7. Like it sounds, this tool lets you quickly resize a selection of multiple images at once. It’s was typically used in the past to compress photos to more manageable sizes for sharing via email (although…

The latest thing in email add-ons seems to be programs that help you to not look stupid when sending email. What do I mean by that? I mean sending out messages saying “see attachment” when clearly, there is no attachment present. Not only does this make you feel a little silly, it also wastes your…

As much as I’m into customizing my UIs, I’m relatively surprised that I completely overlooked this feature in Windows Live Mail: color! Thankfully, the Live Mail Team updated their blog the other day and pointed it out to me. Of course, I immediately opened my inbox and started tweaking away.  What…

The wait is up! Today at PDC, we finally got to see a demo of the next OS from Microsoft: Windows 7. One of the biggest improvements in Windows 7 is the new taskbar, but there have also been other improvements like better networking features and a less noisy UAC. If you're just looking for Windows…

There is a lot of interest in environmental responsibility these days: debates on global warming, hybrid cars, recycling, buying environmentally friendly products, conserving energy, reducing waste, etc., etc. Additionally, there has been a growing area of discussion on the…

Amnesty Generator is free software for Windows PCs that lets you put nearly any widget on your desktop, including those from services like YourMinis, SpringWidgets, Widgetbox, iGoogle, and now the New York Times. Although the software is designed to work in Windows Vista, DownloadSquad is reporting…

I've written a few posts about apps that get your Facebook contacts into Outlook - like FBLook, which provides access to Facebook via a toolbar add-in, and Facebook app, Fonebook, which syncs your contacts; but what about exporting contacts from Outlook to Facebook? If you are like most…

Think your secrets are safe because you removed incriminating text messages or phone numbers from your cell phone's SIM card? Think again! A new tool, called the Cell Phone SIM Card Spy, lets you retrieve that deleted data. To use the device, which is a USB key, you just put the SIM card into the…