Cool Windows XP tricks, tutorials and software reviews.

Have a dirty computer monitor? Here’s something that will keep your screen looking clean…

These cute, free screen savers are from the movie “Must Love Dogs” and I must say they’re a great idea.

There are four of them to choose from (Click the image to download):

If you get an error with the “flash.ocx” file, you need to configure your system to allow 3rd party screensavers.

Enjoy!

Tired of your XP? Want to buy Vista? Well, don’t. Vista is still full of bugs and not reliable yet. So what’s so good about it? Most people like the new and pretty looks.
It’s a great idea to mix together the good things from both Windows systems: the reliability of XP and looks of Vista. Lets go over this, step-by-step so you can easily follow.

1.Change the theme. This is probably the most important thing when trying to make your XP look like Vista. You will need a good Vista-ish theme, I recommend VistaXP or YAVFC. You should be able to get some good ones from Deviantart.

But before you can install 3rd party themes, you will need to patch up your uxtheme.dll file. This file tries to stop you from using other themes than Microsoft’s own. Here are the patches for service pack 1 and service pack 2. (If you’re not sure which Service Pack you have, or what it even is, make sure you take a look at this post.)

You can replace the file manually, but the easiest way is to use replacer, which also backs up the old file in case anything goes wrong..

To replace, go to C: \WINDOWS\System32 and look for uxtheme.dll, which should be among the bottom half of the files. Drag it into the replacer window. Now drag the patch which you downloaded into the window and confirm.

To install a theme, download and unzip into the C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes folder.

You’ll also need StyleXP to use the themes.

Now that the hardest part is over, take a deep breath and give yourself the good-old pat on the back.

2. Download the Vista cursor pack. Unzip it to your desktop or anywhere where you can find it later. Now, go to Control Panel -> Appearance and Themes -> Mouse Pointers and open the pointers tab. Click a cursor, press Browse and find the corresponding Vista cursor from the pack you downloaded.

Try Yahoo! Widgets or Thoosje for that Vista signature sidebar.

If you want to, you can also get the TRANSPARENT explorer and internet explorer, which are almost as good as the real ones.

3. A transformation pack is also necessary if you want to go all the way. Basically, what this does, is that it replaces the startup, logon and shutdown screens of XP and makes them look like Vista. You will need to sacrifice some startup speed, but that’s the price.

Here’s a good transformation pack by Windows X.

This is what my XP desktop looks like after a little bit of tweaking:

So, congratulations on your new „Vista“ and make sure you show it off to your friends

More Cool Windows XP Tips & Tricks HERE!

This is a really fun how-to. Use it to prank your friends, colleagues or pretty much anyone!

All you need is a instant messenger like Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN), Yahoo! or AOL and program called Fake Webcam. This will let you play any video as a webcam on your messenger.

1. Download Fake Webcam and install

2. Download a video you want to display as webcam onto your desktop. Here are some free samples you might like.

3. Add the video to Fake Webcam (Control Panel -> Add File) and press play.

4. Now when you show your webcam to someone or have a video conversation, the video will play instead of the your real webcam. 99 % of people don’t know you can do this, so you can convince pretty much anyone. The bad thing is that the Fake Webcam trial version will show its ad at the end of the video, so you’d better stop the conversation before it’s shown.

By the way, I’m working on a complete site redesign, so don’t worry about the lack of posts this week.

Wow. Looks like there’s a tidal wave sweeping the web. First it was ThePlanet, then went Amazon and now, even adsense is down.. I wonder what will be next.. Google.com ?

If google itself went down, There would be chaos. People screaming on the streets, whole cities burning down because no-one can google the solution.. Looks like I Power’s prediction that the Internet will end by 2012 is coming true. In a terrible way.

We are all dependent of Google, even though we might not notice it. Most of us run several searches a day. When something’s wrong, Google is always there to help. But we don’t know how much we need it, until it’s gone. Gone for ever.

Just imagine: You are doing your daily search for vegetable recipies or “cool” flash games and type google.com into your browser. The page loads for several seconds and a blank screen appears. You refresh, but still nothing. The goosebumps are already forming… You try refreshing for one last time and a message appears in the centre of the screen, where you’re used to seeing the homely “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons..

Now you’re terrified. Keeping the sobbing to a minimum, you head over to Yahoo.com, just like the other 200 million Google users, all trying to get some info on what the hell’s going on.. How long do you think Yahoo will last with four times the normal 69 million visitors? Maybe an hour, maybe less.

With the fall of two of the web’s greatest search engines, the hordes of terrified and just plain curios people now unknowingly divide themselves into packs, each one moving from site to site, flooding them with visitors, clogging the servers and devouring the sites. All done without knowing.

These would be the next 10 sites to fall:

1. Youtube.com

2. Windows Live

3. MSN

4. Myspace

5. Facebook

5. Wikipedia

6. Blogger (along with all the blogs)

7. Baidu

8. Microsoft

9. AOL

Imagine that! The whole world will be left to wordpress blogs (like this one) and small, pointless websites, but their owners can’t turn the limitless traffic into money. Adsense is also down.

If you have an internet connection and 3MB of free disk space, you can watch TV on your PC for free. Yeah, I know you can buy all those weird TV cards and even antennas for your PC, but that isn’t FREE, is it?

The way to go, is to download a free peer-to-peer streaming program. One of the best for that is SopCast. It is very popular and has many channels to watch, from sports broadcasts to movies.

1. Download the latest version of it and install.

2. Run the program. It will ask you to login with your account (which you can create for free) or login as anonymous user. I don’t see a big difference in which one you use.

3. Next you want to choose a channel to watch. There are hundreds, so you have a good choice. Just click the channel you want to watch and it will start streaming in your default video player. You can go full screen with hardly a quality problem on most channels.

Enjoy!