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Jiggle and Watch
 Here’s a really handy
little utility for anyone who watches videos and TV downloads on their laptops.
But first some background. Many machines are set to switch off the screen or
fire up the screensaver after just a few minutes of inactivity, especially when
on battery power, and this can become really annoying. Even though the CPU and screen
are active power save systems usually monitor for mouse movement and keyboard
taps. Sufferers get into the habit of wiggling the mouse, or using the touchpad
every so often to stop it happening. Well, you could do that, or how about this;
it’s called Mouse Jiggler, and no
prizes for guessing what it does. In fact there are two modes, straightforward Jiggle,
which moves the mouse after a few seconds of inactivity, and Zen Jiggle, which
moves the mouse pointer ‘virtually’, in other words the PC thinks it is moving,
but the pointer remains still. Either way, it’s simple, free and it does the
job,
16/08/10
FlashBack Screen Recorder
 Here’s a really useful tool
for capturing whatever is showing on your computer screen (or screens). BB
Flashback Express is a free screen recorder that does precisely that. For
example, if you wanted to create a tutorial, showing how to do something on a
PC then all you have to do is hit the record button and do it! BB
Flashback Express records every screen, menu, and mouse movement as a Flash
or AVI file, which you can share or upload to YouTube. As an added bonus it captures
and record streamed video, like YouTube et-al, and keep this to yourself, it can
also record those well known services – no names, no pack drill -- that you are
not supposed to record and to date have proved to be tricky customers…
01/04/10
A Rather Dim Idea
 Have you ever tried to adjust the brightness on your PC
monitor? It’s normally not too difficult if you have a laptop, there’s
usually an option on the Function keys, but often the only way to do it on a
desktop PC is grapple with the monitor’s controls – and that’s easier said than
done on some models -- or delve deeply into Windows display properties. But why
would you want to? Maybe you are working
in a darkened room and the screen is too bright, or it’s a sunny day and not
bright enough, either way, what you really need is a tiny little freeware application
called Dim
Screen. It sits minding its business in the System Tray, when you want it
just right click on the icon and select a level, or tap the user-definable keyboard
shortcuts for brightness up and down. It’s that simple, and if you want it to
launch with Windows just copy the program shortcut into you Startup folder.
19/03/09
Drawing Attention
 If you are in the habit of using your PC to give
presentations then here’s a handy little portable application that can help you
illustrate your point. It’s called DemoHelper and it lets
you draw on your screen, to highlight something, point to a feature or, when no
one is looking, have a crafty doodle. It’s small (just 76kb) and very easy to
use, it runs from a pen drive, so there’s no need to install it, and it sits
quietly in the System Tray until needed. Right click the icon, select the Draw
mode and you’re in business. Right click and you can instantly draw an arrow.
It’s highly configurable, you can change colour, or the size of your brush even
zoom in and out, and when you’ve finished just press the Esc key and your
handiwork vanishes.
29/01/09
Conquer Your Colour Scheme
 I get a lot of emails and letters asking why the colours in
printed photos sometimes don’t match what’s on the screen? Sometimes it’s the
printer, but more often than not it’s simply that the monitor hasn’t been
properly set up. Monitor calibration is essential if you work with graphics or
photo editing software but how many of us ever take the time to adjust our
monitors, apart from twiddling the brightness and contrast controls? Not many, I
bet, but there’s no excuse any more. A freeware program called Calibrize takes you gently by the hand,
and in three simple steps helps you to adjust your display; from start to
finish it only takes around 2 minutes and the new settings or colour ‘profile’
is then saved and applied every time you start Windows. It’s also handy for
those who, like me, use two monitors, making it easy to accurately match the
two displays.
23/10/08
Is My LCD OK? Well, Is it?
 Here’s one way to find out, a small freeware
program called, you guessed it, IsMylcdOK.
It’s a simple LCD monitor checker program that displays a series of solid
colours, gradients and horizontal and vertical lines that will show up most of
the common faults on flat screen monitors. These include dead or ‘hot’ (always
on) pixels, faulty backlights and incorrect video phase setting. The program
download is tiny, around 15kb, and it doesn’t even need to be installed, it runs
from the zip/exe file, or from a pen drive. It is really easy to use; though
watch out for the intro screen, it’s in German, so click the English button to
continue (unless you are, or speak German, of course). To select a particular test
just hit the appropriate number key no your keyboard, or cycle the tests by
pressing any key, and to quit just press the Escape key. Here’s hoping you get
a clean bill of heath!
0506
Free Video Capture Makes its Debut
 If it moves and it appears on your PC screen then you can
capture it with this freeware application, called Debut. Now don’t get
too excited, it can record streamed video (and audio), like You Tube and
iPlayer, but the unless you have a blisteringly fast PC the frame rate will
probably be quite slow if you don’t want to sacrifice too much picture quality,
but it’s definitely worth experimenting and its certainly good enough for a
quick and dirty archive. It’s just the job for making tutorial videos, showing
someone how to do something on a PC, by recording everything that happens on
the screen. It also has a built in timer and it can be set to email or upload
your movie by FTP. You can even get it to burn directly to DVD with an optional
add-on and there’s a facility to record from external sources like web-cams and
USB capture devices.
28/04/08
Starship Screensaver
 Yes, yes, I know I dislike screensavers, which are pretty much
redundant these days anyway with LCD screens, but I just couldn’t resist this
one. It’s called Star
Trek LCARS, and in case you’re not a trekkie, LCARs stands for Library
Computer Access and Retrieval System, which is the fictional operating system
used on Federation starships, a sort of warp-speed WIndows if you will....
Really that’s all you need to know, and once installed, after the preset period
of inactivity you will be regaled with authentic-looking Starship display
screens showing all manner of interesting things, including plans of the ship,
‘Sector Scans’, Navigational readings and Galaxy maps, and I forgot to mention,
there’s also sound effects. Qapla'
13/08/07
Simpler Screen
Capture
 We’ve looked at
screen capture utilities before and some of them were very good, but this one,
called CaptureScreen,
has to be the simplest yet. The program is tiny just a few kilobytes, you don’t
even need to install it but it’s a good idea to have it on your Quick Launch
toolbar so it’s ready whenever you need it. Just click on the icon and semi transparent
box appears. Move and resize it to cover the part of the screen you want to
capture, right-click and select Capture, Save or Print, and the image is frozen.
You can save it to file (.bmp, .jpeg, .tiff, .gif, .png) copy it to the
clipboard, to import into an image editing program, or the application of your
choice, or print it directly, it’s that simple!
28/05/07
Photosynth, A Glimpse of the Future
 If your PC is reasonably powerful XP machine equipped with
1Gb of RAM and a decent graphics card (ideally 128Mb or more), you might like
to check out a pre-Beta preview of Photosynth, a new development from Microsoft
Live Labs. What makes it even more interesting is that it’s also available as a
Firefox Extension.
Anyway, back to the Photosynth preview, which is rather
difficult to describe, but think of it as a cross between the tilt and fly
options in Google Earth, and the amazing photo jiggery-pokery carried out by
Tom Cruise in the sci-fi movie Minority Report. You can view multiple images
and collections of photographs and transform them into a 3D fly-through,
viewing objects from any angle, zooming seamlessly in and out and see how and
where images were taken, in relation to one another. It’s really impressive,
but remember, this is test software, quite demanding of your PC’s resources so
don’t be too surprised if it doesn’t run or proves buggy.
06/04/07
Changing Resolution
Results in Blank Screen
 Have you ever
fiddled with your PCs resolution settings, clicked the OK button and found that
the picture disappears? Scary stuff, but Windows XP has a built-in safety
feature that should reset the resolution to its previous setting after 15
seconds. But sometimes it doesn’t work and you end up with a dark screen and no
obvious way back. The same thing can also happen if you swap monitors that
cannot support your current resolution, but there is another safety net that
will get you out of trouble. All you have to do is start Windows in Safe Mode,
just press F8 repeatedly after switch on and on the menu that appears there
will be the option to ‘Enable VGA Mode. This is the universal default setting
of 640 x 480 pixels and it works on just about every monitor. When Windows has
finished booting you can go back into Display Properties and change the
resolution back to its original setting.
12/09/06
Improve
Legibility on Larger Displays
 Either
my eyesight is failing or larger screens and higher resolutions are making
things harder to read. I prefer to believe the latter, and one of the most
obvious problems is typing in web addresses in Internet Explorer; the text is
so small that it’s easy to make mistakes and difficult to spot them afterwards.
This tip increases the size text in the IE Address box and the text-entry/display fields
and Explorer boxes in other MS and Windows programs as well. Simply go to Display Properties
(right-click an empty area of the Desktop and click Properties) select the
Appearance tab and click the Advanced button. In the Item drop-down menu select
Icon, now you can change the display font and size, I would leave it on Tahoma,
it’s a good clear display font, but try increasing the size by a couple of
points, to 10pt, you would surprised how much difference it makes to
legibility.
21/08/06
Fixing
Dead Pixels on an LCD Display
 There
are few things more aggravating than a dead or ‘hot’ (permanently lit) pixel on
an LCD screen and the trouble is some manufacturers consider several dead
pixels to be quite acceptable, and not replaceable under the warranty, though
normally only if they’re well away from the centre of the screen.
The first
thing to do if you encounter a dead or hot pixel on a new screen is complain.
Some vendors and manufacturers are more reasonable than others. If they won’t
oblige or a pixel lights up after the guarantee has expired then there are a
few things you can try, and who knows, you might get lucky, what have you got
to lose?
There
have been several reports of hot pixels being fixed with gentle massage. The
theory is light pressure around the defective pixel forces the liquid crystals
back into their little pockets (sounds extremely dubious to me…). The trick is
to switch the screen off, rub the area using a soft cloth, then after a few
seconds switch the screen back on. Another wheeze is to gently tap the area, it
also sounds a bit optimistic but who knows? Just be very careful not to tap too
hard or you’ll have a few million more dead pixels on your hands…
The last two methods are a lot safer and involve switching the pixels on and
off really fast, presumably in an attempt to reset or switch the faulty pixel
back to its normal working state. My favourite is a little freeware utility
program called Dead
Pixel Tester or DPT, which in addition to a Pixel ‘Exerciser’ facility also
has a number of useful and rather funky test patterns and screens that can help
you to find faulty pixels. The second one is called Screenfix, and this is
a crazy web page that randomly switches the pixels on and off many times each
second and apparently several hours of this treatment have been known to revive
dicky pixels
08/08/06
Double Quick Display Properties
I don’t know about you but I’m forever opening Windows XP Display
Properties, to tweak settings, mess around with screensavers and change the
appearance of my desktop -- it may have something to do with my job -- but the
point is to get to it you have to open Control Panel and click on the Display
icon or right-click on the desktop and select Properties. I’ve found a much
better way and now I can open Display with a single click on a Quick Launch
icon and here is how it’s done. Right-click on the desktop and select New >
Shortcut. In the ‘Type the location o the item box’ enter (or copy and paste)
the following command:
rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL desk.cpl
Click
Next, give the new shortcut a name then OK. Now you can drag and drop the
shortcut onto the Quick Launch toolbar and you are ready to give it a road
test.
28/07/06
SPIN THE SCREEN
On many XP (and some Windows 9x)
PCs there is a hidden facility, built into the graphics card/adaptor software
that lets you rotate the screen display. This can be quite useful when using an
LCD monitor, for example, some of which can be rotated to provide a ‘Portrait’
view, which some users prefer, when using Desktop Publishing (DTP), web layout
and word processing applications.
On some PCs with ATI and
NVIDIA graphics adaptors the screen rotate function is assigned to a memorable
keyboard shortcut; Ctrl + Alt + left/right cursor arrow is used on several
graphics cards. On others it’s buried in Display Properties (right-click empty
area of desktop, select Properties, click Settings then Advanced button. If
your PC doesn’t have this facility you can try it out with the 30-day
trial-version of Pivot Pro, the screen rotation program supplied with many
rotating monitors. If you fancy a little fun try a tiny freeware utility called
Rotate. It randomly flips and rotates the screen but returns it to its proper
state when a key is pressed.
SNEAKY SCREENSAVER SHORTCUT
Quick, the boss is coming!
Here’s an easy way to swiftly hide that web page or personal email you’ve been
working on in company time. The idea is you click on a desktop icon and it
instantly fires up a screensaver, blanking out whatever is on the screen. It’s
also a good way of hiding your screen from prying eyes if you are only going to
be away from your desk for a couple of minutes, and you can tell when you
return if anyone has been having a peek. Here’s what to do, go to Search on the
Start menu and type ‘*.scr’ (without the quotes) into the filename box, click
the Search button and in a couple of moments a list of all the screensavers
stored on your PC will appear (most of them live in C:\windows systen32). Right
click on the icon of the one you want to use and select Send To > Desktop
(create shortcut) then exit the Search box. To start the screensaver simply
double-click on the Desktop icon, moving the mouse or tapping a key restores
normal service. By the way, right-clicking on the desktop icon brings up the screensavers settings menu
CLASSY GLASS
Today’s Top Tip is a little
freeware utility called Glass2k. Once installed simply right-click on any open
window, or press a keyboard shortcut, and you can change the window’s
transparency, so you can see what’s underneath. It can also make the taskbar
transparent and there’s the option to store your settings and load it with
Windows. The download is tiny (just 54kb) and it takes only a few seconds to
install. It’s Beta software, so the usual warnings about using it at your own
risk apply but it’s been working flawlessly on our office PCs for weeks so why
not give it a try?
SHARPER DISPLAY ON LCD MONITORS
LCD monitors are now as good as CRT displays but it’s important to make
sure that you are using the correct settings, in particular resolution and
refresh rates. For best results an LCD screen should run in what’s known as ‘native’
resolution, so if the screen has 1024 x 768 pixels, that’s the setting you
should use in Windows Display Properties. Another little known facility is Clear Type fonts, which
are available in Windows XP and these are optimised for desktop and laptop LCD
displays. To switch it on go to Start > Control Panel and click the Display
icon. Select the Appearance tab followed by the Effects button, select ‘Fade
Effect’ on the drop down menu and check the item ‘Use the following transition
effect for menus and tooltips’. Next underneath check the box ‘Use the
following method to smooth the edges of screen fonts’ and select ‘Clear Type’ on the drop-down menu. Exit the
dialogue boxes and reboot. You can also fine -tune the settings using a free online
or downloadable optimisation tool on the Microsoft
web site.
QUICK SAVER
If you want to launch a
screen-saver quickly -- maybe you're going out to lunch or prevent others from
seeing what's on your screen -- open Windows Explorer, go to the Windows folder
and open the System file. There you will find all of the Windows screen-saver
files. They're easy to spot as they have monitor-shaped icons and end with the
file extension *.scr. Right click on the icon, select 'Send To' then 'Desktop
as Shortcut', when you want to start it in a hurry just double-click on the
desktop icon.
QUICK PEEK
Here is a nifty little
trick to access the contents of your desktop from the Start button, without
having to close or minimise any windows. Right click on the Start button and
choose Open then on the Start Menu window that appears go to the File menu,
select New and Shortcut. The Create Shortcut window opens and in the Command
Line box type in the following: 'Explorer /root,' ignore the inverted commas
but be sure there's a space between Explorer and the forward-slash, and don't
forget the comma after root. Click Next and a window opens asking you to
'Select a title for the program'. Back space to delete the default entry and
call it 'Desktop' (or anything else you fancy) and click Finish. The item
should now appear on the Start menu, if you click it a window containing the
contents of your desktop will open. To remove it from the Start menu go Start
> Settings > Taskbar & Start Menu > Start Menu Programs tab and
click the Remove button. Find the shortcut on the directory and click Remove.
CUSTOM COLOURS
If you’re bored with the
standard Windows 98 & ME colours for title bars on windows and message
boxes here’s a quick way to cheer them up with a very snazzy ‘gradient’ colour,
which changes gradually from one colour to another. This trick works best if
your PC is set to True Colour or High Colour, to check right-click onto an
empty part of the desktop, select Properties from the menu and click the
Settings tab. To create your colour gradient stay with Display Properties and
select the Appearance tab. Click on the Active Window title bar in the display
window then click on Colour, a palette of 12 colours appears, with the facility
to create a colour of your choice by selecting the ‘Other’ button. Now click on
Colour 2 and select a second colour, the effect is immediately displayed. Have
fun, experiment with some bright and outrageous shades; it can really brighten
up your desktop!
SCROLL SENSE
Newcomers to Windows often
find the scroll bars at the side and bottom of word processors and spreadsheets
screens quite difficult to use. The bars are narrow and the slider can be hard
to control, until you get used to it. It's easy to change the size of the bars;
even seasoned users may prefer to make them a little wider. To make the change
go to Control Panel, click on the Display icon and select the Appearance tab.
Click in the middle of the scroll bar shown in the 'Active Window', in the
display. The word 'Scrollbar' should
appear in the box below marked Item, along with a pair of up/down arrows and
the default setting of 16. Try 20 or 25 but if you want to see something really
funny whizz it up to the maximum of 100!
PERSONAL SCREENSAVER
Create your own personal
screensaver. If you have the OSR2 release of Windows 95 or Windows 98 onwards
click on the Start button go to Settings, then Control Panel and double click
on the Display icon. Select the Screensaver tab and scroll down the list until
you come to '3D Text'. Highlight the entry and click on the Settings button.
You can enter your name or a message -- up to 16 characters and spaces long --
in the text field, that will bounce or wobble around the screen, or you can
choose an animated digital clock display. Click on the Texture buttons and try
some of the *.bmp files in the Windows folder. This screensaver also contains
an 'Easter egg' a hidden novelty feature planted by the programmers. Type the
word 'Volcano' into the text field, click OK and see what happens…
MOVE THE TASKBAR
A pound to a penny says
your Windows 95/98 Taskbar is still in its default position at the bottom of
the screen, taking up valuable screen space. Maybe you’ve enabled the Hide
Taskbar facility (Start > Settings Taskbar & Start menu) so it doesn’t
take up any room when you are working, but it still pops into view every so
often, when your mouse strays close to the bottom of the screen. So why not
move it? The most logical place has to
be the right or left side of your screen. The right hand side in particular is
often a ‘dead’ area in programs like word processors and since a VDU screen is
over 30% wider than it is tall; you can afford to loose a little room at the
side. To move the Taskbar simply put the mouse pointer into an empty area of
the Taskbar, right click and hold and drag it to its new location. You can
enable Auto Hide, or better still, leave it on show and more accessible, then
re-size your application to fit, so that it doesn’t obscure scroll bars: most
Windows programs will ‘remember’ a new layout whenever they are opened.
SEE THE COLOURS
It's all very well your PC
being able to process over 16 million colours but can you see them all on your
monitor screen? This simple little freeware monitor test program will help you
find out and adjust your settings to produce the best possible picture. The
self-extracting 'zip' file is only 278Kb and should only take a couple of
minutes to download from:
http://www.monitortest.net/monitortest.html
When you see a picture displayed
on your monitor how big is it and what size will it be when it’s printed out?
Screen Ruler is a brilliant little freeware program that superimposes a ruler
on your screen. You can move the ruler around the screen and make it longer or
shorter with the mouse; a right-click menu sets the scale and units (pixels,
inches, centimetres or picas) and flips between horizontal or vertical layout.
The download zip file is only 143kb and it can be downloaded from: http://www.spadixbd.com/freetools/jruler.zip
AVOID REDEYE
Whilst it’s easy enough to
remove red-eye in a digital image, it makes sense to avoid it happening in the
first place. You can’t do much about the position of the flashgun on most
compact cameras but a lot of models nowadays have a red-eye reduction mode.
This is usually a bright light or weak ‘pre-flash’ before the main flash that
reduces the size of the subject’s pupils. If your camera hasn’t got this
facility you could try asking the subject to look at a bright light, just
before you take the picture. Alternatively try covering the flashgun with a
paper tissue or handkerchief, which has the effect of diffusing the flash.
SMARTER SCANNER
If
you have a scanner here’s a quick, simple and very cheap trick that might help
to improve picture quality, especially if it's a budget model with only
rudimentary scan controls. Try this - place a sheet of black paper or card
behind the picture or image that you are scanning. The card will cut down
reflections and glare from the normally white backing pad, which can result in
better contrast, crisper colours and more accurate mid-tones.
SMALL ICONS
If your screen resolution
is set to 1024 x 768, or higher, you may find your desktop icons are a bit on the
small side and any you’ve made from pictures may look indistinct. You can
change the size of icons (make them smaller as well as bigger) by
right-clicking into an empty area of the desktop, select Properties then the
Appearance tab. In the ‘Item’ drop-down menu select Icon and in the Size box
increase or decrease the value as necessary.
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