HOW TO GUIDE: Force Readyboost to work on EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES and UNSUPPORTED DEVICES

Here’s how to get Readyboost to work on unsupported devices and external hard drives.

1. Plug in the device.
2. Open the Readyboost tab on the device properties.
3. Select “Do not retest this device”
4. Unplug the device
5. Open regedit (start->run->regedit)
6. Expand – HKLM (Local Machine)\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDgmt
7. Find your device.
8. Change Device Status to 2
9. Change ReadSpeedKBs to 1000
10. Change WriteSpeedKBs to 1000
11. Plug in the device.
12. Enable Readyboost!!!!

Twitter

 

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) via SMS, instant messaging, the Twitter website, or an application such as Twitterrific. These updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and also instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, or through an application. For SMS, currently two gateway numbers are available: one for the USA and a UK number for international use. While the Twitter service is free, posting and receiving updates via SMS may incur charges from the wireless carrier.

Advanced WindowsCare Personal

Advanced WindowsCare is a comprehensive PC care utility that takes an one-click approach to help protect, repair and optimize your computer. It provides an all-in-one and super convenient solution for PC maintenance and protection.

Engage – Menu Organizer

Engage is a Start Menu organizer (and replacement) that gives you fast and easy access to all of your most used items. Stop wasting time hunting through your Start Menu. Your programs, documents, favorites, bookmarks, web sites, shutdown, and search engines are all just a few keystrokes away. Also, Engage will organize your programs for you automatically. But don’t worry, Engage does not modify your existing Start Menu, in fact, you can use both at the same time. Engage is simple, just press Start, then type a few letters and press Enter to launch.

Version 1.1.1.75 includes updated categorization database.

Free High Resolution Wallpapers

If your like me and get tired of that same old wallpaper you’ll want to checkout these sites.  The first is Free High Resolution Wallpapers, it has beautiful looking free wallpapers in various sizes and resolutions.  The next on my list is Shifted Reality 3D Wallpaper, if 3D rendered images is what you prefer this is a great site with lots of original designs.  This last site I found while digging is called InterfaceLIFT, its chalk full of wallpapers.

VLC media player

VLC – the cross-platform media player and streaming server

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

If you like VLC, please rate it on the Freshmeat and versiontracker entries!

 

How To Sync Your iPod to Any Computer with YamiPod

YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation.

Here’s How:

1. First, you need to make sure that your iPod has disk use is enabled. To do this, open iTunes, go to Edit -> Preferences, then the iPod tab, and then the Music tab. Near the bottom of the option screen, you’ll want to make sure the box labeled “Enable disk use” is checked.
2. Next, download YamiPod (Yet Another iPod Manager). YamiPod will download in a ZIP file, so open that ZIP file and drag and drop YamiPod.exe onto your iPod drive in My Computer (you’ll be running YamiPod from off your iPod so that you don’t have to download the program every time you want to sync to a different computer).
3. Making sure you have closed out of iTunes, open your iPod drive (My Computer -> iPod) and find YamiPod. Double-click YamiPod.exe to run the program.
4. If everything’s working correctly, YamiPod should show you all of the music currently loaded on your iPod. At this point, if you want to add songs to your iPod, you can simply drag and drop music from your desktop into YamiPod, which will place them in your iPod. But if you’re interested in making these easier on yourself, you’ll probably want to set up folder synchronization so that you don’t have to deal with adding new files yourself every time you connect.
5. To do this, go to Tools -> Synchronize in YamiPod. The first thing you need to do is add a location (like Home, Work, etc.), which you can do by clicking on the plus (+) sign. You’ll add a new location for each computer you sync to.
6. Now it’s time to add folders. Find and add the folder(s) where you keep your music by clicking on the plus (+) sign below the folder box. Once you’ve added the appropriate directories, you should be ready to sync. For more information on the finer points of the remaining options/checkboxes included in the Synchronize dialog, check out YamiPod’s Synchronize page.
7. Now all you have to do is click Synchronize and you’re ready to go. YamiPod should analyze your folders and update your iPod with all of the music it doesn’t already have, and you’re no longer locked into syncing your iPod to just one computer. There have been some reports of slight instability with YamiPod, so please let me know if it doesn’t work correctly for you, check out the YamiPod forum.

What You Need:

• An iPod – pretty much any generation iPod will do.
• YamiPod free software

paint.net

Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.
The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for installation and shell-integration related functionality.

FavIcon from Pics

the first web tool for creating still / animated favicons from regular images…

Would you like to display your own icon on the browser address bar when visitors view or bookmark your web page?

Now it’s easy to create icons for your web pages with FavIcon from Pics. Simply select a picture, logo or other graphic (of any size/resolution) for the “Source Image” and click “Generate FavIcon.ico“

Things you can do to safeguard your computer

• STAY ALERT! Sounds simple? But do you really know if you have the latest patch for your browser, the software you use everyday or even the operating system that you run all your programs on? Don’t expect to hear about security issues and other software bugs in the traditional media such as the TV and news papers. Even if you subscribe to a technical journal, you may not get the news in time.
  • Use email notification services : Subscribe to email notification services related to the software you use. Don’t forget to include your operating system, web browser and any other software that will connect to the Internet in this list. Almost all of these notification services are free and subscription information is usually found on the software publisher’s web site or the software registration card.
  • Periodically check related web sites : If an email notification service is not available, add a task to your calendar to check your software publishers’ web sites at least every month, if not every week. You may have to search their news archives to find any security bulletins.
  • Search newsgroups : Some software publishers may not provide timely information about their software glitches openly. In such instances, newsgroups dedicated to open discussions may help you to find related messages posted by other users. Be aware that the quality and the credibility of information gathered from newsgroups maybe lower than information retrieved using above two methods. Searching, rather than browsing messages one by one, is recommended when it comes to newsgroup postings. For example, search for:
    “product name” AND bug OR fix
• TAKE ACTION Once you become aware of a bug or a security issue, carefully read the documentation for it and take the recommended action. For example, if applying a software patch is recommended by the software publisher, do so as soon as possible. Don’t delay taking action until the end of the month. Some software patches must be applied in a particular order. Applying fixes as they become available could make it easier to keep this order.
• KEEP DEFECTIVE SOFTWARE OUT OF REACH After applying patches to your current software installation, be sure to remove defective software from circulation and to document the actions you took for future reference. For example, if you receive a replacement CD or a floppy with a fix, remove obsolete disks from the circulation to avoid future confusions. If the fix was provided in a form of a patch (if you still need the original installation disks in case you have to reinstall the software), be sure to make a note of the patches you applied for future reference. You may want to keep a separate notepad for this purpose or simply label or mark the disks as a reminder to yourself.