TuneUp Utilities 2009 can make your Windows operating system faster, more comfortable and more secure with just a few mouse clicks. And all operations performed on the operating system are completely safe, because all changes are monitored by TuneUp Rescue Center and can be undone at any time. All TuneUp Utilities modules can be accessed through a common interface that is divided into six categories.

Improved Features of TuneUp Utilities 2009:

 TuneUp Drive Defrag: Intelligent defragmentation with new progress display
TuneUp System Control: Supports Opera
TuneUp Uninstall Manager: Intuitive uninstall options
TuneUp Startup Manager: Increases the speed at the start-up of your PC
TuneUp Styler: Expanded PC style options for Windows Vista (32/64 Bit)
TuneUp Registry Cleaner: More powerful tool with in-depth view of your PC registry

Time out from this London stuff for a minute. Check out this site I just wasted a lot of time playing on: www.looklet.com.

You can design new looks with different models and even change the backgrounds….

Due programmi per l’authoring dvd opensource: dvd styler e dvd flick. Entrambi testati e funzionanti. Devo ancora confrontarne la qualità, dvd flick sembrava dare una pessima qualità nel mio lettore di casa, ma un confronto via pc collegato alla tv tra il dvd creato da dvd flick e il filmato originale in m2p non ha rivelato sostanziali differenze, quindi forse è ora di cambiare il lettore!

Per masterizzare ovviamente si può usare Infrarecorder, anche se entrambi i programmi offrono l’opportunità, oltre a quella di creare un’immagine iso, di masterizzare direttamente. Attenzione in dvd flick a scegliere una delle due opzioni (iso o masterizzazione), altrimenti il programma crea solo i file vob e compagnia bella in una cartella video_ts nel pc, e poi bisogna masterizzare a mano la cartella. Funziona comunque, ma se si può scegliere la via più comoda…

With IconWorkshop™ make your own icons for Windows®, MacOS® and Unix®. It creates Windows® icons up to 256×256 for Windows Vista™ and Macintosh® icons up to 512×512 for Leopard (MacOS® 10.5). Unix® uses PNG icons. IconWorkshop creates PNG images with alpha channel in a few clicks including from existing Windows® and Mac OS® icons.

The new generation of icons uses variable transparency (alpha channel). This feature permits creating beautiful icons with smooth borders and shadows. You need a professional tool to create such icons. Axialis IconWorkshop™ has been designed with one goal in mind: "Icon Quality".

Enjoy the powerful editor which permits creating the various image formats of an icon from an original drawing without quality loss.

DISCLAIMER: This application is for non-commercial purpose only. If you like the product , please purchase it.

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http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XY8ZU80Q
http://www.easy-share.com/1906022133/Axialis-Icon-Workshop-v6-Havesoftwares.zip
http://www.sendspace.com/file/gsqwul
http://www.mediafire.com/file/txwo2ymjyid/Axialis-Icon-Workshop-v6-Havesoftwares.zip

Request: Benefited users can pray for, well being of my friend Deepa.

up next: UI improvements

Truth be told, I’d love to have Windows 7 once it’s released. It has the nice looks of Vista plus some slick interface improvements. But alas, I’ll only get a new computer next year, so that’ll have to wait. In the meantime I’m making my XP desktop nicer. There are a lot of things in XP that are less than satisfactory, both in looks and in usability. So I’ve improved on some of these, and I now I’ll tell you what I learned.

And yes, I realize this is pretty late to still be writing about XP, but whatever. AND, in addition to my nonchalant “whatever”, I just learned that apparently XP users are in the majority… SO TAKE THAT!

1) a new theme

transformation packs. I’ll get this out of the way first: if you’re simply looking to make your Windows XP look like Vista or Seven, instead of having fun customizing everything yourself, then the easiest thing is to get a transformation pack. There are several of these out there, but here are a couple that look good: Vista Transformation Pack, Seven Transformation Pack .

{ Windows 7 transformation pack }

But use these at your own risk, because by modifying your system like this Something Bad could happen… and I haven’t tried them myself so I can’t say whether or not they work, but since they’re so popular I’m assuming they do. Also keep in mind that these transformation packs might slow down your system if you have an older computer.

Microsoft themes. There are a few themes made by Microsoft that are pretty popular, the biggest being the Royale family of themes. These are kind of like XP’s Luna themes, but shinier and better-looking. After you install one of these via an .msi or .exe file, it will be available in the Display Properties (select Properties under the desktop right-click menu).

Royale Remixed is an awesome rework of the original themes. It includes all 3 Royale themes as color schemes: Royale (light blue), Royale Noir (dark blue), and Royale Zune (black). This theme is more complete and (in my opinion) way better than the originals, but if you want you can still get the original Royale, Royale Noir, and Royale Zune themes.

{ Royale Remixed Zune }

Unlike most themes, Royale Remixed includes shutdown and log off graphics, but they have to be installed manually. See the included readme for instructions.

custom themes. Most themes aren’t made by Microsoft. In fact, you’ll find thousands upon thousands of these custom themes. There’s great collection of these here, and more here. DeviantART has a ton of themes.

To install these non-Microsoft themes, just download the Uxtheme patcher and run it. Don’t worry about a message box that might pop up, just click “Continue”. Then put your new themes in C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes. Now they might be available in the Display Properties, under the Appearance tab. If not, open the .msstyles files in the Themes folder.

{ Silence theme }

In case you use Google Chrome. As of June 2009, I don’t think there are any official themes for Chrome besides the default blue. This isn’t a problem for Vista and Windows Seven (I assume), because in these Chrome uses the Aero theme. But in XP, light blue is seemingly the only option. Once again I put on my google goggles and discovered that the seeming reality was in fact… a lie! I found Chrome Plugins, a website with unofficial plugins for Chrome, including some themes. Not many though… If anyone has a good source for Chrome plugins, please comment and tell me!

{ black Aero theme for Chrome }

2) get Stylish

Styler is a program that allows you to customize the Explorer toolbar by applying themes. DeviantART has a whole section devoted to these themes, and many visual themes you’ll find at deviantART come with a matching Styler theme.

{ OSX Tiger toolbar theme }

Here is a good tutorial to get you started, using a Vista toolbar theme as an example. You can have some sweet toolbars with Styler, but personally I don’t use it (I’ll tell you why in part 2).

3) cool mouse cursors

{ Entis cursor set }

Here’s pretty good mouse cursor collection. DeviantART also has lots of cursor sets, here. To use new cursors, just go to Control Panel -> Mouse -> Pointers, and then load the cursors. Not much to be said about cursors…

4) nicer icons

To customize your desktop icons, grab the freeware app IconTweaker. Then get some icons in DeviantART’s icon section or take a look at this great collection (thanks again instant fundas!).

{ Vista icons applied in IconTweaker }

Usually icon sets are packaged as individual icon files, so it’s kind of a pain to install them because you have to load each one individually. Fortunately, IconTweaker can load pre-packaged icon sets. Unfortunately, these aren’t very common. But I found a few of these packaged sets here and some more here. Also, at deviantART there are some nice Vista and OSX IconTweaker packages.

That’s it for visuals! A special thanks to all the artists on deviantART who make these amazing themes and icons and whatnot. Also a big thanks to the website instant fundas for making some great theme collections and for being the first one to show me (via Google search) that there is a bigger, more beautiful world beyond default XP themes. If you have any suggestions, corrections, or angry rants, drop me a comment. Here’s one last screenshot (click to expand).

-fipi

up next: UI improvements

well tonight i eyed this rad peavey, but i never got to pick it up. picked up the flute, tho, and some sort of drum that kept sliding around, but not me, just the drum.

and at some point i played pool, and at some point we talked about the blues. the old blues. the masters, the first ones to be recorded. and maybe who dares to play the blues, and maybe we will.

next week.

next week at styler’s open mic, where the equipment comes storming through the door at quarter after nine, and the coconut sits on the mixer, and the effects fly fast and hard, as they should, cos who knows what the hell we are doing, cos really we never did it before.

where the colossal fossil sauce rocked it out, and pulled out the hendrix and the marley and the sugar hill gang, yes, they did. and me, i guess i used to know it hands down, but now i know less than i did, but i think this is thoroughly understandable.

and this is ocmd music at the steer inn just down the road from where i once slammed on the brakes in my 1969 VW bug, and slid sideways into the intersection, then sat there, trying to look normal, until the light changed.

i might of ran over a toad, driving home, and this weighs heavy on my heart, as i could not swerve, because my tires are bald.

and my old dog, hitch, she is sleeping on the floor. snoring. she wakes up once in a while to go outside, or eat some food, but mostly she just snores.

so that’s the happenings at the steer inn, i suppose. i tried to film the fake cow, but set off the alarm, and all the chickens were asleep.

but i rocked on the swing in the backyard. which is worth at least one more day on earth, as i see it.

well tonight i eyed this rad peavey, but i never got to pick it up. picked up the flute, tho, and some sort of drum that kept sliding around, but not me, just the drum.

and at some point i played pool, and at some point we talked about the blues. the old blues. the masters, the first ones to be recorded. and maybe who dares to play the blues, an maybe we will.

next week.

next week at styler’s open mic, where the equipment comes storming through the door at quarter after nine, and the coconut sits on the mixer, and the effects fly fast and hard, as they should, cos who knows what the hell we ar doing, cos we never did it before.

where the colossal fossil sauce rocked it out, and pulled out the hendrix and the marley and the sugar hill gang, yes, they did. and me, i guess i used to know it hands down, but now i know less than i did, but i think this is thoroughly understandable.

and this is ocmd music at the steer inn just down the road from where i once slammed on the brakes in my 1969 VW bug, and slid sideways into the intersection, then sat there, trying to look normal, until the light changed.

i might of ran over a toad, driving home, and this weighs heavy on my heart, but i could not swerve, my tires are bald.

and my old dog, hitch, she is sleeping on the floor. snoring. she wakes up once in a while to go outside, or eat some food, but mostly she just snores.

so that’s the happenings at the steer inn, i suppose. i tried to film the fake cow, but set off the alarm, and all the chickens were asleep.

but i rocked on the swing in the backyard. which is worth at least one more day on earth, as i see it.

Please view the this image for this to make the most sense.

Section 1: FindeXer adds a sidebar to your explorer which you can place shortcuts into. Hopefully, future versions will also include a folders function to fully emulate vista. FindeXer’s colors and icons are fully customizable, not to mention separators can be added.

Section 2: Windows standard buttons were used. The only buttons I enabled were the Back and Forward buttons.

Section 3: I used the QT Breadcrumbs Address Bar for this. It works JUST like Vista’s address bar.

Section 4: This search bar is part of QT Standard Buttons. More information about this is covered in section 6.

Section 5: This was created with a personal customization of two Styler toolbar skins (specifically what is called a “Bottom only” skin, and the full function skin). This is a very versatile program that can hide that annoying menu bar in explorer, and can cover all the common tasks that the Windows Standard Buttons, and address bar are capable of doing. There are hundreds of skins out there you can download. This program also adds a shadow to your windows, among other functions.

Section 6: This was a tricky one. This is the QT TabBar I have hidden the text, as I have no use for the tabbar, however, it is needed for the QT standard buttons (Section 4) to show up. They are both included in the download from the previously hyper linked site. It also adds a new background to the entire toolbar area of the explorer, another function I am using in the picture.

Section 7: This is just a bottom shell style, rather than the typical sidebar shell style that is default on Microsoft XP.

Now, you may have noticed by now that in the picture, my window frames are transparent and blurred, which is often called the “Glass” effect. This is the crown jewel of Vista and 7’s UI (User Interface). There are two ways to accomplish this.

1. You can use a freeware program called TrueTransparency, which ONLY makes the frames transparent. This program also can be unstable at times, and will randomly crash (it has never crashed my explorer, or computer however).

2. If you are willing to chunk out 20 dollars for WindowsBlinds (Which is what I use, and is worth every penny if you ask me), it allows you to use hundreds of skins, use customized explorer buttons (which is how my buttons look much closer to Vista’s), and many of other nice little things.

The only detriment these additions pose is an increased explorer start up time, however, you make up that time in how easy it becomes to move through your computer. Additionally, with this configuration, the back button takes you the root folder, therefore, the main way you will go back is by using the address bar.

For skins for the various programs mentioned, go to deviantART.

now available at salon ziba for the discounted price of $255,

www.salonziba.com

A quien no le paso que se canso de la apariencia azul, plateada o dorada de Windows XP? Si ya estas cansado de esos colores aburridos, esta guía te ayudara a cambiar esos colores aburridos. Personalmente me gustan los colores oscuros con el resto de la ventana en gris o blanco sin que contraste mucho. Por suerte existen Themes (Temas) o Visual Styles (Estilos Visuales) para Windows XP. Se pueden encontrar muchos en Internet, pero tenes que saber donde buscar.

Esta guia se vasa en usar Estilos Visuales que no consuman demasiada memoria RAM (mi compu tiene 448mb ) para que la computadora reaccione bien a distintos programas. Obviamente si tenes 2 GB de RAM, lo menos que te importa es eso. Pero igualmente se pueden conseguir resultados espectaculares si sabes que haces.

Otra cosa, les recomiendo hacer una copia del UXTheme.dll antes parchearlo, porque si tenes algun problema con el parche, siempre podes restaurar el original.

¿Que son los temas y estilos visuales?
Antes que nada debemos explicar que los temas o themes de Windows XP son un paquete que consta de un Fondo de pantalla, un Estilo visual, Fuentes, Sonidos y en ocasiones hasta de iconos. Los Estilos Visuales o Visual Style solo son eso, la apariencia de las ventanas de Windows.
Además cuando nos encontramos navegando podemos encontrar otro tipo de “temas” que son más bien otro tipo de sustitucion de escritorio llamado Shell como el que utiliza Windows Blinds (y que son muy similares a los utilizados en Vista).

¿Como instalarlos?
Ahora si viene una breve pero efectiva (espero) explicación de como hacer el cambio o instalación de temas y estilos.
Debo de explicar que este pequeño tutorial solo indica como hacer la instalación de manera manual, deben saber que existen aplicaciones que han sido desarrolladas para hacer el trabajo de manera rápida y automática. Un ejemplo es Styler, una aplicación gratuita; o pueden optar por opciones de pago como TuneUp 2009 (el modulo Styler) o StyleXP. Todas son opciones viables. Pero personalmente prefiero usar el parche para poder usar cualquier VS sin tener problemas.

Generalmente, si usas uno de esos Windows Modificados (Salamandra, Colossus, SuricataOS, etcetera), no es necesario parchear el DLL porque ya vienen modificados para eso (casi siempre tienen una apariencia modificada; personalmente, pienso que son todas ASQUEROSAS).

Otra opción es crear su XP Modificado con esos parches y algunos otros ajustes, pero eso es para otro(s) artículos. Probablemente en el futuro redacte alguno.

Ahora si, en teoría las versiones que incluyen el SP 2 en adelante tienen liberada la DLL para cambiar de apariencia sin necesidad de modificar el sistema, pero a veces esto no es real, así que para eso podemos realizar lo siguiente:

• Descargamos el Uxtheme Multi-patcher, debemos de revisar que sea compatible con nuestra versión de Windows

• Ejecutamos esta aplicación, después de que haga el trabajo “sucio” nos pedirá que reiniciemos.

Una vez reiniciado podemos dirigirnos a la carpeta C:\Windows\Resources\Themes (puedes escribir la ruta en Ejecutar y se abrirá el explorador), ahora cada vez que quieras instalar un Tema nuevo ahí descomprimirás el archivo Zip que contiene los archivos necesarios para que el tema se aplique correctamente, debes de ser atento y observar el orden que ya tiene el tema por defecto de XP llamado Luna, ya que en ese orden deberás colocar los temas y estilos, de lo contrario no se aplicaran correctamente.

Igualmente, para poder aplicar un solo tema es tan simple como dar doble click en el archivo visual, enseguida se mostrara la ventana de “Propiedades” en la pestaña “Apariencia” desde la cual podrás aplicar el estilo.

Tampoco es necesario ponerlos todos en la carpeta Themes de Windows, porque podes poner los VS en cualquier otro lado, que si no los moves de lugar no pasa nada.

Si no te gusta esto, podes optar por opciones mas “practicas”, como Styler (al final de la entrada esta el enlace de descarga) o TuneUp Utilities 2009 (Styler), que realizan el cambio de forma automática.

Ante cualquier duda, no duden en preguntarme. Yo mas o menos mes las arreglo, y puedo ayudar a quien lo pida si me explica bien la situación.

Ahora si, las descargas:
UXTheme Multi-Patcher 6.0 (compatible con XP SP3)
Styler [Freeware]
TuneUp 2009 (no disponible por ahora)