Quickly Access your Favorite Programs, Files and Folders

Say you want to access your Outlook Mailbox, Media Player or a document, you will navigate to the desired location and open it but you can quickly run the program in just a click using this tool called Favorite Shortcuts. Favorite Shortcuts menu available: • in the Windows Desktop context menu • in a folder background shortcut menu • in the Windows Explorer File menu • in the Internet Explorer Favorites menu • in the Windows taskbar notification area (system tray) • in any application using a hotkey. To bring it up, right-click an empty spot on your desktop (or any other folder), point to Favorite Shortcuts or Quick Launch, and then click an item in the popup menu. You can also right-click on the special icon in the taskbar notification area (system tray) to display the favorite shortcuts menu. To display the Quick Launch menu, just left-click that system tray icon. This can be accessed through a hotkey as well. The tool is a shareware and can be downloaded from the location below. Details about the product can also be found below. Download Favorite Shortcuts

How to Get Better Battery Life from Your Android Phone

If you have a modern Android phone, you know the pain of turning on your phone at 5 PM only to realize it's deep in a low-battery coma. Here are the simple manual changes, and clever automatic tweaks, that will keep your phone awake and useful for far longer.

There are a lot of different things that can kill your phone's battery, and oftentimes they're things you don't even need. We've mentioned quite a few of these before, but if you're having serious battery life issues on your phone, make sure you check each of these settings, features, and customizations to make sure you're getting the best battery life possible out of your phone.

The Features that Draw Battery Power

There are quite a few settings and features on your phone that will drain battery life, sometimes without your even realizing it. To see what I mean, head to Settings > About Phone > Battery > Battery Use. You may see some things there you didn't realize were battery killers. Here are the settings that are most likely killing your battery, and how to turn them off when you don't need them.

Your Screen

Your screen, especially if it's one of the new beautiful Super AMOLED or Super LCD displays, draws by far the most battery from your device. The best way to minimize your screen's battery usage is to turn the brightness down. By default, your phone should be on "Auto" brightness, which works, but might still use up more juice than you'd like.

If you head to Settings > Display > Brightness, you can uncheck "Automatic Brightness" and put it on something like 10%. It'll be a little harder to see in direct sunlight, but you'll be better off everywhere else. Putting the Power Control widget on your home screen makes toggling between low and high brightness a lot easier, too, so that's a widget I highly recommend you use if you don't already. To add it, press and hold on an empty section of your screen, choose Widgets, and pick the Power Control option.

I'd also recommend lowering the Screen Timeout from 1 minute to 15 or 30 seconds under Settings > Display. If you tend to let your phone sleep automatically (rather than hitting the sleep button when you're done using it), this will help you save some life as well.

Cellular Data

Unfortunately, one of the biggest battery killers—especially if you live or work with with bad service—is your cellular and data connection. Whether you've got a fancy new 4G phone or a standard 3G unit, your data will use up battery even if you aren't actively using the phone.

You can turn your data connection on and off using either previously mentionedAPNDroid or previously mentioned Quick Settings. Toggle mobile data on when you need it, turn it off when you don't. If you're just planning on talking, texting, or sending a quick email, EDGE or 1X is more than sufficient. You can turn data back on when you're browsing and need the extra speed. It seems extreme, but it'll save you quite a bit of juice.

Unfortunately, these apps only work with GSM phones (AT&T and T-Mobile in the US); CDMA phones (like those on Sprint or Verizon) are left out. Some phones can turn off 3G from Settings > Wireless & Networks > Mobile Networks, but others will have to go the more complicated route. Sprint users can also turn off 4G with the previously mentioned Power Control Plus widget, while Verizon users can turn off 4G with the LTE OnOff app.

Wi-Fi

When you have Wi-Fi networks around, use them. They'll automatically turn off your data connection and use Wi-Fi instead, which is better for battery life than cellular data. However, when youaren't around Wi-Fi, it'll actually drain your battery by constantly searching for networks to connect to. Apart from a few choice locations, I don't use Wi-Fi very much except at my house—so I'll turn Wi-Fi off with the Power Control widget when I'm out and about.

Bluetooth

Having Bluetooth on kills battery just like Wi-Fi does. If you don't use a bluetooth headset, just turn Bluetooth off entirely. Again, you can toggle it on and off from the Power Control widget, so on the occasions that you are using a Bluetooth headset, or transferring files over Bluetooth from your computer, you can quickly toggle it on right from your home screen.

GPS

Everyone hates on GPS as a huge battery killer, but it probably isn't as bad as the others since it's unlikely that you're always using it. GPS only turns on (and drains battery) when you use it for something, like Google Maps or turn-by-turn navigation. Of course, if you use location services with Twitter, Facebook, or other social apps, then it may be turning on more often than you realize. Like the others, it can't hurt to toggle this one off using the Power Control widget when you're not using it, and then just turn it on when it's time to use Google Maps.

How to Automate These Settings

Of course, toggling these settings on and off all the time isn't an ideal phone scenario that leaves you feeling like you live in the future. If you only use Wi-Fi at home and at your local coffee shop, for example, wouldn't it be nice if your phone just knew when you were there and turned Wi-Fi on for you? Or wouldn't it be nice if you could just have Bluetooth on during work hours, when you're more likely to use that headset?

Automate Any Setting with Tasker

Luckily, you can do all this (and way, way more) with one of our favorite tools, Tasker (or other similar apps like Locale andSettings Profiles). We won't get into how to use Tasker here, since we've already given you a full rundown before, but you can automate pretty much anything you want—like turning GPS on only when you open Google Maps,turning on Bluetooth only when you dock your phone, and scaling back on data usage at night.

If you'd rather not go through the trouble of setting all these up, of course, you can still do it manually. Again, I can't recommend Power Control or Power Control Plus enough—it makes it so easy to toggle those settings on and off.

Scale Back Data Usage with JuiceDefender

Your other option is to use previously mentioned JuiceDefender. It does all the automation for you, though you can tweak some of its settings if you like. Basically, it manages your data connection as intelligently as it can. It will essentially turn off your data connection and re-connect every 15 or 30 minutes, to see if you have new emails, Twitter mentions, or other notifications to download.

By default, this particular setting probably won't do a ton unless you're already using your battery inefficiently. If you have your apps set up to use push notifications or battery-efficient intervals for pull notifications, this shouldn't save you a ton of battery (more on that below). What is really cool about JuiceDefender is its other features. For example, you can set it to disable Wi-Fi after one minute if it hasn't yet connected to a nearby network. It will then keep Wi-Fi off for 15 minutes and check again. It can even learn the Wi-Fi spots you connect to most, and just turn Wi-Fi on whenever you enter those areas. It can also turn off data entirely at night and re-enable in the morning, either after a certain time or when you wake the phone from sleep. You can also configure which apps have access to background data, which is nice for those that may be sucking up your data without you knowing it.

It's extremely easy to set up and use, and you can grab it from the Market for free. However, some of the features (like the Wi-Fi ones) are only available in the $5JuiceDefender Ultimate upgrade, so I highly recommend you grab that too. It's well worth the price.

Other Things to Try

All that said, there are a few other tweaks I'd recommend, whether you're using the above settings or not. Here are some extra things you can do to make sure your phone's getting the best life out of its battery.

Tweak and Uninstall Data-Heavy Apps

While some apps, like Gmail, use battery-efficient push notifications, others (like the default Email client, Twitter, Facebook, and others) poll the server for data every so often to see if there are any new notifications. You want to make sure these are using battery-efficient intervals. You don't need your Twitter app checking for email every five minutes—every 30 minutes (or more) is fine. These can make a huge difference in your data usage, and will save you quite a bit of battery. Closing these applications when you don't need them is a great idea, too.

If you have apps you aren't using, uninstall them. Some apps will try to connect to the internet without you realizing it, and it's best to just uninstall them entirely. If it's a piece of crapware that came with your phone, you'll have to root and use Titanium Backup to freeze it. Also, get rid of any widgets that are constantly pulling data down, like Facebook widgets, weather widgets, and so on. Or, at the very least, make sure you can edit their settings so they only poll for data every half hour or hour.

Turn Off the Eye Candy

Screen animations, live wallpapers, and other eye candy features can get pretty CPU intensive, so if you're looking to save battery life, turning them off is a great way to do so. You lose some of the "awesome" factor of course, but if you've done everything else and still aren't happy, this should give you a bit more juice.

Keep Your Phone from Getting Too Hot

Nothing kills a battery like extreme heat. This is probably common sense by now, but don't leave it in a hot car, get it out of your pocket when you can, and keep it as cool as possible during the summer. The hotter that battery gets, the faster it will die.

Wipe Your Battery Stats

If you're rooted your phone, you'll want to make sure you wipe your battery stats every once in a while, especially after you've flashed a new ROM a few times. This isn't something you want to do often, but if you've flashed a few ROMs since you've had the phone and haven't wiped the stats yet, wiping them now is probably a good idea. Follow these instructions to make sure you do it correctly.

Don't Use a Task Killer

We've talked about this before, so I won't get into the whole spiel here, but unless you're using an old version of Android—like 1.6—you don't need a task killer. They'll harm your battery life more than they'll help it. If you've done everything else correctly, like uninstalling apps that constantly connect to the internet for no reason (including crapware), quit apps when you're not using them, or use battery-efficient notification intervals, you don't need to be killing apps left and right for any reason. Don't use it.

Underclock or Undervolt Your Phone

If you have a new, powerful phone, you probably don't need all that CPU power it's giving you. Rooted users can download and installpreviously mentioned SetCPU, which lets you adjust your CPU's clock speed. Tone the CPU down a little bit, or even create a new profile that turns it way down whenever your phone is sleeping—after all, why do you need your processor clocking out at 1 GHz when you're not even using it? You can also create profiles that underclock your phone more and more as your battery goes down, so once you get to, say, 25%, your phone sacrifices more performance so it can last as long as possible.

You can also use a lower voltage kernel, which you can find around the internet or grab with previously mentioned Kernel Manager. Sometimes these can be a little less stable, and you may have to underclock your phone at the same time, but they can seriously give you better battery life.

Get a Secondary Battery

Last but not least, there's no shame in getting another battery for your phone. Most modern smartphones have crappy battery life, it's just a sad fact of owning one. If you find that, even with the above tips, you use your phone enough that the battery doesn't last you as long as you'd like it to, it's time to swallow that pride and just pick up a second battery. They don't take up a lot of space; you can keep it in your backpack or pocket until your phone dies and then just pop it in to give it new life. If you prefer, you can also get an "extended battery", which is a larger battery that will bulk up your phone, but give it quite a bit more battery life.

Make sure you're buying a real OEM battery, though. A lot of places, like Amazon, are selling a lot of knockoffs for super cheap. They can be tempting, but they can also cause problems—buy directly from your cellphone manufacturer or carrier to make sure you're getting a real, high quality battery for your phone.

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Hopefully you've learned at least a few new tricks for saving battery on your phone today—there are a lot of different things you can do, and it's up to you to pick and choose which ones work the best for you. Of course, many of you have probably built up your own arsenal of battery tips over the years, so if we didn't mention one of your favorite battery tricks, be sure to share them with us in the comments.

Google Launches the Closest Thing to a Real Time Machine

Remember watching those time-lapse videos of growing plants in science class? They look pretty dated once you've checked out the same sequence through Google's new "GigaPan Time Machine" application, which lets you zoom in and out of a time-lapse video without losing resolution.

"With Time Machine, the cameras capture these image mosaics at regular intervals to create a video with hundreds of millions or even billions of pixels in each frame. The result is a video that viewers have the ability to zoom in on while it's playing and see incredible detail," Google wrote in a blog post (see video demo below).

For example, Google links to a video of potted plants growing from seed to full bloom. You can target where you zoom in and out to focus on certain leaves or flowers (you may even be able to spot a catepillar taking a chomp of a leaf). The panorama was created by taking photos every 15 minutes for 26 days, using a Canon PowerShot G10 mounted on an Epic Pro.

The application, created by a team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, uses GigaPan photo technology, which involves "stitching" together high-resolution photos to create a panorama. You might have come across it while spying on people at President Obama's inauguration. It was also built using HTML 5, making it optimal to use with Chrome 7.0+, Google wrote. It works on Safari 5.0+ as well.

"Science has always been about narrowing your point of view -- seeing a particular experiment or observation that you think might provide insight," Illah Nourbakhsh, an associate professor of robotics at CMU told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

In the future, Noubakhsh also said he expects upgrades whereby high-resolution photographs, stitched together into a vast panorama, can be taken in fractions of a second to better examine fast-paced events like sports or volcanic eruptions.

Check it out at GigaPan's website, where you can also create your own time-lapse videos using stock photos.

Security lessons still lacking for computer science grads

Computer science majors have good job prospects, but the vast majority lack an understanding of security and the fundamentals of secure programming

This year's crop of college graduates are preparing to leave school and join the workforce, and the computer science majors among them appear to have good prospects. Development and software engineering jobs have grown significantly over the last five years, according to job site Indeed.com, with software engineers for social media, mobile applications, and cloud infrastructure currently in the highest demand. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects jobs for software engineers -- who design applications -- to grow by a third in the next seven years.

Yet in one key way today's graduates are unprepared to enter the workforce: The vast majority will lack a solid understanding of computer security and how to make their applications secure, experts say. Most top computer science programs don't require students to learn the fundamentals of secure programming -- an oversight that will continue to hurt application security in the future, said David Koretz, CEO of security firm Mykonos Software.

"If you look at computer science and software engineering programs today ... the crazy thing that blew me away is there is not a single required class on security for any of our computing science or software engineering grads," Koretz said. "You can go through five years of training and yet you will not know anything about security."

This week Mykonos became the latest company to start working with undergraduate programs -- in this case the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York -- to improve the security preparedness of computer science graduates. Microsoft also has made calls for better training of graduates and worked with undergraduate programs to add security education to their curriculum. And last year Solera Networks offered universities a free security appliance if they used it in their training.

In 2009, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the SANS Institute, and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) launched a series of contests aimed at training students and workers in computer security. Known as the U.S. Cyber Challenge, the program hopes to make up an estimated shortfall of 10,000 security professionals.

Getting security into computer science curricula is a necessary step in helping software developers prevent the thousands of vulnerabilities discovered every year in applications. High-profile breaches of major online service providers -- such as Google, Twitter, and marketerEpsilon -- have highlighted the need for more secure programming.

"To me, not only is it not surprising [that we are seeing these incidents], it seems exactly what we set ourselves up for," Koretz said.

Convert Photos into Morphed Animations with FotoMorph

If you have ever wanted to convert your friend’s pics into some funny animations then you can do that easily. Whether you want to take some revenge or just entertain your buddies, this tool is for you.

What you need to do is download this tool called FotoMorph, import 2 or more pics to photo morph. After importing the pictures, click on the Control button and map the similar features on both the pics with each other like map the nose of one pic to nose of another, eyebrow of one to that on another.

What this will do is that it will make the transition of one pic to another very smooth. After this you will need to set the animation properties on the photos. When finished you just need to export the project to save the file in your favourite format.

After some practice you would be able to create the morph animations easily.

Download FotoMorph

Extract Contacts, Notes, SMS, Call history, Photos from iPhone Backup

As you know my older iPhone is dead now, I had to go for another phone. The advantage of buying the original iPhone was that I had to pay a little amount to get the new iPhoneas a replacement. Now my biggest problem at the moment was to restore all the contacts and data back in the new model.

The task is easy if you have the backup in the iTunes ready but if the iPhone backup is not available with you, the task would be very difficult. While searching for a solution, I came to know about this tool called iPhone Backup Extractor, and with the help of this tool you can easily read the backups and extract any file from that.

The iPhone Backup Extractor can recover contacts, pictures, call histories, MMS, SMS and text messages, video, voicemail, calendar entries, notes, app files, saved games, debug information and data that might otherwise be inaccessible.

It automatically converts the extracted database into CSV, VCard or ICAL formats, so they can be easily imported into Excel, Outlook, or Webmail. The tool will show you all the available items from the backup, and you can either extract all the items simultaneously or one of them manually.

The tool works on both Windows and Mac but is not free. You can either purchase the tool if you liked it or get the cracked version (we don’t support piracy).

Download iPhone Backup Extractor

Top 10 Ways to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

It doesn't matter whether you're an artist or a businessperson, we all require a little creative thinking in our work. If you find you're getting stuck, here are some of the best ways to get those creative juices flowing again.

Photo by Drew Coffman.

10. Plan Ahead

Just because you're being creative doesn't mean you can skip out on the organization part of being productive. Making plan ahead of time can help youavoid creative plateaus, and waiting to judge your ideas after you finish them can keep you from exploring more alogical ideas. Creativity won't strike you on cue, but a simple mind mapand a bit of creative focus can go a long way.

9. Set Some Weird Rules

While we've been hammered with certain guidelines for running businesses and doing good work, to encourage creativity you sometimes need to set some weirder rules. Reward failure, but punish inaction. Create some conflict. Think contrary to what you usually hear, and mix things up to get your mind thinking in new ways. Photo by Hararca.

8. Think Inside the Box

All your life you've probably heard "think outside the box". It's a bit more complicated than that, though—instead of thinking completely differently (which is not only hard, but ignores the principles we've found to work),think inside the box and build on those already-useful ideas in new ways. Christopher Peterson said it best: "If you never venture outside the box, you will probably not be creative. But if you never get inside the box, you will certainly be stupid." Photo by Ronit Slyper.

7. Don't Stress About Being Truly Original

If you reject anything out of a desire for true originality, you'll never get anywhere. It's all been done before, and the key isn't coming up with a truly original idea, it's knowing what to stealfrom other artists and how to make it new and interesting.

6. Stay Motivated with Side Projects

If you focus too hard on one project at a time, you're bound to get stuck in a creative block, or at least a spell of low motivation. "Distracting" yourself with other, smaller projects gets you away from your big project while keeping you productive and creative. When you're done with one of those, you'll come back to your big project with a new mindset and renewed enthusiasm. Photo by Marcin Wichary.

5. Change Up Your Morning Routine

There's a reason some of the most creative people are known to be smelly and unkempt. While we aren't about to tell you to ditch hygiene altogether, sometimes switching up your morning routine can give you a creative head start you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Try getting up in the morning and jumping right into your work—you may have some creative moments you hadn't experienced after a shower, getting dressed, and so on. Photo by Chaos Manor Reviews.

4. Get Some Exercise

A change of scenery is always a good idea to get a burst of creativity, but a good 30 minutes of exercise will actually boost your creativity. In fact, it boosts nearly every dimension of cognition, so exercise regularly to get your blood (and creative juices) flowing. Photo byeduardomineo.

3. Stop Working Mid-Thought

If you find that you start some days with no idea where your project is going next, consider when you stop working the day before. Instead of looking for logical breaking points, always know what's coming next—that way, when you start up the next day, you can build up a bit of creative momentum before moving on to the new stuff.

2. Get Some Sleep

We all know how great sleep can be for your health, but it's good for your creative brain too. A Harvard researcher found that if you sleep on new ideas, you're a good chance more likely to make connections between distantly related points. If you're on a streak, there's nothing wrong with burning the midnight oil once in a while, but don't neglect regular, quality sleep if you want to keep that streak going. Photo by Deeleea.

1. Know When to Take Time Off

We can't all be creative 100% of the time, so don't burn yourself out by working 24/7/365. Designer Stefan Sagmeister actually takes a year-long creative sabbatical every seven years to rejuvenate his creativity. That's obviously not in the cards for everyone, but do as much as you can—even a little afternoon daydreaming can go a long way. Photo by Kr. B.

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Everyone's got their own tricks for fostering creativity (in fact, you've shared some of yours with us before), but if you've got any favorites that didn't make the list, tell us about them in the comments. And, be sure to check out tips from some of the world's creative geniuses, too.

Block Website using Right Click Context Menu in IE

It happens sometimes that while browsing the internet we come across a website that we don’t want to visit. What we do is block it instantly, but with this registry file we can add an entry in the right click context menu so that we can block the website instantly before closing it.

Blocking some particular website is a good way to ensure that we don’t come to see thatwebsite again but this process is bit long so with this reg file called BlockThisSite(developed by winhelponline), we can add an entry in the right click context menu, so that we can block a website with just a click.

Add “Block This Site” to the Right-Click Menu in IE

Windows XP
1. Download BlockThisSite_XP.zip, unzip the contents to a folder.
2. Double-click BlockThisSite.reg to run it.
3. Move the file BlockThisSite.htm to the C:\Windows\Web directory.

Windows Vista
1. Download BlockThisSite_Vista.zip, unzip the contents to a folder.
2. Double-click BlockThisSite.reg to run it.
3. Move the file BlockThisSite.htm to the C:\Windows\Web directory.
4. Move the file BlockThisSite.vbs to the C:\Windows directory.

What this reg file does is, it adds the page to the hosts file and blocks it for future browsing.

To Remove the BlockThisSite option

To remove the entry just run the Undo.reg which will make the hosts file and the right click menu as before.