So you’ve started using Katapult, but your distro doesn’t show the Katapult icon in the system tray by default. How do you get to the configure dialog? For that matter, how do you bring back the system tray icon?
One of the greatest mysteries to me is why most file managers don’t have tabs - it makes performing tasks so much simpler. I’ve found a lightweight file manager for Ubuntu called PCMan that gives you most of the functionality from Nautilus, but also has tabs.
If you’ve been experiencing the problem where you can’t add files to Windows Media Player’s library no matter what you do, then you probably have a corrupted database, and you’ll need to delete it and then re-add all of your media to the library.
For those of us that have to use Outlook 2007 at work, you should know that it not only handles mail and calendars, but also makes a very nice RSS reader as well. Of course, I don’t need to tell the couple hundred of you that are already reading the How-To Geek feed this way =)
I recently set my Kubuntu box to use seamless Microsoft application integration so I can use Windows applications that look like they are natively running in Linux, although they are really running in a hidden virtual machine. Really a very sweet option, similar to running Parallels with Coherence on a Mac.
Did you know that you can drag sidebar gadgets to the desktop, and then Close the sidebar? This tip might be obvious to many of you, but judging from all the emails I get on the subject, I felt that I should write an article about it anyway.
One of the more irritating things about Windows Vista is that you can’t easily get to your Network Connections list – at least not without clicking through half a dozen links in the control panel. I’ve previously written about how to make a shortcut to the Network connections list, but how about just adding them to the built-in start menu search?
Word 2007 has a ton of great effects that can be added to pictures in your documents, and they are all quickly accessible via the Format tab on the Ribbon.
Note: This is the first edition of the Geek Comic, which will be a weekly comic featuring the Geek and a number of other interesting characters. Subscribe to the RSS feed for the latest comic as well as your daily dose of How-To articles. Suggestions for new comics are welcome.
If you want to share a small part of your Excel worksheet but don’t want to send an Excel file, you can copy part of the worksheet to the clipboard as a picture instead, which can be pasted into any application that supports images, such as your favorite image editor.
When you are including graphics in a Word document many times you want to place the image in a particular way or at a certain angle. Word 2007 has just the tool for the job.
I have begun Alpha testing on Cerulean Studios Trillian Astra the new version of the Trillian IM client. I thought I would share with you the look and feel of this new application as it goes through development. Remember, this is still in Alpha testing.
If you like to use Windows Calculator to perform quick calculations while in Excel, you can save time by adding it to your Quick Access Toolbar. This should work for any version of Excel that has the Ribbon.
Completely uninstalling iTunes from your computer is one huge hassle. If you happened to download the version with the iPhone update it’s even more so. The program likes to claw itself deep into your system. The following is a series of screen shots demonstrating the hassle. This is removal of iTunes 7.3 from an XP machine.
As I wrote in my previous post; Apple upset me pretty bad with it’s iPhone update. Also, iTunes’ horrible performance on Vista leaves nothing to be desired. The iPhone update was the final straw for me. I have decided to ditch iTunes for a new music player. To read about the nightmare of completely uninstalling iTunes from your computer check out “iTunes Uninstall Hassle“. I have been an iTunes user for many years. So choosing a new player is not going to be easy. Many trials and tribulations are ahead in this quest. I have decided to document my findings as I go along.
Having switched from Ubuntu to Kubuntu recently, the first thing that irritated me beyond all reason was that single-clicking on a file or folder immediately opens the file instead of selecting it. Since I use Windows and Ubuntu on a daily basis, it’s just frustrating that it works differently in KDE.
If you are a Firefox power user like I am, then you probably have dozens of tabs open all the time. After trying a number of different options, I’ve finally settled on using multiple rows of tabs as the best option.
One of my friends contacted me a while back asking why the default setting in Outlook 2007 is to not mark items as read until you switch to a different email, which leaves the new mail notification sitting in the system tray even though you’ve clearly read the email.
You have a directory full of log files that you want to import into Excel or a database so you can do some processing on them… but there are hundreds of files… how do you make them into a single file?
If you receive an error saying “Tunepimp (MusicBrainz tagging library) returned the following error: “Fingerprinting of .mp3 files is not supported” when you are attempting to fill in the tags on your mp3 files using Amarok’s MusicBrainz plugin, then you’ve come to the right place.
One of the best new features in Outlook 2007 is the To-Do bar, where you have quick access to your calendar as well as your task list. Unfortunately, the default setting of showing all of your tasks regardless of date can be overwhelming for anybody that has a lot of tasks, and just isn’t all that helpful.
Ever since my friend Daniel educated me on the great “Open Resource” feature in Eclipse, I decided I needed the same feature in Visual Studio as well. After browsing around, I finally found a comparable plugin called VSFileFinder that will work in Visual Studio. It’s not quite as good, but it’s pretty decent.
After becoming addicted to the new experimental Google Beta Shortcuts that let you navigate through results with your keyboard, it started to irritate me that I didn’t get to use the shortcut keys when I use a quick search in the Firefox address bar using the “?” keyword. Good thing it’s a very simple to change.
In Excel if you have a long entry in a cell the text automatically spans into multiple columns. Here’s how simple Excel 2007 makes the task of wrapping text in worksheet cells.
Excel has a zoom feature so that you can increase the size of the entire document, but sometimes you just want to zoom in on a specific set of cells that you are working on, and Excel 2007 makes this task simple.
