Hiding Extra Windows

So, you’re using Windows 7 and you’ve got loads of stuff open on your screen. No matter, just press the Win+Home keyboard shortcut…

And all the windows hide except for the one you were using. Useful! But you probably already knew that…

What you didn’t think about is that there’s probably an easier way to use that shortcut key combination. Instead of using Win+Home, I prefer to use the Win+H shortcut combination since it’s easier to use without moving my fingers off the main row.

What we’ll do is create a really simple AutoHotkey script to do just that. You’ll need to make sure AutoHotkey is installed, then create a new .ahk script (you can use the New –> AutoHotkey script item on the context menu).

Next you’ll paste in some boilerplate code:

#InstallKeybdHook
#Persistent
#HotkeyInterval,100
SetKeyDelay, –1

And then here’s the line that actually does the work. When you press Win+H, which in AutoHotkey language is #h, it will use the Send function to push down the Windows key, press the Home key, and then release the Windows key. (of course, your keyboard keys won’t actually move. This isn’t an auto-play piano).

#h::Send,{LWin down}{Home}{LWin up}

Once you’ve created the script you can double-click it, and the shortcut key should start working immediately.

Oh, so you aren’t using Windows 7 yet? Well you can still get Mac’s Hide Others (cmd+opt+H) Keyboard Shortcut for Windows.

Wave Invites? Who Said Wave Invites?

We were given 20 invites to the Google Wave preview, and we offered them up to the readers. Out of a whopping 454 total comments requesting a login, we’ve picked 22 people that we’ll send an invitation to Google Wave.

Fuzzy math! And yes, we are aware that 22 > 20, but reader Xander volunteered to give up 2 of his invites as well, bringing the total to 22. He’s also on Twitter, in case you are wondering what generous soul would do such a thing. Thanks Xander!

Note: Google Wave invitations are being manually approved on Google’s end of things, so be patient.

The Weekly Random Links, Courtesy of Tiny Hacker

This is just a sampling of the random geekery over at Tiny Hacker this week. Want them in your feed reader or inbox each day? Head over to TinyHacker and subscribe.

	Got Carpal Tunnel? Instead of Getting Off the PC, Install an App to Help!
	Tweak the Windows 7 Taskbar Behavior the Easy Way
	BetterPrivacy Clears Out those Hidden Flash Tracking Cookies
	Power Up Your Firefox Tabs the Lightweight Way
	Fun Logic Game: Stuck in a Room With 2 People
	Find and Recover Those Files You Didn’t Mean to Delete
	Share One Mouse and Keyboard with Multiple PCs
	Save Firefox Bookmark Searches to Make Dynamic Folders
	99 freeware programs to trick out your PC
	Turn Task Manager Into a CPU Usage Widget
	Complete Guide to Windows 7 Libraries
	Add CPU and Memory Meters to Your Windows 7 Taskbar

Super User has Super Questions with Super Answers… Super!

More great stuff from Super User, as usual.

• Tips for approaching a hanging computer?
• When is the best time to purchase a new computer?
• Word 2003 .DOC formatting lost in HTML Emails
• Hidden features of Windows command prompt
• Installing Windows 7 (64 bit) on a Mac Pro without Bootcamp?
• How to install snow leopard in VMWare
• Can you store CDs/DVDs in a fireproof safe?
• Is there spyware in most crack/cracked/keygen software?
• Windows 7 “Libraries” – How do you back them up?

Did I use the same joke last week? I vaguely think I did. Oh well.

Last Year in Geek

One year ago, we were being lazy and not posting nearly enough. Here’s a couple of the interesting things that we did post during our non-lazy time.

• Keyboard Ninja: Toggle Hidden Files with a Shortcut Key in Windows
• Add Control Panel to the Desktop Right-Click Menu in Vista
• Easily Determine Windows Uptime in Windows 7, Vista or XP
• Power Up and Manage Your Windows Send To Menu with Send To Toys
• Benchmark Startup Times of Software Applications with AppTimer

The Weekly Geek Note

Server Quest II

The game is aimed at Administrators and IT Professionals but if you think you can do it better try it out.

Choose between two characters, Matt or Alicia where each has their own geeky characteristics.

Decide what kind of geek you are…

The controls are very basic…just the arrow keys and spacebar.

You start out in your IT dungeon office and people come to bug you about things not working. Challenges vary from querying a database to a user’s monitor not working because it isn’t plugged in.

You can walk around to the cubes and talk to the other employees.

Mini games with different challenges come up. In this example, Matt is biking around to grab a bunch of emails that were accidently sent out to an entire contact list.

After you complete a mission, go back to your computer and check your email for another task.

If you work in IT you’ll find a lot of humor and fun in Server Quest II. If you are a worker who thinks they can get things done better than those lazy game playing IT geeks, you’ll have fun with this game as well.

Play Server Quest II

What’s Google Wave, You Ask?

The all-knowing Google robots decided to come up with a new solution to the problem of collaborating on the web. You can edit and discuss documents in real-time with a group of people. The Google Wave team says Wave is “what email would look like if it were invented today.”

Right now, that’s the extent of what it does, though the underlying framework will eventually allow a lot more interesting uses.

Instead of bothering to take you on a tour of how it works, instead we’ll just point you towards the very best source on the subject, the Complete Guide to Google Wave, written by Adam Pash and Gina Trapani from Lifehacker.

Be Quiet and Give Me My Invite Already!

Fine! We’ll get down to business. Here’s what you need to do:

• Leave a comment with your idea for a topic that you would like to see us write about.
• Include the keyword googlewave in your comment (for spam checking purposes).
• Make sure to use your real email address (nobody will see it but us).

We’ll pick 20 random people from the comments, and announce the winners in our weekly roundup, so even if you are reading this on Friday you can still participate.

Note that your comment might not be approved immediately, but rest assured that it’s sitting in the queue.

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a free Open Source disk encryption utility that works with Windows, Mac, and Linux. It allows you to encrypt an entire drive, partition or flash drive and ensure no one can access the data without the right password. It provides on-the-fly encryption and after the drive is encrypted you can continue to use everything like you normally would. 

Installation is straight forward and it’s recommended to create a system restore point before installing.

Click on the Create Volume button to begin setting the disc up for encryption.

The entire process is wizard driven which makes it easy to use even for beginners. You can encrypt a virtual disk, removable drive, or an entire system drive. There are a lot more steps than what we show here, but the wizard makes all of your choices easy.

You can choose different levels of encryption. There are several types to choose from and each has its unique qualities…but for most users you will be fine with AES.

To complete the process you will need to restart the computer.

The amount of time it takes to encrypt a hard drive will vary depending on the size and speed of the system. In our test we encrypted an entire 320GB drive and it took about 4 hours.

To complete the process a restart is required.

Now anytime you start up your PC you will need to log in using the password you created in TrueCrypt.

If you’re worried about private or sensitive data being compromised, TrueCrypt is a simple and effective free option. If you have a version of Windows or other OS that doesn’t include BitLocker or another encryption feature, TrueCrypt has you covered. It’s a versatile utility as it can encrypt partitions, VHDs, Flash Drives, or entire hard drive like we showed.

Download TrueCrypt for Windows, Mac, and Linux

What’s the Problem?

Sure, you say, you can just uncheck the box when you are installing it. You’re a geek, and you know stuff!

…but what about all the doctors, teachers, and moms that don’t know any better? They don’t want to be geeks, they have other things that matter to them more than sitting in front of a computer all day and night. It’s Shocking, I know, but they have a life.

They shouldn’t be punished by companies earning their living by scamming them into installing some worthless piece of crap software that they don’t need or want. They shouldn’t have a PC loaded down with crapware just because you like free stuff so much that you’ll keep supporting these products by installing them. When is enough finally going to be enough?

If you really love free software so much, why don’t you switch to truly free (open source) software, and maybe start using Linux? After all, everybody knows as soon as you install Linux you’ll be all-knowing and gain special comment-leaving powers.

Nobody Wants Toolbars!

Having extra software riders is common place in apps like RealPlayer or iTunes and other “Lameware” apps, but now it’s getting worse. When getting the latest version of  Flash Player on a Windows 7 install, we see they’re trying to add extra software like the Google Toolbar, or worse, a Mcafee scan.

Sun’s Java tries to install extra things as well like in this example they want to put the Bing Toolbar in Internet Explorer for you…

And sometimes it offers to install the awful Yahoo toolbar as well.

A bunch of quality freeware apps seem to be using this practice nowadays as well…like CCleaner… which makes us sad. We love CCleaner.

Or Foxit Reader who want to install their own toolbar and make Ask.com your default search. On a side note, have you noticed how bloated Foxit seems to be getting in recent versions?

Avoid The Extra Junk 

The extra apps they try to sneak on your system aren’t malware like Digsby was trying to do when they joined the dark side, but it’s irritating and annoying that a user is automatically opted in. One service that makes it easy to install your favorite apps without the extra baggage is Ninite which we have previously covered.

Not only do they make it a huge time saver to install multiple apps at once, they say NO to all the extra crapware they might try to include.

We spoke with Patrick Swieskowski, one of the founders of Ninite, and he told us about how they ensure their service installs apps free of crapware.

These tricky toolbars and addons were a big reason we started Ninite. You always have to be on your toes when running installers these days.

When we set up the automation for each installer we pay careful attention to these offers and decline them. We also check our test systems for new toolbars or other bundled apps after the automation, and if anything got through we throw out that configuration and try again.

We’re really serious about making Ninite a place to get software where people don’t have to worry about these sort of addons or spyware. For example, if I found that our Digsby install had the research mode enabled by default, we would have immediately removed it from the site until we could resolve the problem. Any feedback we receive about malicious or shady app behavior becomes our top priority.

How-To Geek Policy

When you read about free apps and utilities that we write about here, we will always let you know if the app tries to sneak something else in. It’s our official policy.

Note: if we’ve written about something in the past and the developer has since added a crappy toolbar, be sure to let us know so we can update the article and point it out.

Conclusion

Yes, it’s only a matter of un-checking a box, but it seems that allowing a user to opt-into installing the extra junk would be more acceptable.

foobar2000

Foobar2000 is a great music player for the geek who wants a light player that they can tweak the heck out of to their liking. The installer is only a 1.6 MB download but packs a lot of power. Features include gapless playback, ReplayGain support, ripping CDs, customizable interface, open component architecture and a lot more. It supports FLAC, MP3, MP4, OGG, WAV, WMA, AIFF, and other music formats.

Installation is straight-forward following the install wizard and you can go for the standard or portable version.

When you initially set it up or at anytime after you can go through the quick appearance setup feature to change the look and feel how you like it.

The player is easy to navigate and with a component plugin like Columns UI has all of the features you would expect from most players out there today.

You can find a bunch of different plugin components that have been created by different developers over the years as the project has grown. There are plugins for appearance, tagging, CD burning, and even an iPod manager. Virtually any function you might want, someone has created a plugin. To use the plugin components, download the zip file and extract the DLL file into the Foobar2000 components folder.

One of the must have components is Columns UI that lets you customize the interface in several ways.

Depending on the layout you can get tabbed or dropdown playlist features.

It also includes the ability to convert your music files to different formats. Just right click on a song and select Convert.

Now you can go through and choose the format you want to convert it to and add select between several settings and effects options.

An EQ is included for you to tweak the sound how you like it, and you can save your own presets.

If you are a Keyboard Ninja you’ll like the customizable shortcuts.

Going through your library is easy with the search feature.

Foobar2000 is a cool player for a music loving computer geek who wants to tweak every aspect of their player. If you’re a fan of foobar2000 or just started using it, leave us a comment and let us about it.

Download foobar2000 for Windows

foobar2000 Plugin Components

Installation

Installation for Photo Flash Maker Free is extremely quick with only three install windows (and no EULA) to sort through.

When you start the program you will see the “Main & Slideshow Wizard Windows”. Notice that you can easily disable the “Slideshow Wizard” (lower left corner) so that it does not appear each time you start the program.

This is what the “Main Window” looks like once you close the “Slideshow Wizard”.

Photo Flash Maker Free in Action

There are two ways to start creating your new flash slideshows…using the visible three step toolbar or by using the wizard. Using the three step toolbar will allow you to choose the “between photo” effects to suit your personal style. For our example we chose to use the wizard.

To get things started go to the “File Menu” and select “New Project From Wizard”…

You will be presented with the “Add Images to Slideshow Window” and can browse for the photos that you would like to use.

Once you have selected the photos that you would like to use click “Next”.

Choose the “Frame Style” that you like best and click “Next”. For our example we chose “Photo Only”…

The final part is to choose the names that you would like to use for the “swf & html files”. Once that is finished click the “Publish Now! Button”.

At this point you can choose to immediately view your files or wait until you have closed the wizard and then view them.

Here is the swf file opened directly in Firefox…

Followed by the html file with the flash file embedded. Notice the “advertisement-type listing” at the bottom…this is extremely easy to remove by editing the html file in Notepad (or your favorite text editor). See screenshot below for the exact text to remove.

The only drawback to using Photo Flash Maker Free is the momentary banner at the end of the slideshow…but it is a very small price to pay for such a nice file.

For those who would like to remove the textual “advertisement-type listing” at the bottom of the webpage here is the exact code that you will need to select and delete. Afterwards the webpage is clean and ready to go…

Menus

The menus for Photo Flash Maker Free are simple and straightforward. Here you can see the “File, View, & Photo Menus”…

And the “Music, Create, Preference, & Help Menus”.

Options

There are three parts to pay special attention to in the “General Options Area”:

• You can delete the “Default URL” and leave it blank without any effect on your flash files
• It is recommended to deselect “Show Title on each photo” to keep your flash files looking clean (unless you want to label your photos)
• Make certain to set the JPEG quality to 100 to get the best looking result for your photos

Select the settings that best suit your needs for background music (if you are adding any to your files).

Make any background color and scale adjustments that you desire.

Conclusion

If you have been looking for a way to add some photo fun to your website, then Photo Flash Maker is definitely worth taking a look at.

Links

Download Photo Flash Maker Free (version 5.11)

iPhone / Android / iPod Touch Optimized

If you want to browse through the latest articles on the How-To Geek site on your iPhone or other mobile device, you can now easily do so thanks to our optimized interface…

It even nicely resizes the pictures down, keeping the articles readable.

For those who might care, we’re using the WPtouch plugin for WordPress to accomplish it.

User Reviews for Our Reviews Section

You’ve probably already noticed that we’re including our product reviews into the main RSS / email newsletter now. What you might not realize is that you can leave your own review underneath ours.

Just head over to any of the reviews, like this one on Norton AntiVirus 2010, add in your thoughts about the product, and give it a star rating—feel free to be totally honest, even if you hate the product.

Printing Articles is Better Than Before

We’ve heard from our readers many times over the years, and printing the articles should work a lot better now… just hit the Print button in your browser, and you’ll be able to print the page without the sidebars, headers, comments, or the rest of the stuff you don’t want on your printed page. If you don’t know where the print button in your browser is, there’s also a new icon below each article.

Tip: If the article seems to run too far off the page, you can use the “Change Print Size” to a smaller number, like 95%.

If you want to keep an offline copy of our articles, you should really consider printing them to PDF instead of paper.

New Article Schedule

You might have noticed today that the articles are heading out the door in a slightly different schedule—for the last, well, long time now, we’ve scheduled all of the articles for the day early in the morning in one big set. Starting yesterday, we’re going to be publishing articles at regular intervals throughout the day.

The daily email subscribers will still get all of the articles, so don’t worry. It’ll just be scheduled a little differently.

Sample the Latest Random Geekery from TinyHacker

For all the rest of you that didn’t sign up for TinyHacker the last time we mentioned it, we’ll continue to show off some of the highlights over here in the weekly roundup. Just keep in mind that there’s a lot more great stuff over there on TinyHacker.

	Put Your Virtual Desktops In the Windows 7 Taskbar
	Crazy Awesome, Giant Resolution Wallpaper Images
	The Real-Life Paper Mario (Geek Fun)
	Use the Ecofont to Save Money on Printing
	Hide Your Files Inside Windows Calculator
	Open Your C:\ Drive With One Keystroke in the Run Box
	Want Some ASCII Art? This Guy Has the Whole Nerd Collection
	Find Awesome Icons that are Just the Right Size
	RichCopy is a Powerful, Free Copy Application for Windows

Super User

Yet more Super Questions with Super Answers from our favorite Super Geeky site. Super.

• Why is MD5 still used heavily?
• Whats the purpose of the WWW subdomain?
• Can you activate one Windows 7 on 2 identical machines?
• Linux: How to move all files from current directory to upper directory ?
• Is there a difference between AMD and Intel processors?
• Is a clean install really better than an upgrade?
• Windows Vista 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit upgrade?
• Does using a certain kind of numbers make a good password ?

The Geek on Lifehacker

Over at Lifehacker, I’ve continued my daily writing with varying levels of usefulness, but loads of eye candy. Here’s some of the highlights:

The Master List of New Windows 7 Shortcuts

• LongBar is a Slick, Open-Source Sidebar for Windows
• The Left 4 Dead HUD Desktop
• The Ultimate Halloween Desktop
• The “ChromeOS” LiteStep Desktop

The Geek Note

Wheeeeeeeee!

That’s right. More new stuff coming soon.

The Problem – Real Player

The problem is RealPlayer which can be a lot of extra bloat to deal with just to watch the occasional RM file or online content. While it may not be as adware ridden as it was a few years ago, it’s far more than you need just to watch play some online content.

Of course it still likes to leave advertisement popups on your desktop, which is completely unacceptable from any program.

Real Alternative

Real Alternative is completely ad free and allows you to play RealMedia files (.ra .rm .rmvb .ram .rpm .rv .rp .rt .rnx .smi .smil) without having to install the bloated RealPlayer. It installs the right plugins to support RM content that is embedded in Web pages. It also comes bundled with Media Player Classic which you can use on your desktop for playing RM files.

After installing, you can go through and set it up according to your preferences.

If you find a site that requires RealPlayer to watch embedded content right click and select Real Player.

It opens up with Media Player Classic to watch the video.

This is definitely a lot better solution than dealing with the huge bloated annoyance of RealPlayer.

Download Real Alternative

Click on any of the images below for a larger version of the image more suitable for using as a wallpaper. Since everybody’s desktop might be a different size, you may have to crop or adjust the images for best effect. Happy Halloween!