A great update from Gmail! - Now you can send SMS from the online chat.. without having to download any software.

To enable it, you have to Open Gmail and go to the Labs Page (from Settings), scroll a little bit down, and you will see something like this:

And from there you just select Enable and then just apply the changes, after that you can click on a contact and send an SMS from there… pretty simple!

I, personally, have wanted this since I bought my laptop (that came with Vista). And I’m sure a lot of people out there want this cool effect too… You want to keep the transparency of the window even when a window is maximized.

Well, the fix is simple. Just download this software VistaGlazz. It’s very simple to use. First patch, and then apply the hack.

Have fun!

To Enable or Disable the Task Manager in Vista is very simple. Some versions of Vista have the option, and you can set this through a GUI, but that does not work for all versions, so I will be guiding you through the method that should work in all versions of Vista.

The Steps:

1. Open the regedit by pressing the Windows Button + R and type in regedit.

1. After that browse to “HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System”
2. If you don’t find the folder (which most probably you will not) right click on  Policies got to New -> Key then type in System and press Enter
   
3. In the right pane right click and select New -> DWORD (32-Bit)
4. Type in DisableTaskMgr and press Enter
5. Now double click that DWORD
6. Set it to 1 to Disable task manager or set it to 0 to Enable task manager

When you try to create a new project in Visual Studio 2008, or even some Express editions, does it display the error “Requested Registry Access Is Not Allowed”? or something similar?

Well, it seems to be quite a common problem, but the solution is very simple. First download SubInACL from the Microsoft Website, and install it. Then open the folder C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools and afterwards create a batch file / windows command script (using a .cmd extension) and open it with a text editor. Then if you have for example problems with C# Express 2008 write the following commands:

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VCSExpress.csproj.9.0 /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VCSExpress.csproj.9.0 /grant=users=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VCSExpress.csproj.9.0 /grant=system=f

If you are having problems when trying to create a C# project in Visual Studio 2008 then write the following commands:

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VisualStudio.csproj.9.0 /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VisualStudio.csproj.9.0 /grant=users=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\VisualStudio.csproj.9.0 /grant=system=f

You might need to search the registry to find the relative folder for the problem that you are having, because if for example you are having problems with creating a VB project in Visual Studio 2008 you have to replace csproj with vbproj and so on. Then just save that .cmd file and double click it (make sure that it is located in the folder C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools or it will not work), then it will run and now you will be able to create a new project with no problems!

Happy Coding!

Did you know think that the Windows Task Manager only displays the information you see when you press CTRL+ALT+DEL? Well, it is more powerful than that! Most of us don’t ‘explore’ this little application to get to know it more, we are too frustrated when we have to use this software (most probably because some application is not responding). So, here I will explain to you how to know more information about your applications, like the PID, CPU Time, I/O Reads, I/O Writes and much more information!

So just open the Task Manager

Task Manager

Then just go to View / Select Columns…

And you will see the following window:

As you can see there are tons of options that you can select, just select the ones that you want and press ok!

Well, we all know that to save our Monitor’s life we should switch it off when it’s not in use…

Vista does have a screen saver named ‘Blank‘, but that is NOT good! That does not turn the monitor off at all!

All you need to do is download this software and then extract the files somewhere, not on the desktop.. extract it somewhere where you will keep it there permanently.. example Program Files. Then double click WinFlogTurnOff.exe and see if the monitor does turn off then just press any button or move your mouse to switch the monitor back on.. if is does not switch off then tough luck for you.. but if it does work for you just copy/paste WinFlogTurnOff.exe to something like WinFlogTurnOff - Screensaver.scr

Please note that we changed the extension from .exe to .scr

Then press right-click on the .scr file and press Test if it turns off your monitor then everything is OK! Just move your mouse or click any button and it will switch back on! Perfect! Now just right-click and press Install.. Then make sure that it is set as your default screen saver, set a time and you are done!

It will turn off the monitor after the time you’ve setted.. it will work the exact way as a normal screen saver does.. You just can’t ‘Configure’ it.

Well, why bother downloading Gtalk to your computer, or having a tab of GMail open just to chat with your friends, and you always have to switch between tabs. Well, you can now talk from any tab, without downloading anything! You can just chat from your sidebar! How cool is that huh?

Well, all you have to do is bookmark this link, then click on Bookmarks / Organize Bookmarks… find the link that you just bookmarked, click on it then press the More button at the bottom, and tick Load this bookmark in the sidebar then whenever you feel like chatting just click on that bookmark and the Gtalk will pop up in the sidebar!

Alternatively you can even download this plugin. It’s up to you!

We all hate Vista for some reason or another, but yet most of us still find it cool enough and use it. The most thing that I’m sure that annoys most Vista users is, when they want to open some application an annoying pop up comes up asking you to Allow or Deny that action. Well, here is the end of that annoyance!

Open Control Panel, switch to classic mode open User Accounts and select Turn User Account Control on or off, most probably it’s the last option then un-tick Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer. Press OK and restart if needed.

When it boots again, you will stop receiving that pop up.

We all know that most of the people absolutely love the Vista look, but at the same time they hate it, because it takes up too much resources and it’s slow, buggy and well.. if I start listing all the bad things about Vista, I guess it will be quite a list. So, if you like the Vista look, but prefer to use XP I have the solution for you!

Use Vista Transformation Pack. It will replace some files, install some software and after you restart your PC, you will have a whole new look! I have tried this for over 5 times on my old computer (I always re-installed it after I made a format), it always worked like a charm, and never messed my computer.. but we warned!

Besides that, there is another alternative, which looks quite nice too, it’s called Vista Skin Pack 5.0. I never tried this personally, but from the snapshots I’ve seen it even looks nicer that Vista Transformation Pack.

WARNING: SOME SYSTEM FILES MIGHT BE REPLACED. BACKUP YOUR PC!

Well, we all know how what a tedious work it is to rename files one by one. Sometimes we have images taken with our camera named like DC5897 etc.. for sure that does not mean anything to us. When you are on vacation and you take several pictures of that place you would like to rename them something like

Hawaii 1, Hawaii 2, Hawaii 3 etc..

And I’m sure you are not interested in renaming all those pictures one by one. All you have to do is select all the files you want to rename, and press right click on the first image that you want to start the count with, and press rename, give it an adequate name and press enter. All the selected files will be renamed and given a number.

This is the result:

Before Rename

After Rename

Hope this saves you a lot of time!