Archive for February, 2010

Last year, Gina switched to Yahoo for her search because she felt Google already had enough of her data. Over at our gadget-obsessed sibling site Gizmodo, blogger John Herrman discusses taking things a little further, ditching all of Google’s apps. He explains:

You don’t have to be ready to commit to a full overhaul of your online lifestyle to understand why someone might want to yank their data from Google’s servers, and hand it off to someone else: You’ve got Google’s CEO deafly rehashing fallacious arguments about privacy—"If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place"—and hesitating on a drawback; you’ve got contextual advertising that seems just a little too closely tuned to that sexxxy love letter your girlfriend sent you while you were on that business trip; you’ve got that violently insane ex husband who now knows where you are because of Google’s clumsy Buzz rollout. Most of all, you’ve got reasons, and you’re ready for change.

Herman walks through some of Google’s most popular offerings, then proposes switching to what he considers to be the best alternative to each. He suggests using Bing instead of Google search, Yahoo Mail instead of Gmail (he even details how to get all your email out of Gmail first), Windows Live Calendar rather than GCal, Flickr over Picasa, and Zoho instead of Google Docs. (That is, most of the runner-up favorites in each category.)

Hit up the full post for more details, then let us know whether you’d consider dropping Google to enjoy a little less data monopoly in the comments.

How to Go Google-Free on the Web – Privacy – Lifehacker

It’s been awhile since I last looked at Launchy, the open source application launcher for Windows. With this application, you use keyboard shortcuts to launch applications, files, folders, bookmarks and more with just a few keystrokes. Once installed, it hides in your system tray waiting for its next command. When you’re ready, you hit “Alt + Spacebar” to display the input window. Then you can just start typing what you want. Launchy finds it.

For users of Windows XP, this app has clear benefits. However, later versions of Windows offer a similar feature just by using the “Search” box in the Start Menu. Still, some Launchy enthusiasts prefer the app to the native functionality and, well, that’s the great thing about Windows – you can tweak away by installing alternative programs like this. 

Just recently, the developer released the next edition of this application – the Launchy 2.5 Beta. This version offers the following changes:

• Faster performance
• Icons displayed correctly
• Environment variables updated correctly when system changes
• Controly includes more items
• New shortcut keys
• New controls:
o Shift+tab or Shift+bkspc deletes previous tab
o Shift+Ctrl+Enter launches in elevated mode (Vista and Win7)
o Down arrow shows history (when there is no current search text)
• Default skin built into executable in case no other skin is found
• Down arrow
• Launchy now has an icon in the system tray
• Skins are simplified and easier to create

The executable is here. As with any beta software, the usual caveats apply. Install at your own risk. But this sounds like a good update to a pretty great program. Can’t wait to check it out!

New Beta of Launchy Arrives | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

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Have you wished that Windows had an App store that was as easy the iTunes App store?  Then You will love AllMyApps.

Allmyapps makes software installation a breeze. No matter how many applications you need, 1 click is all you need to have all your favorite applications installed on your PC.

Allmyapps also keeps your applications safe! Would you need to reinstall your system, Allmyapps takes care of reinstalling all your favorite applications in the blink of an eye.

Allmyapps – Application Store for Windows XP, Vista and Seven to find and install the best applications

Gizmo had a great roundup of free software. 

Cleanup & Tuning File Cleaning, Memory Optimizer, System Tune-Up and more…	Desktop & GUI File Manager, Program Launcher, Start Menu, Tray Icons and more…	Disk & File Tools Backup, Restore, Encryption, Synchro-nization and more…
Educational There is always something to learn…	Games Computer games, chess and other diversions.	Home & Office Office Suites, Finance, Project, Spell-Checker, PIM and more…
Image View & Edit Bitmap, Vector, HDR, Viewer, Photo Organizer and more…	Internet & eMail Browser, eMail, IM, Download, Parental Filter and more…	Linux Our Linux section with tips and software…
Multimedia Audio/Video Edit, Ripper, Burner, Online TV and more…	Networking FTP, SSH, Remote Access, BitTorrent and more…	Programming Editors, Binary Extraction, Search & Replace and more…
Lookup & Cataloging CD, DVD, File and Software Cataloging and more…	Security Anti Virus, Adware, Firewall, Intrusion Prevention and more…	System Info Disk, RAM, Memory, Down/Up, WiFi Finder and more…
System Tools Registry, Time, Vista Tweaks, Font Manager and more…	Website & Server New! Web scripts and server software…	Video Tutorials Watch how things are done…

Gizmo’s Freeware Reviews

Yes, it’s perfectly possible to watch Hulu from outside the United States if you know how to hide your location, but there are millions of people who don’t who would love to get access to the streaming service. For them, there’s now TVGorge, a recently launched Flash streaming site that’s still in ‘infant stages’ but has a lot to offer already.

Million dollar question is: is it legal?

According to its website, TVGorge using searching and indexing techniques to detect and gather content from third-party TV streaming websites around the world. The company says that its proprietary script is capable of detecting the best source for TV shows and automatically compile the information for its database. Each video is said to be manually screened to make sure it is of high quality and functioning properly.

TVGorge Lets You Stream 120+ Popular TV Shows, With No Geo-Restriction

Windows: Booting your computer up in the morning is one of the most tedious parts of starting your computer use for the day. What if you could gain the benefits of a reboot and still start quickly out of a hiberation?

The premise of Boot Snooze is that it takes less time to pull the computer from standby or hibernation mode than to do a full reboot, but rebooting a computer is necessary and sometimes beneficial. With Boot Snooze you shut down your computer, performing a full reboot, and then Boot Snooze puts it back into hibernation or standby mode.

You could obviously do this manually by rebooting your computer every night and then hibernating it immediately after it finished up the startup routines, but that would negate the time saving benefit of having Boot Snooze do it for you and leaving your computer fresh and ready to use in the morning without the down time of booting up.

Boot Snooze is freeware, Windows only. Have a favorite tool of your own for speeding up boot times or just helping you to spend less time waiting for your computer to do things? Let’s hear about it in the comments.

Boot Snooze Reboots and Hibernates Your Computer for Faster Startup Time – saving time – Lifehacker