DeskSlide is a utility for automating wallpaper changes on your desktop. You can schedule the wallpaper to change at intervals of seconds, minutes, hours, days, or logon.

In Task Scheduler mode, you can create complex schedules. Specify how your images are displayed: auto fit, full bleed, center, align, tile, random position, and stretch.

[732K] [Win98/ME/2k/XP/Vista] [FREE]

With gas prices the way they are, it’s easy to see why so many people are concerned about the cost of filling up their vehicles. I’m not that old, but even I remember when gas was well under one dollar per gallon. Nowadays you have to count the cost of driving anywhere, and when you actually leave the house, it makes sense to accomplish as much as possible so that you don’t have to hit the road again for one specific thing. I never used to track my gas mileage and costs, but now I’m beginning to think about heading down that path. FuelFrog will tell you how your money and miles are being used.

Using FuelFrog only takes a small amount of work, but the benefits are plentiful. You let the service know how many miles you traveled on your last tank, the price you paid, and how many gallons you added to your car. From here, FuelFrog will compile and display the details so that you can see how they change as time goes by. If you really want to save time then you can also use Twitter to input this data. In the end, the results will probably surprise you.

Stop Big Media reports:

In a near-unanimous voice vote tonight, the Senate passed a “resolution of disapproval” that would nullify the Federal Communications Commission’s latest attempt to dismantle longstanding media ownership limits.

Last December, the FCC voted to remove the “newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership” ban that prohibits one company from owning a broadcast station and the major daily newspaper in the same market. The resolution of disapproval (Senate Joint Resolution 28), introduced by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), would nullify the FCC’s new rules if passed by Congress and signed by the president. The House version of the resolution was introduced by Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) in March.

Today, the Bush administration issued a statement opposing the resolution and threatening to veto it. The statement called the FCC’s new rules the product of “extensive public comment and consultation” but failed to mention that only 1 percent of public comments supported the administration’s position.

Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, which coordinates the StopBigMedia.com Coalition, made the following statement:

“Today’s historic Senate vote is a resounding victory for the vast majority of Americans who oppose media consolidation. We applaud the bipartisan leadership of Senators Dorgan and Snowe for acting in the public interest. But to stop Big Media from polluting our local airwaves with more junk journalism and propaganda, we need the House to move this legislation forward quickly.

“At this watershed moment, public outrage against Big Media has reached a breaking point. The Bush administration’s threats to undercut this bipartisan effort in Congress show how out of touch this president is with the will of the American people. But we’re not going to stand idly by and let the White House green light Big Media’s expansion. The great pendulum of political change is swinging away from corrosive consolidation and toward better media.”

Read the FCC’s cross-ownership order here.

Learn more about the FCC’s new rules here.

Rules in Outlook can be used for a number of different things. Many people use rules to keep their inboxes clutter free and organized. For example, you can have all messages from a specific sender placed in a separate folder.

In a previous tip I showed you how to create a rule in Outlook 2007. At some point, after a rule is created, you may decide that you want to temporarily disable the rule. If you delete the rule you will need to recreate it when you want to use it again. Therefore, a better option is to turn the rule off.

To turn a rule off in Outlook 2007:

1. Open Outlook 2007.
2. From the Tools menu, click Rules and Alerts.
3. If you have more than one e-mail account, in the Apply changes to this folder list, select the Inbox that you want.
4. From the list of rules, select or clear the check box next to the rule you want to turn off.
5. Click OK.

To turn the rule back on, repeat the steps described above.

When you first install Vista, all other icons, such as My Computer and Internet Explorer, are hidden. However, the one icon that always appears on the Windows desktop is the Recycle Bin. If you prefer not to have the Recycle Bin on your desktop, you can easily hide it using the steps listed below.

To hide the Recycle Bin in Vista:

1. Click the Start button and click the Control Panel.
2. Click Appearance and Personalization.
3. Click Personalization.
4. In the left pane, click Change desktop icons.
5. Deselect the Recycle Bin check box.
6. Click OK.

If you decide to unhide the Recycle Bin, simply complete the steps described above to add the icon back to the desktop.

After attending the most prestigious interior decorator academy in Paris, and graduating at the top of her class, Halle is ready to take the next step; starting her own business!

Design and decorate dream homes for Halle’s stylistically demanding clientele — from single-room studio apartments to elaborate multi-room mansions — while choosing from hundreds of colorful, chic accessories and pieces of furniture in this challenging, puzzle-filled adventure!

It’s time to show off your Eye for Design!

[Download free trial of Eye for Design]
[Buy Eye for Design]

BookmarkSync is unlike other Web-based bookmark utilities. It is a unique system that enables real-time automatic bookmark synchronization between all your different browsers, computers, and operating systems.

Add a bookmark to Internet Explorer at work, and it will automatically update your Firefox browser at home and your Safari browser on your Mac. It supports Unicode, so it works for bookmarks in all languages.

[3.9M] [Win95/98/ME/2k/XP/Vista] [FREE]

I was born in 1986 and did a lot of my growing up in the ’90s, and while I may not remember everything that happened in that famous decade due to my young age, I still remember quite a lot. On certain occasions I’ll get a random and instantaneous flashback to some event, product, or television show that had an impact on me, and I always get a kick out of this. My friends and I often talk about our not so distant pasts as if they were decades upon decades ago, but your past is your past, and it’s fun to relive it from time to time. Retroland will help you to remember some of the things that you either loved or loved to hate.

This social network will keep you entertained for quite a few hours. All you have to do is browse through some of the topics under the main categories to take a trip down memory lane. Not only are the topics listed, but they also contain full descriptions, and you can contribute your memories and photos for others to read and see while reading what others have already said and posted. The discussions are where it’s at, so groove on over to Retroland and start participating in them.

One of the very handy things about creating organization charts in Visio is that you do not need to spend hours re-arranging shapes. Visio will take care of this for you. Using the Re-layout option, Visio will arrange the shapes in the best possible way while maintaining any of your layout preferences.

To arrange organization chart shapes:

1. From the Organization Chart menu, click Re-layout.
2. Visio will automatically arranged in the best way possible, while maintaining your layout preferences.

If you have a long list of favorites, you can configure Internet Explorer to only display those favorites that you have recently used instead of displaying all of them. This is also a good way of organizing your favorites list so it is more manageable. Those favorites that you use infrequently are still available by clicking a link. In other words, they are just hidden from view until you decide to make then unhidden.

To configure this feature in Internet Explorer:

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. From the Tools menu, click Internet Options.
3. Select the Advanced tab.
4. Scroll through the available options and place a check beside the option to Enable Personalized Favorites Menu.
5. Click OK.

Now when you open Internet Explorer and click on your Favorites menu, only those Web sites that you have recently accessed will be displayed. The remaining favorites are accessible by clicking the down arrow.

One hundred people were surveyed. Their sometimes surprising, often hysterical, answers await in Family Feud: Dream Home, the latest sequel to the popular series!

Play against the average score, or challenge a friend in 2-player mode.

Earn points to customize your dream home — modern and neutral, or teeming with color — it’s up to you! Enjoy classic Family Feud fun AND endless decorating dreams! It’s time to play The Feud!

[Download free trial of Family Feud: Dream Home]
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Volumouse provides a quick and easy way to control the sound volume on your system — simply by rolling the wheel of your wheel mouse. It allows you to define a set of rules for determining when the wheel will be used for changing the sound volume.

[45K] [Win98/ME/NT/2k/XP/Vista] [FREE]

When you have something that you want to get rid of, what do you do? Do you at least try to give it away or sell it to someone, or do you just throw it straight in the trash? Unfortunately, a lot of people are quick to throw away items that really don’t need to be thrown away. Depending on what it is, you could probably sell it, but an even better option is to give it as a gift to someone who may be looking for something like what you have. This could be a friend, family member, or even someone from your community. One person’s junk really can be someone else’s treasure, and Freecycle understands this.

This site is composed of thousands of groups that contain millions of members from all over the world. The chances are that there’s a Freecycle group in your area, and you can participate by listing items that you’re looking to get rid of. By focusing on your community, you’ll have a better chance of finding someone who may want what you have and be willing to pick it up. As a member of the group, you could also find some things that you want, and it’s the giving and receiving that makes this service so special.

Where does it end? How do you keep up with this information overload? It’s gotten to the point where I’ve had to start actually closing my system down. I love information. I’m an information junkie! I love teaching, learning, consuming, producing… I love it all. Imagine billions of people like me, though. How do we deal with all of it?

Gnomie Ken Goldstein, Ph.D., MCSE writes:

Aloha, Chris:

Although I don’t participate in any of your chat rooms or other social networks, I do read all of your newsletters. You’ve posed an interesting question, but I think you’ve grabbed the wrong end of the “stick.”

I’ve worked with computers since 1959, hold a doctorate in Systems Engineering, and my job frankly entails that I be an Encyclopedic Synthesist for my large client base. It pays very well, as my base hourly rate is $125, and that goes up fast when I’m solving specialized problems. But, like you, I have what appears to be an overwhelmingly immense quantity of data to ingest each and every day. I read 684 monthly trade publications cover-to-cover, many of which come out weekly, and I haven’t tried to count the number of e-mail based newsletters I receive. So how do I convert this waterfall into something that I can drink?

Well, the first realization I came to was that not quite everything is really applicable to what is important to me (i.e., paying my bills, enjoying my work, and having quality time with my family). So I sat down and brainstormed really hard for about a month, and finally came up with a list of what now includes 22 technologies that my experience showed were really the key services that my clients were willing to pay top dollar for. Of course this list has been modified a number of times since I first created it over 20 years ago, but following it allows me to concentrate on the core competencies that meet both my and my clients’ goals.

Second, I went back and took a second — and more modern — speed-reading course. My reading speed was already well over 2,200 words/minute from my original Evelyn Woods training, Chris, but I can now scan at nearly 10 times that rate with 92% accuracy.

Third, I developed a series of techniques both to store the incoming data that are valuable to me, and more importantly to locate it later. I’m not going to share all of my “secrets,” but a fast scanner and a search product called dtSearch both play major parts.

Fourth, my engineer wife and I developed what we call the PITA (short for “Pain in the Ass”) system that we apply to all our clients and prospects for services rendered. A reasonable client is one who has a good idea of what he or she wants, is willing to listen to expert advice, and who also pays our invoice on time; they get a PITA factor of 1.00. A client who doesn’t know what the problem is will listen only infrequently to advice, and/or who doesn’t pay responsibly gets a factor between 1.5 and 2.0. And a prospect who has no clue what he wants, just wants to babble about his woes, and pays only when our lawyer contacts him may get a PITA factor of 3.5. By the way, the PITA factor is the multiplier for my base hourly rate. In short, if I can’t enjoy what I’m doing, someone else is going to pay for it!

Last, I schedule family time and fun things first. Chris, I know that many of my friends who work in similar fields never seem to have the time to enjoy living out here in Hawaii. So if I want to take my granddaughter out snorkeling in Kaneohe Bay or help on a Rotary project, I put it on my schedule, and let the work flow around those important things.

Once you choose to do something similar, you’ll find — as I did — that the “information overload” isn’t really an overload at all, because you’re the one who has set your priorities!

Keep up the interesting newsletter.

Gnomie Alan writes:

Dear Chris,

I’ve seen your YouTube clips about Vista and wish to share my experiences with you. I recently purchased an Acer M1610-LB7Z Intel dual core base unit, which came with Windows Vista Home Edition. I am a qualified computer repair and service technician and was very surprised at how good the build and component quality was for the price paid. However Windows Vista has been a nightmare! The main issues I have personally encountered have mainly been with USB and core stability with many programs producing the “program did not respond” error message. The programs used were legitimate programs that are supposed to work with Vista. I will list some of the issues I’ve encountered:

1. USB 2 speeds exceptionally slow pre service pack 1 at only 135 KB/S with service pack 1 approx 3 MB/S
2. Every time I put in a USB memory stick, Vista always wants to “scan and fix” the drive. Yet upon scanning, there is nothing wrong with the memory stick. I’ve tried different memory sticks and still the same message appears.
3. BSOD appears now and then when I attach an external USB 2 drive. The error message clearly states USB problems.
4. Occasionally the hard drive really thrashes when idle.
5. UAC stops some programs from being installed! I turned off UAC and the exact same programs installed fine.
6. Sometimes right clicking on files to find the file properties seems to take ages.
7. Sometimes deleting items from the desktop takes ages and the file is often not removed from the desktop; I have to refresh the desktop to ‘remove’ the file. Sometimes the system is completely locked down when trying to delete a small file and a reboot is needed.
8. Unable to set Firefox as my default browser; Vista locks onto IE7 all the time.
9. I’ve encountered several Windows Explorer crashes when trying to do simple tasks such as moving files.
10. IE7 crashes a lot.
11. I had a Windows error message about Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 “unexpectedly not working,” yet the Kaspersky product seemed to be working fine. This error message also happened with OpenOffice 2.40
12. The following programs have crashed with Vista (all are supposed to be Vista compatible): Nero 7, AOL instant messenger, Windows Live Messenger 8.5, Yahoo! Messenger, GIMP, Windows Defender, and Windows Media Player 11.

I installed all the security updates, but for some reason Vista Service Pack 1 was not offered via the Microsoft update service. I later installed it manually and some of the USB issues were fixed, but the transfer speeds are still much slower than XP. Pretty much all of the above still happens on Vista with or without Service Pack 1. What I did next was to install Windows XP Pro and absolutely not one of the issues above happened, thus its pretty clear to me that the computer hardware is fine. The problem clearly is with Vista, which I feel is a ‘broken’ operating system.

An organization chart that contains many shapes may not display on the entire page. Some shapes may stray off the drawing page. You can easily fix this using the Best Fit to Page option in Visio. By selecting this option, Visio will attempt to fit the shapes on the drawing page.

To fit organization chart shapes on a drawing page:

1. From the Organization Chart menu, click Best Fit to Page.
2. Visio will identify the best layout and spacing and arrange the shapes accordingly.

If you find that the shapes still do not fit on the drawing page, click Options from the Organization Chart menu. From the Options tab, under Shape display, decrease the Width and Height values. Click OK.

The best just got better! StuffIt can compress some files as much as 98%. StuffIt 12 can now compress JPEG and other multimedia files from 10% to as much as 50%. Save hard disk space, store more on removable media, and beat email size limitations!

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In today’s digital world, hundreds if not thousands of megabytes of files are created or downloaded onto your PC. Reclaim that space with StuffIt! StuffIt can compress files by up to 98% of their original size. Shrink those large files into email-friendly attachments and fit more onto CDs, DVDs, and other media. StuffIt lets you tamper-proof your archives, incorporates a new, improved user interface, self-healing archives, and more!

Advanced MP3 and PDF Compression
StuffIt’s advanced technology specializes in the compression of MP3s and PDFs with no quality loss!

Optimized to Work with Microsoft Office
StuffIt’s Microsoft Outlook Plugin allows you to compress and email attachments on the fly. StuffIt’s improved Microsoft Office Plugins now allow you to use FTP and CD/DVD Burning capabilities for Office documents directly from within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint!

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StuffIt also plugs directly into Photoshop CS2 and CS3 to give you easy access to your compressed graphic files!

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Compress Adobe Photoshop files and 24-bit TIFF, PNG, BMP, JPEG 2000 and GIF images with no loss of image information.

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Can you compress a Zip even further? StuffIt can! Add a Zip archive to a StuffIt X archive and see even further space savings!

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Easily find and open archives without having to remember they are located! Archive Manager automatically shows you all of the files that you can expand with StuffIt.

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StuffIt keeps a manifest of all your archived files. Search for a file inside an archive whether it’s residing on your PC, on an external USB drive, on a network or CD/DVD.

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StuffIt’s Archive Manager displays all the archives on your PC, making it easy to browse, preview, search, and find the file you’re looking for.

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No need to expand an archive to know what’s inside of it. StuffIt’s new user interface displays a list of your files and photo thumbnails in your StuffIt X and Zip archives.

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StuffIt works with your anti-virus software (like McAfee and Norton AntiVirus) to ensure that you are protected when archives are expanded.

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StuffIt’s MD5 or SHA1 technologies track changes to your archives and let you know if it’s been corrupted or infected with a virus.

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Schedule StuffIt to back up your files while you sleep! StuffIt will automatically take care of the details, like backing up only your most recently changed files. StuffIt will even send you a confirmation message to assure you your data is safe.

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Burn your archives to disc directly from StuffIt. With easy-to-use wizards to take care of the details, like splitting large archives across multiple discs, StuffIt makes backing up hassle-free.

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Shirley is an aspiring entrepreneur. Her charming personality and ability to organize successful yard sales make her a natural business woman, with a dream to someday open her own boutique in Beverly Hills.

Help Shirley raise the money she needs by hosting yard sales in Malibu, Venice Beach, Hollywood, and Beverly Hills!

Pick things up and move them around in a unique dynamic environment as you help your yard sale junkies find that perfect item! Start the selling frenzy today!

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IM-Translate features immediate translation of instant messages using an intuitive machine-based language translator. IM-Translate conjugates verbs and uses sentence analysis to render the most accurate translation possible, instantly. Even IM chat slang/jargon has been incorporated into the translator.

[460K] [Win98/ME/2k/XP/Vista + Windows Live Messenger] [FREE]

To me, one of the toughest decisions when it comes to having a child has to be connected to deciding on a name for the new addition to the family. It’s not a decision to be taken lightly because this name is intended to stick with the child for the rest of their life. A name means a lot, and all parents want to choose one that’s appropriate. Many times, the methods that expecting parents use to choose baby names are completely random, and they quite literally pull names out of thin air. This may work for some people, but others may opt to be more scientific and thorough in the way that they choose potential baby names, and Nymbler is the resource for them.

One of the nice things about Nymbler is that it works with your personal taste, and this means that it lets you choose some names that you like and then see what other suggestions it was able to come up with based off of the names that you provided. You can filter the results by boys and girls names and boys or girls names. Names that you like can be saved and sent to others through e-mail, and you can even block names that you don’t like from appearing as suggestions.