Color Cop is a multi-purpose colour picker for web designers and programmers. It features an eyedropper, a magnifier with variable magnification levels, 3 by 3 and 5 by 5 average sampling, snap to websafe, colour history, and a 42 colour complementary palette.

Color Cop will convert RGB decimal values to Hexadecimal colour codes. It has colour code support for HTML Hex, Delphi Hex, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic Hex, and Visual C++ Hex.

This link leads to a demonstration of Color Cop in action.

You can download Color Cop here.

If you use it; why not consider making a donation to the program’s creators? You can do that on the Color Cop website.

…For two reasons if you live in the Northern Hemisphere; for one if you live in the Southern Hemisphere: -

- Because, in the Northern Hemisphere, the nights are getting shorter from this point onwards; whereas, in the southern Hemisphere the reverse is true. (You’ll notice very little difference if you live within 500 miles of the equator on either side.)

- And because, since it’s Yule today for Pagans, and Christmas on Friday for Christians, I’m giving away a couple of products with PLR rights – meaning you can customise them and even sell them as your own work- as Yule/Christmas presents to all of my readers, or any who want them.

So then; without more ado, I present you with: -

• Auction-O–Matic:  Automatically create Auction Ads that really hit potential bidders between the eyes without ANY programming!

And…

• 55 ClickBank Review Articles: Custom reviews for each of the top 55 ClickBank products including the upcoming ones. All articles already have hoplinks to the Clickbank product, so all you have to do is to insert your own nickname, rather than having to go the marketplace and finding the product link.

Both of these products have PLR rights, and you’re all welcome to either or both of them.

Blessed Yule / Merry Christmas

…And what would this post be without the customary adverts?

- Cue the adverts: -

The case-mounted LED hard-disk activity indicator isn’t all that good for analysing hard-drive-activity with – Not only because it’s on the front of your computer case; which could be behind you as you view the screen, or under the desk, but also if you have multiple hard-drives you can’t tell which one is active.

Cue FloatLED: This clever little device brings your disk-activity LED on to your screen; which is where you look at everything else. – But not only does it tell you of drive-activity; it also tells you which drive the activity is from, and whether the activity is reading, writing, or both.

This will be a diamond for those of you who have more than one physical drive and know that one of them is making funny noises. – Or for those of you who like to imagine they’re flying the Star Ship Enterprise when they’re sitting at the screen; it’s another flashing indicator.

Beam me up Scotty.

(Latin = Transmittae mae cirtum Caledonum.)

If it weren’t for the utterly amazing number of add-ons associated with FireFox, I’d use Safari as my default browser: It has a hugely superior amount of screen area. I do use it for watching video only; but unfortunately it’s crashed more than once in Windows 7 RC; yet seems fairly stable in XP.

Due to the add-ons; FireFox has the place of default browser on both my machines. One of the most invaluable add-ons I’ve discovered to date is MeasureIt.

Read more

It appears that today is anti-malware-day on kkomp.com: So I’ve written a bonus article, because I really do recommend that you use this free software: -

As you may or may not know, I’ve been plagued with viruses over the last few days. Fortunately the infection has now been dealt with; thanks to Microsoft Security Essentials. When I became infected, my antivirus solution provided by Avast! simply didn’t see it. Malwarebytes was oblivious to it also. – Yet there was definitely an infection, as my system was spewing out spam emails to all on my contacts-list, as well as to non-existent addresses that the worm was probing by creating the address itself and seeing if the mail was delivered.

AdAware from Lavasoft managed to find a keylogger, a backdoor Trojan, and the worm itself. I thought that the problem was sorted at that point, and went merrily on my way singing joyfully and blogging crazily. The following day I activated my email client, then switched on the 64-bit box, as well as the external hard-drive. My email inbox was soon swamped by hundreds of “Message Undeliverable” emails. The worm was back!

How? I cleaned both boxes with AdAware, I formatted the external hard-drive, including all the backups, and made a fresh backup. Nevertheless I did it all again, and the system stopped sending spam. I ran 4 different programs on all drives of both machines. All reported that the system was clean. Imagine my horror when two days later the system started sending spam again!

I’d recently been reading an article on PC Mech.com, entitled “Free Anti-Virus From Microsoft Is Now Available”. This gave me an idea: Microsoft earlier dropped its Windows One-Care program, and promised to replace it with something a bit lighter. This was the promised product; just out of beta.

My thinking started to run along the lines of: “Well it’s a new antivirus solution, it’s from Microsoft, it works with Windows 7 64-bit as well as with Windows XP 32-bit; both of which I run, and it’s best of all FREE, which means that it won’t hurt to give it a try. – There’s definitely a problem somewhere on my system that everything I’ve tried so far is missing; so let’s give it a whirl.”

I isolated the box running XP 32-bit, removed Avast! free-edition from it, and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. I set it to auto scan in 1/2-hour . To cut a long story short it found 4 pieces of malware, which it rated as a severe threat, and removed them. Upon reconnection; after I’d isolated the Windows 7 box, having installed Microsoft Security Essential on it, no spam. Yay!

I ran it on the 64-bit Windows 7 box. – It found the culprits: Two instances of Trojan downloaders: ASX.Winmad.AN, and ASX.Winmad.CJ. It deleted the infected files, which had been downloading various malware infections and distributing them over my LAN. – Target neutralised: I’m now virus free.

I can’t speak too highly of Microsoft Security Essentials. It’s a glowingly-excellent piece of software from the softies. Microsoft Security Essentials was the only free antivirus solution that was able to both see and clear the entire virus-infection and fully clean my system. Most other solutions couldn’t see any infection at all, and those that did didn’t get to the root of the issue. Microsoft Security Essentials, however, did the business and completely solved the problem.

After that glowing report, let’s get back to reality with the nitty-gritty: -

Microsoft Security Essentials is extremely thorough: On its default setting it scans everything, and I mean everything. It looks inside zipped archives; personal, program, and system archives, byte by byte: .CAB files and the like are no longer safe places for malware to hide. If it does then it will die by being detected and eradicated bit-by-bit.

Being so thorough; there are obviously limiting factors.

The first of these is time: Microsoft Security Essentials is fast; there’s no doubt about that, but it does so much work that it’s no faster than any other antivirus solution of a similar type. I found that on my box running 64-bit Windows 7 with a 3-core AMD Phenom CPU running at 2.3GHz and 8GBs DDR2 800MHz RAM, Microsoft Security Essentials managed to scan about 50 GBs of data an hour.

The second is heat: With such a colossal amount of calculations being processed at a quite incredible speed, the processor would have a lot of work to do, and therefore produce heat. This antivirus solution, running a full scan, is no laughing matter. I have a feeling that a single-cored processor of 1.8GHz or less would have problems with it. Indeed, from personal experience, I had a lot of programs running at the same time as the full-scan was happening on my AMD Athlon 64×2-powered box, running 32-bit XP Professional at 2.3GHz with 2GBs DDR2 667MHz RAM, and the processor usage went so high for so long that the thermal-trip shut the CPU down before it fried. Running Microsoft Security Essentials on its own caused no such problem though, and the scan was slower than on the 3-core Phenom, but totally effective nevertheless.

As you’ll see from the white CPU-usage graph in the top-left corner of the picture of the readout from Glint system monitor, above, the processor usage can be quite large. This readout was from the Athlon 64×2 XP box with only Microsoft Security Essentials running.

One other thing: If you’re running 64-bit XP; and that’s probably not a lot of you, as 64-bit XP can be a nightmare as far as drivers are concerned, there’s no version of Microsoft Security Essentials for your operating system. Microsoft Security Essentials has versions for 32-bit XP, 32-bit Vista and Windows 7, and 64-bit Vista and Windows 7.

Have you tried out Microsoft Security Essentials yet? If so then what do you think of it?

Notepad, as supplied with the Windows operating system, has been around for seemingly aeons. It’s a great little app for using to jot down written notes in text-only format and save as a text file. It’s also useful for writing and editing batch-files; if anyone still codes in dos, (‘Shows age yet again.) and you can also edit html and php files in it, by converting the file extension from .htm or .html to .txt, editing the content, and then changing the file extension back again to .htm or .html.

That’s some of the benefits of it. – But there are also drawbacks too; especially when editing code. They say that a picture speaks a thousand words, so let two screenshots do the talking. The first screenshot is of the html code of the first part of this post as seen in Notepad supplied with Windows XP. The second screenshot, below it, is of the html code of the first part of this post as seen in Notepad++

‘Not a fantastic example, perhaps; – but imagine if you were working with a larger html file, perhaps even a page of php code, which editor would you find it easier to use? Notepad; without any clear indications to where sections or lines of code are on the page; or Notepad++, with clear indications as to where sections or lines of code are on the page, and I didn’t mention the colour text options yet either, or any other available features.

- And since this is an unscheduled extra post that I decided to write on the spur of the moment, I’m not going to go into detail either. – Instead, what I’ll do is suggest that you download and install Notepad++ and try it out for yourself. If you’re not happy with it then simply uninstall it. – Target neutralised.

That was short and sweet. There are other notepad substitutes out there besides this one. Which do you use, and why; or are you still using the original?

Ping Optimizer? – What is “Ping”?

Although the future-post ping problem has now been fixed in recent versions of WordPress, the update pinging problem still exists.

The Solution:

• When you create a new post, your blog will ping and notify all the ping services that it has been updated. This encourages search engines and different blog directories/services to index your updated blog properly.

• When you edit an existing post, it won’t send an unnecessary ping to any ping services and saves your blog from getting banned.

• When you post a future post by editing the time stamp, it will ping only when your post appears in future. It won’t unnecessarily ping many times when you schedule posts as WordPress does by default.

The plugin is free; but it’s released as “Reviewware”: This means that if you find the plugin useful then a decent review of the plugin in your blog would be highly appreciated by the writers. Not only will this give due credit, but it’ll also spread the word and thereby notify others who would also benefit from installing the plugin. If you don’t want to write a review than it’s not compulsory to do so; but it would have been appreciated.

- So how do I get hold of this plugin?

Easy: Click thisdownload link. It’s free and, unless you really want to be in constant danger of being labelled a ping-spammer, it’s a must-have.

Feel free to comment.

- A little helpful advice; prior to the release of Windows 7, which may save you some money: -

XP mode in Windows 7 is a free download of virtual PC software that emulates the XP hardware/software environment

There is a problem with XP Mode; several in fact: -

First, if you don’t have the Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate edition, then XP Mode just won’t work: It’s Microsoft’s way of getting you to pay more.

At this point you might be asking ”Why would I want XP Mode anyway?”: -

XP Mode will allow you to run a virtual Windows XP session, either or on the Win7 desktop or in a separate window. XP Mode is aimed people who have programs that ran fine on Windows XP, but won’t work on Vista or Windows 7 because of, mainly, the new system architecture, both software and hardware, and improved security associated with these operating systems.

- So if, say, you’re a business who wants to use Windows 7, but you regularly use programs that will only work in XP, and you don’t want to have to shell out for loads of new software on top of the operating system’s volume licence, you buy Enterprise Edition and use XP Mode where necessary. – I think that was the general idea.

BUT – What if you’re a home user and you’ve bought your shiny new machine complete with a preinstalled Home Premium version of Windows 7? You might be starting out in an online business, perhaps, and have software that you used to run on XP which makes Windows 7 cough and croak, or 7 simply refuses to run it in the first place. Oh dear; you’re screwed.

Oh; and just to rain even heavier on your fireworks, in the case that you did go out and buy Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition, there’s something else that you should know:

There are also hardware requirements associated with XP Mode.

XP Mode requires your computer to have at least 2GB RAM, as well as to be running a processor that has Chip-Level Virtualisation built into its architecture: In other words you’ll need an AMD processor that supports AMD-V, or an Intel processor that supports Intel VT. Celeron, Pentium, and Sempron processors are a no-go due to this. Also, even if your processor does have this feature, it may not have been activated, so check your BIOS to make sure.

- Or perhaps maybe not: You see there may nevertheless be a way to scrub round it using a free download from Sun Microsystems called Virtual Box. Virtual box is exactly what it says on the tin; or should that read “exactly what it says on the box”? – It’s a virtual box that runs inside a physical box, and it allows you to run multiple operating systems on a single physical computer without having to dual-boot or partition the drive. You can in fact have both operating systems running at the same time, and you can switch between virtual operating systems too; whether they be Windows, Linux, …I’m not sure about OSX; possibly not. –?

- So in the case of our fictional business person above, we download and install Sun Virtual Box, and we then load XP Professional within the virtual environment.

Yes I’ve done it myself. Yes it worked without any problems on my 3-core AMD Phenom-powered box with 4GB DDR2 800MHz RAM installed at the time, running the 64-bit Windows 7 RC. (Incidentally I installed the 32-bit version of XP Pro inside the VM.) Do check that your box meets the minimum requirements before installing Virtual Box.

In conclusion, then, the way to avoid shelling out extra for a version of Windows 7 with XP Mode is to use something that’s free instead of XP Mode: -

Open Source – 1

Microsoft Proprietary – 0

Now I give no guarantees that this will work perfectly and flawlessly every time; so don’t try to sue me if it goes tits-up. Normally, however, it should, as far as I can see, provide a reasonable alternative to XP Mode. – What do you say? Over to you: Please comment.

CoolPreviews is an extremely useful add-on to the FireFox (& IE6) web-browser that allows you to preview a hyperlinked page’s content without actually clicking on the hyperlink. This can be particularly useful when browsing a site with many hyperlinks as it allows you to view hyperlinks without actually clicking on them and opening the page in FireFox.

Firefox 2.0-3.5b4+ required.

Having installed CoolPreviews, you’ll see a little blue magnifying-glass icon after a hyperlink when you mouse-over it. Clicking that icon will cause CoolPreviews to present its own sub-window within your FireFox or IE6 browser, in which a preview will be displayed. This preview can be locked so that it doesn’t vanish when you remove the mouse-pointer from the CoolPreviews window.

I’ve tested this FireFoxadd-on in Windows XP Professional (32-bit) and also in Windows Seven RC (64-bit). It will also work in Windows Vista, Mac osX, and Linux.

There is also a version for use with Internet Explorer 6: This version doesn’t work with IE 7 or IE 8; however I have noticed that the majority of my readers who use Internet Explorer as their preferred browser actually have IE 6 installed; therefore I thought this worth a mention. (Incidentally; also worth a mention is that IE6 is getting rather dated. Although it’s not as sucky as IE7 to my mind, it’s probably worth upgrading to IE8 if you want to stay with IE, unless you have a very old computer that’s short on resources. Also, once again unless you have a very old computer with depleted resources – Particularly with regard to RAM – it would be worth your while to install FireFox in addition to IE in my humble opinion, even if you continue to use IE as your default browser.)

- And the best thing of all is, of course, that this add-on is absolutely free of charge. – So why not download it? If you don’t have FireFox and don’t use IE6 then why not download FireFox as well? (‘Awaiting brownie points from Mozilla.)

Here are the links again: –

CoolPreviews

FireFox

Xmarks (Formerly Foxmarks.) is probably one of the most useful pieces of free software that I’ve featured on this blog to this day. It’s a browser plugin. It currently works with Internet Explorer (Including IE8), FireFox, and Safari. – So whether you use Windows, Linux, or Mac osX, it can work for you.

(Although it’s not from Google, it’s marked as  a beta, and probably always will be; just like most of Google’s software is. – Think of it as a work constantly in progress. (Perhaps I should rename this blog to “Beyond (beta)” in that case?)

Xmarks allows synchronisation of your added bookmarks and stored passwords with a secure online server. – Therefore if you ever have to reinstall your browser you can simply upload all of them from the server. Also, if you have more than one computer, no matter how far away they are from each other, providing that they’re both on planet Earth, you can synchronise your bookmarks and passwords between the two via the secure server.

From the Xmarks page on Mozilla Corp’s website:

“It takes only a moment to get up and running with Xmarks. After you install the add-on, click on the notification to set up Xmarks and start backing up and synchronizing your bookmarks. Install Xmarks on each computer you use, and it seamlessly integrates with your web browser and keeps your bookmarks safely backed up and in sync.
Xmarks will sync across browsers too. Today we support Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari (Mac OS). Please visit our website at xmarks.com for details.”

Also from the same website:
“Secure Password Sync is an optional Xmarks feature. If you’d like to learn more about how it works, visit: http://www.xmarks.com/about/features/secure_password_sync”

 
“Xmarks provides seamless bookmark synchronization between your computers and browsers via our synchronization server. Your bookmark (and optionally password) data is securely stored and backed up on our servers.”

Users of this service include technology nerd and problogger David Risley, as well as myself.

Xmarks can prove to be an invaluable tool to keep your browsers synchronised. Download links follow: -

FireFox

Internet Explorer

Safari

If you run a WordPress blog you’ll find that over time your database gets rather fat. You may be surprised to know that a lot of that is crap that’s just wasting space on the server: –

In addition to comments in the spam queue, your database also keeps record of post revisions, unapproved comments, and comments listed for removal as spam.

Every time you revise a post, an entry is made in the database. Typically you only want the latest revision; the previous entries are old hat which is just wasting bytes. If someone comments but you don’t approve the comment for publication, it gets an entry in the database, even though you’ll probably never refer to it again. Although storage is comparatively cheap these days; there’s still no point in wasting it.

WP-optimize does the cleaning for you. It also allows you to rename the default allotted username “admin”; which might pose a security risk.

This plugin is extremely useful for bloggers who have large blogs; and it also has its uses for all other blogs too. Why not check it out for yourself?

When I first started this blog in June 2008 I was fairly clueless about how to do anything regarding blogging.

As time went by I kept certain files and folders that I used or wrote / altered on my computer(s). Some of these were deleted deliberately or further altered beyond recognition over the course of time. A few somehow got lost or buried due to hard-drive failures, computer renovations/rebuilds, corrupt backup folders, etc.

I assumed that I’d lost the original theme folder that I used when I first started the blog. It was a publically-available WordPress theme at the time, was called Serenity Pink, and was initially authored by Fredrik Fahlstad. It had been re-edited in Front Page by Tina Silva. (The link to her blog may take a long time to connect; and although Serenity Pink is featured on that blog, when the download link is clicked it goes through to WordPress.org, who appear to have pulled it altogether.)

Clicking the download link in the image will take you to a WordPress Themes page on wordpress.org, where the theme should be, but isn’t.

I’m still using it to this day; although I’ve customised the hell out of it and it looks very different from the original.

Having recently rediscovered the original theme folder buried on my hard-drive, I zipped it up and FTP’d it to my server with the intention of making it once again available; as, correct me if I am wrong, but I’m unable to locate it on the internet it via means including a Google search or a search on MSN. – Therefore I assume that it’s no longer available.

To preserve posterity, despite a lack of links with my posterior; other than a person thinking that it’s a load of arse, I’ve made it available for download here, should anybody wish to use it. As far as I am aware this is the theme as it was when I first started using it. If I have edited it at all then any such edits are so minor as to be virtually unnoticeable.

So without further ado; if you want to download this theme in zip format you can do so by clicking here.

Enjoy.

Every now and again Microsoft develop something that is a real hit. A few years ago they developed a desktop theme for XP that went down very well with the critics.

( Please excuse the low-resolution of this pic.)

I’m talking about the Zune XP theme, which adds so much to the desktop experience.

The default blue, olive drab, or silver, theme of XP looks OK, depending upon personal taste; but the Zune XP theme makes the entire XP experience that bit better, with its sharp and well-defined colour-co-ordination.

I could write more; but I really don’t want to steal the thunder of other earlier commentators. – Therefore I’ll just link to Steven Harman’s commentary from 2006, which includes a download link.

You may notice, at the bottom of each page and post, that there is now a reader-interactive star-rating system which you can use to personally rate any of the said pages and posts.

This can seemingly be applied to any blog by its owner. I was a little dubious about it at first as it seemed from the spiel that it would only work on a blog such as Blogger, WordPress.com as hosted by WordPress, etc. However it appears to be working on my self-hosted WordPress blog without a problem.

(I’ve only recently installed it; so I’m not yet 100% clued up on it yet.)

How does this plugin help me as a blogger?

It allows my readers to provide feedback to give me some idea of the overall quality and/or their personal opinion of the content I’m publishing. This allows me to see which posts go down best with my captive audience. Up until now I have relied on visitor statistics alone. Whilst this provides some general guidance on the popularity of any particular post; it is a combination of the subject’s search popularity and the article’s quality: Many readers of the article may be arriving from Google or another search engine not knowing what they’ll find, just looking for advice. They’ll then read my article, followed by which they’ll think to themselves:

“"That was a good article”, “That article was total crap.”, or somewhere in between. One or two may comment, most won’t: They’ll either take or ignore the advice and browse on.

Now, however, the reader; whether they specifically came to my blog to read my article because they like my articles, or they just arrived from a search engine looking for advice, can give feedback with a single click of the mouse without having to bother about writing out text as to whether and why they thought it was a good or crap article.

(*Note: To be able to use the plugin properly you need to register with outbrain and get an outbrain key, which you’ll need to enter into the settings panel of your plugin/widget to activate it and to claim your site.)

The Outbrain plugin includes a widget too; which you can adjust to suit yourself as set out in the video below: -

Outbrain Tutorial: Changing your Blog Settings from Outbrain on Vimeo.

How does this plugin help you as a reader?

As I stated above; you can give feedback with a single mouse-click, rather than typing text in the form of a comment. It’s not compulsory, obviously; but if you like or hate it you can tell me easily.

I do still encourage comments of course; but if you’d rather not bother you can just click a star to give your opinion instead. Also everyone else who reads the article can see an aggregated opinion of what other readers thought of it too. While this isn’t a guide based totally upon expert opinions, it gives an overall idea of what the internet community in general think of it.

This text is copied from Digital Musings.com:

“A few points about the Outbrain Rating Widget:

• No registration required
• Installation is super-easy… we adjust the widget’s design to your blog’s look& feel automatically
• It’s absolutely FREE

You can get the Ratings Widget here. And the Developer Blog is here.

And yes, Don’t forget to Rate this Article! “

- So I do encourage other bloggers to adopt this for their own purposes.

I have no commercial interest in this product; so I’ll not be affected in any way whether you use it or not. At this point in time I would think that it would be a good idea to at least give it a try all the same.

The video below informs you how to read ratings reports generated by the plugin: -

Outbrain Tutorial: Blog Reports from Outbrain on Vimeo.

That’s all for now.

(I fully expect my internet stalker; Syphilis Syndrone (“Sarah Palin”) to go through all my entries rating each one “Poor”. I also expect that he’ll use more than one ip address to multiply-underrate each article. He’s a mindless alcoholic thug with a number of hang-ups who’s never grown up: If you see a single rating for every post, and it’s “Poor”, then you’ll know that I pre-empted him correctly.)

I think I’ll keep this short and sweet. There’s no need to overdo it with the spiel. – It’s just that every now and again I stumble across something uncommon which I’m glad that I found. This is one such item: -

Adobe Air: A breath of fresh apps. – If you don’t have Adobe Air installed on your computer then I suggest that you install it ASAP: The desktop apps that are coming out that run in Air are starting to get rather good.

Particularly this one; ReadAir: Google Reader on Adobe Air on your desktop.

In short: I tested it; it works. Look: -

If you’re a Google Reader user then this will prove invaluable to you.

Here’s that link again. Enjoy.

- From your desktop no less.

If I were to mention the phrase;

“App for uploading pics to Facebook”,

- you’d probably reply, “Facebook Photo Uploader”.

Very square indeed. There is another one however, that might even be a little more versatile.

It’s a Java-based app.

– For those crying;

“I don’t want to install Java; it’s bloat.”

I always install Java on a new build; whether I need it straight away or not. It’s harmless, and may well be useful in the future, even if not at present. – ‘Same with .net Framework, and of late Adobe Air too..

Make sure you have the latest Java runtime environment installed. This’ll work on Java 5 or 6+. It’s called Bloom.

You can tag photos with it, upload them to an existing album, or create a new album and upload to it, and you can also view your friend’s pics with it too.

It’s not platform specific, so whether you run osX, Windows, or Linux, provided you have Java installed you’re in clover.

You might just discover that it’s bloomin’ good.

Get it here at antaki.ca. 

Latest version released 20th January 2009.

“The Woork Handbook is a free eBook [by Antonio Lupetti, of woork.blogspot.com .] about CSS, HTML, AJAX, web programming, Moo Tools, Scriptaculous, and other topics about web design…”

That’s got to be good. I haven’t even looked at it yet; I’ve only just discovered it. Since it’s free, however, I reckon it’s worth a Digg, maybe subscribing to the RSS feed, even a contribution if you’re feeling generous why not? I simply have to blog it.

Please remember that the guy who wrote it doesn’t have English as his first language; so it may be a little confusing in places. : But it’s FREE – Who’s complaining?

This guy may not necessarily be a cunning linguist, but he seems to have a good amount of tech prowess; which can only be beneficial to take notice of. It would appear to be a good idea to bookmark his website.

You can download your free copy HERE.

It’s strange to note that this chap; having all that knowledge and experience, uses Google’s blogger rather than his own self-hosted blog. Maybe he has many other blogs; hosted and self-hosted? I have a blog on Posterous, as well as one on Windows Live: Both of which I hardly ever use these days.

Carrying on with that point: When I was working in the double-glazing industry, a lot of my colleagues had the worst windows I’d ever seen, in an unbelievably bad state, on their own homes; yet they were selling brand new double-glazed uPVC windows and doors etc to other homeowners. -  Have you ever noticed that with trades people? I know a builder whose house is a wreck. I know an electrician whose home wiring hasn’t been attended to for about 50 years… It’s quite uncanny in a way.

Anyway enough of this rabbit: Go forth and download your free copy; then do something nice like donating, bookmarking, adding to social media, etc.

If you like you could tell me what YOU think of the book. Please remember when you do that I’m not a programmer as such, I’m still a novice when it comes to php, css, and almost everything else too in that line, other than 1970’s Commodore BASIC. Also to a lesser extent; DOS, and HTML. Having said that you get the chance to go well beyond my understanding here. – So if you’d like to take the opportunity to ‘beat the author’ ; please feel free to indulge.

  – No I didn’t mean that kind of beating.

Last year, about this time of year approximately, during a lull in business, I was experimenting with designing screensavers. I was just venting some artistic talent possibly? Whatever the case I zipped them into self-extracting .exe files and stored them on disk.

A year later I’ve still got them, and the ones that I don’t install on customer’s computers when I build them; i.e. the arty-farty ones as opposed to the advertising ones that is, are wasted.

With that in mind; having just found the files whilst searching through my disk contents, I thought ‘Why not let my readers have one?’. – So here you are if you want it; a free 3D screensaver which I designed originally as a piece of art:

It’s supposed to be an artistic representation of a quad-core processor. I designed many variations on the theme, but this is one of my favourites.

I’ve just tested the file a few minutes ago. It was on the other computer; so I networked the file over to to this one and , after scanning to ensure it hadn’t picked up anything during storage, I installed it on this machine for the first time ever and without any problem. After checking everything was OK I FTP’ d it up to kustomkomputa.co.uk so you can download it.

As I say; it’s in a .exe file, which when you click it will install the .scr file straight to your C: drive. Quad Core.scr gives you a choice of 3 options, which you can see by right-clicking on the file: Test, configure, and install. Clicking "Test" will allow you to preview it only. Clicking "Configure" will give you an advertisment for the Xara software that I created it with, and clicking "Install" will install it fully as one of your screensaver options; configured as default.

If you don’t want it to be your default screensaver; just right-click a blank area of the desktop, click "Properties" in the dialogue box that appears, click the Screensaver tab, and configure something else as default.

I’ve been making some changes to the header and background of the posts and pages on this blog; which is one reason I didn’t get a chance to post anything within the last 24-hours. To make amends I thought, having rediscovered the screensaver folder, that I’d share one with you.

I apologise for the size of the download; nearly 7 megabytes. (It might as well come with its own service pack at that size.) It is animated and it is a 3D design. I hope you’ll enjoy it if you download it. It’s nothing fantastic; but it’s free anyway.

I’m declaring this screensaver as “open-source” (Even though I don’t have any source-code.); no copyright. – If you want to do anything at all with it then feel free. The download link is http://www.kustomkomputa.co.uk/Quad_Core.exe . Enjoy.

Time for me to go all "Smashie & Nicey" on you in a pop-tastic kinda way; I’ve just found some super-sensational seasonal software from Sound Spectrum, for Windows or Mac, that’ll ensure that your computer sees in the New Year to the music in a fantastical funk-a-delic style with all the top trimmings-mungous taste of seasonal serene cyber-generated scenery.

From spinning glitter-clouds, sparkling Christmas-tree bulbs, scintillating snowflakes, popping bubbly-corks, boogy-ing snowmen, Canadian country scenes of winter with falling realistic-looking snowflakes… You have just got to experience it for yourself. The pictures just don’t do it justice:

Still-pictures alone simply cannot express this tune-tastic piece of software that gyrates and pulsates, changes colour and design-shape to tunes playing on your Media Player…Oh it’s all too much!

I have it running right now on my new-build comp running Windows XP with an AMD Athlon 64 x 2 2.2GHz CPU and 2GB of 667Mhz DDR2 RAM while the Windows Media Player 11 plays a compilation of tracks from the Ministry of Sound Funky House Sessions and also of course You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet by Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

This software is awesomely mega-tastic great mate. It’s a must to have on your PC or Mac this New Year’s Eve. The best thing is that you can download a free trial – less than a couple of megs in size -with a few features disabled before or if you buy the software. - Now that’s cha-a-a-ridee!

That’s what I’m running now and it is simply awesome in itself.

Sound Spectrum do some quite amazing software in that line, other than that described here. Their website is well worth checking out. Right now browse on down by clicking here and see what you think of this piece of software.

Perhaps I should have tried to find an affiliate program first? I have a feeling that this will boost sales. (?) Anyway – maybe unfortunately for me – I make nothing from it as yet if you buy this software.

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Can you draw this?

In pencil? Photo to Sketch can:

In pen? Photo to Sketch can:

- If you buy the paid version you can even get it drawn in pastel.

All at the click of a mouse.

- But I’m content with the free version.

They say a picture paints a thousand words: Those three pictures have saved me one heck of a load of typing.

Results are virtually instant. Read more and download it for yourself here.

This add-on was entered into Mozilla’s Extend Firefox contest. While it didn’t win any prizes, it is nevertheless a rather useful add-on for some people who wish to surf in total privacy.

Just as its name suggests; it closes the current tab and "forgets" about it: It deletes all the relevant cookies, and can be configured to also forget all the pages of that domain so that they are not included in the browsing history.

Available in English, French, Spanish, and German languages, it adds a button to the toolbar which you click to forget all about that current tab.

I disclaim any responsibility for whatever use this add-on is put to by any readers who download and use it. I also very much doubt that it’ll "forget" any malware picked up from any dubious sites surfed, or other malicious sources. If your computer becomes a malware-hive as a result of indiscriminate dodgy-website surfing then it may well be your own fault for abusing this piece of software. This isn’t an opt-out for halfwits: Always remember to use safe-computing practices at all times, or your computer could well end up compromised.

You can go to the description and download page for this add-on by clicking here.

It’s not every day that you get to see a free keyboard synthesizer program online. Sure, there are loads if you look; but they usually all cost; and unless you’re a professional musician you don’t really want to shell out $$ for something that you’ll only use very occasionally if at all, once the novelty’s worn off.

This little proggy is from Ranfo.com. Ranfo.com is running a promotional program for online Music store affiliate, zzounds.com. Click here to go to the page; from where you can download the software. The program uses the MIDI capabilities of your sound card to generate the tones. It’s not only a piano that is synthesized either: This polyphonic desktop keyboard synthesizer has 128 different voices and sound effects. Whether you have a separate or onboard soundcard, this software will work with it.

"Here is just the thing to express your musical talent and annoy co-workers while you are away from your real piano. Using the MIDI capabilities of your sound card this polyphonic desktop keyboard synthesizer has 128 different voices and sound effects. Play it with the mouse or from the computer keyboard."

-So if you feel like tinkling the ivories; attempting to become the next Jean-Michelle Jarr, or just making a racket born from boredom, this free software is probably for you. Click here to go to the download page.

Normally YouTube videos are only viewable off-site by embedding the script presented onsite in your own html page. Now it’s possible to capture YouTube or Google video and save it as an .AVI, .MPEG, or .flv file with save2pc (lite). (The paid-for version also allows you to capture to .mov, .wmv, 3gp.)

Paste the URL of the video you want to capture into the link box on program’s GUI, press Start , and the .AVI, .MPEG, or .flv file will be downloaded into the selected folder in the "Save to" box.

From the website:

"save2pc allows you to easily grab and save desired YouTube video. The user interface of save2pc is very simple, so you don’t need any technical knowledge to use it. No need to use scripts for web browsers. Just run save2pc and start downloading!"

"save2pc is a completely FREE Software. It contains absolutely NO ADWARE, NO SPYWARE, NO REGISTRATION, NO POPUPS, NO MALWARE or other unwanted software."

It works with Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista operating systems.

If you’re using your laptop there may be many times when you may want to leave it switched on, but not have your LCD screen running using up power and making light unnecessarily. Changing your settings in Windows seems a pain-in-the-proverbial for just that one event – Only to have to reset them afterwards.

 This is where Turn Off LCD comes into its own. Developed by Taimur Asad, Turn Off LCD is a small-sized handy utility that doesn’t require installation and runs out-of-the-box. You’ will, however, need to have Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 installed to run it. It allows you to instantly switch off your LCD display screen with a single click

The software will run on both Windows Vista and Windows XP. 

As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I have a lot of data backups of different types: In fact I’m a backup-a-holic to a certain extent; having been caught without a backup or a working backup too many times to recall. Luckily I did manage to recover at least some of my data at those times from semi-backups I’d burned to DVD or CD and a few recoverable files from failed backups. Nevertheless it wasn’t pleasant or enjoyable doing so. So now I backup everything to a number of destinations; one of those being my other computer.

Besides a copy made using Paragon Drive Backup,, I also like to have a "hard copy" of my data on both computers: By "hard copy" I mean identical files and folders on the disk. The reason being that if one computer fails – as is sure to happen at the most inopportune moment – I can simply start that job or that part of the job again on the other computer and assign a repair slot for the one that’s not working properly or at all.

*A (jealous?/unthinking?) friend commented that my office was too cluttered; especially my desk, when the topic arose once. She asked me why on earth I needed two computers? Wasn’t that just greedy and overkill? I could only use one at a time, surely? I replied that if one went down the other would be used as a substitute until the first one was fixed. She scoffed at me and said that I definitely didn’t need two computers, (Maybe she was after the spare one?) and that it was just unnecessary clutter. (Isn’t it great when do-gooder friends try to run your life for you – As if they didn’t have a life of their own to run. – Perhaps they haven’t?)

Two months later my main computer’s BIOS chip failed, and I sent the motherboard back under warranty and was sent a new one. I then had to rebuild the computer; having stripped it down to remove the old, faulty, motherboard. The entire operation including stripping down, RMA, return, their checks, agreement to replace, and delivery of the new board, took around two weeks in total. During that time my friend called to suggest more ways of de-cluttering and supposedly "making my life easier". (Getting better friends was one way that I immediately thought of.)

"What’s happened to your computer?" She asked, when she saw it on the bench in bits.

"Oh it malfunctioned." I replied "Fortunately I had a spare computer, so I wasn’t left in a rut without any way of going online." I sneered at her as she eat her earlier words.

Previously I’ve had issues with synchronising the two, and had to manually shift folders around – Remembering which one was which and all the malarkey involved with it.

Today, however, while I was reading a PC mag, I read about Microsoft’s SyncToy 2.0. This handy program is one of Microsoft’s range of power-toys that they kindly released and didn’t tell many people about, so that only the hyper-geek community discovered it.

Once installed this power toy took all the hassle out of synchronisation of files: I told it what to synchronise on the main computer with what files on the backup computer, and the jobs were written down and programmed so that whenever I need it to sync the files I just click and Sync-Toy gets on with it; ensuring that the changes I made to one file on the main computer are reflected in the other copy on the spare/backup computer, while I get on with something else.

This power-toy will work in Windows XP and in Windows Vista. The stated system requirements are:-

Microsoft .NET Framework v2.0
1GHz Intel P3 processor or equivalent
256MB RAM, 512MB RAM recommended
20MB free disk space

- In other words most computers running XP or Vista built in the last 5 years should have no problems with it. The Microsoft .Net Framework v2.0 is available for download from Windows Update if you don’t have it installed on your machine. There isn’t a Linux or Mac version as far as I can see, but if you do run Linux or Mac exclusively then it’s possible to run Windows in a Virtual Machine environment within those operating systems.

To read the full overview click this link. Even if you don’t back up between networked machines; it’s possible to backup and sync files over the internet too with this handy prog, so the uses are manyfold. Another great thing about it is that it’s free, even though it is from Microsoft.

It’s free, it works, it’s written for Windows and freely distributed by the same company that wrote Windows: You can’t go wrong with it, and I bet you can find a use for it. To download it go to the overview page and near the bottom you’ll find a download link for the 32-bit and also the 64-bit versions of it.

Enjoy it; and if you can think of any radical ways of putting it to use other than the obvious I’d be interested to read your comment below, as would other readers no doubt.

If you’re a control-geek and you want to totally nerd-out FireFox, then I thoroughly recommend this add-on: It shows extra information on the status-bar of FireFox; such as FireFox’s memory usage, total installed RAM, network speed, upload/download to FireFox… Rabbit, rabbit, yap-yap, rabbit rabbit, bunny… Here; take a look at the options panel and see for yourself:-

As you can see, you can fully-customise the function of this add-on, from what it displays right down to the colour of the text it displays it in. – Of course being a FireFox add-on it’s freeware and fully Open-Source just as you’d expect; so you can code away at it to your heart’s content if you want to fully-personalise it.

Unfortunately there’s only a Windows version currently – But as it’s Open Source, if you have the ability, you might like to create one for Mac and for Linux.

Here’s what it’s showing on my computer with the above settings applied:-

How To Get Yours

Direct your browser to

https://add-ons.Mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3271

That’s all.

Today; in a change from my usual Windows-adherent policy, I decided to browse some Open-Source projects – having downloaded Firefox 2.** yesterday and finding that it surprisingly renders this site better than IE7 in Windows XP Professional!

Another Open-Source project I stumbled upon while testing K-Meleon was http://browsershots.org: This is a very useful website to bookmark. With this website you can see exactly what your site looks like in a number of different browsers at 2 resolutions using a variety of operating systems: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Free BSD…

For the privilege of so testing their site I’m going to make a donation to the cause: You no doubt see the donate linkin the screenshots, so it would be good to give it a click when you get there and chuck a few bucks into the development coffers if you feel like supporting them.

Life’s a bitch; which is why I always try to be a bigger one.

Here are some more screenshots:-

What do you think; of K-Meleon? Of browserhosts.org? Did you test neither, either, or both? What are your results? Your remarks? Your comment below is welcomed.

No-o! I said “click” ; not “chick”. Sod off until Easter!

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The first thing I’d like to say is that this is the 100th post to this blog; which I consider quite an achievement in around six weeks considering everything, even though I do say so myself – So first off here’s to celebrate. (Yes I know it’s only 100, and yes there are hundreds, even thousands, more to come. This is my way of saying “Well done Sharron” to myself.) A small celebration; and then on with the show:-

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From the foldermarker.com website:-

“Folder Marker – a helper which can mark folders by priority (high, normal, low), by degree of work complete (done, half-done, planned) and by the type of information contained in the folder (work files, important files, temp files, private files).

Folder Marker is distributed in three editions. Compare them.”

PREVIEW:

Here’s a section of my desktop showing the multicoloured folder icons:

I hope you find this program useful; even for making your desktop look prettier if nothing else. Enjoy.

The Windows operating system’s GUI can be like a complicated maze that takes years to get used to finding your way around. I’ve personally been using XP for years and still occasionally struggle to remember where certain things are.

A remedy for this is a little icon that you can unzip to your desktop that, when clicked, brings up a click-able listing of features in a box; some of which are buried deep in the operating system – and if you’re like me you can never remember the command-line for them to save time either.

It’s called “Windows in a Box”; that’s Windows; not Window’s: The person who developed it must be one of those people who inserts an apostrophe before the s in every word that ends in s. Forgetting the spell-lames for now though, this little box can be most useful to virtually anyone. – Oh; and it’s free too BTW.

For example; if you’re not aware that to run the Direct X Diagnostic program (in XP) you need to open a command prompt and type “dxdiag”, or find the link to it buried deep in the GUI, then the shortcut is right there in Windows in a Box, and only requires a click.

The following text is quoted from the Softpedia website, and includes a download link:-

“Access all the features of windows XP on your desktop”

“Ever get tired of searching for a setting inside the control panel?
Inside Windows XP are hundreds of settings that require endless clicking through the Operating System that can get really frustrating. Windows in a box was designed to eliminate all that.
Sits on your desktop, easy to navigate, and puts an end to all the frustration of endless searching for settings.
Spyware, Adware and Malware free. Requires little memory to run, and nothing to install.”

Softpedia Secure Download (US)

The meeting’s basically over, everyone’s left, and you check over the data you’ve extrapolated from the topics presented as you sit alone in the empty boardroom. Suddenly Mother Nature calls you to the ladies room just outside the boardroom door and around the corner. As you exit the ladies’ room you notice someone’s purse lying on the floor, and being an honest person you hand it in to Reception. On your return to the empty boardroom you find that your laptop  is missing… Has anything similar ever happened to you? Hopefully not; but if it ever should, what are your chances of ever seeing your laptop again? Virtually nil – Unless you use Adeona:

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According to http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/adeona.html Adeona is “The Roman goddess who guides the child back home, after it has left the parental house for the first time.” (Seemingly a lesser-known goddess from the Roman empire times, and who I as a Pagan was unaware of, as were a couple of other Pagans who I asked.) 

This isn’t an exercise in invoking any Roman deity though – The software was named after the goddess Adeona for seemingly obvious reasons:

Developed by the University of Washington, Adeona is totally Open Source and completely free. It is the first such program that tracks the location of a stolen laptop, and it relies on no central service. Its use only requires a small software client to be downloaded to and installed on your laptop.

This new development in Open Source software was initially presented at Gnomedex on August 23rd 2008 by a representative of the development team.

For more information and links, please visit http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/ 

Also go here for more in-depth on this topic:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10024278-52.html

Click Here

‘Time for another freebie – It’s been a while.

This program is written in dos; but it will run on XP in normal circumstances without the user doing anything other than clicking on the .exe file. (I’m not sure about Vista though: ‘Never tried it with Vista.)

This program is so small it will fit on a floppy, and it’s very much like the original 1970s arcade game in looks when it’s running. I wish I could remember who the program’s author is but I can’t: Neither can I find it on Google any more.

I discovered this program in 2001 and I’ve been playing it occasionally ever since: When you activate it it’ll take your entire screen but it won’t erase anything that’s on it. Press “Esc” to leave the program and return to normal Windows. It should also be OK running in Linux too; though once again I’ve only ever used it in Windows.

You can download it FREE from this link.

The controls are quite simple: Press return to start the game. To move left press the “Ctrl” key, to move right press the “Alt” key. To fire the canon press the shift key.

I was unable to get a screenshot in the time I had available to write this article; and anything I could find on the web didn’t do the program justice; so excuse the lack of my usual illustrations.

I hope you enjoy playing this relic from the 1970s: It was probably in vogue before a lot of you were even born. At the risk of showing my age I used to play it at the arcade in my teens.

*Disclaimer – This software is supplied as is; without warranty, guarantee, or any charge. I refuse to accept any responsibility for any problem that it causes you or that you may have with it: If you can’t accept that then don’t download it: Having said that it’s never given me any problems whatsoever. Please virus-scan the file before you run it so that you can be sure that I haven’t sent you malware, spyware, or a virus. (I haven’t; but do so anyway as it’s good practice.)

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You may note that I use the “Serenity-Pink” theme. You may also note that I’ve edited the “Serenity-Pink” theme that I use. I have absolutely no idea how many other bloggers actually use the “Serenity-Pink” theme for their blog: I haven’t seen anyone else using it yet. Maybe it’s not the most popular theme as a larger percentage of bloggers appear to be guys, and not a lot of guys would choose pink; added to which not all girl-bloggers, nor dare I say gay guy bloggers, like pink and/or this theme.

For those who do, however, I may be able to offer you some help if you so want it.

I found a number of things that were screwy with this theme, after I started using it; the main ones being as follows:

The size of the text in the sidebar as well as the default text size in the body also to some extent, were too small: I use an older CRT monitor circa 1999 – Yes I know I’m behind the times but I prefer CRTs http://kkomp.com/archives/46 – and I use 1024 X 768 resolution. It appears that a large percentage of desktop users, whether they use CRT or TFT/LED monitors, prefer this resolution also. My eyesight without glasses or contacts isn’t fantastic but it’s acceptable. (- Just.) I found that I had to really concentrate hard to read the default text in the body if I was more than a metre away from the screen.

The text and links in the sidebar were even worse: Smaller, and baby-pink on very light grey. I could read it if a metre or closer to the screen.

Thirdly the header overflowed in Firefox and some other browsers if the first line was full; pushing the entire header and body to the left and into the pink area . I use IE7 which doesn’t have this problem, so until it was pointed out to me I was blissfully unaware of the issue.

In essence then the theme that I had chosen was virtually unusable in its default state.

Virtually Unusable 

Working with a couple of other bloggers (See end credits.) I’ve edited the theme to a point where it is now workable:

The amendments I made were all made in the folder style.css:

First I edited the “Wrap” container to sort out the overflow problem with the header links with regard to Firefox etc.

An Example as Seen in Firefox etc.

The second amendment I made was to edit the hex. values of the colours so that pink was pink rather than baby pink, also to darken the grey background a tiny bit. The only effect that this had was to change the sidebar and link text from an unnoticeable unreadable small-print to a noticeable unreadable small-print. Added to that was the fact that some browsers; particularly those used with the Apple Mac, were still seeing the grey background as white.

- So I edited the hex. again; this time to a hot-pink: Almost soft-red. I also darkened the grey background a bit more; but the thing that really did the trick was using a larger font-size and different font in the sidebar: I agree it doesn’t look as pretty as it used to – But it’s at least now easily readable.

As for the default text in the body: I left it as it is; but I use Windows Live Writer a lot to edit text, font, style, and to build tables etc anyway. I’m not a fan of Trebuchet MS but I do still use it in a few posts.

Trebuchet MS

My question is; do you use “Serenity-Pink” theme, and if so have you edited it; either in a similar manner or completely differently? If you do use this theme and you think you could benefit from my improvements then my edited style.css file is available in a .zip format HERE. If you’ve not edited your own style.css file at all then all you have to do is replace the existing style.css file in your (Your_domain)/wp-content/themes/serenity-pink folder with mine, and you’ll see all my improvements appear in your theme. If you have edited your style.css file then I suggest that you compare mine with the original to see where I’ve changed things, and change those things accordingly in your style.css file accordingly if you wish to do so.

Note: If you have already edited your style.css file and you replace it directly with mine as above, then all your editing will be lost and you’ll be left with only my edits – So if you’ve already worked on the file then I suggest that you check my edits against the original first; than implement them after you’ve found them should you wash to do so. If someone else has edited your style.css folder for you in the case of you not knowing quite what to do then I suggest you get that person to do the operation if you wish to try out my edits.

Please please back up everything from your original configuration before you do anything: then if you change your mind or bugger something up you’ll have the original files to replace the changes you made with your original.

I would like to know about your edits and changes to the “Serenity-Pink” theme if you use it also – So do feel free to comment, or contact me: serenity-pink at kustomkomputa dot co dot uk.

PINK

CREDITS:

My thanks go to MaXsiM http://mxm-studios.com/blog/ for his help in working with me to address the header text overflow issue; also thanks to davidrisley http://www.davidrisley.com/ for his constructive criticisms leading to the current editing of colours and font/font size.

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ScreenHunter 5.0 Free is an incredibly versatile piece of software; and as a freebie is also great value: Download it from http://www.wisdom-soft.com/sh/sh_free.htm .

Operating the program is simplicity itself: Just click the “Capture Now” button, find the top left corner of the piece of screen you want to capture, hold down the left mouse button and select the full area of the screen you want to capture.

Next just release the left mouse button and the selected area appears on your desktop in a .gif icon. Insert the .gif into your document and drag the borders to the size that you require: It really is that simple – And it all costs nothing, nil, nada, zilch. There is a paid-for version but I really don’t see the point of it as the freebie version does everything needed from what I can tell from a few days trial of it.

The top three screen captures were taken using ScreenHunter.

©KKomp 2008

Immediately after posting the Free Screensaver post I saw a link to this on Twitter; so I thought I’d have a look.

I haven’t tried any of the software he recommends yet at time of writing; but it sounds like good stuff: Here’s his video.

Of course I tweeted back to him via twitter to have a free screensaver on me; well one good deed deserves another. and since he presented himself so charismatically I included his vid on this blog.

(For some reason I’m not doing too well with the html on this entry; so rather than spend ages messing with it I’ll just republish with this apology included for any sloppiness in the design/layout of this post.)

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kkomp

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Fed up with the same old Windows screensavers?.

Here’s something new. Guaranteed spyware, malware, and virus-free. (Scan the file if you like.)

This screensaver is animated.

It’ll make a change to the usual on your monitor. So why are you being offered a free screensaver; and who are Kustom Komputa? Kustom Komputa supply unique desktop computers built to suit the individual user’s requirements, to the UK mainly. Since it is my company, and because it’s involved in promoting Xara software, there’s a free screensaver, built using Xara Screenmaker 3D installed on almost every individualised computer produced: But why limit it to products? To further advertise Xara  graphics software, Kustom Komputa are giving a screensaver built using Xara software away to anyone who wants it. Click here to download the file to a location on your computer. When the download’s finished simply right-click the file’s icon and select “Install”. That’s it – You’re done.

If you’d like to easily make your own screensavers too, then click here and scroll down to Xara’s advertisement at the foot of Kustom Komputa’s index page, which will open in a new window when you click the link above.

If you’d prefer something a little more arty you might like this one. You’ll need 7zip to unzip it; but it’s well worth any extra hassle.