VistaJuice

If you want to make your Vista computer run faster, or if you just want to Tweak couple of settings to suit your needs, you have to check out TweakVi by Total Idea.

They were the ones who have, in my opinion, one of the nicest and best Tweaking utilities for XP - and this time around they do not disappoint with TweakVi either.

If you wonder how can someone develop such a great app just couple of days after the official Vista launch, and those big companies (Nero, Nokia's PC Suite, Apple [hello iTunes] etc.) are still struggling?

Answer is simple - they made it long time ago - and just perfected it. I used it while it was in Beta itself, on Vista Beta - and it worked quite nicely.

For more info go here: Total Idea's TweakVi page.

Don't you just hate when you can't have your RSS feeds presented to you immediately? Is the Vista SideBar's RSS Gadget too small and sucky for you as it is for me?

Well GREAT!

There is a simple solution afterall and it's called Feeds Plus.

With Feeds Plus, you can set some or all your feeds to pop-up a notification when there's an update. Clicking on the notification opens the feed for you to read.

To Get it and/or find out more go here:
http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/feedsplus.asp

Cool thing about this is that couple of Interns at Microsoft's IE RSS Team developed this. Nice! :)

Works for XP too ;) You just have to have IE7.

Also check: Microsoft Team RSS's Blog

Brandon Paddock, a guy I quoted on couple of things before for cool tips and opinions, just made available a nice little freeware app for Vista. He calls it Start++, and it surely is the right name for it.

All of you who used Windows Desktop search on XP should know about those cool little shortcuts: type "g search terms" to search Google on the provided search terms. You could also launch programs, run scripts with parameters and more.

Now, in Vista, we have the search integrated and some of this functionality provided straight from the Start Menu search bar - but, it lacks the shortcut functionality that Deskbar provided. Brandon expands Vista's own Search bar by enabling this once and again for us + he adds couple of cool new things too:

1. typing "w genetics", searches the WikiPedia on the term 'genetics'.
   
2. typing "g something", searches the Google for what that 'something'
3. and my favorite: typing "sudo programNameOfYourChoice" will run that application with administrative privileges! This is really great since it even beats the [CTRL] + [Shift] click on the app to do so - how easy is that! :)
   
4. Start++ also works from the command line!
   
5. Search Actions let you perform actions over search results.  In the following case, “Play Shakira” will:
   a) perform a search for music with the keyword “radiohead”
   b) write all the results to a .M3U file
   c) open the results in Media Player
   

Here's a screenshot of the configuration UI, which lets you create your own custom commands / aliases:

Check out his post about this on his web site (www.BrandonLive.com).

In the license terms it explains I am not allowed to redistribute the application, therefore, please go to his site for the download. Brandon - If you allow me to redistribute - I'll gladly host it on my site as well to help with the bandwidth ;)

All in all, Great little app Brandon! You are starting our PowerToys section before some long due powertoys like Image Resizer and PowerCalck make it to Vista from the Msoft kitchen :) Seriously how hard is it to repack the XP powertoys so they can be installed on Vista?

Via: BrandonLive.com

Brandon got some help and tips from the comments on his Start++ app so a new version 0.3 is out.

For an update go here: http://brandonlive.com/startplusplus/download

Also you may subscribe to Start++ updates via RSS

Update: I was quite in a hurry when I wrote this post that the update was not yet available, but Brandon rather just said that the update is coming soon. Today (Saturday), it is available for download though :)

If you are like me then during the course of a day you probably use the windows calculator a lot. The truth is it hasn't change much since Windows 1.0!!! I know since I have Windows 1.0 running under Virtual PC 2007 - and I was amazed at how same the calc looks like :)

Well, there is a nicer, better one. Not like the ones that you can get for Windows XP under the PowerToys section, but a bit different. It has a unit converter, as well and here is how it looks like:

You can get it straight from Microsoft's web site here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=32b0d059-b53a-4dc9-8265-da47f157c091&displaylang=en

Via: MicrosBlog.com

Andreas Verhoeven from AeroXperience (www.aeroxp.org) brings us a really sweet add-on for Vista. I know I am tired from the pretty but yet static user icon on the start menu - so with some clever programming he brings us back what Microsoft threw out in the first place.

I'll let the following video speak for itself (watch the User Icon at the top right side!). If you cannot see the start menu, please press play at the bottom! It's a short video:

All you have to do in order to get the same effect is run the little app. Do note that the application dynamically loads itself into explorer.exe (for which you might need elevated rights or be logged in as administrator). Because of this, the smallest mistake in this application will make explorer.exe go down. So, do I need to say: You use this application at your own risk!

If you want this running at all times - just add it to your Startup folder :)

Via: AeroXperience forums (www.aeroxp.com) (this thread)
Get the app here: Ave3dUserPic.zip

P.S> As soon as I get the permission from Andreas to redistribute the app, I'll update this post with a link to the app directly on VistaJuice.

Lately, DreamScenes were my choice for a desktop wallpaper but until someone makes a really nice and amazing one - I think I'll just stick to the nice little gadget I found on the net called: Desktop Wallpaper.

It acts as a slide show on the SideBar, but besides that, you can set it to automatically change your desktop wallpaper at pretty much any time interval you desire. It's a great thing if you are like me and simply like too many wallpapers, or are just bored of the same ol' same ol'. You can also set it to grab the pictures from any folder on your computer.

Here is a screenshot of how it looks, and to get it click here.