Over on digg recently I also saw a tutorial for creating a fake software box using Photoshop. I don't use Photoshop, but I do use Paint.NET. So I decided to try the same thing using that tool, which is one of my favorite free tools.
There are a few features different from Photoshop, so it wasn't 100% trivial to do, but I did manage to emulate it pretty well. I may write a similar tutorial for Paint.NET users to follow. Take a look:
PureText is a simple little tool that could save me hours of my life. I searched for it today before I began to write such a tool for the third time. Here's a summary by the author (the guy who writes DependencyWalker):
PureText is basically equivalent to opening Notepad, doing a PASTE, followed by a SELECT-ALL, and then a COPY. The benefit of PureText is performing all these actions with a single Hot-Key and having the result pasted into the current window automatically.
Basically, this describes what I do about 5-30 times a day. I grab something formatted and want to paste it into another document or email, but I rarely want to keep the formatting. Before this tool, I copied the text to the clipboard, then I hit this arcane sequence of keys: WindowsKey-N (my Notepad hotkey), Ctrl-V, Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Alt-F, x. Now that I've bound this tool to WindowsKey-Q, I've shortened 6 keystrokes (with slight delays) to 1 immediate keystroke.
It may seem silly, but it's worth it for me.
Microsoft acquired FolderShare and made it free. If you use multiple computers, you'll surely like this. It's a painless way to keep specific folders on your machines synchronized.
In addition, you can share the directory with invited friends if you want.
It doesn't have the deadbolt-security feeling of GoToMyPC. As such, it's even easier to use, though it might make people hesitate when they see how easy and fast it is for them to access their remote files.
If you're looking for something to make you say 'Wow' today, take a look at Goowy. The email interface is beautiful, and it's all highly interactive.
Even if AJAX turns out not to work wonderfully for online Office tools, this shows that Flash has a lot of promise.
Ever since I first started playing with WMI, I've been meaning to delve into it more. It seems like a very handy interface for manipulating and querying Windows machines.
I just ran across the WMI Code Creator tool from Microsoft. This fellow will generate example code in C#/VB.NET/VBScript for all sorts of WMI tasks. It really demonstrates how easy it is to do powerful things with WMI. For instance, it takes only a click or two to create a VBScript that gets notified whenever a process is invoked. Here's code of a VBScript it generated for me:
strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\CIMV2")
Set objEvents = objWMIService.ExecNotificationQuery _
("SELECT * FROM Win32_ProcessStartTrace WHERE ProcessName = 'notepad.exe'")
Wscript.Echo "Waiting for events ..."
Do While(True)
Set objReceivedEvent = objEvents.NextEvent
'report an event
Wscript.Echo "Win32_ProcessStartTrace event has occurred."
Loop
This snippet will display "Win32_ProcessStartTrace event has occurred." whenever notepad.exe is invoked. This is only a small example of the easy demos you can put together with their code creator tool.
Earlier today I was thinking of writing a utility that monitors what applications you use regularly and lists them for others to see. Part of that would involve providing short descriptions and frequency of use into a socially-linked database.
Well, part of that is already here. Take a look at MyProgs.Net. It acts as a del.icio.us for cool and clever software utilities.
Mark Russonivich posted a neat little description of how to kill all but the 'System' and 'csrss.exe' processes on Windows:
Running Windows with No Services
(This will not be useful for anyone who wants their machine to be usable.)
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