Enable GOD Mode in Windows 7

Did you ever fantasize about a location, that could give you access to all the important settings of your Windows PC at a single place? It is a real pain to go through the entire Control Panel and search for all the settings, and when you want to do something else, you have to restart the Control Panel again and start hunting all over the item again.

This is were some tricks come to your rescue. As the title suggests - GOD mode is a feature in Windows that allows a single hub for all the crucial settings of your Windows PC.

Here is a screenshot of the GOD mode. (Click on the image for actual version)

As you can see, it gives you access to all the important settings.
You can also enable it by following the below steps.

Step 1: Go to your Desktop and Right click.

Step 2: Click create folder.

Step 3: Name your new folder this, "GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}" and press enter. (without the " obviously)

Step 4: Watch as the folder changes form to look like the control panel.

Step 5: Open the folder and bask in all your godly, control panel power.

How to skip obtaining driver from windows update.

Whenever you plug a new USB device on your Windows Vista/7/8 machine and you are connected to the Internet, the operating system automatically tries to get the latest version of the driver.

This feature is really useful when you need to install new devices now and then and you need to stay updated. But, this feature can also be a real pain if you need to plug the same type of devices again and again.

There is an option to 'Skip obtaining the driver from Windows Update' but clicking it again every-time is a real nuisance.
Luckily, there is an option to disable this feature and install the device drivers from your local disk every time.

• Go to the Windows Start Menu.
• Right-click on Computer.
• Select Properties.

Windows 7 Computer Properties

• Click Advanced System Settings.

• Click on the Hardware tab.
• Click the Device Installation Settings button.

• Click the No, let me choose what to do radio button.
• Click the Install driver software from Windows Update if it is not found on my computer radio button. (the Save The Squirrels button).
• Click Save Changes.

 

That is it. Now the driver will always be installed locally.

Add Slide To Shut Down on your touch enabled Windows 8 PC

This is a hidden gem within Windows 8.1, and it’ll be more useful for those using a touch screen device than a PC. You can open up a transparent window that allows you to swipe down to shut down your PC or device.

In order to activate this feature, you have to do some digging around in the Windows folders.

Open “Windows Explorer” and navigate to:

C:\ – Windows – System32

 Locate the entry "SlideToShutDown". Right Click on it and select "Send To"

Click on "Desktop (Create Shortcut)"

This will place a shortcut on your Desktop to the Slide to Shut Down feature.

Anytime you want to use this to shut down your PC, just click on the shortcut. You can also pin the shortcut to the Start Screen if you so desire or create a keyboard shortcut to activate it.

In order to do that latter, right-click on the shortcut you created on your Desktop and click on "Properties".

In the Shortcut key: box, enter in the combination for the keyboard shortcut. Make sure to click “Apply,” then “OK.”

Now whenever you want to ShutDown your PC, just use the keyboard shortcut you defined and you will be presented with the "Slide To Shut Down" screen.

Different types of firefox browser

We all have our favorite browsers and Firefox is one of them. However, only few of us know all the different options available for us.
Firefox itself comes in various flavors.

The default Firefox:- This is the default version and the most popular version of firefox about which almost everyone is aware of. When you search 'download Firefox' this is the first download link.

Waterfox (The 64-bit flavor of Firefox):- This is the 64-bit version of Firefox and designed to work with most of the 64-bit machines, if you have one try this flavor. You will certainly experience some performance improvements.

PaleMoon - The "optimized" version of Firefox:- This is different flavor and it removes the parental control and accessibility feature from Firefox, it also has a different menu bar configuration. Its focuses on speedy launch.

Iceweasel - This is the Debian based version of firefox and you probably might have been using it if you have ever used a Debian based linux like kali linux.

IceCat - This is the GNU based version of Firefox, similar to the debain based. Just the name and logo changed. The entire sourcecode is of firefox.

SeaMonkey - This is the old project of mozilla and in the time of evolution some of the feature were ripped apart. If you still love those features, Sea Monkey is for you.

Give a try.

Get a really thin taskbar on the side in Windows 7

Most of us don't like the normal position of the taskbar in Windows 7, and we shift it to the left or right side of the desktop.

Reducing the size of icons on Taskbar can definitely give you more space, but there is a limitation on the thin-ness of the taskbar. You can only reduce the length to a defined limit.

What you get is this type of a taskbar.

The problem is that you feel cheated and there is some extra space on side of each of the active application.
Could there be a way to get rid of it?

Luckily, there is...

Step 1.>
Right-click on your taskbar and click on properties.

Step 2.>
Check the boxes- 'Auto-hide the taskbar' and 'Lock the taskbar'. Click on apply and then click on OK. The taskbar should now be hidden.

Step 3.>
Open up notepad and type the following commands as it is:-

@echo off
echo ThinTaskbar
echo Please wait a few secconds...
net stop "UxSms"
net start "UxSms"

Step 4.>
Save the file with anyname and add the extension .bat
Example:- thinBar.bat

Step 5.>
Run the file with administrator privileges. Right-click and select Run As Administrator.

Step 6.>
This should stop the Windows Aero and restart it. Your taskbar gets auto hidden by default.

Step 7.>
Again open the taskbar properties and uncheck the box 'Autohide the taskbar'.

This should now give you a really thin taskbar and some more space on your desktop. :)

How to remove people from photographs using photoshop.

Here is a sample tutorial that will give you a brief idea about how to remove unwanted people from a photograph.
Before proceeding further, make a note that this example is for a very specific scenario.

Scenario:- You want to take a photograph of a monument, but you are just unable to do so because so many people are getting in your way.

Here's how you can do this.

Step 1.> Mount your camera on a tripod stand and take 20 photographs of the monument keeping the exact same position of the camera and the settings. Take these photographs each with an interval of 10 seconds.

Step 2.> Open these photographs in Adobe Photoshop all at once. You can do this by
File-> Script-> Statistics

Choose "Median".

That's it. You are done :)

Here are the sample results.

The results obviously depends upon the number of photographs taken and I have assumed that all the people in the photograph are in a moving state. Suppose that there is a couple who is sitting throughout the photo shoot at the same location, they will still be included in the final result.

Try it for results.

Get the most out of VLC media player

Here are some tips to get the best out of your VLC media player.

Reduce Video Lagging
Old computers seem to have a problem while playing high resolution videos and certain formats. This can be fixed by using a simple trick. Go to Tools->Preferences->Inputs and Codecs. In the Codec section change the settings of the 'Skip H.264 in loop de-blocking filter' from None to All and save the setting.

Reduce Pixellation
Low quality videos can be enhanced by reducing pixellation and blockiness effects. This can be done by enabling post processing option by going to Video->Post Processing. A higher number denotes a higher level of post processing. What this option effectively does is employ a filter on every frame that smoothens the image . Hence you end up losing on image detail, but block effects are smoothened out. As this is computationally intensive, it is best applied on laptops with high processing power.

Video Effects
VLC has some really cool video effects options. You can tinker around with a variety of these by going to Tools->Effects and Filters->Video Effects. Ever wondered if Yuvraj's flick six off Brett Lee would look as elegant if he were right handed? You can check that out by flipping the video horizontally using Geometric Filters. Motion blur effect can be added in real time using Advanced Filters. There are a load of options for changing colour, contrast, brightness, sharpness, etc.

Snapshots
Want to tell a friend about a blooper that appeared in a movie? Well, take a snapshot. Pausing at the right moment for a snapshot is invariably difficult. In VLC, you can enable advanced controls by View->Advanced Controls. The right most button in the new row of buttons is the frame by frame playback button. Repeated pressing of the button will enable to play and pause your video playback frame by frame. That makes the task of taking a snapshot quite comfortable. You can take a snapshot of a frame by Video->Take snapshot. The picture is saved in the My Pictures folder of your home folder.

Chat on Facebook without getting detected.

Recently Facebook made a change in its chat system and it enables the other user to know that you have seen their message.

Now you see what I mean. A sad thing, Facebook does not allow you to turn this feature off manually, but luckily the browsers today have extensions that can alter the way your browser works.

Step 1.>
Go to this website.

Step 2.>
Depending upon the browser you are using Firefox / Chrome, you will be prompted to install the extension that will then allow you to chat undetected.

 
Step 3.>

Congratulations, you just went incognito... ;- )

Yes, that's it. You are done. Now suppose I have installed the plugin on my Computer and my friend replies to the chat. Here is an actual screenshot from my friend's computer.

  

You see, my friend cannot see if I have seen the message or not...catching my rift..?? ;)

Add shortcuts to My Computer in Windows 7 and Windows 8

The ‘My Computer’ icon gives us easy access to our hard drives , pen drives and other network-related locations. But if you’re one who enjoys a clutter-free desktop, then maybe you can use this tweak to remove the many program and folder shortcuts on your desktop.

1.> Adding program shortcuts to My Computer

First you’ll have to navigate to a special folder. Shortcuts placed in this folder will be displayed on ‘My Computer’.
Hit Windows Key + R and type in %appdata% into the box and click on OK.

 

Then navigate to Microsoft > Windows > Network Shortcuts. Program shortcuts that you place here will be shown on ‘My Computer’, it’s that simple.

 

Once you have placed program shortcuts into that folder, you’ll be able to see the shortcut icons on ‘My Computer’.

2.>  Adding Folder Shortcuts

Because you can add any shortcut, you can also add folder shortcuts. To easily do that, just right click on your frequently used folder and click on Create Shortcut.

Now all you have to do is cut (Ctrl + X) the created shortcut and paste (Ctrl + V) into the Network Shortcuts folder, like how we transferred the program shortcuts earlier.

Thus, it serves a neat way to get your things organized. Do try it out and please leave your comments if you find any problem.

Download subtitles automatically to VLC Media Playe

It's not really hard to find subtitles online for your digital movie collection, but you can save a couple of steps with the VLSub extension for VLC media player.

After downloading the extension from Github, just drop it in the appropriate folder.

• Windows: C:/Program Files/VideoLAN/VLC/lua/extensions/
• OS X: /Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/share/lua/extensions/
• Linux: ~/.local/share/vlc/lua/extensions/

You can download the extension over here.

Download Link.

How to use it?

• Start VLC
• Start your video
• Click on the menu View > VLSub or VLC > Extension > VLSub if you're using Mac OS X
• Click on "Search by hash" or "Search by name"
• Select a subtitles file on the list
• Click on "Download selection"
• That's it, the subtitles should appear on your video

Iron Man 3 unlimited iso-8

I guess you have played the official IRON MAN 3 game on your android device or your iOS device.
The game is amazing...but one thing is for sure the game pace is really slow and it takes ages to collect ISO-8 and stark credits.

Apart from that if you wish to play using the IGOR armor...it would definitely take you ages to unlock it..unless you are rich like tony stark... ;-)

Here is a way to have unlimited ISO-8's

[WORKS FOR ANDROID ONLY] no root necessary... :)

Step 1.>
Uninstall IRON MAN 3 from your device.

Step 2.>
Download this apk file and install the game but don't start it yet. DOWNLOAD LINK.

Step 3.>
Download this data file. DOWNLOAD LINK

extract it and put it in the folder sd/Android/obb/

The extracted file would be a complete folder named something like com.gameloft.android.GA....

Now run the game and after the tutorial is complete, after you die about 3 times, you will have unlimited ISO-8's... have fun.. :D

Here is a screen...

 

Remove background from any image

For design buffs like me...have you ever wanted to remove the background from any image..it can be any off your photograph or may be you want to apply some custom background...a nice scenery or some special monument just for experimenting or due to some purpose.

Removing background from an image can be a tedious job and we need to select every portion of the image.

Luckily, we have this online tool that lets us perform this operation easily....just drag and drop...yep...its that simple... :D

Step 1.>
Open this website in a new tab/window and come back to read the further instructions.
Clipping Magic.

Step 2.>
Just drag and drop any image..a high contrast image works best...but you can try others as well.
We will use this image

Step 3.>
Open the image in the website and you will be given some instructions how to go about...and then you will be taken to the work area. There are just 2 simple rules
-> Mark the areas you want to keep in green
-> Mark the areas you want to remove in red.
Here is a screenshot of my work halfway through. Note the green and red marks.

Step 4.>
Complete marking the areas until you get your desired image. I have added a screenshot that shows the complete work...hardly took a minute.
Note that the right side of the image gives a preview and this will be our downloaded image.

Step 5.>
Download the image and you are ready to play around with it. Here is a sample of what I did with it.
Feel free to click the image to get a bigger preview.

For any other design queries...please leave a comment. :)

Waterfox: The 64-bit version of firefox

Many of us love using Firefox. Its an open source browser with tons of add-ons and high compatibility. I myself am a very big fan. It also provides a sync feature that enables to maintain the same bookmarks/saved history/passwords etc. across all our devices.

What most of us don't know is that apart from the normal version of Firefox(what most of us use) there are several other versions available that are not advertised anywhere. There is a reason behind it...these builds are not stable and may have some crashing issues. But these are too slight for general everyday users like us and surely we must give them a try.

We all know about 64-bit software these days...Photoshop has a 64-bit version, WinRAR has a 64-bit version and even flash has a 64-bit edition. These versions utilize the full capacity of your processors and give you improved speed and efficiency.

SO WHY NOT WITH A BROWSER?

We use Chrome, IE and Firefox...but all of them are 32-bit versions...if you run the Task Manager of Windows then too the chromes process is named as "chrome*32.exe"
Similar is the case with Firefox.

THANKFULLY, being an open source software developers have released a 64-bit flavor of the browser as well.
It is known as "WATERFOX".

You can download it from here and believe me you will notice the change in speed.

DOWNLOAD LINK.

Don't worry it uses the same profile as the firefox browser and none of your data will be lost. :-)

For even enthusiastic readers, here are few more releases of firefox...

Download Firefox beta

Download Aurora

Download Nightly.

Mind you..these all are 32-bit builds..

Enable .NET Framework 3.5 in Windows 8 in offline mode

If you open CMD.EXE with Administrative Privileges i.e. at elevated level & run the this DISM command dism /online /get-features you will see that from the State that .NET Framework is not part of the Operating System.





So the first thing you need to do is to copy the required package to local machine before you run the command to install .NET Framework. To do that use Windows 8 ISO/DVD/USB Media. You need to copy SXS folder to local machine located at D:\sources\sxs (In this case D: your drive letter on which you have loaded Windows 8 Media)



You can also use the following command to copy this folder locally. xcopy d:\sxs\*.* c:\sxs /s
Once completed, in order to install this feature you can run the following command dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFx3 /All /SourceC:\sxs /LimitAccess  and hit Enter



After completing the installation of .NET Framework 3.5 you can see that the feature is enabled in the Control Panel –> Program and Features



Bingo. Now you can enable .NET Framework feature on Windows 8 without needing of an internet connection.

Enjoy

Change folder colors in windows

With the changing versions of windows, we have seen changing themes and styles but one thing remains pretty much the same. The color of your folder icons. You get the same boring yellow color in all versions of windows, whether it be Windows 95 or the latest Windows 8.
Searching for a specific folder when you know you need to access it again and again can be a pain.
Luckily, there is a free tool that allows you to change your folder colors as per your desires. Here is a look about what the software can do for you...

Changing the color of the folder icon could help you spot and differentiate folders easily, rather than just depend on the folder name.

Step 1.> DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL

Download and install this free tool Folder Colorizer. Install the software to your desired location and also make sure that you have .NET frameword 4.0 or higher installed. If not, the software will itself prompt you to download it. Just click yes.

Step 2.> CHANGING COLORS

To start differentiating your folder, select any folder icon you want to change the color of, right click on it, select ‘Colorize!’ and then pick any preset color.

 Step 3.>CHANGED COLORS

Once you have selected a color for your folder, your folder icon color will change automatically from the standard yellow to the color you picked.

Step 4.> CHANGE COLOR

If you need to use custom colors, right click again, select ‘Colorize!’ and select ‘Custom…’

 Step 5.> CREATE CUSTOM COLOR

From the window, pick any color you want to use, then click on ‘Add Color’. This custom color will be saved as a preset color, so the next time you want to use it, you can select it straight from the list.

Step 6.> RESTORE ORIGINAL COLOR

Should you decide to restore the original color of your folder icon, right click on the folder, select ‘Colorize!’ and pick ‘Restore original color’. The changes will be made immediately, and you will see that the color of your folder icon has returned to the original yellow.

Please do share the feedback and problems if any.