Wi-Fi On Radar

Here’s a wireless utility with a difference. The Xirrus Wi-Fi Monitor generates a radar-like display to show all of the wireless networks in range of your laptop. By translating relative signal strength into range it shows, in a rather eye-catching way, which ones are likely to give you the best connection. For obvious reasons – unless you have a rotating and highly directional Wi-Fi antenna on your PC the display cannot tell you which direction the access point actually is, but it looks great. Versions of Wi-Fi monitor are available for Windows Mac and Linux, and the only catch is the XP version requires that you install Yahoo Widget Framework, which adds another 15Mb to the download, (the Vista version installs as a sidebar Gadget)

Chrome Plated Easter Egg

It didn’t take long for the hidden ‘Easter Egg’ in the new Google Chrome browser to be discovered. In case you haven’t heard, Easter Eggs are hidden features in a program, usually of a whimsical nature, put there by bored programmers. The one in Chrome is fairly good and quite amusing to watch but I won’t spoil it for you by giving the game away. To see if for yourself you will have to download and install Chrome then in the Omnibox (the name for the combined address and search box  one of Chrome’s best features – type ‘about:internets’ and see what happens. While we’re at it there are a couple of other things you can try. Typing ‘about:memory’ displays Chrome’s memory usage, ‘about:histograms’ shows a number of performance statistics and ‘about:crash’ does just that, and instantly shuts down the open browser window.

Make YouTube YourTube

YouTube is great, well, some of it anyway, and even occasional visitors will see a video that they would like to download to watch again or send to someone else. There are lots of recording utilities on the web but this one, called Better YouTube has to be one of the easiest to use. It’s a Firefox add-on and it only takes a few seconds to install. Thereafter, if you see something you fancy simply click the ‘download this video’ link that appears just below the player screen and the download of the chosen video, as an .flv file, starts automatically. Incidentally, if you haven’t got a .flv player on your PC then I can thoroughly recommend the subject of a previous Top Tip, called VLC, which plays just about anything.

Increase Your Torrent Speed

This PDF explains how to get up and running with bit torrent technology efficiently. It shows how to battle ISPs throttling bit torrent speed and other ways to get the best optimization of your bandwidth.

This is a step by step tutorial guide on setting up uTorrent. It details all the steps from downloading to optimizing your settings. Many people have used Bit Torrent and think they are running with optimized settings, even then, it is advised to read through this guide and see what you may have missed to better optimize your settings. Read More »

Introducing the Firefox 3.0 CD

The gold bits of Firefox 3.0 went live on June 17, 2008, over half a year past the initially planned launch which was targeted for the end of 2007. At just a few days short of the first two months on the market for the successor of Firefox 2.0, users of Mozilla’s open source browser now have access not only to the download version of Firefox 3.0, but also to the CD. Via Mozilla’s store, Firefox 3.0 CDs go for $4.20 a pop in the U.S. and £3.00 per item for additional international markets.

“With more than 15,000 improvements, Firefox 3 is faster, safer and smarter than ever before,” reads a fragment from the description of the browser. “Dozens of new features including the “awesome” bar, one-click bookmarking, full zoom, advanced tabbed browsing and blindingly fast performance. Instant Web Site ID and other security features keep you safe from scammers and spammers. Over 5000 add-ons let you customize your web experience to your personal needs.” Read More »

Personalised emoticons for Windows Live Messenger

Can’t find the right image to use for your Live Messenger character? Help is at hand from the new minimise me website. This has an online designer for creating a new avatar for Live Messenger software. Once installed they will appear as the character picture in conversations and also as four different emoticons to use in conversations.

It is simple to use although it is sometimes a little slow to respond when clicking on some of the icons, but this is common complaint with web based editors and it is a limitation with the technology as a whole. Read More »

Free Games at Windows Live

Windows-Live

To compete with Apple’s successful iPhone and iPod App Store, Microsoft announced today that Windows Live will have free games for its PC users. What used to be only available to Xbox users is now available across the entire Windows platform.

Microsoft’s press release states “the launch of Games for Windows  LIVE marks a major expansion of the Xbox LIVE service across multiple platforms, uniting gamers with a single identity, a single gamertag, a single friends list and a single list of achievements attainable on the Xbox 360 and a Windows-based PC.” Read More »

Smarter Surfing

There are few things more depressing than searching for something on one of the major Search Engines only to get back tens of thousands or even millions of hits. You know the answer is in there somewhere, but where? Refining your search terms can help, but here’s something else to try. Install SurfCanyon on your Firefox browser and the next time you search for something, click the little SurfCanyon bull’s-eye icon next to the top hit and check out its recommendations. Obviously it can’t work miracles but after trying it for a couple of weeks I have to say it’s quite impressive and more often than not its suggested results get you to where you want to go a lot quicker then trudging through pages of hits.

Free Firefox Wallpapers

Good news for Firefox fans out there. If you are getting bored with your wallpaper, we’ve got something cool to spice up your desktop. We’ve crawled deep into the Internet and this weekend, we present you with some of the nicest Firefox wallpapers you’ll ever find. Get your fingers ready on the mouse wheel, here’s 70+ nice and beautiful Firefox wallpapers. Full list after jump. Read More »

Firefox With Many Addons

Most of the Firefox users I know have a lot of addons, no matter if they’re running Firefox 2 or Firefox 3. Now, the problem appears when some of those addons start crashing, or when Firefox ends up eating huge amounts of memory. Yesterday, I read an older article on CybernetNews about having 200 addons installed in Firefox, and this made me think about taking things to a whole new level… Since all that was happening back in 2006, when Firefox 3 was not ready yet, and to have 200 addons installed and notice how the browser behaved with one or two sites opened is already a bit outdated, I decided to try and go for a new Firefox 3 world record as of 2008!

Obviously, things are not that easy as it seems, because I have a really rough ride in mind for Mozilla’s pet, my computer, and myself as a user. Here’s what I want to do: Read More »