HitsGarden

In the early days of Windows PCs text inputting was a reasonably simple affair, with a keyboard used to enter text, in American English, which is then displayed on the monitor. With the arrival of new technologies, such as speech-to-text, and handwriting-to-text, conversion, and with the new opportunities of the globalized technology market requiring the more advanced support of Asian languages by existing technology, Microsoft beefed up its advanced text processing functionality with the Ctfmon.exe software component.

The process Ctfmon.exe is not spyware and is actually used by the Microsoft Office suite of applications to launch both the Microsoft Office XP Language bar and the Alternative User Input Text Processor. The Language bar is an important part of Microsoft’s Text Services Framework [TSF] and operates as the user interface for the TSF. Although it comes preinstalled, with Windows XP and Vista, it is also available to be downloaded for the older versions of windows. Read the rest of this entry »

As you may know you can make icons manually out of ordinary JPEG and bitmap images, by fiddling around with the size and format. It’s easy enough, just a bit time-consuming but why bother? Here’s a simple one-click solution, called Easy PictureIcon. Just select your image and it is automatically converted to the three commonest sizes (16 x 16, 32 x 32 and 48 x 48 pixels). All you have to do is decide if you want to compress trim or fit, select background transparency, and where to save it. Go on, give your desktop a makeover, and don’t forget, you can change the icons in most applications simply by replacing them with one of your choosing, providing it’s the same size and has the same filename.

Here’s an ingenious little program, or more correctly, a Shell Extension, called appropriately enough XnView Shell Extension that adds extra functionality to your right-click menus. Simply download and install the program and when you next open Windows Explorer, or My Computer, navigate your way to a folder containing image files. Right click on one of them and you’ll see a whole load of new options appear, including info about the file, the option to convert the file into .gif, .bmp, .jpeg, .pcx, .png. .tiff or .tga format, set as wallpaper, view as a variable sized thumbnail, and much more. Give it a whirl, I think you will be impressed!

Here’s a solution looking for a problem. Let’s suppose you have a quantity of images that you want to crop and resize in a hurry, and at the same time, convert them from one image file format to another (jpeg, png, gif or tiff), and while you are at it, you also want to add a time/date stamp and a copyright watermark.

We’ve all been there and usually the only way to do it is one at a time, using an image editing program, well not any more! All you need is iKnow Batch Crop, and that’s really all you need to know. It’s incredibly easy; there are just three simple steps. Step One asks you to create a folder to store your modified pix in. In Step Two you select the picture you want to process and in Step Three you decide the shape, picture format, time/date and watermark, click OK and it’s done!

First there was the USB turntable, then the PC cassette deck, now we have, you guessed it, USB VCR. Anyone who has a collection of old VHS tapes will know that time is running out and if you want to save those precious home movies and recordings you had better get your skates on because VCRs are disappearing fast, and in five years there may not be anything to play those tapes on. The USB VCR Converter from Firebox comes with everything you need to replay your tapes, download them to the PC and convert them to the file format of your choice (iPod, PSP, DVD etc.). It goes on sale next month for just under £150.00. For those of you that still have a working VCR don’t forget the Boot Camp articles, which show you how to make DVDs from VCR tapes.