Picture This, Easily

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.

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 »

Microsoft Reinvents the Mouse

It’s not often that Microsoft comes up with an interesting looking peripheral, and it has been responsible for its fair share of horrors in the past but that might all be about to change with the Arc Mouse. The curved, crescent shape doesn’t look very promising but by all accounts it is very comfortable to use. The best bit is that it folds up, reducing its size by around a half, making it idea for notebook users and those with limited desktop space. Arc Mouse will be available in red or black and it goes on sale in the US in a couple of months for around £30. That’s a bit steep when you can get a perfectly decent standard mouse for a tenner but if it turns out to be as comfortable and easy to use as some early testers claim then it could well be featuring on many Christmas pressy lists.

Opera 9.50 Fixes Fiesta

On its official website, Opera describes the latest version of its browser as “beautifully engineered”. However, it looks like Opera 9.50 was made available to end users before the cooking process was ready. After the release of the gold version of Opera 9.50 on June 12, 2008, the feedback starting pouring in, and it was not a pretty sight. As a direct consequence of the user input, Opera is now scrambling to make available version 9.51, designed to resolve all the issues introduced with Opera 9.50.

“Discover the new standard in Web browsing. Download Opera today to get the fastest and most powerful Web browser available and make the most of your time online,” is a message on the official Opera welcoming page. And while the evolution of version 9.5 over its predecessor is indisputable, the fact is that so are the many problems plaguing the browser. June 25, 2008 saw the offering of Opera 9.51 Build 10074 Release Candidate 1, and as of June 30 users can also grab Opera 9.51 RC2 Build 10080. Read More »

Dell Goes Green

Like car manufacturers PC maker’s boastings used to be all about price and performance but the times they are a-changing and market leader Dell is now talking up the future energy efficiency of its products. Dell is aiming for a 25 percent reduction in power consumption on its desktop and laptop machines by 2010 – compared with today’s models – and leading the way will be a new range of ultra small machines, previewed recently at a Los Angeles environmental conference. According to CNET News the tiny PC uses a new mini ITX form factor motherboard, codenamed Eklo, which results in a system unit box that is around 80 percent smaller than current desktops and uses 70 percent less energy.

Smarty, or should that be Qwerty Pants

It’s what every well dressed computer user has been waiting for, a pair of jeans with a built in Qwerty keyboard. It’s just the job for having a quick google when you’re away from your desktop PC.

We can blame designer Erik De Nijs for the classically styled ‘Geek’ jeans, which, you may be interested to know, also incorporates a small pair of speakers that have been sewn into pockets just above the knee, and there’s also a handy mouse but we can only guess where the joystick is kept…

Introducing the New Windows XP

On April 25, 2008, Microsoft introduced the next version of its Windows XP operating system, detailing revamped plans for the business built around the platform, a brand overhauling and the road map for upcoming products. However, the desktop version of Windows XP got no play as the Redmond company focused entirely on the embedded version of the platform. The Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2008 in San Jose was also synonymous with the introduction of the Windows Embedded Ready, a brand umbrella for the company’s forthcoming key device products. Read More »

Icon Finder General

As I am sure you know you can change your desktop icons by right-clicking on them and selecting Properties and clicking the Change Icon button, but what do you change it to? Of course you can go on line and search through the thousands of free and paid for icon banks but you may be surprised at how many icons there are sprinkled around your PC.

A freeware utility called IconsExtract managed to find no less than 18,000 icons and cursors on my office PC, and this is on a machine only three months after a full re-install! Read More »

Clear the Decks

How many times have you wanted to just clear everything off you desk? It’s tempting, no matter how hard you try desks are like magnets for all kinds of rubbish that you somehow never get around to throwing away, and PC desktops are just the same. So, for everyone who has forgotten what a naked desktop looks like, Read More »