Ken Criscione's Blog » Programs

Reorder taskbar and system tray.

admin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:38:08 +0000

Reorder
your taskbar and system tray with Taskbar Shuffle

Windows only: In addition to reordering your Windows taskbar items, previously
mentioned Taskbar Shuffle can now reorder your system tray icons as well. As
much as I liked previous versions of Taskbar Shuffle, its footprint always
seemed a little too big to gain startup privileges. After taking a look at the
latest, though—which includes taskbar reordering, system tray reordering (by
holding Ctrl while dragging), and middle-click window button closing—Taskbar
Shuffle has more than proved itself worth the 6MB memory footprint its uses. If
you’re obsessive about organizing your taskbar, the free, Windows-only Taskbar
Shuffle is a must-have.

Analyze and visualize hard drive usage with Baobab

admin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:33:18 +0000

Analyze
and visualize hard drive usage with Baobab

Linux only: Open source app Baobab is a disc usage analyzer that
visually represents the space taken up by various files and folders on your hard
drive. Baobab is the Linux equivalent of WinDirStat
for Windows and GrandPerspective
for Mac and possesses most of the functionality of those apps. Baobab can be
used to search for and locate unusually large files, and it is not limited to
your local hard drive — it can also be used to analyze folders over FTP and
Windows shares. Baobab is a free download for Linux only and can be installed
through the repositories in most distros with the installation hook
baobab or gnome-utils.

Download TV shows automatically

admin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:41:06 +0000

Automatically

download new TV shows over BitTorrent with ted

Windows/Mac/Linux (All platforms): Freeware application ted
(torrent episode downloader) is like Tivo for BitTorrent,
providing an easy-to-use interface for setting up season pass downloads for your
favorite television shows. We’ve mentioned ted in
the past, and I’ve even posted a
step-by-step for getting the most out of ted, but since we last highlighted
it, ted has gone through some significant improvements, like its long list of
built -in shows complete with show information. When you add a show, ted will
download every new episode torrent of that show as it becomes available using
your default BitTorrent client. Ted is a free download for Windows, Mac, and
Linux. Not up to speed on BitTorrent? Check out our beginner
and intermediate
guides.

Virtual Desktop manager for Vista

admin — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 18:28:20 +0000

Virtual Desktop manager for Vista

More
Screenshots

Introduction

Vista provides developers with the new DWM based aero
interface. A new set of thumbnail API’s can be used to access some of this new
technology. This virtual desktop program takes advantage of this new API and
uses some tricks of its own to provide a powerful virtual desktop manager with a
full screen thumbnail based preview. You can have as many desktops as you want
and can seamlessly switch between them.

But wait! What if you still are
using XP? Don’t worry, Vista/XP Virtual Desktops provides support for XP as
well, although window previews are not live since XP doesn’t have
DWM.

Vista Virtual Desktops is managed by Z-Systems.
The Z-Systems website also has a Vista Virtual Desktop page.

Awards

- Up
to Down Software (Spanish)

Features

Full screen desktop/window manager/preview with full drag and drop managing
Desktop switch indicator
An infinite number of desktops
Watch the windows move in real time as you drag them around in the window
manager
Multiple monitor support
Window menus
Tray icons for each desktop
Per-desktop backgrounds
Configurable colors, fade speeds, hotkeys, etc.
Uses Vista’s live thumbnails
XP support
And much more!
Roadmap/Change
Log
The
Hack

Default Shortcut Reference

Windows Key + Z – Show the fullscreen “switcher”
Windows Key + W – Pop up the window menu for the active window
Windows Key + Numpad 1…9 – Switch to the corresponding desktop, if
it exists
Windows Key + Arrow Keys – Move to the corresponding desktop
Windows Key + Control + Numpad 1…9 – Send the foreground window to
the corresponding desktop

Current Release – 0.5

The fourth release, 0.5, is marked as a release
candidate version. This means that it is almost “production quality”. Feel free
to download it and test it out for yourself. If you notice any bugs, please post
them on the issure tracker section of this site. Any feature requests can be
posted either in the issue tracker or in the discussion forum.