I’ve recently gotten Left 4 Dead 2 to run on three screens using SoftTH. To run this, all you need is Left 4 Dead 2, and a computer that supports 3 screens. It’s a lot of fun, and highly recommended. Here are instructions and screenshots.
If you do a lot of work from the command prompt, it can be annoying having to type in the full path of the directory you want to go to every time you open a prompt. With older versions of Windows, you could run a registry hack to add the option of opening a command prompt on the right click menu.
With Windows 7, the functionality is built-in and enabled by default. All you have to do, is to shift-right click on the directory that you want to open a command prompt in, and click on “Open Command Window Here”.
A lot of times when you’re working on an infected system, it can be difficult to near impossible to get your anti-malware software to install, let alone run.
This is generally because the malware/virus/whatever on your system tries to block known programs from running that might have a chance to remove it. Here’s a few tips to get around that.
First, boot into safe mode. That keeps some of the nastier parts of the viruses from running.
Then, install the Anti-Malware. It should install under safe mode, but if not, try renaming the installer.
Once it is installed, odds are that it still will not run. Go to the directory that it is installed in, and rename the programs exe to something else. Then try to run it directly.
You should now be able to run a scan and remove the infection. Anti-Malware may not be able to remove everything, so try running something like Spybot just to make sure that everything is cleaned off.
Aldiko is an amazing freeware ebook reader for the Android. Not only can it read your own ePub format books, but it can also download free books from feedbooks, and paid books from o’Reilly.
Reading books on my Droid is great. While the screen is not as sharp as an e-ink screen, it’s still much better than most mobile screens for reading. Changing pages is accomplished by flicking the screen, or using the volume buttons. There is an inverted mode for night reading. Additionally, you can change the font and font size options to your preference.
For converting your currently owned ebooks to ePub, I’d recommend using Calibre.
This is probably old news for most of you, but I just got a Droid phone and discovered a port of Angband for it. It uses the keyboard, and all the controls work as you’d expect them too.
You can download it here.
As someone who uses a desktop and a netbook constantly, I’ve had some issues keeping everything synchronized. xMarks is an incredible Firefox plugin that keeps all of your bookmarks and passwords synchronized across your computers.
You create an account with them, and then everything is stored on their servers, and periodically their Firefox plugin syncs with the server making sure that everything is up to date. It’s completely seamless, and I’ve never had an issue with it.
Another cool feature is that you can login at the website, and access your favorites there, so if you need to get a link, but don’t have your computer, it’s pretty simple to get to it.
Personally, I don’t use the password sync, as I’m not comfortable having that kind of information all at one source, but the bookmark sync is incredible, and highly recommended.
You can download it at their official site here.
I’ve recently had the chance to use Thermaltake’s BlackX hard drive enclosure. It’s an external SATA to USB box that has some really nice features. Rather than being a standard enclosure that requires you to screw the drive in, it’s just a dock where you can plug in a SATA hard drive just like a big flash drive.
It feels pretty stable, seems fast, and supports hot-swapping as well. Anyone who does a lot of work with recovering data from hard drives, or who needs a fast, cheap way to move a lot of data should definitely take a look into this. You can buy it here.
MediaMonkey 3.2 has been released and has made quite a few improvements. It now supports jumplist support in Windows 7, along with better compatibility with it as well. Additionally, it’s added support for directory monitoring in the free version, which was previously a paid only feature.
To see a full list of changes, go to their website here.
A great new feature in Outlook 2010 is Quick Steps. It lets you quickly apply a set of commands on an email. So, if you want to have a quick step to reply and delete the email, you can do it, or you can make a quick step to forward the email to everyone in your project team and then move it to a specific folder.
The best way to think of them is as highly configurable rules that can be run on demand. Outlook 2010 comes with a few examples, and makes it very easy to make your own. They can be accessed from the main ribbon, or by right-clicking on an email.
I just finished installing the Office 2010 beta, and it’s looking like they’ve made a ton of changes since the technical preview.
I’ve not had a chance to do too much with it yet, but here’s what I’ve noticed changes with so far.
First and foremost, most of the interfaces have been cleaned up a lot. Everything is much cleaner and smoother looking. Most if not all of the placeholder icons are gone, and replaced with actual icons.
Speed has been greatly improved. Outlook 2010 seems to be much snappier, especially on IMAP.
Outlook 2010 also has added a social connector bar at the bottom of your emails. To be honest, it looks very similar to Xobni, and is quite impressive. It has an option for other social networking plugins, so it’ll be interesting to see what kind of plugins are released.
Only real annoyance is that it doesn’t support upgrading from the technical preview, so you’ll have to uninstall that first. But, it’s not that big of a deal.
I’ll have further updates as I use the program more.