Are you looking looking for an “Alt+Tab” replacement that adds functionality, cool eye candy, and isn’t the annoying Windows Flip 3D? Today we take a look at T3Desk, which is a free utility for managing application windows on your desktop.

Using T3Desk

This is a very cool free app that lets you manage applications on your desktop in 3D. You have the ability to to move them around, flip them, zoom in and out, stack on top of each other, control transparency, and more.

From the main menu you can go through and change options, manage how it starts, read FAQ, and more.

To make an application window 3D, right-click on the Minimize button. Here we show Firefox open in its normal 2D look.

Now the 3D window after right-clicking on Minimize.

You can move the 3D application windows around and stack them on top of each other.

Using the scroll wheel on your mouse allows you to zoom in and zoom out on different windows.

Here you can see several windows apps that are open and stacked on top of each other. One the Cakewalk app is maximized a bit, with medium transparency all on top of Internet Explorer.

Hover your mouse pointer over the icon on the taskbar to get a view of everything that is running.

Right-click on the app on the desktop to get the option to restore to full screen, close, or change the T3 Desk options.

It will run on all versions of Windows, but running it on Vista or Windows 7 will allow it to take advantage of Aero. Here is an example of it running on an XP machine.

Right-click on the icon in the Taskbar for a menu to restore all to their 2D state or make them all 3D and access other items.

There are several options you can change to customize the look and feel of T3 Desk. There are also some nice Hot Key combinations for the Keyboard Ninja.

Conclusion

T3 Desk is an fun and interesting way to manage multiple applications on your screen. It’s also more than just eye candy as it can actually be functional in easily increasing productivity. It will run on XP, Vista, and Windows 7 and takes up few system resources. If you’re annoyed by Aero Flip 3D or looking for an Alt+Tab replacement, T3 Desk is worth a try.

Download T3Desk

• 0 Comments

You’re probably reading this article because you’re frustrated with that CCC.exe process running in Task Manager, and you’d like to know how to get rid of it, or at least understand what it’s there for.

For example, you’ll see the process here wasting memory in Task Manager…

??????????????? ?

So What Is It?

CCC stands for Catalyst Control Center, and it’s part of your ATI video card driver package—or to be more specific, it’s part of the utilities bundled along with the drivers, and adds features like customizing your display, or setting hotkeys for different display profiles. As long as the ccc.exe utility is installed into your Program FilesATI Technology directory, it’s a legit process that can be left alone.

It’s also responsible for that icon cluttering up your system tray:

Once you’ve launched the full Control Center, you’ll see a screen similar to this one (depending on your driver version).

On my test system, there was no startup item anywhere for this process. Depending on your driver version, it’s possible that it would be included in startup and could be removed.

Get Rid of the Tray Icon

You can remove the icon easily by clicking Options –> Preferences –> Enable System Tray Menu to turn it off. Sadly, this won’t usually get rid of the process that’s running, but at least it’ll save a few resources and keep your system tray cleaner.

Note that depending on your driver version, this setting might be in a different place, but it should definitely be in there.?

?

Depending on your driver version, it’s possible this might remove the process—it didn’t on my laptop, however.

Totally Uninstall CCC.exe (and the ATI Control Panel)

You can completely get rid of the whole thing by simply going to Uninstall programs in Control Panel, and just removing it from there using the wizard—you’ll want to make sure to keep the display driver installed, and just remove the ATI Catalyst Control Panel.

You can also totally uninstall the entire package, and then reinstall without selecting the control panel. It’s up to you.

Install ATI Drivers Manually

Depending on how you removed the ATI components, you might need to re-install your drivers (without installing Catalyst). You can do so in Device Manager by right-clicking on the display driver and choosing Update Driver Software.

Once the wizard has opened, you can allow Windows to search automatically (if you aren’t a gamer this usually works pretty well). Otherwise, you can download the drivers manually, extract them to a folder, and then click the ‘Browse my computer for driver software”.

Then choose the location you uninstalled the software to, and make sure to click “Include subfolders” when checking for the driver.

Temporarily Kill CCC.exe the Easy Way

If you’d rather keep the ATI utilities installed because you use them, you can setup a shortcut to automatically kill CCC.exe whenever you want… just create a new shortcut to the following:

taskkill /f /im ccc.exe

You could even try putting this into your startup folder… or create a scheduled task instead. This is the safest and easiest method to get rid of the process without breaking anything else.

Drastic Steps You Shouldn’t Take

If you want to keep all the ATI stuff installed, but want to get rid of CCC.exe, you could simply rename the file to CCC.bak instead. This will keep the process from running, but obviously is going to break anything that would be trying to use it. Keep this as the last resort, and you should probably disable the tray item before you do this.

• 0 Comments

Are you a keyboard ninja looking for a way to do even more in Firefox with your keyboard? See how easy it is to work that ninja magic with the SiteLauncher extension.

Once SiteLauncher is Installed

After installing the extension it is recommended that you go into the settings first to make any desired changes or modifications. Here you can see the “Launcher Hotkey, Direct to Site Hotkey, & Default Shortcuts”.

To remove a website from the list, click on it to select it and then click on the “x” that will appear at the end of that listing. To change a current shortcut click on the appropriate listing, make the desired changes, and click on the “Revise Button”.

Note: The “Revise Button” will take the place of the “Add Shortcut Button” when modifying current listings.

Make any desired changes to how SiteLauncher behaves, the “Appearance” and the “Effects”. You can experiment with the appearance and effects to make SiteLauncher match up very nicely with your current browser theme if desired.

In the lower right corner you will be able to access the “Advanced Tweaks”…

These are the “Advanced Tweaks” for SiteLauncher. You can return to the “Main Options” using the button in the lower right corner.

The “Help Section” has more information concerning the hotkey combinations used to activate SiteLauncher and the shortcut links that you have added to it.

You can also enable or disable additional visual options/features in SiteLauncher such as grouping related links, mouse support, and custom icons. Notice that there is also an option to import and export your settings…

SiteLauncher in Action

Here is what SiteLauncher looked like in our example browser after some changes and modifications in the “Settings”. We changed the hotkey combination, the websites listed, single-hotkey activators, text size, and padding to personalize it.

Note: You may also use your mouse to click on the “links” in the SiteLauncher window.

If you prefer you can use the toolbar button to access SiteLauncher…just click to activate it. Note that the toolbar button is automatically added after installing the extension and can be easily removed using the “Customize Toolbar Window”.

This is the additional menu that will be added to your “Menu Toolbar”. You can deactivate it in the “Settings” (see “Advanced Tweaks” above).

Conclusion

If you love being a keyboard ninja and want to expand that to browsing a customized list of websites in Firefox, then you will definitely enjoy using this extension.

Links

Download the SiteLauncher extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

Download the SiteLauncher extension (Extension Homepage)

• 0 Comments

We haven’t told anybody before, but Windows has a hidden “How-To Geek Mode” that you can enable which gives you access to every Control Panel tool on a single page—and we’ve documented the secret method for you here.

To activate the secret How-To Geek mode, right-click on the desktop, choose New –> Folder, and then give it this name:

How-To Geek.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Once you’ve done so, you’ll have activated the secret mode, and the icon will change…

Double-click on the icon, and now you can use the How-To Geek mode, which lists out every single Control Panel tool on a single page.

At this point you might notice why this is a stupid geek trick—it’s much easier to use the default Control Panel than navigating through a massive list, and anybody that really calls themselves a geek will be using the Start Menu or Control Panel search box anyway.

In case you were wondering, this is the same as that silly “God Mode” trick that everybody else is writing about. For more on why it’s pointless, see Ed Bott’s post on the subject.

Alright, So It’s Not Really a Secret How-To Geek Mode

Sadly, this is nothing more than a stupid geek trick using a technique that isn’t widely known—Windows uses GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers) behind the scenes for every single object, component, etc. And when you create a new folder with an extension that is a GUID recognized by Windows, it’s going to launch whatever is listed in the registry for that GUID.

You can see for yourself by heading into regedit.exe and searching for {ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} under the HKCR CLSID section. You’ll see on the right-hand pane that it’s the “All Tasks” view of the Control Panel, which you can’t normally see from the UI.

You can use this same technique for other Windows objects by doing some digging around in the registry… for instance, if you were to search under HKCR CLSID for “Recycle Bin”, you’d eventually come across the right key—the one on the left-hand side here:

So if you created a folder with the name “The Geek Knows Deleted Files.{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}”, you’d end up with this icon, clearly from the Recycle Bin.

And it’s even a fully functional Recycle Bin… just right-click and you’ll see the menu:

So here’s the quick list of the ones I felt like digging up, but I’m sure there’s more things you can launch if you really felt like it.

Recycle Bin: {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

My Computer: {20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

Network Connections: {7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}

User Accounts: {60632754-c523-4b62-b45c-4172da012619}

Libraries:? {031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5}

To use any of them, simply create a new folder with the syntax AnyTextHere.{GUID}

Create Shortcuts to GUIDs

Since the GUID points to a Windows object launched by Windows Explorer, you can also create shortcuts and launch them directly from explorer.exe instead of creating the folder. For instance, if you wanted to create a shortcut to My Computer, you could paste in the following as the location for a new shortcut:

explorer ::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}

And just like that, you’d have a shortcut to My Computer, which you can customize with a different icon, and a shortcut key if you so choose.

Yeah, it’s a stupid geek trick, but it’s always fun to learn new things.

• 0 Comments

Over the last year we’ve posted a bunch of interesting wallpaper posts, and for today’s Week in Geek we’ve got the best ones lined up, as well as some very interesting Productive Geek posts, and more.

Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: The Windows 7 Edition

Friday Fun: Retro Nintendo Wallpapers

Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: the Abstract Art Edition

Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: Guitar Edition

Amazing Desktop Wallpapers: the Castle-Themed Edition

Totally Awesome Lego Wallpapers for Your Desktop

Use a Random XKCD Comic as Your Desktop Wallpaper

Dual Monitors: Use a Different Wallpaper on Each Desktop in Windows 7, Vista or XP

TinyHacker Continues Random Geekery

Since I’m pressed for time today, there’s no cool screenshots of each one, but you should definitely check them out.

• Muziic – Stream Virtually any Song or Music Video
• 12 Classic Solitaire Games
• WhatInStartup Shows Detailed Startup Info
• Clean the Notification Area Icon Cache in Windows 7
• Great Music On Demand with Grooveshark
• Spybot, Search & Destroy HiRes (Icons We Like)
• Use Revo Uninstaller’s Built-in Tracks Cleaner

Got an interesting tip you’d like to see featured on TinyHacker? Send us an email at tips@tinyhacker.com and we might feature it there.

Productive Geek Helps You Get Things Done

Over at the Productive Geek site, the readers and forum members are already contributing some really interesting stuff. For instance, have you ever wondered what those EULA agreements really mean every time you install a piece of software?

The Software License Agreement (or EULA) Dissected and Explained

You can also learn some tips to help you learn how to properly delegate when you’re at work.

7 Rules To Live By When Delegating At Work

There’s also something useful for everybody… how to save some money with a couple of great Coupon sites.

3 Useful Sites to Find Your Daily Coupons and Deals

Productive Geek Goes Mobile!

We’ve built a completely new mobile site for Productive Geek, that allows you to not only read the articles but participate on the forum. You can post topics, replies, and read through the forum right from your iPhone, iPod Touch, Android phone, or possibly other mobile devices. You don’t have to go to any special URL either, you’ll just automatically be shown the mobile site from your phone.

In the very near future, you’ll be able to use How-To Geek on your mobile device the same way… here’s some screenshots of the Productive Geek Mobile to get you excited =)

???

There’s a lot more awesome stuff coming…

Super User Questions Become Super Answers

As usual, there’s loads of interesting stuff over at Super User.

• how to report some illegal website to FBI or crime department
• Linux: rename file but keep extension?
• Installing google chrome on RHEL 5.3
• Making BASH script `for` handle filenames with spaces (or workaround)
• Looking for MD5 utility that integrates to Windows
• What is the maximum workable RAM on a modern PC?
• Player that can fade out/in a song
• slim down disk space usage windows 7
• How to clear the contents of a file from the command line?
• How do you add zero before values in excel document?

The Geek Note

We’ve been furiously building new features for Productive Geek, but we’re about to turn our attention to the other sites in the network with a lot of new enhancements, like the new Mobile How-To Geek site we’re building.

And here’s what it looks like so far… still a bunch of work to do.

Once we’re done, you’ll be able to participate on How-To Geek, including posting on the forum, directly from your phone.

• 0 Comments

It’s the end of the year, the time when everybody looks back at the year before and reflects on what happened. It’s navel-gazing time, people!

Yeah, there’s nothing really of value in this article, so you should check out our awesome Lego Wallpapers instead. I’ll try to make it quick…

Pixels and Charts and Numbers and Such!

Last year we ended up a little short of our 30 million pageview goal, but this year we smashed our goal of 40 million with ease, especially after the Windows 7 launch had the XP users scrambling for answers. I’m hoping next year that we have enough pageviews to require a 24-CPU server—really, just give me any excuse to get a server with 24 CPUs in it!

If you zoom in on those numbers you’ll start to see just how much we’ve grown… we went from 2.9 million pageviews / month last year to 4.9 million this month. If you include TinyHacker and now Productive Geek numbers, we’re way over 5mil/month for our network.

The only other interesting stat from Analytics is the number of Google Chrome users, which has hit almost 10% this month, and continues to climb—but it’s not just taking away from Internet Explorer, it’s also taken some points from Firefox as well.

So let’s take a quick tour through what happened this year…

January 2009: The How-To Geek meets Lifehacker

In January of this year, I started working as a staff writer over at Lifehacker, one of the largest blogs anywhere—and quickly realized that my writing skills needed a lot of work! Working with the crew over there has been a tremendous learning experience for me, and I’m very glad I agreed to it. Every Monday you’ll find my feature articles over there, like this week’s article: You Don’t Need to Regularly Reinstall Windows; Here’s Why.

April 2009: Mysticgeek Starts Handling the Editing

It didn’t take very long before I realized that handling a regular day job, How-To Geek, and also writing for Lifehacker was really starting to be too much to handle. Mysticgeek stepped in to take care of the day-to-day editing and much of the other administration, and freeing me up to take care of other stuff. He rocks! (literally).

May 2009: Asian Angel is Awesome!

When we found out that Asian Angel, the former Lifehacker intern, was available to work for us, we grabbed her as quickly as we could—and it’s one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. Before she came along, our readers would always complain that we didn’t cover Firefox enough—and she’s filled that void with loads of great articles about Firefox, Google Chrome, and now she’s started branching out into all sorts of topics.

It’s really more than that—she’s a wonderful, sweet, caring person that we’re just thrilled to be working with.

October 2009: TinyHacker Launched

We’ve never known what to do with all the extra random stuff that we find, so in October we launched TinyHacker, our random geek links site. It’s random! We’ve got some interesting plans for this site in 2010, so stay tuned.

???

December 2009: Productive Geek (beta) Launched

After a year of being around Lifehacker, I realized that we really need a forum to discuss life, hacking, and Autohotkey. The Productive Geek forum just launched a few days ago, but it’s going to be great.

Fun Logos and a Lazy Geek

We started out the year with a bunch of fun logos, hand-drawn by yours truly. Sadly, the time involved just got out of hand, and I didn’t keep it up all year. In case you missed them, here they are.

Valentine’s Day 2009:

April Fool’s Day 2009:

Mother’s Day 2009:

Easter 2009:

Behind the Scenes

This year we’ve completed some serious milestones—we completely upgraded the platform the server is running on, built loads of new stuff like a better email newsletter system, and created the new Productive Geek platform that we’re actually going to use to launch more new sites. All of this is thanks to Shawn, our awesome programmer. Shawn, if you’re reading this, I’d just like to say: get back to work! =P

What’s Next?

At some point in the next month or two, we’ll be launching another new site geared at IT admin types, hiring a couple of new writers, and really branching out even further.

• 0 Comments

It’s no secret that we love a great set of wallpapers around here, and when we stumbled on the first Lego wallpaper we knew what we had to do: put together another wallpaper roundup for our great readers!

You’ll probably note that not all of these images are big enough for some of today’s gigantic screens, so you’ll probably need to either tell Windows to stretch the image out, or put them on a different background color.

The first batch of images are all linked to the same place, a fun Lego-related site called BrikWars. The rest are linked from other places, but you can click on any of the images to get to the download site.

As a bonus, I found three square images that an enterprising reader could probably sew together, which would be great for a widescreen setup.

?

Enjoy!

• 0 Comments

The new Taskbar in Windows 7 is a great new feature, but sometimes you might have too many apps and not enough room. Today we take a look at Jumplist Launcher that allows you to consolidate the app launchers on the Taskbar.

Using Jumplist Launcher

Jumplist Launcher doesn’t require installation and you can run it directly from your hard drive or a flash drive and launch the executable.

After launching it you’re presented with a configuration dialog screen to begin setting up your jump lists. You can create different Groups and name them to suite your needs. You can browse to program and file directories, but the easiest way I’ve found is to drag shortcuts into Jumplist Launcher.

You can add up to 60 different Jumplist items.

After you have created the lists, make sure to pin the program to the taskbar and close out of the app. Then you can still access the items by right-clicking the icon on the taskbar.

Occasionally there are errors while adding items to the Jumplist, but the problem seems to correct itself right away, so just click OK to the dialog box. If you do get errors or find any bugs it’s recommended to post them on the developers blog.

Conclusion

For this article we used Jumplist Launcher Version 7 on Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit). It looks like this project is in constant development, and there are still a few bugs, but it works and and can be quite useful. This cool little app is a great way to consolidate taskbar launchers and save space on the Taskbar.

Download Jumplist Launcher

• 0 Comments

Navigation in Windows 7 is a lot easier with the new Taskbar, but it could be easier with everything in one central location. Mouse Extender is a free utility that allows you to navigate through Windows easier.

Mouse Extender

This handy utility doesn’t require installation and can be run from a flash drive. After you launch it, you can start building it up with different apps and other items. Right-click to access a context menu where you can add new tabs, files, web sites, and more.

?

To add programs, files and folders, just drag the icon to the Mouse Extender interface.

Here is an example of a bunch of music and media apps added to a multimedia tab we created.

It allows you to add different Windows utilities, folders, and directories.

?

You can customize where each icon in Mouse Extender points to.

The controls at the top let you to quickly access Control Panel from the interface.

You can also restart or shutdown your system from Mouse Extender and choose if the power down control is Sleep, Hibernate, or Shut Down.

Also included is a timer that will start a countdown and shut down your computer. You can set it for a few minutes up to a full hour before it shuts down.

If there are new updates when you check, a balloon notification is displayed to click on and download it.

Mouse Extender requires .net Framework 3.5 and will work on XP, Vista, and Windows 7. This is a small app which is light on system resources, but packs a lot of neat control and navigation features.

Download Mouse Extender from CodePlex

• 0 Comments

Have you been wanting Firefox’s “Flagfox Extension” goodness in Google Chrome? Now you can get it with the Chrome Flags extension.

Installation

During the installation process you will see the following message window asking for confirmation about installing the extension. Click “Install” to add Chrome Flags to Chrome.

After the installation has finished you will be presented with this tab (instead of a small pop-up message window) that provides information about Chrome Flags…

Here is a closer look at the information that Chrome Flags provides for websites.

Checking the “Chrome Extensions Page” shows that there are no options for you to worry with.

Chrome Flags in Action

As soon as you visit a website you will notice the small flag icon at the right end of the “Address Bar” showing you where that website’s server is located.

To access information about the website that you are viewing simply click (left and right both work) on the flag icon. A drop-down window will open showing the country where server is located, the IP address, and a set of clickable links for more detailed/specific information. Notice that you can also view information from WOT and McAfee SiteAdvisor for the website.

For our example we chose two of the additional information source links to look at. Here you can see the McAfee SiteAdvisor listing…

And the Google Trends information for the How-To Geek website. Definitely nice…

Conclusion

If you have been wanting that “Flagfox” goodness in Google Chrome then your wait is over. This is definitely an extension that you should add to your Chrome installation.

Links

Download the Chrome Flags extension (Google Chrome Extensions)

• 0 Comments