If you ever are given a text file which you need to pretty up (for example when importing into a program/database), there are a lot of common manipulations you might need to perform. If you do not already have a tool for this job, then a handy resource is Goformat.com. With Goformat, you can perform the following actions straight from their...

For those of us who use a laptop, there is no doubt that one of the most important components is the battery. If the battery completely dies you can always plug the system into the wall to use it, but that defeats the purpose of a laptop. Therefore, it is essential to take good care of your battery and a program which can help is the appropriately named utility:...

Mac users who make use of VLC media player and are tired of the cone icon can easily give it a face lift with the MacRabbit VLC Makeover Kit. Setup is easy enough:Find your copy of VLC in Finder Right- or control-click it and select “Show Package Contents” Navigate to Contents > Resources Drag all the icons from the downloaded disk image to the...

An interesting article I read today titled ‘Millions continue to click on spam‘ provides some good insight into why we continue to get so much spam. This article is well worth the brief read, but here are some points of interest: Even though over 80% of email users are aware of the existence of bots, tens of millions respond to spam in ways that...

The need to convert text to speech is probably more common than you think. It is useful for applications such as automated systems, custom programs and sometimes is just fun to play with. With that said, if you ever have the need to do this, an application which can make this process easy is SayIt. AnalogX SayIt gives your computer a synthesized voice to rival...

Last year, I wrote a tip regarding Penzu which is a free online journal. This differs from a blog as all entries are private by default so you can write what is on your mind without having to stuff the book under the mattress when you are done. Since my last tip, the site has added quite a fit of features including:Integration with Flickr Easily share entries...

The past week, I ran a couple of tips which pointed out ways to automatically update or notify you of updates to programs on your system. Of course, everyone has their own method of applying updates to programs on their system, so when do you install updates to applications? Do you install the new version as soon as you know when they are available? when they...

Whenever a new version of Firefox is released, there is always the possibility that some of your add-ons will not be compatible. When this happens you can either wait for the add-on to be upgraded, not upgrade Firefox or go without the extension. Alternately, you can easily ‘hack’ the add-on to force compatibility. The process is pretty simple: you...

Windows users are aware of Windows Update which delivers updates to the Windows Operating System, but did you know there is an add-on called Microsoft Update which delivers updates to Microsoft Office, Live Essentials and other MS products through Windows Update? The Windows Update Web site provides security updates for Microsoft Windows operating systems. The...

Whether you are a college basketball fan or not, there is something about the March Madness Tournament which gets us all filling out a bracket. One thing I noticed while browsing the scoreboard yesterday is that you can watch all the games online for free. Whether you are watching the 5-12 seed game for an inevitable upset (maybe) or want to flip over to a close...