Kinect may not be the best way to play games on an Xbox 360, in spite of the fact that some games for the platform are pretty good. However, one place Kinect does shine is in controlling the Xbox interface. It features all kinds of cool gestures that make it easy to control the console without touching the controller. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could get functionality like that on your Mac? With Flutter it's actually possible, and it's easier than you might think to get it up and running.

Of course, Flutter is not as deep as Kinect, as it lacks the hardware and depth sensing technologies. However, it's a very useful tool for listening to music and watching videos, as it allows you to skip songs, rewind, fast forward, play, and pause – all with simple gestures. Instead of digging through open windows to find and pause music, you can simply perform a gesture, and save yourself some valuable time. Plus, it feels really cool stopping music with a gesture, like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Using The App

When you launch Flutter for the first time, it will run you through a quick calibration so it can learn how you perform the gestures. This takes just a few seconds, as there are only a few gestures you need to know. In case you happen to forget, I will remind you of the gestures again:

• Hold palm of hand towards webcam – Pause
• Point right with thumb with palm facing camera – Skip
• Point left with thumb with palm facing camera – Go back

The set up will also ask if you would like to let the app take photos during gestures to help improve accuracy. Personally, I prefer not to have my photo sent to the developers, but at least it asks your permission and does not take photos without your you giving it the okay.

Once you run through the quick set up process, you will be ready to use the program. Out of box, it supports a big list of programs, such as:

• Spotify
• iTunes
• Quicktime
• Powerpoint
• VLC

Most popular programs for media are available, and you will need to set your preferred program, so if you have more than one open, it will know which one the gesture should control. To set the preferred program, simply right-click or CTRL-click the app's icon in the menu bar and go to the drop down.

You may not want to have the program running all the time, and that's simple enough to fix. All you have to do is click the icon and the app will turn off. You can tell it's off because the icon will be lighter, and the light on your webcam will turn off.

Another handy option is the ability to choose whether the application automatically starts up when you turn on your Mac. If you are the kind of person who is constantly consuming one form of media or another, you will probably want this option on. If you plan to only use Flutter occasionally, turning it off might be the way to go for you. Either way, having options is always a good thing!

If you still can't get the hang of the gestures, fear not, because if you right-click on the icon you can bring up the gesture tutorial again at any time.

Chrome Extension

While I may be covering the Mac application specifically, I would be missing a key part of the experience if I did not mention the awesome Flutter Chrome extension. It offers the same key functionality as the Mac application, but it does it with web-based apps like Netflix, Pandora, YouTube and more.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a way to speed up the process of controlling your music, Flutter is the perfect application for you. It's incredibly easy to use, and let's be honest, it just feels downright cool to control your music using only your hand.

This app is now also available for windows 

community....

DOWNLOAD

The only problem with Synergy, a popular opensource tool that lets you share one keyboard and mouse between multiple computers, is that the application hasn’t been updated since 2006 and users were left stranded with many bugs. Now a bunch of developers have taken the code, added Windows 7 support, and fixed the bugs themselves.

Named Synergy+ (Synergy-plus), it is much more stable and is updated frequently whenever a new bug is discovered. There are a bunch of committers and contributors, who help in finding and patching the bugs.

On the program page you will find the link to bugs that have been fixed, among them are 7 critical bugs that were fixed instantly. A total of 42 bugs have been reported so far, most of them completely fixed.

Download Synergy+

It works on all versions of Windows after 2000, including both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Updating Windows is a necessary task to ensure security and privacy, as well as to apply bug fixes. Windows Update provides an easy and automated installation, but for someone running a network or a multitude of PCs, this could mean a lot of manual work as well as wastage of internet bandwidth.AutoPatcher Updater is a useful tool allowing a user to install Windows updates offline and on multiple computers with one download.

Recently, AutoPatcher has added support for Windows 7, making this utility even more essential.

To use this version, download the package and run the apup.exe file. AutoPatcher will build its own program from the most recent updates. You have to select all the Windows builds that you want to get the updates for.

Click Next and let the program build its executable file.

Once this is complete, a new file with the name autopatcher.exe will be created in your initial download folder (the one where you ran apup.exe from). Run this new file, agree to the license terms and tell the program which updates you want to download and, optionally, install.

This is a portable tool, hence the updates you have downloaded using this can be applied to other systems simply by transferring them to a USB or optical drive and executing on the target machine. You also have the liberty to grab updates for other versions of Windows than the one you have.

Download AutoPatcher

[via Lifehacker]

File viewers are these days abundantly available, with many great solutions offering a wide range of functions. Perhaps one of the most popular ones out there is Total Commander Lister, which offers a wide variety of plugins and file type support. Today, we bring you something better, with the name of Universal Viewer.

Universal Viewer is an advanced file viewer with wide range of formats supported, including common ones like text, binary, unicode, jpeg, gif, png, and then not so common ones like doc, docx, xlsx, odt, pdf etc.

The software contains view modes for files under nine different categories:

• Text
• Binary (fixed length)
• Hex
• Image/Multimedia
• Internet/Office
• Unicode
• Plugins
• RTF/UTF-8
• MS Office

The options available are plentiful, with full control over the files being viewed in terms of their manageability. Furthermore, the customizations and tweaking offered are really advanced. The whole Options menu is dedicated for this purpose.

The viewers own configuration is done separate from plugins configuration.

Configuration options are available for the interface, file types, text, multimedia, shortcuts, history and certain miscellaneous settings.

One interesting feature of Universal Viewer is its context-menu integration with Windows. Since the application is fully Unicode-compatible, it gets displayed in Windows’ context menu right after installation, so you can call up the viewer from anywhere in the Windows environment.

All in all, Universal Viewer is pretty similar to Total Commander Lister, but differs in the following respects.

• Built-in functions of several plugins: images, multimedia, webpages view
• Support for multiple codepages: ANSI, OEM, EBCDIC, ISO etc.
• Support for text converters for DOC, DOCX, ODT, PDF etc.
• Support for user tools
• Toolbar, status bar, other interface improvements
• Auto-reloading of file on changing, “Follow tail” option
• Displaying of line numbers
• Displaying of non-printable characters
• Combined Unicode/Hex mode (call Unicode mode twice)
• Modern RegEx search library
• Print preview
• EXIF viewer

It works with all x86 versions of Microsoft Windows.

Download Universal Viewer

Even with the launch of Windows 8 looming on the horizon, there are still a lot of apps coming out that enable users to make Windows 7 look like Windows 8. Among other features and designs, the user, as well as the developer community, has been giving special attention to the lock and login screen of Windows 8. Since both, the lock and login screens, are rumored to be a lot different in the final version of Windows 8, than those included in the previous versions of Windows, people have been creating and downloading apps to get a taste of what to expect from the upcoming Windows release. Win Lock is another new open source addition to the list of utilities to make Windows 7 look like Windows 8. It replaces the default Windows 7 lock screen with the one from Windows 8, providing you with an alternative, and beautifying the appearance of your lock screen in Windows. Moreover, the application also allows you to set a custom Name, Password and Background for the lock screen. It even features the Windows 8 native clock which will be available on the lock screen.

The option to set the name and password to the application makes it to be more than just a cosmetic app. Since it can be set to start with Windows, it can also be used as a Windows lock screen replacement tool. After installation, the application runs in the system tray. Right-click its icon and select Settings to setup the Windows 8 style lock screen for use. The Setup Win Lock window allows you to enter Your Name, Set Password and Select Background from an available list. You can also set the application to launch on Windows startup. If you want to revert back to the original settings, click the Reset All Values button to restore everything back to normal.

Once the lock screen is setup, the Windows 8 lock screen will be displayed with the selected background every time you login to Windows. The native Windows 8 clock is also available on the left bottom side. The clock displays the time, day, month and date.

Double-click the lock screen to access the login screen. Enter you Password to get entry into Windows. Clicking on the Power button lets you choose between Sleep, Hibernate, Restart and Shutdown. You can perform the power actions on your PC directly from the lock screen.

Win Lock works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7.

Download Win Lock

Personally, I find the feature of Windows allowing users to disable the logon screen, totally unsecure. When you enter the password on the logon screen, it takes some time to load windows explorer and all startup programs. This can also be quite annoying and time consuming. So what is the solution?

There should be a way to auto login and then auto lock Windows, so that when you hit the Power button and return a few minutes later to login, you won’t need to wait for all those startup programs to load.

Thankfully, there is a brilliant tweak that makes it possible and is a must have for every geek out there.Auto Logon & Lock has been tested to work on both Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit) and Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit).

The installation is quite easy, I have created a simple screen cast below which will walk you through the installation and configuration procedure. You will need to reboot the system to test it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EveUO9afCyI 

the above link shows you a demo on how to make the topic happen

Using this tweak has multiple benefits, some of them include:

• Faster boot time.
• Automatically resume downloads if your computer restarts due to power failure.
• Protect ‘Safe Mode’ and ‘Safe Mode with Command Prompt’(Existing Auto Logon methods leave Safe Mode unprotected).
• It locks the desktop before Windows Explorer is started(Other methods auto lock after all startup programs have finished loading which can take several minutes).

Download Auto Logon & Lock

Notepad is the most basic text editor available for use in Windows. It is meant to provide users with the most basic options for editing text-only documents, such as cut, copy, paste, word wrap, change font etc. There are no options to include and edit images, include page margins etc. For those type of advanced editing functions, Microsoft Word in the Office installment can be used. Previously, we have covered some very good applications that provide you with an alternative to the default Notepad, such as Glass Notepad, a free portable notepad for Windows that is similar to the default notepad but its interface is transparent, and Notepad7, a text editor with all the options included in the default Notepad, but it has a different ribbon-based GUI. Today, we have another notepad for you, called Tiny Notepad, with almost the same options, albeit with a completely different user interface based on the new Metro UI of Windows 8. Keep reading to find out more about Tiny Notepad.

Tiny Notepad has all the simple document editing options included in the default Notepad, such as Word Wrap, changing into different fonts, cut, copy, paste, undo and redo. The prominent different is in its interface. The interface is completely based on the Metro Style UI included in Windows 8. The main interface comes with a black bar at the top with a white typing area. You can access the Settings menu from the top left, while options to minimize and maximize the application to full screen view are available at the top right corner.

Clicking the Settings button opens up options to Activate Word Wrap, Set The Font and Resize Window. Activating and deactivating Word Wrap is done directly from this menu.

Choose Set the font to change the font according to your preference. You can change the font style as well as its size. A preview pane at the bottom shows you how each selected font looks like before applying it on to the complete document.

Select Resize Window in the Settings menu to resize the application Window. Just grab the edges, set the size according to your preference and click I’m done! to save the size settings.

The fact that you cannot change the Window size directly using the interface edges is a bit of a turn off. Moreover, there are no options to make the font Bold or Italic. The application is still in beta, and hopefully the developer will look into these issues. Tiny Notepad works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Download Tiny Notepad

Text editors come in more than packs of dozens, such is their abundance. Along with the many commercial offerings, free software are also available in huge numbers. Letterpress is an open source offering that covers not only basic text editing functions but also brings many advanced features like file comparison, HTML and PHP support, mathematical operators, and much more.

Letterpress is as simple as it can get. You get a text entry area, a handful of menus and that’s it. A notification bar at the bottom of screen shows line and column information, encoding, tabs information, etc. All the options are found under the various menus.

The format menu let you control elements of Whitespaces, Word Wrap, Modes, and let you choose font and colors among various other options. Also possible is to customize options like Word Wrapping, and choose to show/hide whitespaces, align with margins etc.

The most powerful options come from the Tools menu, where you can add macro support, use workshop to launch grammar forge, theme designer etc, compare files, perform HTML and PHP operations and more. Letterpress offers a lot under the hood, and almost any kind of user can take out of it as much as they want.

Finally, please note that the software is in beta, so bugs can be expected. It works with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download Letterpress

Note: When downloading, please make sure to download the letterpress executable and not the src.7z file, as this is only the source code.

Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system comes with a lot of features and programs that may be useful to some (that’s why Microsoft put them there in the first place), but to most average users, these features will only serve to consumer unnecessary hard disk space. Unfortunately, Windows itself does not provide any option for their removal. Win Integrator is a free utility that allows a user to perform a customized installation of the Windows 7 and choose what to install and what not.

Win Integrator is very easy-to-use and user friendly. The main window requires the user to provide the Windows 7 installation files.

Once the input files are in place, the rest of the tabs become available. The Updates tab allows the user to choose which Windows updates to install, and the Drivers tab allows selection of drivers. The Remove tab provides the option for removal of Windows programs such as Internet Explorer, Games, .NET Framework, certain drivers etc.

The Features tab allows the user to remove or keep Windows features such as Indexing Service, MSMQ Server (the list is long) from the customized installation image. Then comes the Apply tab, where the user has to confirm and apply the changes made to the installation file. Finally, the last tab lets the user create the custom-tailored ISO, which would install Windows 7 in the way you want it to be.

As you would have noticed, the software works in a very systematic method, taking step-by-step approach for every item as it should be. The customization options themselves are plentiful, but be advised that you should not remove something unless you are sure that you will not need it again.

Win Integrator comes with English and German language support. Although it has been marked as a Windows 7 custom installation tool, it should work fine with other versions of Microsoft Windows as well. Pre-requisites to run this software are Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile Beta 2 and Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7 or Windows® OEM Preinstallation Kit (OPK) for Windows® 7.

Download Win Integrator

Have a nice weekend!

image sources (google)

So many people have asked about the small Google rectangular icon next to Windows 7 Start Orb on my taskbar that I have finally decided to publish this post. Originally, Windows Quick Search Box was introduced for Mac only, but Google has included it as part of Internet Explorer 8 toolbar too.

Google has a history of sneaking small features into their products without anyone noticing. Mind you, Google Quick Search Box is not a small feature and is one of the many reasons for the increase in my productivity. If you have no idea what I am taking about, have a look at the screenshot below.

Click the Google Quick Search icon or hit a hotkey(can be changed) to bring up Google Quick Search box, now type any keyword and it will search the web, default browser address bar, local drive, and your desktop. The recommended results at most time are quite accurate.

Google includes this features as part of IE8 toolbar and is not included in Firefox toolbar. You don’t need to use IE8 after installing this toolbar, I am a Firefox/Chrome user myself.

An important question arises, when you search for any term, will it open Internet Explorer 8 browser to display the results? No, it will open the search results in the Windows Default Browser(it could be FF/Chrome/Opera/Safari) or you can manually select it by right-clicking the Google Quick Search icon in the taskbar(see screenshot below).

In layman’s term, Google Quick Search can search in your desktop, on the web, in local drive(windows indexed) and in your default browser’s address bar, thus, making it one powerful must-have search tool for every Windows user. Also it will save you the headache of having to open the web browser before initiating a search.

You can install the Internet Explorer 8 toolbar from the following link, please open it using IE8, opening it in any other browser will not work since you will be redirected.

Google Internet Explorer 8 Toolbar

Have a great weekend!

image sources (google)....

Hi folks, in this post i'm going to tell you how to make windows 7 genuine. The files i have kept for download is for windows 7 ultimate. normally windows checks the purity of the OS by the help of WAT (Windows Activation Technologies). So by removing the WAT we can make windows 7 a genuine one. We do not need any kind of activator application etc.,

STEPS TO FOLLOW:
     1) Run remove WAT with admin crtls.
     2) Click remove WAT.
     3) Restart your PC.
It's done. If this does not make your PC genuine, after removing te WAT run the registry file given in the archive and ADD it to the registries...
Feel free to comment. Thanks

Click here to download WAT remover.

Welcome readers. The metro twit is a best application for browsing twitter specifically.

Twitter as we know so many people in it. Twitter is a place for our own tweaks where we can follow or let others follow us. But the normal desktop version of twitter is so boring these days.
So here is a new way of browsing twitter inspired by metro twit on Windows 8. In Windows 8 twitter client is free with ads. And without ads if you upgrade it to plus. But you nee to pay for it. Some of my friends say upgrading to plus is worth it. But what i think is just for a new look of twitter we need not pay. Or we can just stay calm for some days and pirate it in its own free full version. Currently there are no stable cracks available for this application. As soon as it comes you can download it by yourself. :):)

So with this application you can follow, unfollow, tweak, retweak, change themes, color schemes and so more.
See you can do what you do in normal twitter. This is just like a skin to twitter. I'm writing like a answer for a question in exam just to extend the paragraphs to the end of the pictures i used. Hehehehehehe.... :). Fine i can't extend any more so here's the link from the manufacturer....

Clck here to download METRO TWIT

It’s a bit of a shame that the Windows Search experience has been lackluster in recent OS releases like XP, Vista, 7, and even (in my opinion) 8. Luckily, for the savvy user, there are a whole mess of third-party solutions that make searching the Windows file system what it ought to be: simple and effective.

Picking at your brain on this subject, the first alternative that should come to many minds is Everything. This piece of software is to searching your Windows PC as Dropbox is to file synchronization. There are others though, and neglecting those options could mean you’re missing out on something you find to be even better!

Another of our writers, Aaron, recently pulled through with an article that introduces users to seven pieces of software in this class. In the comments, I stumbled across a recommendation by one of our great readers: UltraFileSearch. After checking out the software, I thought it’d be right to feature a full article on it and introduce everyone else to the extensive round of features.

Click here to check out the official UltraFileSearch website!

First, be advised that UltraFileSearch is available in two versions: Standard (shareware) and Lite (freeware). In this article, I’ll be covering the Lite edition. If you’d like to check out the differences between both versions, check out the Features page of their page.

UltraFileSearch is advertised as being compatible with the following versions of Windows:

• Windows® NT 4.0
• Windows® 2000
• Windows® XP
• Windows® Server 2003
• Windows® Server 2003 R2
• Windows Vista®
• Windows® Server 2008
• Windows® 7
• Windows® Server 2008 R2

However, I tested it out on Windows 8 Pro (64-bit) and it worked just fine.

Both versions are available in hard installation and portable forms. As always, I go for the portable version. The download is only 1.90 MB in size and will take you a quick second. Afterwards, simply extract the archive to a folder of your choice.

Getting comfortable with the interface isn’t difficult. While there are other search applications that are more stylish and glossy, UltraFileSearch Lite is aesthetically plain.

Just looking at the above screenshot, you can see many of the features available to you in UltraFileSearch Lite:

• Search by Mode, either Simple or Wildcards for more efficient searching.
• Support to search external and flash drives.
• Recursive scanning of subfolders.
• Search specifically for files or folder names.

While many Windows Search ninjas may know how to utilize aforementioned features with what comes with Windows, UltraFileSearch Lite really puts it out there for you. Across the top, you should also see the Containing Text and Date and Size tabs. These are further ways to narrow your results.

Searches for containing text are really great for TXT, PDF, DOCX, and other text-based file formats. UltraFileSearch Lite supports matching words or phrases, case sensitivity, and allows you to include or exclude certain file types.

Searching by date and size can be a great substitute for wildcard searches. If you’re searching for one specific file that you know was modified, created, or last accessed in the past hour, UltraFileSearch Lite is great for pinpointing that. You can also search for files of large sizes if you’re interested in saving disk space, for example.

It should be known that UltraFileSearch Lite installs no services or anything in the background. That being said, no indexing is possible. For users who don’t want a resource-intensive search, this is great. Unlike Everything though, UltraFileSearch Lite also does not create a database of your files per search. Either way, it is just as its name suggests and very light. You’ll find search speeds to be generally slower than another application that supports these features, but any other assumptions about speed are completely dependent on the specifications of your system.

Additional features include the ability to export your search results in multiple different formats. I find the HTML format to be the most pleasing to read and scan over.

You can also export to comma-delimited or plain text formats. You can also change the view of how your search results are displayed.

Above you can see results displayed as large icons rather than a list. It’s little features like that which make UltraFileSearch Lite a pleasant experience. Another big deal about UltraFileSearch Lite is that it can search any NTFS or FAT systems. Many others don’t support FAT32. You’re also able to search by environment variables and network path names, which are two features that advanced users may find very useful.

Overall, UltraFileSearch may seem to pale in comparison to your trusty Everything, but it will get the job done better than Windows Search. It’s a free and portable application that I think is worth a try. Let me know what you think of UltraFileSearch Lite in the comments!