Web Talk

If your Windows Vista Start Menu is boring, with the same stuff, static and with no fantasy, you can put some spicy on it by using Start++. This nice freeware software, created by Brandon Paddock who works on Search technology for Windows at Microsoft, extends the Start Menu Search box, the Run box and the command-line with customizable commands. It also adds nice and customizable extensions called “Startlets”. Some of these Startlets include: Launch a program, play music, Look-up something Wikipedia or Dictionary.com etc. Download it now!

Every year in the Internet are sold hundreds of domains for a lot of dollars. Some of them are quite famous, other ones are not but anyway all of them are worth so much money that the battle to get them is so hard that it is fought by offering millions of dollars at a time. Here is the list of the most expensive domains in the Internet:

1. Sex.com (sold between 11 and 14 millions of dollars in January 2006). This tells you a lot about what make the Web spin.
2. Porn.com (sold for 9,5 millions of dollars in 2007). It is incredible how the Internet is so strongly connected with sex, isn’t it?
3. Business.com (sold for 7,5 millions of dollars in 1999)
4. Diamonds.com (sold for 7,5 millions of dollars. The date of selling is unknown)
5. Beer.com (sold for 7 millions of dollars. The date of selling is unknown)
6. AsSeenOnTv.com (sold for 5,1 millions of dollars in 2000)
7. Shop.com (sold for 3,5 millions of dollars. The date of selling is unknown)
8. Wine.com (sold for 2,9 millions of dollars in September 1999)
9. Creditcards.com (sold for 2,75 millions of dollars in July 2004)
10. VIP.com: 9sold for 1,4 millions of dollars in September 2005)

If you have been following Web Talk for a while you should know something about the famous browser war which has been going on for some years. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera are fighting hard to persuade more and more users to change browser and download their latest versions, which promise to enhance our surfing experience to new and wonderful levels. So far Firefox is winning this tough competition, even if its competitors are trying their best to beat it up. But lets see together the most important features and the latest news about the most important browsers. Continue reading »

Have you ever wished to get that cute widget you saw on that website to put into your Vista sidebar? I think so. The issue is that, that nice widget can only survive in the Internet and can not be taken “as-it-is” to be used wherever you want on your computer! I mean, are you crazy or what? There are certain rules which have to be followed for the peace of mind of those people who want everything to be in order, tidy and within specific boundaries. Anyway, if you hate limits you can always download Amnesty generator for Vista! But what is that? Do you remember the nice, cute widget I told you some seconds ago? Well, now with this freeware software it doesn’t matter where it comes from (e.g. MySpace, blogs etc) and for what reason it was made. Just copy and past its html code into Amnesty generator and you will be able to use it on your Vista sidebar without missing a beat!

If you had or you will have the chance to install the new Windows Xp SP3 (Beta or RC) you could incur into an endless reboot once you turn the computer off and on again (this could also happen after downloading a hotfix). This issue will also prevent the operative system from booting to Safe Mode, cutting you off from any procedure to uninstall the just installed SP3. During this endless process the computer could return the famous Blue Screen of Death with the following error messages:

• STOP: c0000139 {Entry Point Not Found}

  The procedure entry point GdiGetBitmapBitSize could not be located in the dynamic link library GDI32.dll.

• STOP: c0000139

  The procedure entry point SMapLS_IP_EBP_24 could not be located in the daynamic link library Kernel32.dll.

This issue is due to people trying to install SP3 with build version v.3311 or v.3244 or earlier. To fix it and prevent your system from rebooting endlessly, read this trick:

• Boot from Windows CD.
• Press “R” to open up a Recovery Console’s command prompt window.
• Select the Windows Installation to use (usually is C:\Windows).
• If prompted for a password just hit enter.
• Make a backup of existing GDI32.dll in system folder with following command:REN C:\Windows\System32\GDI32.dll C:\Windows\System32\GDI32.dll.orig
• Copy backup GDI32.dll from c:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386\gdi32.dll to the system folder with the following commands:copy C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386\GDI32.dll C:\Windows\System32\GDI32.dll Replace “C” with your own system drive letter.
• Restart your computer

Source: tipandtrick.net

Some months ago I spoke of a nice freeware photo editor, which lets you wave goodbye those expensive, bulky, tricky to use software such as Photoshop. Today I want to speak about another freeware photo editor which promises you to be so easy to understand, that you won’t need any tutorial to start using it! Its name is Paint.NET and it is compatible with all Microsoft’s operative system including Vista SP1. It is also compatible with all the most famous processors such as Intel Core Duo and Quad. Pain.Net is able to manipulate all the major photo formats such as: png, jpeg, bmp, gif, tga, dds, tiff, pdn and psd. Its most important features include:

• Lots of special effects such as: 3D, rotate, zoom, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, curves, and levels. You can also convert an image to black and white, or sepia-toned.
• Lots of tools such as: curve tool for drawing splines or Bezier curves, Gradient tool, Magic Wand for selecting regions of similar, Clone Stamp for copying or erasing portions of an image, text editor, recolor tool etc.
• History window. This features lets you roll back in case you made some mistake and you wish to go back to the last good known change.
• Lots of plugins. If you wish to expand the range of tools Paint.NET has got, you can download new ones here.
• Big community. Paint.NET has been created to be used right out-of-the-box. In case you don’t know how to do something you can always count upon a strong community reachable by clicking here.
• Paint.NET uses Framework to work!

If you have a blog and you want it to run on Internet Explorer smoothly, you could have a nasty surprise. In fact, depending on what version of Internet Explorer your visitors are using, you blog could not be rendered in a proper way on their screens, making you loose a lot of readers and hours in the vain attempt to understand what it is wrong with your site. Don’t worry, it is not your fault but Microsoft’s and its nasty attitude not to respect HTML standards. To avoid this kind of surprise it could be nice if you could have a way to test your blog on the different Internet Explorer versions before putting it online. Well, IETester is the reply you are looking for. As a matter of fact “IETester allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.” If you want to download it, click here.

If you have a Wordpress blog and you want to test a new theme just to see how it looks like or if it works, sometimes you maybe at loss about how to try it without putting your blog on maintenance mode, or letting your readers see what kind of online changes you are doing while you are testing it. These two plugins I am about to speak of are meant to solve these kind of issues. User Level Themes and Theme Tester let you test your blog theme without affecting your readers’ navigation. The way they work is rather simple. Basically they redirect visitors to a known working theme, while they leave you free to test and work on your new theme. But let’s see together their most important features:

User level Theme

• Two options are available if you want to test a theme namely: “Administrator Level” and “Visitor Level”.
• User Level Theme uses Wordpress Plugin Framework to work. WPF provides a standard administration interface and allow for simplified plugin management.

Theme Tester

• Simple to use. One click and you are done.