Disable Windows Help on Windows 7 and 8

What’s the most annoying thing on Windows? You said it, hitting the F1 button and seeing the Help window appear. Which, let’s be realistic, no one uses, no one reads, and everyone curse when appears. If some of you are used to tweak your Windows, you should remember that on Windows XP there was the “Help and Support” service, by disabling it the Help window will never appear again… sadly in recent versions of the OS this is no longer the case.

That’s why we most go deeper, into the root of this evil and remove it completely. It’s located on C:\Windows under the name of HelpPane.exe. Just change the name to something else, it won’t bother you again.

Now, two things to consider here:

1. If you are not able to change the name of this file (system protected), use Unlocker.
2. When changing the name, keep it similar to the original. Add something at the beginning (like the image) or add a .old at the end.

Changing the name back will bring the help back with any issue whatsoever.

Disable Sticky Keys on Windows, permanently

I hate sticky keys, I actually do, and I’m too lazy to find a good way to disable it, that’s why I prefer to go to the root of the problem and get rid of it, for good. And since there is no Sticky Keys service or .exe, we must focus on the source: The ease of access center.

Of course, it’s not the Ease of Access center, is it’s ability to show you popup messages or dialogs whenever something activate it. But if you don’t use it, then you’re good to go.

Go to C:\Windows\System32, search for the file EaseOfAccessDialog.exe. You need to rename it, any way you can, change the name to whatever you want.

Two things:

1. If you don’t know how to change the name, I recommend using Unlocker.
2. Don’t change the name to something weird, try to keep it original. Add something at the beginning (like the picture), or add “.old” at the end.

Once this is done, the dialog won’t popup again. And don’t worry, you will still be able to access the Ease of Access features if you want to.

Goodbye Google Reader

Today is the last day for Google Reader, tomorrow it will be no longer available. It was launched on October 7, 2005, almost eight years ago, and I’ve been using it since 2007, around 6 years give or take, and it was one of the most amazing tools to be updated, share topics with friends, comment these topics, save for read later, check trends, browse for stuff, manage the blog you followed… it was amazing.

Sadly, all of this comes to an end today, tomorrow we will only find a 404. In fact, in my case, when I type the letter “r” on Chrome, it takes me immediately to Google Reader (reader.google.com), and it became the most browsed site in my history ever.

There is a lot to say about it, but I like to keep things short. Farewell, Google Reader, you will be missed.

Fixing Drag&Drop Images in Photoshop for Windows 8

This is a common problem for new Windows 8 users, and it’s that you won’t be able to drag and drop images into Photoshop the way you did it on W7. But as everything, there is a simple fix to it.
Open regedit. You can either press Windows + X, right click the bottom left corner, or open the “run” prompt and type “regedit”.
Once it’s open, head to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Now look to your right, you should see a Enable LUA key, it’s binary and set to 1, you need to change it to 0.

Finally, proceed to restart your PC to get the result.

Delete input languages on Windows

As I posted, you can prevent or at least fix Windows’ input language switching with some minor tweaking, but that’s is only mostly useful for people who use several languages, for people like me who only use one input method, I rather remove all the ones I don’t use.

First click on the language bar at the right bottom of the screen > Change language preferences. With the language window open, click on the language you want to edit >

On the new window you should see the input languages on the second section, is easier as clicking “Remove” on the ones you want to delete from your system (you can add them back later if you want to).

Then click save. From now on the input language won’t change… for good.

YSK that now Imgur has a Meme Generator

Exactly as the title says, Imgur, one of the most awesome and useful image hosting sites is now allowing it’s users to easily create memes fast and easy. And that’s it… A meme creator.

You can access it from over here.

Full actual history here.

Avoiding the language bar from switching languages

As someone who doesn’t need to change languages on Windows, I found this feature completely useless and irrelevant. But the problem is not the actual functionality, but the keyboard shortcut that can annoy you if you press it by accident… and that happens a lot.

I like to keep a clean taskbar, and the language bar is one of the first things I remove, so I mainly use the keyboard to switch languages. And since it sometimes changes without my authorization, I had to find a way to prevent it permanently, or fix it really quick.

One way to avoid this is by changing the shortcuts from “Ctrl + Shift” into something else, but sometimes a program will take care of changing it without your permission or you just going to press the button by accident. Of course, that shortcut only switch between languages, meaning that if we change it and the language switch by itself or by magic, we must remember it or activate the language bar just for that.

What you may not know is that you can both remove the shortcut to change the language and assign a keyboard shortcut for each language you have installed for a quick switching.

Just as the image above, click on your language bar, then “Change language preferences”. Once in the language configuration menu, click on “Advance settings”, to the left.

In there you head down and click on “Change language bar hotkeys”.

A menu will popup, on it you’ll see your languages and the hotkeys for each of them and the one to switch between languages. What you need to do first is remove the hotkey that allows switching, this can be done by clicking on “Change Key sequence” and then marking on “Not assigned”.

*If you can follow those simple instructions, look for someone that can.

Now, we need a backup plan in case everything fails, that’s why we’re going to assign hotkeys to the only language we want to use or one for each language we use. We’ll do the same we did above, click on a language, then on “Change key sequence”, assign one and hit Ok.

By doing both of those things, you can at lest be confident that the language won’t be changed by accident and even if it does, you have a quick way to fix it.

Or if you’re a extremist like me, just remove all languages except the one you’re using, it’s easier.

YSK about pressing K instead of the Spacebar on YouTube

While playing a video, or any media, on VLC or Windows Media Player hitting the spacebar is the way to go to pause it immediately. You don’t even think about it, just hit it without looking, and then press it again to resume it. YouTube offers this as well, you can just hit the spacebar to pause a video, but the problem is that you MUST have focus on the video, otherwise it will scroll down instead of stopping it.

But good news, everyone, there is a workaround, instead of hitting the spacebar, you can just hit the letter K and the video will pause/resume without any complication and you don’t even need to have focus on the video.

From any part of the page, just hit K and the video will pause.

Does Defragmenting your PC really improves performance?

Yesterday I posted that cleaning your registry won’t improve your performance. Today I want to debunk/confirm the other myth: Defragmentation.

First of all, yes, at some level, it does, but the real question is: Do you even know what Defragmenting actually is?

This image to the right is the most popular, amazing, and clear definition of what defragmenting really is:

“…organizing the contents of the mass storage device used to store files into the smallest number of contiguous regions (fragments). It also attempts to create larger regions of free space using compaction to impede the return of fragmentation.”

As simple as that: Defragmentation is the fix for fragmentation.

Why “defragmentation”? Well, it all starts with the word “fragment”; whenever a file is being stored in a storage device, there is a chance of it not being able to exist as one continuous block, but instead since there may be files in the way, the file is divided in as many parts as necessary, AKA, fragmented.

What you do when you defragment is fix this fragmentation, merging the files that are separated into one continuous block. There are many different methods that disk defragmenters use when doing it’s job, but the popular consensus is moving all files to the beginning of the disk. This is done for two different reasons: (1) New files will be created after the defragmented ones, and (2) the hard drive head won’t travel to the end of the disk searching for files, making it faster to get your files, AKA, better disk performance.

Now, let me sum it up for you: Does defragmenting your PC really improve performance?

It doesn’t improve CPU performance, nor RAM performance, your games won’t render better… the defragmentation improves disk performance.

And this is something important to keep in mind, Disk Performance. What exactly disk performance is? Well, a very raw way to explain it simple is “Read/Write Speed”. That’s it, the improvement when reading from and writing into a storage device.

Of course, lately, this is not that necessary nor urgent. With the coming of flash drives and SSD drives defragmenting is becoming less relevant and users don’t feel the need to defragment because the read/write speeds are quite awesome considering the old IDE drives.

But again, disk performance, how it improves overall performance?

Reading: each time you open Computer, or want to see the size of a folder, or try to see the thumbnail of an image, you are making requests to the hard drive to read these files and show them to you, whether if it’s the size of a file or your beach photos. A faster reading can give you faster responses.

Writing: when you create a file, install a program, or open a website, you are storing files into your drive, that at some level can be compared to burning a CD. A faster writing can give you, again, faster responses.

Defragmentation can improve both speeds, can put files into one chunk and into an specific region of the disk, making these easy to read. And since files are not scattered, files can be written in one continuous block instead wasting time separating them.

 

In conclusion, unlike the old debunked myth of cleaning your registry, Defragmenting your drive can, in fact, improve your disk performance. If you have an SSD drive, you have no obligation to do this at all.

Open Reddit NSFW Links in Incognito Window

Well, I guess the tittle sums it all up. “Open Reddit NSFW Links in Incognito Window” is the name of a Chrome extension that does exactly that, when you click a post on reddit classified as NSFW or Spoiler it will automatically open on a Incognito Windows instead of a new tab or that same window. It does everything automatically, the only thing you need to do is click the link and you’re done.

But even if it sounds good, it has something on it’s options that we must check after installing, and I quote:

Open Reddit NSFW Links in Incognito Window converts links to Amazon.com on reddit to my affiliate link by default. This helps me earn a tiny bit of money if you buy something on Amazon.com within 24 hours of clicking an affiliate link.

That option comes Enabled by default, but you can deactivate it if you want. It’s your call.

In case you want to see it in action, here’s a short video about it.

Link | Open Reddit NSFW Links in Incognito Window

Does cleaning Windows Registry actually improve performance?

No, it doesn’t.

If you’re looking for a longer and more detailed explanation, keep reading.

To begin with, Windows Registry, what is it good for? From Wikipedia:

… hierarchical database that stores configuration settings and options on Windows. It contains settings for low-level operating system components and for applications running on the platform that have opted to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, SAM, user interface and third party applications can all make use of the registry. The registry also provides a means to access counters for profiling system performance.

TL, DR: The registry is a compilation of Windows settings and configurations.

So, again, is performance affected by “cleaning” the registry? No, is not. You can modify some keys to improve performance, but “cleaning” will do nothing.

The myth started back in the old days, when Windows was young, modifying the registry was a pretty common practice due to network limitations and PC power; gamers modified TCP ports to improve network connectivity or maintain a stable connection, and PC tweakers will mess with it to improve performance a little (back there, even a little was a lot). But deleting keys does not affect actual performance; most of the time when a key is delete it, the program using it will replace it with the same and with default settings.

When you uninstall a program, the program should delete the keys that were added to the registry when it was installed, but many times this is not the case and the keys remain as invalid ones. These invalid keys won’t affect Windows at all because the program using/accessing them is no longer installed, ergo, they will remain there and just take a few bytes of space. Even if removing them, a few bytes of size are nothing to worry about.

Now, these invalid keys could barely and rarely affect Windows performance, yes. This is because in the very rare case that an program is looking trough your registry for an specific key, it will take longer to find it because there may be invalid keys on the way. But usually programs or Windows know where their own keys are located or where are going to be installed/created, so the performance in this case is not affected by them.

But as I was saying, the myth started way back in the old days. Remember when hard drivers had a size of 32Mb or even 64Mb?! In those days, you need to save as much space as you possibly could, and since drives were slow, well defragmented files were necessary to keep the system at full speed. These invalid keys could possibly have little but clear effect on the performance due to these files (where registry is stored) being defragmented, but today this is completely irrelevant.

The increase of performance we may get by removing invalid keys from our registry it’s so little, so miserable that in most cases you won’t even get a before-after difference, it will just be the same. The question we should ask ourselves is how, or why, the registry affect performance? Let me start by saying that the effect is little, small, minimal, so miserable that I’m just answering this question as a formality.

The registry is, in fact, loaded into your RAM as soon as your system starts, so let me quote:

The key located by HKLM is actually not stored on disk, but maintained in memory by the system kernel in order to map all the other subkeys. Applications cannot create any additional subkeys. This key contains four subkeys, "SAM", "SECURITY", "SYSTEM", and "SOFTWARE", that are loaded at boot time […] A fifth subkey, "HARDWARE", is volatile and is created dynamically, and as such is not stored in a file […]. On Windows Vista and above, a sixth and seventh subkey, "COMPONENTS" and "BCD", are mapped in memory by the kernel on-demand and loaded from %SystemRoot%\system32\config\COMPONENTS or from boot configuration data, \boot\BCD on the system partition.

What does this mean? That even if part of the registry has a local file size, the main part of it that could affect our performance is loaded into RAM and it doesn’t affect it because it already has a pre-loaded set of keys to load, so it won’t actually affect your performance… at all, specially if you have 8Gb of RAM or more. And the files that are stored, if fragmented, defragment them if you want.

 

TL, DR: if your registry takes 1Gb in space, reinstall Windows.

Defragmenting System Volume Information on Windows

Are you having troubled while defragmenting System Volume Information? Well, let me start by saying that no defragmenting software will even touch System Volume information. This folder is related to Windows’ System Restore service and it’s restore points; it’s system protected and can’t be manually modified. You can’t change the privileges to edit or delete it manually, but there are ways to defragmenting it…

As I said, the folder is managed by Windows System Restore, so if you aren’t running this service, make sure to start it (Volume Shadow Copy and Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider).

When the services are up and running, right-click Computer > Properties. Go to System Protection. You should find that at least one disk has it’s protection on. Proceed to deactivate AND delete everything.

In case you don’t know how, click on Configure. On the next window, proceed to click on “Disable System Protection” and on “Delete”, just in case. When hitting “Ok” a message will appear, read it, click on Yes.

At this point your System Volume Information folder should be nothing but a few kilobytes. If not, the restore points were not deleted correctly. Do it again and/or use CCleaner. Do everything you can to bring it down.

There is a tricky part; most of you will want your System Restore back ASAP, and that’s cool, but if you re-enable it there is a chance that the folder appear again… and fragmented. So to prevent this you must immediately defragment your Hard Drive after deleting the restore points. Not files independently, but all the drive.

By doing this, you make sure that when the restore points are created there is enough continues space to be created and without the need of fragmenting the files within the folder.

Protect your privacy while browsing with 3 extensions

Lately browsing comes with a price, a really big price: Ads that track you. And that means exactly what you think: an ad can track your location, your browsing history, your likes, and more. The only purpose for this is to know what do you like and know which ads to show you. This is a complete violation of privacy, and even though Firefox and Chrome have a “Do not track” option, we can never be to careful.

• Adblock Plus. This is one of the most amazing extensions; it works by blocking all possible ads from any website you visit (including ads from videos). It also has a pop-up and an automatic downloads blocker. You can whitelist an specific site if you want and create custom filers.

• Ghostery.  This is another awesome and highly recommended extension. It focus mostly on stop trackers, scripts, and can even block cookies without any user interaction. Just as any ad blocker, you can whitelist some sites and/or some domains if you want. Just DON’T ACTIVATE GHOSTRANK and you should be good.

• PrivacyFix. Unlike Adblock or Ghostery, PrivacyFix focus on taking care of the information we share and helping us to keep it private. On it’s first run, it will guide your through steps to make your social networks as private as possible, it can block Google+ and Facebook plugins, and even remove the “Like” and “+1” button from any site you browse.

There are many more options to helps us remain protected on these days, but I personally consider that these three extensions are nice for average users or people with low-spec PCs.

Link | Adblock Plus | Ghostery | PrivacyFix

Be careful what you wish for - Dorkly comics

Yep, seems legit.

Link | Dorkly

Unblock region locked websites with Hola!

One of the things we all hate about YouTube is the annoying region limitations; if you’re not located on one of the approved countries, you won’t be able to watch an specific video. But even though is annoying, that doesn’t mean that we can’t see those videos. There are thousands of services, programs, proxys, and ways to do this, but I always like to keep things simple… an extension should suffice.

In this case is Hola!, which is a sites’ unblocker that allows you to access not only YouTube videos, but also any site that is blocked on your region, like Hulu, Netflix, Twitter, or even Google. Hola! is not only an extension, it also comes as an Android/iOS app and Windows program. Of course, it works by creating a VPN between your PC and a remote one, just as most services do these days.

In case you access, lets say, YouTube, and the video is still blocked, make sure to go to the extension’s settings and activate YouTube on it’s list of sites.

Try it, trust me.

Link | Hola!

You can now add images to Facebook comments

Since the week started, everyone’s talking about Facebook’s comments and a new feature that involved being able to add an image to a comment. Like this:

Of course, before starting to post images on every possible post/thread on your timeline, first read this limitations

• You can’t post pictures on comments from pages.
• You can’t post pictures to users you follow but don’t follow you.
• You can only post 1 image at the time, with text if you want.
• At the moment you can’t see the images you post as an album, so you have no privacy control for these and anyone who can see the post will be able to see your image.
• So far you can only upload images, you can’t select them from your albums.

Also, it seems that you can’t post images to all of your friends, maybe because they don’t have the feature yet or because this feature is still being tested. Either way, if you don’t have it yet, just wait, you’ll get it eventually.

Via | Addictive Tips

Enabling Right-Click button on websites where it’s disabled

A disabled right-click is a problem we rarely see on websites, but when it appears, it can be very annoying. There is no easy way for average users to trick the site into enabling the right-click again, and installing an extension or script seems like a waste of space, the best thing to do is use a bookmarklet. Just drag and drop THIS TEXT into your bookmark bar and click it when a site won’t let you right click.

Easy as that. Always keep it simple.

Bookmarklet | Enable Right-Click

Via | About.com

How to hide Network from Windows Explorer on Windows 8

As someone who doesn’t have a shared network, the Network icon on Windows explorer bothers me more than I would like to admit; I like to keep everything as simple as I can, and an useless button in my screen really annoyed me. After a few searches and reboots, I finally have the way to hide it on Windows 8 (not tested on Windows 7).

BACKUP ANY KEY BEFORE MODIFYING ANYTHING… if you want to.

To do this you need to change one key and create one on Windows’ registry. Or if you want, download this file, double click it, and then reboot your PC.

The manual operation goes like this: Step one: Launch regedit and go to the following key

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescription\{D20BEEC4-5CA8-4905-AE3B-BF251EA09B53}\

In there you’ll find a key called “Parsing name” with the value “::{F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C}”. You need to change it to “::{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}”. Like this:

 

That’s step one, for Step two you need to go to this key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\NonEnum\

In there you need to create a new DWORD key and name it “{F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C}”, set the value to 1.

After this, reboot your PC. In case it doesn’t work, please disable the Network Discovery service.

Via | TechNet

No Anti-Virus: How to check for virus on any portable devices and delete them, manually

Most viruses are “shared” trough users: users who connect their USB drive to any infected PC, then connect it on any other, and infect that one (if not infected already). Sometimes the AV won’t do anything, just stand there, eating resources, and not protecting you. Many DO protect you, but while working on a company I found that average users ignore many of the AV notifications, so whenever I install them, I set it to “automatic deletion” if possible. In case there is no “automatic deletion” the best thing to do is teach the users how the notifications work and how to protect themselves.

Now, knowing that, can we trust an AV to protect us from viruses on devices? Sometimes, yes. Viruses evolve as fast as AVs, so an outdated AV = high risk of infection… Of course, this only applies IF you trust 100% that the AV will protect you, but what if not? What if the AV wouldn’t be able detect threats correctly? It’s up to you to do it.

So, how to check for viruses on portable devices without an Antivirus? First of all, most viruses are hidden and Windows’ Explorer is set to don’t show hidden files and folders by default, and most users don’t change this, meaning that most users can’t see hidden files, so let’s start with this premise.

DO NOT OPEN THE USB DRIVE UNTIL YOU SCAN IT.

To see hidden files and folder (in this case a virus) you can either make them visible or use a third-party program. I don’t like interacting with a virus, so I rather use a program to SEE, and only see if and where the virus is located. The best part is that there are two programs that you can use to see these files:

• Chrome
• WinRAR (or any WinRAR-like: 7-Zip, PeaZip, etc.)

Take this as an example:

• Windows’ Explorer only shows two files: the ones that are visible, Anime (folder) and not hidden (a text file).
• WinRAR shows 3 files: Anime (folder), not hidden (text file), and hidden (text file).
• The same goes to Chrome: Anime (folder), not hidden (text file), and hidden (text file).

Now, Chrome won’t allow you to delete files, only see them. Explorer won’t allow you to delete them because it can’t see them. But WinRAR will allow you to see AND to delete these files easily. It will also let you see if a virus keeps reappearing after deleting it, letting you know if you’re already infected.

If you’re already infected, there’s nothing you can do. The best thing, always, is to re-install Windows. But since not everyone is able to do or afford this, the next best thing is to download an AV and running a scan.

If you’re not infected, just delete the hidden files that weren’t created by you. Most common threats/things to delete are:

• .exe files.
• Shortcuts to files in the same directory.
• RECYCLER or folder with random and weird names (zqlrk, avtro, and stuff like this).
• .vb files (like in the first picture).
• Applications with folders as icons.
• AUTORUN.INF <= You must get rid of this, one way or another. If you can’t delete it, backup your files and format your drive.
• In doubt, Google it.

This is the way to check and clean your device without using an AV. This is necessary knowledge since not all computers you’ll use can be trusted. The best part is that you can prevent viruses and delete them as well.

Disclaimer: I’m not saying than an Anti-Virus is useless or not necessary. I’m just teaching how to protect ourselves… or at least that’s the idea.

Is an Anti-Virus really necessary?

This is not a popular question since people think that they really NEED an Anti-Virus, and I have a personal answer to it:

No, an Anti-Virus is not necessary.

That’s it. Simple as that, an Anti-Virus is not necessary for you as a user to have a pleasant experience on whatever device or platform you’re working with. A perfect example is Linux or Mac OS; these do not need an Anti-Virus and most users using this platforms will agree with that.

“But what about Windows?” What about it? I’ve been working without an Anti-virus for about 6 to 7 years. When I started working with computers I did have one, but later I realize that I didn’t trust any AV, every time I trust them to protect me, they fail and ended protecting myself. After 2 years using AV (I used AVG, BTW), I realized that it was a memory hog; sometimes it took over 200mb and I only had 768 back then, I could barely do anything, and I was forced to shut down the AV to play games or browse normally.

Later on I disabled the AV from startup, only used it to do a check on a USB drive or things like that. Then I learn how to check for viruses without using explorer, and that was the last day I used one.

For a while I was extremely careful, and today I still remain careful, but not careless. One thing I do is help people deleting viruses from their devices and restoring hidden files and folders, or fixing anything that the virus has done. And you don’t need an AV to do that.

In fact, an AV can’t do that (restore files and folders or most virus-related disasters), that’s something you need to do by yourselves, and in most cases, you’ll pay a technician to do that, and that’s just wasted money.

So, what’s this ranting is all about, you ask? Well, I want to help people feel secure (with or without and AV), and the only way is by showing ways to prevent the attack of viruses or undo the problems a virus had caused, that’s why I’ll try to write several posts (as many as necessary) to show these ways:

• How to clean a USB drive manually
• How to know if a process is a virus
• Downloading cracks, keygen, and stuff
• P2P
• Weird links
• Check suspicious files without an AV
• Trusted websites

And a lot of stull like that. These may not mandatory, these may not be individual posts each on, but I’ll try to include all those topics and any more I can think off. I may even create a category for them and continue to post way beyond these topics are done with. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

All your Google Storage shared across Gmail, Drive, and G+

As you may know, Google took care of unifying all of your accounts’ storage into one big pile. This pile will show how much storage are shared between Gmail, Google Drive, and Google+ photos, and of course, the total of all of these together. By accessing this summary you’ll be able to check the total of your account, and if you want, you can easily pay for an upgrade. Note that you can hover over the graph to see individual storage.

 

Note that not all of the data that you have on each service is taken into account. For example, there are several exceptions, for example: on Google Drive, files you create with Docs, Sheets, or Slides won’t use up any of your storage. And on G+, photos smaller than 2048x2048 pixels are free and don’t consume storage.

And of course, you can check the storage easily on each individual service.

The Evolution of Superman’s S

Superman is an icon, he’s recognized on every corner of this world due to his popular shield; the S on the middle of his shirt. But just any superhero or brand, it has evolved from a simple logo to a more modern style. Anyway, for fans or non-fans, this infographic is pretty cool.

Imgur mirror over here.

Via | reddit

Finally! Send Video Messages on Skype

Good news, everyone, we can finally send video messages from Skype. The service is free and is available on the latest update for all these devices and platforms:

• iPhone
• iPad
• BlackBerry
• Android
• Windows
• Mac

Will NOT be available for Linux and Windows Phone 8 at the moment.

For most devices (and I guess Skype for Windows 8), there will be a “Video Message” button to send one. For the normal desktop client on Windows there’s no such thing. You need to right click the user you want to send a message and click on “Send Video Message”. Maybe later a button will be added, who know.

Via | Skype Blog

TurnedOnTimesView: Know when your PC was turned on

Nirsoft is one of the most amazing developers that you can find on the Internet. It has a ton of different portable programs that do specific things really fast and really simple. Famous for MessenPass, I bring you TurnedOnTimesView.

This is an awesome program, what is does is show when your PC was turned on, when it was turned off, and how much time it was active.  Also shows the reason (if any) for the shutdown. And for those who like to keep track of these kind of things, you can save these events as a text file and keep a backup of them.

The color legend goes like this:

• Green: Normal shutdown.
• Red: computer turned off improperly (a power outage).
• Yellow: current session.

And for those who work on IT, the program offers an extra option: the possibility to access a remote computer event log. This is only possible as long as the computer you try to access is in your network.

Note that to make this work, the Windows Event Log service must be running, otherwise it won’t work.

Link | TurnedOnTimesView

Installing Google Screen Capture on Windows 8

If you use Chrome, Windows 8, and like to screen capture webpages, you may realize by now that Google doesn’t support this extension on Win8. But as always, there is a workaround we can do to make it work.

First go to Chrome Extension Downloader, paste the Screen Capture link, and download it. Or here’s the extension on Google Drive. Once it’s downloaded, go to chrome://extensions. Once there, just drag the extension to that page and drop it.

And when the window asking to install appears, install it, and you’re done.