Windows 7 Facebook Gadget

Are you on facebook? Are you running Windows 7? More and more people can answer both questions with a clear “yes”.

You should definetly grab the facebook gadget for Windows 7 if you are on facebook a lot:

Windows 7 Facebook Gadget

It takes a little tweak to make it work, but it’s worth it.

Connect with us through Facebook!

Facebook’s popularity is exploding, their stocks are rising like crazy and there’s no end in sight.
I jumped on the bandwagon and I am proud to say that you can now connect with us through facebook. You can easily login using your facebook account. By the way, all data are stored only facebook servers, so it’s 100% safe to do that! Once you logged in you can post comments and access our member-only pages. Best of all, you can also login to our forums using your facebook account!

Download Facebook Sidebar Gadget

It’s a neat little gadget for your sidebar or your desktop. You can download the Windows 7 facebook gadget here:

Windows 7 Facebook Gadget

How to make it work:

This one is a tricky one to get working, you have to add login.facebook.com and www.facebook.com into your IE trusted sites. Then you need to use the gadget to sign in and set the required permissions to allow it access to your facebook account. Not an install and go gadget like most, shame the writer hasn’t provided instructions. As for the gadget it seems quite useful, certainly saves logging in all the time or leaving facebook open permanently. Will use it for a time and see if its a keeper, does take up a large amount of space on the sidebar, could possible be smaller with more flyouts.

Logon Screens for Windows 7

Have you changed your logon screen already? There are many logon wallpaper around that will help you to tweak and customize your logon screen.

One of the best tools to change your logon screen on Vista and Windows 7 is LogonStudio by Stardock. It’s a free tool that comes in handy whenever you want to change your logon background.

You can download LogonStudio for free over at CNET:
LogonStudio Download @ CNET

It says “for Vista users”, but in this case it will run smoothly on your Windows 7 system as well. Windows 7 is using the same kernel as Vista that’s why there aren’t many compatibility issues anyway.

Download 1250 Logon Screens

Basically you can use your wallpaper collection for your logon backgrounds. If you don’t have a wallpaper collection, you should download our Windows 8 Wallpaper (1250 logon background wallpaper!).

Stardock’s LogonStudio

Stardock, the developer of LogonStudio, also offers a lot of great logon screens:

If you are interested in tweaking Windows 7 to it’s maximum, you should check out Stardock’s Object:

Object Desktop Ultimate

Any real tweaker already owns it, it’s a package of the best tweaking utilities for Windows Vista and 7:
WindowBlinds (more Windows 7 themes), DeskScapes (Animated Wallpaper), DesktopX, SkinStudio (create your own skins and themes), ObjectBar (fancy docks, sidebars and more), etc.

Windows 8 Theme for Vista

The 22nd October is approaching quickly. That also means that we have to think about the successor of Windows 7, Windows 8.

We will soon launch Windows8themes.org – a site dedicated to Windows 8 themes & news.

Anyway, some designers are hard at work and have created an awesome visual desktop theme for Windows Vista that has been inspired by Windows 8.

Windows 8 Theme for Vista

Download Windows 8 theme

mufflerexoz from DA created this Windows 8 theme, you can freely download it here:
Windows 8 theme for Vista – Download

Windows 8 Release Date

Oh, I want to give out a warning. We can expect Windows 8 in 2012 or later, therefore there haven’t been any leaks at all and there won’t be any leaks for a while. That’s why you should stay away from any leaks for now, because they are all fakes and probably contain viruses and trojans.

We will keep an eye on any Windows 8 leaks and will inform you here. Of course we will also post any new Windows 8 themes and add them to our site. If you are a theme creator yourself, feel free to submit any themes to our site, either Windows 8 or Windows 7 themes. For Vista themes, you should go to our sister site vistadesktopthemes.com

Looking forward to the release of Windows 7 now! Hopefully Microsoft will keep up the good work and make Windows 8 even better.

Change Boot Order in Windows 7

Would you like to change the boot order in Windows 7? It’s very easy and doesn’t require a lot of work and you don’t have to modifiy the boot.ini, although you could do that as well if you are an advanced user, but let’s look at the safe & easy method first.

The “easy” method would be to change the default operating system by editing the startup settings.
Do you know where to change those options? No? Then read on…

About The Boot Order

The default OS will always be the first in your boot list. That’s why you have to change the the default OS if you want to change the boot order in Windows 7. Ifyou installed Windows Vista and then Windows 7, Windows Vista will be your default OS.

Why Do You Want To Change The Boot Order?

If the answer is “So that I can boot Windows 7″, then you should rethink your strategy. If you can only see the bootup options for a few seconds and you are not able to select Windows 7, then you don’t want to change the boot order, you want to change the boot selection time.

Set the time to 20 seconds, that will be enough to select the operating system of your choice. You will find that option directly below the dropdown-field of the default OS (compare with step 4.)

Changing The Boot Order In Windows 7

1. Open the Explorer (Windows key + E) and right-click on “Computer”
2. Click on “Properties”
3. Edit the Startup & Recovery settings as seen below:

Click on Settings ...

4. Next, you got to select the operating system of your choice from the dropdown field. I have highlighted it in the picture below:

Select the default OS from the dropdown field

Stock Gadget for Windows 7

Are you trading with stocks? Have you bought some Microsoft stocks or are you interested in DOW Jones and Co?
Well, the bad news are that Microsoft had to remove the stock gadget from Windows 7 RTM (all editions).

Dow jones, who is the provider of the “Dow Jones Industrial Average” quote feed to the Win 7 in-box stock gadget, wants a EULA agreement to be shown and accepted for any user before they can see the data from their feed in the stock gadget.

Luckily there are many 3rd party gadgets available.

Stock Gadget for Windows 7 (Windows 7 Beta)

I don’t fully understand why they had to remove the stock gadget. There are many sites that display realtime stats of Dow Jones, NASDAQ and other indizes, but I suppose it’s all about “pre-installation” without user confirmation. When someone visits a website and requests a realtime quote he does it on purpose and they have to agree to the EULA of the site. Did you know that you have to accept the TOS of a website or you are not “allowed” to visit a site? Of course no one cares, but I guess it makes all the difference.

Download Stock Gadget

Anyway, I hope that this stock gadget for Windows 7 helps your trading endeavours!

Windows 7 Stock gadget

Almost 100,000 downloads. Pretty popular gadget by now!

Microsoft to release free security software soon

Microsoft plans to release the final version of its free antivirus software soon, according to a note sent to testers late Sunday.

"The final version of Microsoft Security Essentials will be released to the public in the coming weeks," Microsoft said in the note.

(Credit: CNET News)

Microsoft first announced its plans for the product, then code-named Morro, last November, at the same time the company said it was scrapping its paid Windows Live OneCare product.

Public beta testing of Security Essentials started in June, with Microsoft reaching its goal of 75,000 testers just one day after it issued a call for them.

On a personal note, I've been using the product on several machines since June, and I like the way--unlike other antivirus programs--it doesn't make a spectacle of itself, just quietly doing its thing. I often forget it is running on a machine, yet it did save my bacon a couple weeks back when I almost caught Koobface from a friend on Facebook.

Firefox gets an early taste of 3D Web standard

A nascent technology called WebGL for bringing hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the Web is getting a lot closer to reality.

Last week, programmers began building WebGL into Firefox's nightly builds, the developer versions used to test the latest updates to the open-source browser. Also this month, programmers began building WebGL into WebKit, the project that's used in both Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome.

Wolfire Games picked up on the WebKit move and offered a video of WebGL in action.

Overall, the moves stand to accelerate the pace of WebGL development by making it easier to try out. But the technology still has a ways to go before people will be able to play Web-based versions of a 3D software such as first-person shooter video games or Google Earth.

"All of these implementations are going to have some interoperability issues for the next little while, as the spec is still in flux and we're tracking it at different rates, but will hopefully start to stabilize over the next few months," said Vladimir Vukicevic in a blog post.

WebGL is one of a several efforts under way to make Web browsers into a more powerful computing platform, increasingly capable of rivaling what software running natively on a computer can do. Even the company with the most to lose from that direction--Microsoft--is embracing it with a Web-based version of Office.

The WebGL plan emerged in March from Mozilla and the Khronos Group, which oversees the venerable OpenGL standard to let software tap into a computer's hardware-based graphics power . WebGL's roots lie with an earlier Mozilla project called Canvas 3D, a cousin of the present two-dimensional Canvas technology for drawing graphics in Web pages.

Although Google is a WebGL supporter, it's also developing a higher-level 3D graphics technology called O3D for browsers. Google is working on building O3D into Chrome, but the fruits of that labor aren't yet available.

WebGL has a ways to go, as well, but developers eager to give it a whirl should probably start thinking seriously about it.

"The WebGL working group is targeting the first half of 2010 for release of the standard, but implementations will show up before that," said WebGL programmer Mark Steele in August.

Those wanting to try it not only have to download the Firefox nightly build, but also have to specifically enable WebGL through the Firefox "about:config" mechanism. Vukicevic has instructions on his blog.