Jing Project - Free Visual Communication Assistant

Jing Project was included by PCWorld in the list of the 100 best products of 2008. In fact, it was placed at the final rank -100 - in the featured listing. However, if I would be compiling the list of the best products personally, I would give it the higher ranking due to its functional characteristics users get for free.

What is Jing Project?
Jing Project allows users to create instant screenshots and little narrated movies (called "screencasts") of anything that’s happening on your PC desktop, and then share them with friends.

How Jing Project can help me?
Think of Jing as a supplement to all your chat discussions, email threads, forum posts and blog entries. You download a freeware installation file on your computer, and, upon installation, it sits nicely on your desktop, ready to capture and share your stuff at a moment’s notice. Simply select an area of your screen, capture it as an image or record it as a video, and then click Share. Jing conveniently places a URL to your content which you can paste instantly into any of your conversations.

Where does Jing send my images and videos?

• Screencast.com
• A local folder
• A network drive
• Copy to your clipboard (images only)
• An FTP server
• Flickr

Is it true Jing is free?

Jing is an officially free product offering, including a complimentary Screencast.com account with 2 GB of storage and 2 GB of transfer bandwidth per month.

Developers Web Site: http://www.jingproject.com/faq.asp

Nice video presentation:

Jing Project Presentation

Customize icons on your PC

This article will hardly be able to help improving your computer performance, but it might help you to find an easy way around your data stored and programs installed on your PC. I am talking about possibility to alter look of your icons, automatically assigned by your operating system. This one of the options we rarely think as customizable, but it is.

Making new icons

Let’s first make a new icon, solely with the standard tools, build in the Operating System, in 10 easy steps:

1. Start >> All Programs >> Accessories
2. Click Paint
3. In toolbar select Image
4. Click Attributes
5. Type 32 in both Height and Width and sure that Pixels are selected under Units, and click OK.
6. Now make your design.
7. If you want to add picture, store on your PC, you can do that as well: Edit >> Paste from >> Chose square picture with 32 x 32 pixels.
8. File >> Save As. Choose name and extension ICO from the drop down listing: name.ico.
10. Save your creation.

Most of the readers would definitely choose the more advanced graphic editor available instead of Paint (which I never use myself). The actions list will be the same, but the process of the picture cropping, editing, and resizing will be much easier.

You might even use one of the many available free online icons creation tools. For example, Real World Graphics Online Icon Maker (http://www.rw-designer.com/online_icon_maker.php) or Sherv Icon Maker (http://www.sherv.net/icon-maker/)

Storing new icons

More likely, you stored your icon at the default location, which is My Documents, My Pictures, or Desktop. It might be accidently deleted or misplaced. It is recommended to move it in the save location together with you system files.

1. Go to the system folder System32 and make a new folder with name My Icons, or any other easy recognizable name you like. Note that the folder might be hidden, if the Hide system files option is activated in the Folder Properties. You need uncheck it, if you want to access the folder.

2. Copy your new icon there, and use the folder for any new custom icons you might be willing to create in the future.

Changing icons

This operation is easy and straightforward.

1. Just right click on any program or folder icon, find Properties (usually the last line in the menu) and open the Properties Window.

2. Locate change icon button to execute the option. It might be in different tabs depending on what you are working with. For example, for folders, this button is under Customize tab, and for shortcuts on the desktop - it is under Shortcut tab.

3. Select browse and follow the path to your new icon file. Choose it and set it up for replacement.

YouTomb against YouTube

There are millions of videos up on YouTube, but thousands have also been removed, and not always with the owner’s permission. If any footage online can be accused of copyright violation, YouTube will take it down, whether or not the accusation was justified. YouTomb, a research project by the MIT Free Culture student group, tracks the top videos removed from the service for copyright violation, and retains the metadata about the videos so we, the public, can make our own decision about whether the removal was justified or not.

The videos cannot be viewed or downloaded at this time, but, at least, if you are the footage author you can see, who requested your video to be removed, and may be you can fight back, if you have substantial proof that accusation and removal is unreasonable.

Authors Web Site: http://youtomb.mit.edu/

5 Tips and Tricks on Changing Properties of Recycle Bin

Everybody used to the regular operations with Recycle Bin. You delete the file normal way, and it appears in Recycle Bin up to the moment you empty it. However, there are several opportunities to alter the main functionality of the Recycle Bin according to the user special needs, which are no so straightforward.

1. Automatically Empty Recycle Bin

As we already mentioned, when we delete a file, that file will move into Recycle Bin by default. There, we have options whether to restore it or just empty the Recycle Bin. When you open the Recycle Bin properties with right click, while you highlight it, you can change the settings to remove files as soon as they are deleted. You can also choose to use the Shift+Delete option on your keyword to remove the file or folder permanently.

2. Increasing Recycle Bin Size

You can increase and decrease the size of the Recycle Bin. There are some size limitations with Recycle Bin size, its default size is equivalent to 10 percent of the drive size. But if you delete a larger size file accidentally, it might be too big to fin in the default size of the Recycle Bin. Therefore, if disk space permits, you can increase the reserved space so you can retrieve the big file from Recycle Bin if needed.

• First Right click on the Recycle Bin icon on the Desktop of your computer then go to Properties.
• Adjust the slider bar in the center of the screen from 10% to maximum size as you want.
• Then click OK button to save your new sitting and exit the Recycle Bin Properties Window.
• After change reboot your computer to have Windows fully initiate the necessary changes to your system.

3. Renaming Recycle Bin

I did not find for myself a valid reason to rename Recycle Bin desktop icon, but you might find one with ease.

• Enter Windows built-in Registry Editor: Start >> Run >> regedit
• Then Go To: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/CLSID/{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
• Change the Name "Recycle Bin" to whatever you want without typing any quotes.

This video tutorial offers slightly different approach, but the result will be the same.

How to Rename Recycle Bin Desktop Icon?

4. Removing Recycle Bin from Desktop

If you do not use the Recycle Bin to store deleted files as a safety buffer, you can get rid of its desktop icon completely.

• Enter Windows built-in Registry Editor: Start >> Run >> regedit
• Then Go To: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/explorer/Desktop/NameSpace.
• Click on the "Recycle Bin" String in the Right Hand pane. Hit Delete, and click OK.

5. More Recycle Bin Editing Options

Here even more extensive list of the Recycle Bin Hacks:

• Add rename to the menu:
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}’ ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:50,01,00,20
• Add delete to the menu:
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}’ ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:60,01,00,20
• Add rename and delete to the menu:
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} ’ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:70,01,00,20
• Restore the recycle bin to Windows defaults including un-deleting the icon after deletion:
  Restore the icon.
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE’SOFTWARE’ Microsoft’ Windows ’CurrentVersion’ explorer’
  Desktop’NameSpace’{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
  @="Recycle Bin"
• Reset Windows defaults.
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E} ’ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,00,20
• Other edits to the recycle bin icon:
  HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT’CLSID’ {645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}’ ShellFolder
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,01,20 ... standard shortcut arrow
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,02,20 ... a different shortcut arrow
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,04,20 ... and still another shortcut arrow
  "Attributes"=hex:40,01,08,20 ... make it look disabled (like it’s been cut)