Have you gotten bored of you default Drive icons in Windows yet? Well, here’s an easy method to change the icon of your Drive to the one you like in short easy steps. You’ll need a new icon file for your drive for this method to work, so chose get an icon before starting this tutorial. This method is applicable on Windows XP and Vista.

Go to the root folder of your drive. For example C:\.

Now chose an icon, and rename it to Drive.ico. Place it in that root folder.

Create a file Autorun.inf (This can be done by making a notepad and then renaming it to Autorun.inf) and edit it with the same lines as shown in the image below.

Now all you have to do is to restart your computer, and you’ll notice that your icon has been changed to the one you placed in the drive. This trick can be used to change the icons of all drive partitions that you have in Windows.

Changing the Folder Image

In Windows, there is an easy way to change the Icon of your folder. You can just simply right click on the folder and then navigate to Properties > Customize and change it to whatever you like. But what if you do not want to change the Icon, but the Image that is shown in the folder? In Windows XP and Vista, an image is shown for picture and music folders. Using this trick you can use album art as folder images for you music albums or your favorite image can be used for your picture albums folder for easy recognition at a glance. This trick can also be used for document or other folders.

First, chose any folder you want to change the image of.

After that, get an image that you want to use as the folder image. Place it in the folder, and rename it to ‘Folder’, without the quotes. Go back one directory and Voila!

You can change the folder image’s attributes to hidden, so that it doesn’t show up in among other files in that folder. Also note that the image can be of any size, and it’ll show in place of the Album Art of your music album folder in Vista. If you want the default image or a selection of images as shown below, back, just delete the ‘Folder’ image file, or rename it to something else.

Read How To Change your Drive Icon And Folder Image Easily by Imran Hussain on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a part of the Windows Live suite of applications that increase the functionality of Windows. WLPG is available as a free download, and fits right into Windows. It offers you indexing of your photos with their thumbnails, , tags, metadata and ratings. It can also act as your default photo viewer. For editing, it gives you options to adjust color, exposure (with Histogram), detail, fix red eye and cropping. Slideshow options are good too with various different themes.

Picasa

The new Picasa 3 Beta from Google is one of the best desktop editing tools you’ll need unless you need Photoshop like editing. Unlike the pervious version, you can now use it as a photo viewer. It  opens the photos in an overlay on your desktop which makes it one of the best photo viewers available. Apart from that, you can organize your photos, sync your Picasa 3 and Picasa Web Albums edits, retouch your images, create and edit movies, capture your screen and webcam videos, add text or watermarks to your photos, print captions, upload to Youtube and Picasa Web Albums and many more.

Paint.NET

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins. If you need to use Photoshop but can’t afford it, Paint.NET is the free alternative for you. You won’t find a better one than this!

Photoscape

Photoscape is a cute photo viewing and editing software with different features from the earlier mentioned software. Check out its key features:

• Viewer: View your folders photos, slideshow
• Editor: resizing, brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal, blooming
• Batch editor: Batch editing multiple photos
• Page: Make one photo by merging multiple photos at the page frame
• Combine: Make one photo by attaching multiple photos vertically or horizontally
• Animated GIF: Make one animation photo with multiple photos
• Print: Print portrait shot, carte de visite, passport photo
• Splitter: Divide a photo into multiple parts
• Screen Capture: Capture your screenshot and save it
• Color Picker: Zoom in screen on images, search and pick the color
• Rename: Change photo file names in batch mode
• Raw Converter: Convert RAW to JPG

GIMP

GIMP is for all you open source software lovers out there. This is another Photoshop alternative that is aimed at advanced users. Along with the usual editing, layers and other advanced photo editing features is the hardware support for not only Pressure and tilt sensitive tablets, but also a wide range of USB or MIDI controllers. It’s also widely expandable through plugins and has one of the largest range of format support amongst the 5 reviewed in this post.

Read Top 5 Free Desktop Photo Editing Tools by Imran Hussain on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

NOTE: HotSpot Shield is blocked by Hulu and most other services. You can now use UltraVPN to watch the shows for free.

Hotspot Shield is a free VPN service for your PC, laptop or iPhone that creates a VPN between your Internet device and their gateway. This tunnel effectively hides your Internet traffic and secures all your data from prying eyes, which even include packet sniffers as well as any firewalls. Since, it’s based in US, we’re also able to access US only websites and web services using it. The installation method is very simple. Just point your browser to Hotspot Shield’s homepage and download the 3.0 Mb application. Hotspot Shield works with

• Windows Vista
• Windows XP
• Windows 2000
• Mac OS X (10.5 Leopard)
• Mac OS X (10.4 Tiger)

After you’re done downloading it, just install the application and run it. It’ll load up your browser and connect to its Internet Gateway.

No configuration is required as it’ll do everything itself. You wont even need to change any proxy settings. Just right click on the taskbar icon and click disconnect whenever you’re done with Hotspot Shield.

Using this, you’ll be able to access Hulu, NBC, ABC, WMC Internet TV and any other website that requires you to be in US. Keep in mind though, that Hotspot Shield will show Ads in a frame at the top of the website you visit, which can be closed with just a click. But hey, support the guys! This is one hell of a service they are providing, and it really helps you stay secure for free. Apart from letting you access free TV shows for free !

Read Access Hulu, NBC and ABC Videos Outside the US ! by Imran Hussain on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

All these issues are taken care of with Toonel. It is one of the most useful utilities I’ve seen in recent times. Not only does it provide you with anonymous surfing, but it also compresses the data to speed up your browsing over slow internet connections.

To use Toonel, you need to download the small java application. And of course, you need Java runtime to execute it. Which shouldn’t be a big problem and is worth it. The application itself is very small, less than 100 kb in fact. Once you run the program you will need to change your Internet proxy settings by going to your browsers options and changing the server address to 127.0.0.1 and Port to 8080.

An you’re done. Now you can browse, download and stream easily. You’ll be able to access any blocked websites or services. If you’re on a slow connection you’ll even notice a speed increase. You can also reduce the GIF and JPEG quality to further speed up your browsing which is a great advantage of Toonel.

If you like this tool or would like to ask any questions, feel free to ask us.

Read Browse Faster and Anonymously with Toonel by Imran Hussain on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Uvlayer allows you to create playlists in a very cool and different style than any other application. The interface reminds us of Minority Report, and that works for its benefit. You can create groups of different videos, search for them and even share them with your Facebook, Google Talk or AIM buddies. Individual videos can be commented on and related videos are shown as well (It doesn’t work for us yet). And if you’re crazy enough, you can also see countless Youtube videos at once in the same application. Every video can also be resized like on the canvas by click and drag.

If you’re not willing to run the Adobe Air based desktop application then you can use the same interface on the Uvlayer website. All your videos, stacks, playlists would be synced with your account right from the desktop application to the web application and vice-versa.

One drawback of this application is that you need to be connected to the internet to view the videos as it doesn’t save them to your computer.

Read How to browse Youtube from your Desktop? by Imran Hussain on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Syncplicity is a file sharing service that gives you 2 GB of space for free to store and sync your files. If you want more space, you can get a paid plan for 40 GB or more as well. The reason we’ve chosen to use Syncplicity is it’s ease of use. Let’s get started with the tutorial:

After you’re done with the usual sign up process, you’ll have to download the Syncplicity client. You don’t need this client to access your files from anywhere or upload them, but to synch them from your own personal computer, it’s a very handy utility.

Once you’re done downloading it, launch the setup. When it’s finished you’ll be presented with a the Syncplicity Installation Wizard, which will link your computer to your Syncplicity account.

Fill in the information and click next.

For tutorial purposes we’ll chose the second option as it gives you complete control over what you want to sync. Click next, and then click finish.

Now the Syncplicity client will open up. It looks so pretty you might mistake it for a part of Windows Vista itself.

Here you can select any folder you want and change it’s label. The folder can also be setup to either sync with the server or just be backed up. You can even share it with who ever you would want to, with ‘read only’ or ‘read and write’ rights. That person wouldn’t necessarily have to install the client to access your shared files.

You might be concerned that only a handful of folders are showing up as for sync and share. But there’s an ‘Add a new folder’ link in the left sidebar and at the bottom that would let you add any other folder you want to.

After clicking ok, Syncplicity will immediately start syncing/backing up your files. The Detailed Status of the sync progress can be seen from the sidebar link.

Or in the system tray, which is one of it’s coolest features. I haven’t seen any other application take advantage of Vista’s new and detailed system tray notifications yet, apart from the volume, network and power options built into Vista itself.

Another killer option in Syncplicity is the fact that you can edit the files you upload using other Web 2.0 services. Love Facebook? You can sync any photo you want between Facebook and Syncplicity. Want to edit a document? Use Zoho or Google Docs. Or edit your images using Picnik. This saves you the hassle of downloading them just to edit them and then upload them again. The following services are supported and can be enabled and disabled according to your will.

The services can be toggled on or off from the client as well.

But wait, what if you’re not at home and need to access your files from the cloud? Just log on to the Syncplicity website and navigate to My Files in the header. There’s a fully working explorer built in the website, allowing you to navigate through your files as if you were at home, and letting you upload and download them as well. You can also edit your files using the Web Applications right from the website.

This comprehensive review + tutorial should get you going on the cloud. I would highly suggest you to use it as a better alternative then physical media.

Read How to put your Data on the Cloud using Syncplicity? by Imran Hussain on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter