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Picking the right color for the right job can do wonders for your presentation. Using the right or wrong colors – say, for your website – can make or break the mood of the visitor to keep browsing through your page or switch to another one. Some days ago, we covered ColorToy, an application that allows you to view color values in multiple formats. The downside of that application was that it only allows you to select a color and view its RGB, HEX, Decimal etc, values, but it did not let you view the color values of an image or desktop. For images, you can use Pictures to Color and Color Finder, but if you want to view the color codes of items on your desktop, give Plastiliq PixelPicker a try. Keep reading to find out more.

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It can be difficult for common users to understand the complex process of creating an unattended installation disk (that requires for no manual interference during operating system installation), add custom wallpapers, themes, screensavers and other components to a Windows 7 disc. RT Se7en Lite is an application that simplifies the process of adding such features and creating an unattended installation disc/USB for Windows 7. Read on past the break for details on this useful little tool.

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SPAMfighter is a plugin for Mozilla Thunderbird, MS Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail, that removes spam and phishing emails from the inbox of your mail client. Normally, anti-spam applications and plugins rely on filters and other rule based methods; however, spammers often find a way around these filters. This often results in plugins and applications becoming redundant after a short period of stability. SPAMfighter uses community-based filters and acknowledges the reports by large communities of people who report spam or phishing messages, when they receive them. This makes SPAMfighter more efficient in detecting spam, as it is reported by multiple users. Such emails are  automatically filtered for the rest of the SPAMfighter community. Furthermore, many of the spam and phishing emails are filtered out by this add-in, before they even reach the inbox of many users. This means that you can get instant spam protection, and even if you end up receiving spam, you can report it to help the SPAMfighter community and avoid receiving mails from the sender in future.

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When the default Windows Start Menu received a facelift in Windows Vista, a very useful search feature was also added. It comes in very handy for quickly searching your whole computer for any type of file or folder, including images, documents, folders, zip archives, executable files etc., without opening any window or search module. Pretty Run is an application that does more than the native search function of Windows Vista and Windows 7. Keep reading to learn more about Pretty Run.

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Image resizing comes in very handy especially if you run a website and need to constantly upload images to the internet. Larger size means that the image will take more time to upload, will consume more space on your website, and resultantly, people visiting your website will have to wait longer for the images to download and get displayed on their systems. You can check out some very good image resizing applications for Windows, such as Image Resizer, Fast Image Resizer and Free Resizer. Back in 2009, we reviewed an image viewing application called JMC Photo Gallery, which we liked so much that we rated it as an alternative to Windows Live Gallery and Picasa. The same developer has come up with an image resizer, JMC Photo Resizer, and we thought of checking it out and reviewing it for you guys. Read on to find out more about JMC Photo Resizer.

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Kiosk mode is a minimalist mode for computer programs, which restricts the user’s rights on a computer. This mode is used for public and enterprise computers, where user privileges are reduced to avoid system issues or data theft by the end user. For example, public information computers in pedestrian zones and museums are often run in Kiosk mode. KIOSK Enterprise is an application that has been designed for a kiosk environment. KIOSK Enterprise allows configuring PCs to run in kiosk mode, which prevents users from accessing certain functions of the operating system. The idea behind KIOSK Enterprise is to avoid laboriously gathering the registry keys for applying user restrictions. The developer has mentioned that he had to manually search and identify keys via the internet to apply these restrictions in the past, and therefore, developed this application to provide the necessary keys for applying such restrictions. This application has been developed for system administrators and to make their task for configuring (kiosk) computers easily.

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Most servers require an internet connection, and some are heavily reliant on a stable internet connection, such as internet hotspots, Kiosk computers and the like. When the drivers of a network adapter crash, or the DHCP may fail to provide an IP address, a computer may require some manual configurations, such as releasing an APIPA, or resetting the network adapter. This can be quite an issue when managing several kiosk (public) computers or servers. Since many systems are present in data centers, which can be located in remote locations or are difficult to move around, it is more convenient to remotely work on them.

In order to check network related issues, some network administrators use applications like Ping Plotter to see if a system is online on the network. However, despite being connected to the network, a system can loose internet connectivity. A simple alternative to manual monitoring can be to simply reboot a computer, so that all settings are refreshed, and the system remains connected to the internet. Cyber-D’s AutoReboot is a simple application that allows you to automatically restart a computer when it is no longer connected to the internet, or when the internet connection gets disabled.

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I believe we, at Addictive Tips, are guilty of not covering enough fun applications for the Windows platform. Mostly, the applications that we review are useful tools, which either perform a new function, or simplify a current process. However, there’s a lot of truth to the saying “all work and no play makes jack a dull boy,” especially when working on computers. Games are a very nice way to release the stress caused by constantly working, but if games are not your cup of tea, you can try another activity which is very relaxing, i.e., creating music. Don’t have a musical instrument lying around? Here is a little application that will surely fill the gap. Little Piano is a simple virtual keyboard that provides you with a virtual piano, allowing you to exercise your creativity. More on Little Piano after the break.

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GreenCloud Printer is a virtual printer driver that helps you save money on your daily print jobs. With the help of this application, you can save up to 33% of paper, ink and toner costs, without reducing paper quality (as claimed by the developer). It completely integrates with installed applications as a virtual printer, and allows reviewing printing jobs, removing unwanted pages, grouping pages per sheet of paper and printing documents as PDF. Furthermore, you can directly send your documents to GoogleDocs, Dropbox, Evernote or Minus.

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Nowadays, when storage devices with huge capacities are easily and cheaply available in the market, it is not unusual for one to have stored large number of TV series and movies. Organizing these TV series and movies can be a bit of a hassle if you have a lot of media stored in your hard disk. MediaRenamer is an open source application for Windows that allows you to easily rename movies and TV series files stored in your computer. The application allows you to scan folders containing movies and TV series, and automatically detect their correct names. More on MediaRenamer after the break.

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One of the most useful tab-management features of modern browsers is opening recently closed tabs using Ctrl+Shift+T hotkey. It certainly saves the time one would’ve spent sifting through browsing history to find and open closed tabs. In contrast to browsers, Windows 7 manages folders and application windows differently; despite storing recently opened programs and items in Start Menu, it doesn’t support bringing them up again using a hotkey. Today, AddictiveTips brings you UndoClose - a free program that remembers all recently closed folders and applications, so that you can restore them in the same sequence in which they were closed using two hotkeys. In short, it enables you to open the last closed folder(s) and application(s) just like the way Firefox, Google Chrome and other browsers let you open the recently closed tab(s).

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Scanning documents is a great way to save them in digital form and ensure that they won’t get destroyed or misplaced. The issue with scanning documents is that we have to set everything manually, and if anything goes wrong, we have to scan the page again, which can be quite annoying. Scan Tailor is an post-processing tool for scanned pages to edit them once they are loaded into your computer. It allows you to perform different operations on the scanned page, such as fixing the orientation of the page, splitting the page into two parts, deskewing the page to rotate it left and right, removing extra material from the page by selecting only the required portion, setting the margins and fixing alignment of the page. More on Scan Tailor after the jump.

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