Once you have installed the program, right click on Google Talk on the taskbar and you will be able to see three new options- ‘Normal Idle’, ‘Always Idle’ and ‘Never Idle’.

If you select ‘Always Idle’, then your Google Talk status will always be idle, similarly if you select ‘Never Idle’ you will be online all the time. If you would like to deactivate gAlwaysIdle, just select ‘Normal Idle’. Please note that this program does not work so well in Windows Vista for me.

Ever since Nirmal wrote about this software on his blog, I have seen many bloggers on my Google Talk list being idle more often. To be frank, I don’t want my friends using this software and I wish someone could not develop a software to find the real status of a Google Talk user just like Buddy Spy for Yahoo! Messenger.

Download gAlwaysIdle

While there are many softwares available that teach you to type faster, the freeware that I liked the most so far was TypeFaster that teaches you how to touch-type and improve your typing speed.

This program has been designed to teach people to touch-type. Touch-typing is a skill that can be learnt with practice and perseverance. Touch-typing is a method of typing which uses 8 fingers and one thumb. Touchtypists do not have to look at the keyboard to find the keys they want to type.

When you first start TypeFaster, it introduces you to the software and gives you basic info like what are homekeys and which keys each of your finger should rest on. Once you are ready you can start the tutor.

TypeFaster even includes a 3D game to make learning to touch-type more interesting.

Speaking of games, here are some more that will help you improve your typing speed:

• QWERTY Warriors
• Typing Invaders
• 10 Finger BreakOut

You can find more typing games at freetypinggame.net and onlytypinggames.com

Do you know any other good softwares or games to help improve typing speed?

With Windows Media Player 11 installed, searching your entire music library just got better. Windows Media Player 11′s capable search modifiers can help you search your music effectively. For example, you can just narrow down to tracks from a particular artist by using the ‘Artist’ Search Modifier.

For example, Artist: Akon will search and list only the songs by Akon. Similarly, you can use the ‘Album’ operator to search for songs from a particular Album.

The useful Search Modifiers supported by Windows Media Player are here for your information:

Additionally, Windows Media Player 11 Search also supports search operators like OR, AND, NOT, “” (quotes)

For example, you can use quotes to return only the exact matches of your search term. Similarly, NOT can be used as an exclusion operator. With AND, you can get results that have ALL of your search terms.

Hope you enjoyed these Windows Media Player 11 Search Tips. Do you have anything to share with us?

It can also recover files moved to Recycle Bin after it has been emptied and if some program does not use Recycle Bin when deleting files, Handy Recovery can restore such files too.

Handy Recovery supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives. It can also recover compressed and encrypted files on NTFS drives.

Features

The key features of Handy Recovery software include

• FAT12/16/32, NTFS and NTFS 5 + EFS file systems support
• In-depth disk scanning for certain file types
• Option to create disk images for deferred recovery
• Shows probability of successful recovery for each file
• Recovers files from deleted and formatted partitions
• File filtering by name, mask, date and size
• Recovers files deleted without Recycle Bin
• Restores the structure of deleted folders
• Explorer-style disk content browser showing deleted files
• One-click filter button to show only the deleted files

Handy Recovery works on many Windows versions like 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 and even Vista operating system.

The bad part is that Handy Recovery is not freeware. It is priced at $39 for a single user license. You can download a 30-day trial version from here. Please note that the evaluation version can recover only 1 file per day.

If you prefer freewares you can try the FreeUndelete Recovery Software which I wrote about last year.

This is a paid review ordered through ReviewMe. If you would like your site or product reviewed here at a lower price, contact me.

Download LogonStudio for Windows XP

LogonStudio for Windows Vista

Stardock LogonStudio for Windows Vista also lets you create new logon screens from jpg, png and bmp images. You can download logon screens for Windows Vista from the LogonStudio Vista Gallery.

Note: LogonStudio for Windows Vista is currently in beta and available for Object Desktop customers only. However you can download an older beta version from here.

When you install and run this version, it will let you know that this beta version of LogonStudio Vista has expired and will not let you apply any new logon screens.

But you can run this version by changing your date to February 25th, 2007

The latest build is LogonStudio Vista BETA 0.70 b.006. Let me know if you manage to download it.

The new TuneUp Utilities 2007 will make Windows even faster, more comfortable and more secure than ever. Configuring the system, making backups and performing maintenance can be easily carried out using the intuitive user interface – all easily done in one program at a single glance.

TuneUp Utilities 2007 is one of my favorite softwares but was not Vista compatible until now. You can download a 30-day trial version from here.

Vista Transformation Pack will replace many of the resources in Windows XP/Windows Server 2003.

It can change such things as:

• Boot screen
• Welcome Screen / Logon Screen
• New msstyles files (visual styles)
• New desktop and file icons
• New toolbar icons
• Progress Dialogs
• Sounds scheme
• System Tray icons
• New Wallpapers
• Windows Media Player Skins
• And much more

I tried the Vista Transformation Pack before getting my hands on Windows Vista Ultimate and I was really satisfied with it. It gave me an idea of how Windows Vista will look like even before it was released.

Download Vista Transformation Pack

Democracy Player let’s you search and download videos from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and other video sharing web sites. The software also let’s you pause and resume video downloads.

Democracy Player lets you save videos on Del.icio.us, Digg and Reddit right from within it’s interface and also lets you subscribe to any video RSS feed, podcast, or video blog.

The player lets you easily download any BitTorrent file and watch it from within the player itself.

The biggest disadvantage of Democracy Player that I faced so far is that videos does not play on Windows Vista, only the audio plays

If you are on Windows Vista too, click ‘details’ link that is next to all video and then click ‘Reveal Local File’ to locate the videos you downloaded with Democracy Player. You can then play the videos with a FLV player.

Download Democracy Player 

To download a YouTube video with this tool just select ‘Download video from YouTube’, enter the video URL and click Ok. The video is downloaded with file name ‘get_video’ and without extension.

You can then rename the file giving it a flv extension so that you can play the video with a FLV player or use the same tool to convert the file to a Ipod video, MP3 file or in other available formats.

Download YouTube Downloader

It quickly scans the files and compares them based on Byte for Byte Comparison, which ensures 100% accuracy. You can then choose to delete all the selected duplicate files.

Duplicate File Finder does not contain any adware or spyware and is Vista compatible and best of all it is small and free.

Download Duplicate File Finder