There are very few tools, I guess, that look for text inside the archived files too, and one such tool is LookDisk. LookDisk is a small freeware tool, weighing around 10 MB. It has many good features. Overall, it’s a fully packed tool for searching something on your computer, which a normal Windows Explorer search won’t yield you.

Let me dive right into the features of this tool. I am going to list out only the features that are not present in, or different from other search tools available.

• First, as I told you above, it can search even files inside archives, for text.
• There are two tabs. One called “Search parameters” and the other “Ext parameters” for any kind of search – Be it a search for duplicate files, or general search. You can save the parameters that you choose for a particular search.
• Search for multiple file names or exclude multiple file names.
• You can exclude files with certain extensions, even archives.
• You can also search for top 10 largest files in a drive or a folder.

These are some of the prominent and unique features in this tool. As far as I know, there are not much tools that have all the general features along with these additional features. So, I can say that this is a fully packed search tool for Windows.

Also, if you are searching for a tool that would only search within compressed files, then you can do that right from your computer.

How to Search for Compressed Files in Windows 7 search

First, open any folder. Click on “Organize” button on the top-left corner. Go to “Folder and Search options”. There, under the search tab, select “Include compressed files (ZIP,CAB..). That’s it.

You can now search even inside compressed files. However, this might slow down the search a little bit.

Download LookDisk

Do you know any other tool worth mentioning? Then, please let me know through the comments form below.

uTorrent is one of the most popular and most used torrent client. In this post, I am going to show you how to limit the rate of  download or upload for a particular download.

• Select the torrent download for which you want to limit the download/upload rate.
• Right-Click on it and select “Properties” option.
• In the dialog box opened, under the “Bandwidth Settings” change the maximum download rate and upload rate as you desire.
• If you want to change it back to default, replace the rate by 0.

That’s it. You can now browse the web while the torrent is downloading.

The first method, I said above is called Soft Encoding, and the second is called Hard Encoding. It is quite a lengthy job to add subtitles into a video everytime you want to watch a movie. So, it’s always better to have videos with subtitles hard-coded.

AutoGK is a tool that helps you to hard-code subtitles easily. It is a small size freeware, with a simple interface. Apart from hard-coding the subtitles it has many other features, but I will be concentrating only on the subtitles part in this post. Here is the tutorial:

1. Download AutoGK.
2. Install it on your computer. While installing AutoGK, it asks you to install some other tools like VirtualDubMod, Xvid Codec etc. Install all of them.
3. Run AutoGK.
4. Select Input file and Output location.
5. Press Ctrl F8. You will get an option to add external subtitle. Select the external subtitle. It supports most of the formats like .sub, .srt, .ssa etc.
6. If you want to see a preview, click on the “Preview” button. Otherwise, click on “Add Job”.
7. Click “Start” to start the process. Many other tools will run in the background. Do not close them.
8. You can check the status of the process, in the log window.

That’s it! You can now play the video and see that the subtitles are hard-coded and you don’t have to select it manually. Do you know any other tool to hard-code subtitles? Then, please share here in the comments section.

P.S. It takes long time to hard-code subtitles. So, be patient while it is being done.

When I searched for the solution online, I found many answers like, saving a excel spreadsheet as a webpage and then, converting that webpage into an image. Or, I found some cumbersome visual basic code (I think so, am not sure)on Microsoft Forums. But, here is a simple solution that I found out to this problem.

You can convert, not only excel tables, but also Smart Arts, Charts and Word Arts into images, using this trick. Let me get to the process now.

If you have a table, already created in Excel,

• Copy that table.
• Open a new PowerPoint presentation.
• Paste the table into an empty slide.
• Right-click on the table, and select the option “Save as Picture”.

That’s it, you are done! Your table is now saved as a PNG image file!

We are actually using a simple feature, that’s already present in MS Office. However, the feature is limited only to MS PowerPoint, not MS Excel or MS Word. I wonder why.

P.S. The same procedure can be followed for converting Smart Arts, Charts and Word Arts into images.

Simple, isn’t it? Please leave your comments and share if you have any other way of doing this.

As I am using Excel 2007, I will be writing instructions based on that, but it will be mostly similar for other versions too.

• Go to the “Page Layout” tab on the ribbon.
• In that, go to the “Sheet options” tab and there check the “Print” option under the “Gridlines” category.
• Here is a simple video tutorial on how to do the same.

Some other tips while printing an excel sheet

You can display comments in your hard copy, and also edit how errors, if any, gets displayed. To do this,

• Go to Page Layout>Sheet Options. Click on the “Sheet Options” block.
• A new window will open named Page Setup. In that, under the “Print” section, there is an option called “Comments”.You can select your preference in the dropdown box.
• Also, below the “Comments” option, there is another option called “Errors”. In the dropdown box, you have options like “Blank”, “As Displayed” and so on. You can change it according to your wish.

Tip: It’s always better to show Errors in an excel worksheet as “Blank”, so that you can manually calculate it later and write.

Check out this video tutorial on the same things that I have discussed before.

One good scenario I can think of, right now where this can be of immense help is, while you are editing a document in one window, say Window 1, by comparing it with an other document in Window 2. With this tool, you need not select the Window 2, to scroll everytime. You can keep the Window 1 active while scrolling through the Window 2.

Or another situation is, when you are watching a movie and reading a document. You can scroll through the document, without selecting the document window. That’s useful, right?

Okay, now about this tool, all you need to do is download it from the internet. It downloads a zip file, which contains a .exe file. There is no need of isntallation. It’s a 20KB file that runs directly on your computer without any installation. You can  hide this tool in the tray, so that it will not disturb you while working. You can also disable it when you don’t want by checking the “Disable Always-Wheel” check box.

So, what do you think of this tool? How can this be useful to you? Share with us through comments here!

[Download Link]

There are many reasons for invalid shortcuts:

• Sometimes when you uninstall software on your computer, even though the software is uninstalled successfully, it leaves some shortcuts that were created behind in your computer. These shortcuts do not work as the main software is uninstalled and hence becomes an invalid shortcut. So, it’s better to use tools like Revo Uninstaller while uninstalling software.
• When you abort an installation before it is completed, the shortcuts that were installed become invalid.
• Or, when you move a file or a folder to a different location, the shortcut to that file or folder becomes invalid as it still points to the earlier location.

So, here is the solution. A simple, small, freeware tool called Bad Shortcut Killer.

This tool finds all the invalid shortcuts present in your desktop and start menu and lists them. You can select or deselect the shortcuts by checking or unchecking the checkbox beside each shortcut. After selecting the shortcuts that you want to delete click on the “Delete Selected Shortcuts” to delete them all. Or else, if you want to check what’s wrong with those shortcuts, you can folow the link to each shortcut.

However,  it lacks some important features. First one, it searches only in desktop and start menu. Even though most of the times, you find invalid shortcuts there, it would have been better if  it could search the whole computer.

Secondly, the shortcuts listed have only the location of the shortcut. If it was hyper-linked, so that user could directly click on it to find the shortcut it would be more user-friendly.

Overall, nice tool to keep your desktop clean.

[Download Link]

However, you can change it to the old XP style (i.e., text beside the taskbar button) easily. Here is a small tutorial on how to do it.

• Go to “Taskbar properties” by right-clicking on the taskbar.
• Under the tab, “Taskbar”, in the option “Taskbar Buttons” select the option “Never combine” or “Combine when the taskbar is full” depending on your requirement.
• Click “Apply”. Now, you can see the text beside your taskbar buttons, as earlier in XP. Here is a snap.

Or, you can also use this freeware application to do the same, if you are too lazy! Link: Taskbar Labels 1.0

Mouse Extender is a quick launch tool that helps you to launch your favorite applications, or even access your important files and folders with a single click. This application is not just a typical quick-launch tool. It has even more extra-ordinary options, that you may not be expecting from it. Today, we will have a look at some unique features of this tool.

Creating Tabs

What would you expect a “middle-click application” to have? Just a simple box, that holds all rubbish? No, you are wrong. This application has an option to create tabs. You can make a set of your important docs in one tab, and create a new tab for your favorite games and so on.

me_add_tab

Adding Web Pages

Do you visit any site very often? You want  a website always at your fingertip? Then this feature will help you do that. You can enter URL of any webpage and add it into your quick-launch library.

me_add_web_url

Also Recommended:  Categorize Your Icons On Desktop Using Fences

Customize The Added Icons Of Files And Folders

This is a superb feature. After adding an application or a file, you can even customize them. You can set a different icon, change the name and so on.

me_edit_item

Shutdown, Sleep Or Hibernate

A really awesome feature! You can even schedule hibernation, shutdown or even sleep time with this “so called SIMPLE” application. So, this acts even as a shutdown timer!

me_shutdown_timer

I found this app to be very interesting and hope even you people will. This application gives its users more than expected. I have listed only the unique features of this applications. It still has numerous interesting features. Check them in this video.

SEO I Did To This Post

SEO Title: Shut Down Download Timer Cum Quick Launcher Tool For Windows – Mouse Extender

Yes, this is somewhat a ridiculous title. I have inserted the keyword, “shutdown timer” in the title. There is a very strong reason for this which I am going to let you know today.

SEO TIP: Always analyze the keywords you use in the titles using, Google Insights for Search. This is a tool that helps you to see the search intensity of any keyword you enter. I will teach you how to use this tool with this example.

First of all, I entered three keywords related to my posts, quick launch tool, quick launch program, quick launcher. Quick launcher got the highest number. [Check this link if you want]. After doing this, I even wanted toadd the Shut down timer feature in the title. So I searched it along with these three. To my surprise, I found that “shutdown timer” was more trending that all the three.[Check this link]

This is the reason why I have used “shutdown timer” at the beginning and  then “quick launcher tool”. So, today you have learned how to use a new tool, Google Insights for search!

SEO Excerpt: Here is a simple tool that acts as a shutdown timer cum quick launch tool. You can schedule shutdown, hibernate or sleep timer using this tool. But it is basically a quick launch tool

I have used two main keywords here. “shutdown timer” and “quick launch tool”. These are the main keywords that bring traffic as well as highlight my post content.

SEO Tags: shutdown timer, computer timer, timer download, pc shutdown timer, shutdown timer vista, quick launch tool, quick launch toolbar

It needs a little bit of explanation here. I have taken these keywords from the Google Insights for Search analysis. This would get me more traffic because I have exactly aimed at what people have searched for and will search for.

To enable, this feature in MS Word, you need to first setup your account in the MS Word. The following tutorial could help you doing so.

1. Click on the Office button on the top left corner of MS word. Go to “Publish” option and select “Blog”.
2. In the new window open, create new blog account. This image tutorial will guide you through the installation.

   

3. While setting up the account, click on “Picture Options”. Select my own server and enter the URL of where you upload the pictures. For example, http://www.techmonk.com/wp-admin/uploads.php. If you are using FTP server, then give the corresponding URL. In the “Source URL” enter your blog URL.
4. If you are setting up an Blogger account then you can simply select the blog provider option or set up any other server online like Flickr or Photobucket wherein you can upload your pictures.

Note: If you are using WordPress.org (Self-hosted) then you need to enable XML – RPC. (Remote Publishing Client). To do so, go to “Settings- Writing”. Check the Enable Remote Publishing option.

Advantages Of Blogging From MS Word

There are many advantages when you are blogging from MS Word.

1. It has more formatting options. So you can choose among variety of fonts.
2. You feel at home when you use MS Word.
3. You can use font sizes with greater flexibility.
4. You can insert chart, clip-art, wrod art and so on.

Disadvantages Of Blogging From MS Word

1. You cannot SEO your articles like in WordPress or in WLW.
2. You cannot create tags and categories for Blogger account. However, if you are using wordpress you can create categories.

SEO I Did To This Article:

This is a new practice that I am adopting in my blogging. This section of the blog will contain all the SEO I make to a article as it would be helpful to my readers. I discuss the importance of the SEO below every post from now on as much as I know. Suggestions about SEO and the article are welcome by means of comments or mails. Will continue it depending on how people react to this.

Post Title: How To Post Articles To Your Blog Using Microsoft Word.

Here the post title is same as the one I have entered into the Platinum SEO pack. This is because people search like “How to post articles from MS Word” and as Google gives more importance to the title I have entered the same.

More about Platinum SEO pack. (A must have wordpress SEo plug-in.)

Post Excerpt: Here is a simple tutorial that helps you to blog from MS Word. If you are searching for an alternative for WLW, then you can use Microsoft Word as your blog writer.

This the post excerpt that the search engines see. If you look at the post excerpt on my blog homepage, it is different. The important point in this post excerpt is the keywords. “Blog from MS Word”, “Alternative for WLW”, “Microsoft as your Blog Writer”. People are likely to search these keywords. and if they do so, this would help me to rank high in the search position.

Also note that the excerpt just contains 165 characters. Most search engines just take 160 characters of the excerpt. So being brief in your explanations with keywords will help you to rank higher.

Note: Google gives second position to the Excerpts after Post Titles.

Keywords: blog from MS word, blog from Microsoft Word, alternative for WLW, alternative for Windows Live Writer

These tell search engine to invoke our links when a query like the above ones are entered. People are likely to search using the following keywords.

Image Optimization: I am still a novice in image optimization and still learning it. Any suggestions on optimizing images are welcome.

An important note: Here, we are in no way fooling the Search Engines as many might think. This is just making our post much related to the search queries.