When it’s time to print the work you’ve just finished with IrfanView, don’t get stuck without enough ink in your printer. Get online and find cheap printer ink.  It’s quick, easy, and frankly, even more dependable than the flunky who works at the local computer store. Find Epson ink cartridges (and HP and Lexmark, too, for that matter) in no time. Laser toner cartridges are available, too!

Last month I blogged about “Ten Things You Can Do With IrfanView” (you should read my previous article on IrfanView before reading this). I covered basic image manipulation options offered by IrfanView in the previous article. This time I shall highlight some of the more advanced functionalities offered by IrfanView.

1. Screensaver/Slideshow with Music : IrfanView allows you to use create simple slideshows and screensavers using multiple images. Press W (or select “Slideshow” from File menu) to bring up the Slideshow/Screensaver tool. Now simple add images you wish to include in your Slideshow/Screensaver. If you want to add background music, add MP3 files into the slideshow file list, usually at the beginning or before an image. The MP3 file is played until it ends or until next MP3 is loaded from the file list. IrfanView Plugins should be also installed, at least the MP3 Plugin.

2. Panorama : IrfanView allows you to create panorama images by merging multiple images. You will find this option under “Image” menu.

3. Batch Resize/Convert/Compress/Rename : Batch Processing abilities is what makes IrfanView really powerful. Launch the Batch Processing tool by pressing B (you can also find it under “File” menu). You can resize, convert and rename a whole bunch of image files at a time. You can also use it to compress multiple images at a go. This is very useful if you are going to upload images to the web. In order to compress a JPG or GIF image just reduce the quality of image from “Options”. Normally a value between 60 and 70 works best. For PNG images also you get the option to choose compression level. For better results you use the PNGOUT plugin. You can even rotate images , adjust colours or add overlay text.

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Welcome to the the third installment of my Tiny Utilities series. In each installment I take a lot at three extremely useful yet free utilities which are less than 2MB in size.

Process Lasso from Bitsum Technologies is a tiny utility that can save you some headaches. Its objective is simple – to prevent a problematic application from freezing your system. It does that by quietly running in the background and monitoring the CPU usage of all applications. If any application starts using up abnormal amount of CPU resources then Process Tamer reduces the priority of that application. This prevents those familiar situations where your computer stops responding because a single application is using 99% of CPU resources. Process Lasso itself has a small memory footprint and can work in invisible mode. Certain applications (example: games or video encoders) require high CPU resources to function properly. No need to worry – you can ask Process Lasso to exclude those applications from it’s purview by adding those processes to the exclusion list.

Download Process Lasso (500 KB)
Platforms Supported : Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista
Version Reviewed : 2.30

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Ever since Facebook opened itself up and released an API to programmers, there has been a mad rush to take advantage of Facebook platform. Tons of new apps are being added everyday. To those who don’t know - Facebook is a social networking website. Recently it opened itself up to 3rd party developers giving them access to its functionalities. Facebook applications are essentially widgets that can be added to enhance your social networking experience. So far several hundred Facebook applications have been created. Obviously I haven’t tried them all. However, among the ones I have tried my top five Facebook applications (in random order) are :

HotLists : Hotlist is based on the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words. Use icons to display what you like - be it companies or television shows or movies or music or celebrities. I prefer this to using simple text to list out your preferences.

Graffiti : Let your creative juice flow. Instead of just posting simple messages on the wall you can draw them using this application. This can be loads of fun and is a nice way to kill time.

Last.fm Music : Last.fm is a website that tracks what songs you listen to and suggests music based on your music taste. Not only does the last.fm widget display recently played tracks it also allows you to create custom (tag based) radio station. It also displays your top artists for the previous week.

You can also use the Last.fm Plus application. It doesn’t have last.fm radio but provides a lot more options as far as displaying statistics is concerned.
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Welcome to another edition of Link Love. Here are some useful posts I came across this week.

Earlier this week Nirmal released an e-book with all the commonly used chat abbreviations.

Many softwares unneccesarily add their own entries to the context menu thus making it slow to load and cluttered. Shankar wrote about three free utilties that can clean up your context menu is a safe and hassle free way.

Keith wrote about a service that allows you to submit your article to 33 social networking/bookmarking/content sites.

If you are a blogger then you must have exprienced bloggers block. All bloggers (and writers) have those periods of time when they can’t think of what to write about. Webd360 has some tips to overcome Bloggers Block.

I am going to be visiting my relatives and would be out of town for about 10 days. During this time I would not have regular internet access hence I won’t be able to respond to email messages and comments. However, I am not completely deserting the blog. I have used the future post feature to schedule a few posts. They would be published during the coming week.

How appropriate! This information about do-it-yourself website buildingis just the kind of thing one can find with a little practiced websurfing. And, if you want to find other goodies, such as a loan calculator, how to improve Internet speed or how to install a satellite TV , visit a top-flight do it yourself website!

We already have several web based Office suites. Hence, it’s only natural that someone would come up with web based web-design tool. Here are three web-based web-design tools.

Synthasite : The newest kid in the block is Synthasite. It sports an advanced tabbed interface that is very similar to desktop based solutions. It offers a rage of templates to get you started. Synthasite is widget based and you need to drag and drop widgets to create your website. Currently not many widgets are available but that is again due to it’s young age. Synthasite is in early technical preview stage and there are many quirks. It also made Firefox unresponsive on a couple of occasions. Also note that the content created during tech preview may be lost when newer versions are released. South Africa-based Synthasite has ambitious plans. Expect a lot of new features in the coming days.

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Opera 10 (code named Peregrine) is slated to arrive later this year. As a long time Opera user I have my own expectations of Peregrine. Here, I present to you ten improvements that I want to see in Opera v10. I am not a codie so my wish-list doesn�t deal with under the hood rendering engine improvements (only exception being Wish #8), rather all of them are noticeable feature additions/improvements.

10. Better Download Manager : Opera already has an excellent download manager. In fact it’s much better than download managers integrated with other browsers. But there is always scope for improvement. I want to see ability to limit the bandwidth being used by Opera’s download manager. The ability to queue downloads would also be a nice addition.

9. Inline Spell Checker : The oSpell userjs is excellent as an inline spell checker. However, this is something that should be provided by Opera out of the box. Heck, even barebones Firefox has it!

8. Prioritize page loading : This feature was suggested by Scott at myOpera forums. He wants Opera to give higher priority to the foreground tab and load that webpage faster than the ones in the background. I think this is a wonderful idea and would definitely make Opera more productive.

7. Private Browsing : Safari has a neat little feature called Private Browsing. Firefox users can use extensions like Stealther and Distrust. Yes, Opera allows users to delete private data. But this is different. When it is enabled web pages are not added to the History, items are automatically removed from the Downloads window and information (including names and passwords) is not saved for Autofill. So only private data collected during Private Browsing is deleted. The utility of Private browsing is pretty obvious.

6. Rich Text Copy : Sometime back Opera removed rich text copy, apparently due to security concerns. Talk about paranoia! I hate the fact that they didn�t even give users the option. I hate the fact that I have to use another browser to copy text with all the formatting. Only other alternative is using a complicated solution devised by Lex1. I hope to see rich text copy back in next version. Plain text copy should remain the default (associated with Ctrl+C), but users should also be allowed to copy text with all formatting via the right click context menu and keyboard shortcut.

5. Activity Monitor : This feature is already present in Safari, and is extremely handy when you want to download streaming content. Currently I have to use Naviscope to monitor browser activity. This is something that should be built into Opera.
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Have you ever come across a wonderful video that you wanted to download, but couldn�t find a way to do so? If the answer is yes, read on.

Majority of the video content available on the web can be grouped into four categories: Windows Media Video, Apple QuickTime Video, Real Video and Flash Video. In this article I shall deal with each one of them. But before getting started you need to download few sofware.
All the utilities mentioned below are Freeware.

i) K-Lite Mega Codec Pack so that you can view the media files. Make sure you install Real Alternative, QuickTime Alternative and Mov downloader.
ii) Orbit Downloader to download files.
iii) GetASFStream to download ASF and ASX files.
iv) Naviscope
v) Any FLV viewer to view FLV files.
Now, let�s get started.
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