Windows 7: Free utility Taskbar Items Pinner adds pre-defined or user-defined folders, files, and even web pages to the Windows 7 taskbar.

Adding one of the pre-defined folders (like, say, your Recycle Bin) is easy enough: Just run the app and tick the checkbox next to the folder. Adding other folders, files, or webapps requires a little more work, but is still pretty simple. Browse to the path of the item you want to pin, add an app icon (as FreewareGenius points out, you actually have to choose your icon for everything you pin, which is a little annoying), and click the big Add Item button.

We’ve detailed a software-free method to pin any item to the Windows taskbar that requires a little more work, but this is a nice alternative.

Taskbar Items Pinner is a free download for Windows 7 only.

Go to Original Source

Windows 7 only: System tweaking utility Alt+Tab Tuner customizes everything about the Windows 7 Alt-Tab dialog, from setting the transparency to increasing the size of the thumbnails.To customize the settings, all you have to do is unzip and launch the utility, drag the sliders to suit your preferences, and click the Apply button. You can even use the utility to switch back to the old XP-style Alt+Tab dialog if you were so inclined. Alt+Tab Tuner is a free download for Windows 7 only.

If you aren’t happy with the built-in Alt+Tab system, and even tweaking it won’t help, make sure to check out the awesome VistaSwitcher alternative, which even includes the Alt+` key combination to switch between specific application windows.

Go to Original Source

iPhone only: Anyone with a smartphone has been there: You’re browsing on your computer but want to transfer a bit of info to your phone. You could email it to yourself, or you could try Pastefire, a clever desktop-to-iPhone sharing tool.

Once you’ve downloaded it to your desktop, head to the Copy Zone, enter in any bit of text along with a username and password (doing this once will create an account for you—the site’s a little annoyingly unclear about registration, but this is the process). Then open up Pastefire on your iPhone or iPod touch and enter in the same username/password. Next time you paste something into the Copy Zone—or, better yet, use the supplied browser bookmarklet to snip some text from your browser—that text will automatically be available when you open up Pastefire.

The most interesting thing about Pastefire isn’t that you can transfer text using it—you could just as easily do that by sending an email to yourself. The clever aspect of the app is that it analyzes the format of the text you send it, then provides various links to common actions you might want to perform with that text. For example, it might offer to open a link in Safari, send it via email or text message, search for it in Wikipedia, or post with your Twitter client. If you’ve sent a phone number, it will offer to dial it on your iPhone, via SkypeOut, etc.

The tool isn’t perfect, but it’s a clever idea for a cellphone timesaver, and it’s a free download from the iTunes App Store.

Go to Original Source

iPhone: Say what you will about the iPhone as a device, but if there’s one consistent weak spot for U.S. users (particularly in cities like New York), it’s AT&T’s service—specifically frequent dropped calls. Mark the Spot quickly reports your problems.

The app is a breeze to use. Whenever you experience a dropped call, failed call, lack of coverage, data failure, or poor voice quality, just fire up the app, select the problem and frequency with which you experience it, and submit your report. The app uses your phone’s location awareness to let AT&T know where their service went afoul. You can also attach a note if you’re feeling really generous. In a perfect world you’d never need to worry about reporting problems, but it’s nice to know it’s an option.

Mark the Spot is a free download, iPhone only.

Go to Original Source

Windows only: Driver update utility Device Doctor finds outdated drivers on your PC, and helps you download the latest version—without charging you a dime.

Using the utility, which can be installed or used as a portable application, is about as easy as it gets—just click the Begin Scan button, wait a couple of seconds, and you will be shown a list of drivers that can be updated. The download button for each driver will take you to their web site, where you can download the drivers for free, without signing up for anything at all. Most of the drivers come with setup programs, but some of them are nothing more than zip files, and would need to be installed manually—hopefully something they can improve on in the future.

During our testing, we used the application on half a dozen PCs, and had varied results—on our XP test system, Device Doctor worked well and accurately found new drivers, but for Windows 7 we didn’t have as much luck, with a few incorrect drivers being thrown at us. That said, Windows 7 was only released recently, so expect that support to improve in the future.

Device Doctor isn’t perfect yet, but as a completely free, portable application that you can toss on your thumb drive, it’s well worth a look. It might even save you some time searching for new drivers while you are fixing mom’s PC.

Device Doctor is a free download for Windows only. Be sure to check out the full How-To Geek review for a more in-depth look, as well as instructions on installing drivers manually.

Go to Original Source

Windows 7 only: If you’re not into Windows desktop gadgets, there is another way to easily monitor your computer’s CPU and RAM: Taskbar Meters puts simple, attractive resource monitors right on your Windows 7 Taskbar.

Taskbar Meters contains two programs that you can pin to your taskbar—one that monitors CPU, one that monitors RAM. Each has a colored bar that shows how much of that resource you are using, complete with color coding. In the program’s preferences, you can decide how often to update the meter and what percentage of usage constitutes “yellow” and “red” colors on the taskbar. Each icon also has a jumplist that lets you easily open up Task Manager or Resource Monitor to get a more detailed report.

Taskbar Meters is a free download, Windows 7 only.

Go to Original Source

Windows only: Fans of TweetDeck with a preference for open source will love MahTweets, a plugin-based Twitter client that also integrates with Facebook, Flickr, Twitpic, and more, and offers all kinds of handy customizations.

The first thing you do upon opening MahTweets is choose what plugins you want to install. Right now it’s only got a few, but they give you the opportunity to choose what networks you want integrated (including Facebook, Twitter, and RSS) and where you want to upload pictures (Facebook, Flickr, or services like TwitPic or yFrog). It then navigates you through the rest of the preferences, in which you can enable notifications, automatic translation, a screensaver based on your networks, and tweak a bunch of performance-based options.

After you’re done with the initial setup, you’ll see the client itself. It starts off with only one column (shown above), but you can add as many as you want, with all sorts of different kinds of filters in each to keep your groups organized (like TweetDeck). In addition to the basic features for updating your status, sending direct messages, and re-tweeting, you can also take webcam snapshots, upload pictures to Facebook or Flickr, and view links to pictures inline—no more clicking on links to open images in your browser.

MahTweets is a free download, Windows only.

Go to Original Source

Windows only: AVG 9 Free—one of the most popular free antivirus apps on the market—is now available for download.

A couple weeks back, the popular antivirus maker AVG released AVG 9 with performance improvements and other updates, but on launch only the commercial version of AVG 9 was available. The fact of the matter is that most AVG users are probably using AVG Free, the freeware version of the app, so if that’s the case for you, good news: AVG 9 Free is now ready for download.

Go to Original Source

Mac OS X: The merry band of iPhone and iPod touch hackers known as the iPhone Dev-Team just released a new version of the jailbreaking app PwnageTool. It supports all generations of the iPhone and every iPod touch except the third generation.

Jailbreaking using the PwnageTool 3.1.3 is a breeze, but if you’re an iPhone 3GS or iPod touch 2G user, make sure to read the details of the Dev-Team’s post for details on your slightly more complicated jailbreaking path. For the rest of us with supported devices, jailbreaking using PwnageTool is as easy as ever.

PwnageTool is a free download, Mac OS X only. At the time of this writing The Pirate Bay link to the torrent to download PwnageTool seems to be down, but this mirror worked for me. Thanks Dan!

Go to Original Source

Windows only: Windows ships with some solid power management options, but it misses the mark on one issue: Most of us need different energy-saving schemes at different times of the day. SetPower adjusts your power management settings on a user-specified schedule.

Once you’ve downloaded and installed SetPower, just fire it up and start scheduling different power management options based on the time of day. As the cheesy informercial-style video above points out, SetPower is perfect for giving you the performance you want when you need it without wasting energy when you don’t need that extra performance—potentially saving you a decent chunk of money on your electricity bill.

If you’re in bed after midnight during the week, for example, put it on a serious power diet to make sure it’s sleeping or hibernating quickly. If you spend an hour or so on the computer in the morning before heading out to work, adjust your power management settings for a little more performance over energy savings. If you’re at work from 9 to 5, dial it back to another power-saving, quick-to-hibernate setting. (You get the idea.)

Any power scheme can be applied individually to any day of the week, starting at whatever time you want.

SetPower is a free download for personal home use, costs $5/license for your workplace to buy it, Windows only.

Go to Original Source