LogonStudio: Banish the Blues!

Another free little program from the same people who bought you bootskin. This is a similiar thing, working in much the same way, but allows your to change your windows log-on screen. You can actually create and edit your own screen if you are feeling creative. If not, don’t worry! If you don’t feel up to the challenge of making your own there’s a lot of bootscreens available here .

Both bootskin and this program work great together for anyone who wants to add a more personalized touch to their computer, and who realises there is life past default blue color schemes and windows logos. : )

There’s one important thing to bare in mind though. If you have a widescreen monitor, i found some of these won’t show up properly, its really a case of trial and error or make your own. But if they don’t show up right, simply delete them from inside the settings, no harm done!

Go here to download it free!

Stay tuned for more customisation tips, i’m big into customising my computer to make it original and cool and as far away from the boring defaults as possible, so i love programs such as these, if you know of any that may interest me, feel free to let me know! Share the knowledge!

Stickythis: Keeping it simple!

If you every have to give a webpage address to someone, its pretty easy to just copy and paste it, right? What if you had to write it down and it was long and complicated or worse, had to give it over the phone?

Now imagine if it was this one: ‘http://local.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=white+house&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=26.991659,68.994141&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=16&ll=38.89763,-77.033515&spn=0.012909,0.033689′ …

Well, good luck!

Or how about you could just change that into this? http://stickythis.com/thewhitehouse

That’s where Stickythis comes in. It changes any URL into ‘http://stickythis.com (whatever you want it to be)’

You can go check it out here and add it to your collection of useful bookmarks!

Avast Home Edition: Free Antivirus with style

If you’re looking for a decent free antivirus program with a nice looking user interface, you could do a lot worse than to check out Avast antivirus. As well as the regular on-demand and on-access scanner, it protects most email clients and p2p programs against viruses, also has a web shield and network shield and it’s also skinnable!

This is my free standalone antivirus program of choice, as it’s easy to use, looks good, has regular updates, and has a very good reputation when it comes to catching and eliminating viruses. It regularly recieves 100% in the “virus bulletin” test, a very good sign it protects good , see https://www.virusbtn.com for more info. (Requires free sign up).

On a side note its worth checking out this site to get the latest ratings of how good various antivirus software is at doing their job, they throw a ton of “in the wild” viruses (virii?) at them and see how they deal with it. (This program has scored 100% every month in the last 2 years). After all what good are its looks and features if it ignores all the nasty stuff!

Speaking of which, its also got very good eye and ear candy, because as well as a nicely designed and skinnable interface, it announces with a voice when virus database has been updated or when it detects a virus! So if you like that kinda thing (and what computer geek doesn’t! oh come on, admit it!) it’s well worth checking out as it does its job great and with style!

More info and the free download here http://www.avast.com/.