Microsoft GIF Animator to create GIF Animations

 Microsoft GIF Animator

– An animated GIF is simply an image of type GIF, that combines within it a sequence of images, to display an animated motion when viewed in any browser! If you do like to create simple GIF animations, then this free tool from microsoft is good enough for you.
This Microsoft GIF Animator is no longer available on microsoft servers and is also not supported by them anymore. But you could still find and download it from some websites.You can also download it here.
Though this software was developed for windows xp platform, we found to our surprise that it still worked on windows 7 as well! It should also work on vista without any issues.

How to create animated GIF?

Microsoft GIF Animator is a simple software and is quite intuitive to use. To create a GIF animation, simply insert images for each of the frames.You can find the “Insert” button on the toolbar at the top.You can also rearrange the image sequence by clicking the up and down arrows. You can adjust the image width and height on the “Image” tab and also specify the final animated GIF’s width and height on the “Animation” tab.

You can have as many frames as the number of images you want to combine into an animated GIF!

Microsoft GIF Animator is also useful to open any existing animated GIF and extract all the image frames within the tool. You can then re-sequence or enhance them and build your own animated GIF!
The trick to make a cool animated GIF is to click two or more successive photo shots, when the target object is in motion.You can then combine them all into one good animated GIF, with Microsoft GIF Animator.

Download Microsoft GIF Animator

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Wi-Fi Hotspots – Find and Manage them with Xirrus

Wi-Fi Hotspots – Free finder and Network Manager

– This free tool is an absolute must for the frequent Wi-Fi Hotspot users. Though windows 7 does have a built-in utility to find Wi-Fi networks, it is a very basic utility and you may not be able to choose the right one with it.
Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector provides you with amazing amount of information that makes it not only easy to pick the Wi-Fi Hotspot with the right speed and performance, but you will also be able to troubleshoot the connections! These are a few other useful applications of this free tool, as identified by its makers.

• Search for all available Wi-Fi networks
• Troubleshoot Wi-Fi connectivity issues, if any
• Verify the Wi-Fi networks’ signal strengths (coverage)
• Manage a computer’s Wi-Fi connection
• Locate Wi-Fi devices
• Detect rogue APs and verify AP settings
• Wi-Fi Education

Features of Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

You can get detailed information of all nearby Wi-Fi Hotspots in a radar like display. Here are the prominent features of Xirrus Wi-Fi Network Inspector.

• Dynamic radar view displaying local Wi-Fi network names and relative distance
• Detailed information of all the local Wi-Fi networks
• Display of computer’s Wi-Fi connection details and most important network addresses
• Connection, Quality, and Speed tests for troubleshooting the Wi-Fi network connection
• Real-time graph of signal strength of one or more Wi-Fi networks with 8 minute history
• Locate mode for tracking Wi-Fi network signal strength, including audible beep
• Directly Connect or Disconnect to Wi-Fi networks
• Enable or Disable Wi-Fi adapter in Windows 7 and Vista
• If you are new to Wi-Fi and/or its terminologies, this tool can also help you with an integrated glossary of Wi-Fi terms

From the above, it is clear that this is much more than a Wi-Fi Hotspot finder and a more complete Wi-Fi network manager.
You will need windows 7, vista or windows xp (sp2 or above) to use this software. You will also need a Wi-Fi adapter, either built-in or external. You will also need .NET framework 2.0 or higher. (Download .NET framework 4.0 here). To check if it is already installed, go to “Control Panel” => “Add/Remove Programs” and look for Microsoft .NET Framework.
If you want to run speed tests, make sure you have adobe flash player installed – Download Flash Player 10.

Download Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

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Media Center Studio add-on for Windows Media Center in Windows 7 and Vista

We had earlier told you about Windows Media Center and how you can enjoy live TV and internet TV on your computer running windows 7, Vista or XP. While connecting laptop to TV is a guide on enjoying Youtube and other videos on the web through TV, windows 7 media center setup is a guide on setting up media center on windows 7, to enjoy TV on it. Windows Media Center has a whole lot of tools and option but you may not always want them. Media Center Studio is an application to customize Windows Media Center. It is available for both windows 7 and vista and you can customize Windows Media Center as per your liking. You can customize the start menu by changing menu titles or removing unwanted menu items, creating or applying beautiful themes to the media center etc.
Here are some of the features of Media Center Studio.

• Edit your start menu i.e. rearrange or disable native menu items
• Create your own menu strips, with your own menu items to go in them
• Monitors your application and returns to Media Center when it exits
• Set up a button on your remote to exit your application
• Create menu items that take you to native Media Center pages or start media
• Create new themes or edit existing ones
• Apply themes to Media Center

If you are a fan of Windows Media Center, you will love this add-on.

Download Media Center Studio

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Free Screen Recorder

Download Free Screen Recorder to Video Capture Computer Screen in Windows 7, Vista and XP

– Microsoft introduced the snipping tool in windows vista, to capture the computer screen as images in various formats. We were delighted with it, as it was way better than the basic print screen utility in windows, though it was not as flexible as the “Snagit” or other free screen capture tools. It didn’t give the users any option to re-size the image or to add captions and titles.
We expected microsoft to enhance the snipping tool in windows 7, but it was not to be! We also expected Microsoft to introduce a video capture tool in windows 7 to record the computer screen, but there wasn’t any! Camstudio continued to be the best know free screen recorder to record tutorials. However, we recently came across this free screen to video capture tool from Koyote and were impressed with it.

Free Screen to Video Recorder

Koyote’s screen to video capture proved to be a good alternative to Camstudio, in video capturing the computer screen, though it has its own limitations. Here we tell you more about this free video recording tool and how to download, install and use it!

• Record the activity on either the whole computer screen or any selected area
• Option to record the sound via the computer microphone
• Option to either capture or not capture the mouse movement.Default setting is to capture the mouse movement.
• Save the video recording as either FLV, AVI, SWF (Flash) or WMV formats. Default format is FLV.
• Configure the parameters of recording quality like FPS, video size, video and audio bit rate, audio frequency and more

Download Koyote’s screen to video Recorder

You can download this free screen recording tool here.

Download Screen To Video Capture Software

After you download the above app (exe), double click the file to start installing it. During installation, the program automatically downloads the Microsoft codecs to support WMV format and this occupies 11 MB of your hard disk space. This free screen to video recorder will also try to optionally install a third party toolbar and make Yahoo! as the default search engine. You can however opt out of them, by deselecting those options as shown below.

How to record screen to video in flv, avi, wmv or flash format?

• 1. Run the Screen to Video application

• 2. choose the screen area to record. You can either choose to record the entire screen or only the selected window or the selected area

• 4. By default, the recorded video will be saved as FLV file.You can change this to either AVI, WMV or SWF (flash) formats.
• 5. You can then select “Configuration” to specify audio capture (if needed), FPS, format, video and audio bit-rate, video size and other recording parameters.

• 6. You can also choose to either capture or not capture the mouse movements
• 7. Once you are done configuring the parameters, click “Start” to start recording the video. You will be asked to specify the name for the recorded video file and the location to save it.

Note – If you have multiple windows open, the “Save As” dialog window may be found it background.You will have to either press Alt+Tab or minimize all open windows (Show the desktop), to navigate to it!

• 8. The freeware will automatically start recording the computer screen activity.If you aren’t yet ready, you can press F9 to pause the recording, get ready with what you want to record and then press F9 again to resume recording

• 9. Once you are done with the activity, press F10 to stop the recording.The software takes a few seconds to save the output in the chosen location.

That is it! The recorded video is ready to be played. You can play it by right clicking the file and choosing Launch Video. If you have VLC Player installed on your computer, the video will be played on it.

You can also choose to “create a web page for the video” by right clicking the file on the software’s interface.
Koyote screen to video capture tool is a simple, yet neat and useful utility to record the screen. It would have been great if the developers had made it easier to upload and share the video via Youtube, Facebook and more. Thought this isn’t very difficult to do, it would have helped the basic computer users, to easily share the recorded video.

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Free Download Pandora Data Recovery Software to recover deleted files

How many times have you deleted a file in your PC and then discovered a need for it? It has happened to me a number of times. I would then try to look for back up copies but if I haven’t backed it up, I look for a free software to recover them.
I had recently discovered that I deleted an important document from my computer.I knew that I didn’t have a back up copy and I started searching for a free data recovery software at Techblissonline.We have posted reviews and download links for several free data recovery software including photo recovery software to recover deleted files.
I however decided to try a new software this time. It was then I discovered the free Pandora recovery software, which can recover deleted files from either NTFS or FAT-formatted disk volume. After you download and install it on the computer, you will have to run Pandora recovery’s surface scan to scan the computer hard drive and build an index of all files, including the deleted files and folders.
Once the scanning is complete, you may recover deleted files by either browsing through the hierarchy of existing and deleted files, or using the search option to find the files using either the full or partial file names. Pandora recovery also lets you recover files using file size, creation date or last access date. However, many may not find any use for these options as they would probably remember only the file names.
This free data recovery software can also be used to recover any images, movie files or files of any other type.The feature that I appreciated the most was the ability to preview deleted files. The quick viewer in Pandora file recovery software lets you preview any deleted image or text file, before you recover them.
You can recover deleted files from reformatted media or from discs with damaged or missing file allocation table.You may even recover files whose MFT record has been reused by the operating system. However, Pandora recovery does not use information contained in the file allocation table and hence it cannot determine the file name, its attributes or the file path. The preview functionality proved to be very useful, as Pandora recovery cannot find the file name.

Pandora Data Recovery Software Features

Here are some prominent features of Pandora data recovery software.

• Ability to browse or search deleted files.

• Ability to preview deleted images or text files before you recover them

• Ability to recover any archived, hidden, encrypted and compressed files
• Ability to recover alternate data streams (ADS) that useful contain file-related meta data
• Ability to view file properties like file type, deletion date, date created, date modified etc. Right click on the file and click “Properties” to view them.
• Ability to view properties of all logical drives on the computer i.e. drive letter, volume label, file system etc.
• Ability to recover deleted files to either the local drive or any remote network drive including flash drive. Developers of Pandora recovery recommend recovery of deleted files to a secondary hard drive, a network drive, USB Flash drive, or other external media for better success rates.

Pandora data recovery works on windows 7, vista, XP, windows 2003 and windows 2000. It recognizes FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, NTFS5 and NTFS/EFS file systems.
Limitations - Success rate depends on the extent the disk space occupied by the deleted files had been overwritten/reused by the file system. Lesser the overwrite percentage, greater is the recovery success rate!

Download Pandora Data Recovery Software

Download Pandora data recovery software and recover deleted files from your PC.

Download Pandora Recovery Software

What files may be recovered using Pandora Data Recovery Software?

Recover files of any type including the following, using the free data Recovery Software.

• Images / Photos – JPEG images (*.JPG), PNG images (*.PNG), GIF images (*.GIF), BMP images (*.BMP).
• Microsoft Office 2010/2007/2003 Documents – DOC files (*.DOC), DOCX files (*.DOCX), XLS files (*.XLS), XLSX files (*.XLSX), PPT files (*.PPT), PPTX files(*.PPTX)
• Music / Sound – MP3 files (*.MP3).
• Archived Files – Zipped files (*.ZIP)

Free download Pandora data recovery software.

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How to hide a Windows 7 Drive?

  Do you have a need to hide or remove one or more computer drives in Windows 7? Here we explain a simple method to hide a drive in windows, that does not require you to modify the registry or dabble with the DOS editor.
There may be several reasons why you might find a need to hide a computer drive in Windows OS. For example, you might have some important documents or media files saved in a particular drive and you wouldn’t want anyone else, using your computer, to discover or tamper them. It could also be that you don’t want others to easily find and use the CD or DVD drive or any other drive on your computer, when you are away. Whatever may be your reason, here is how you can easily hide or unhide a computer drive whenever you want.

How to hide a drive in Windows 7 or Vista?

The following are the steps to hide a drive in windows 7.

• Click the “Start” ORB, type “disk management” in the text box labeled “Search programs and files…” and select “Create and format hard disk partitions“.

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• In the window titled “Disk Management”, right-click on the computer drive that you want to hide and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”. For this tutorial, I chose to hide the computer’s recovery partition.

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• In the window titled “Change Drive Letter and Paths for…”, click the button labeled “Remove” and you will be shown a warning message stating applications relying on that drive letter may not work properly. You may choose to continue by clicking “Yes”, if this drive is used for storing files and not for running any applications.

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That is it. The computer drive will no longer be visible in your windows explorer or “Computer”.
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Assign a Drive letter to the Partition in Windows

To unhide the computer drive, assign a drive letter to the partition (volume), by following these steps.

• Open the disk management utility in Windows, as explained above, select the partition to which you want to assign a drive letter, right-click and choose “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”.
• Click the “Add” button and in the window title “Add Drive Letter or Path”, assign a drive letter and click “OK”.

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You can now use the computer drive in the usual way.
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