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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Open Source, Troubleshooting, Windows x64

SheepDog rounds up stray application windows on multi-monitor setups

It doesn't happen often, but every now and then I receive a customer's laptop which just doesn't want to believe it's no longer attached to an external monitor. And it never fails - some important app is going to appear in the display Twilight Zone.

If only there was some kind of digital shepherd to corral those errant windows. Hey, if not a shepherd, why not SheepDog?

It's a tiny, portable application whose sole purpose is to bring apps that have wandered back to the primary display. Fire it up, and the tray icon listens for a hotket combination to be pressed. In the options screen you can customize your key combo and also change the system tray icon.

Hit the hotkey (or right click the system tray icon and select reposition) and any offending application windows are instantly moved.

At only 20Kb, this baby is going straight on my USB flash drive with all the other handy utilities I need once in a blue moon.

Filed under: Fun, Windows, Macintosh, Productivity

F.lux adapts your display to the time of day

Let's face it: some of us don't get outside as much as we should. When you're working or playing in front of your computer all day, you don't always notice little things like a sunset. An ingenious little app called F.lux lets your monitor adjust to ambient lighting conditions around you, even when you're glued to the keyboard. It adjusts your display settings based on location and your current lighting setup, complementing the lighting inside your room or cube.

As time passes, F.lux checks the status of the sun in your zip code or latitude, and adjusts your display's color temperature accordingly. As a writer, I love the extra bit of environmental awareness it offers. As a designer, I would probably be utterly annoyed by shifting display settings. Good thing there's a handy "turn off for one hour" feature you can use to switch back to your regular whitepoint while you're working with color.

Filed under: Utilities, Browsers

Find and Fix Dead Pixels With Your Browser!

You've probably heard of Dead Pixel Buddy, a free app that helps you locate dead or stuck pixels on your LCD monitor. One of our devoted readers has sent us an interesting alternative that runs in your browser.

Willy Ci
has coded it as part of his portfolio, and it's elegantly simple. Pick a color with the palette tool, click go full screen, and your monitor is instantly awash in glorious pixel-hunting color.

Since it's browser-based, it'll run on any platform (as long as Adobe Flash is supported).

Both machines I used for testing had a slight issue escaping from full screen - the chooser didn't reappear, and my mouse pointer vanished. Simply mousing up to the tab bar and right-click reloading the tab solved the problem.

Once you've pinpointed the trouble spots, head over to killdeadpixel.com and see if you can't revive them with their trippy animated gif. Switching to one of the fullscreen modes makes stuck pixels easy to spot by giving you a black background to work with. No guarantees it'll wake them up, but it's worth a shot since most manufacturers won't warranty a screen with fewer than three problematic pixels.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Open Source

Zoomin: Today's free file

zoominOne of my favorite tricks in OS X is the zoom feature. I can blow tiny UI elements up to a huge size so my students can see those teeny flippy triangles in all those Macromedia apps. Long have I sought a version of this on Windows. Microsoft's little task bar replacement ain't cutting it. But it looks like Zoomin will fit the bill nicely. Zoomin even provides a little windowed interface with color reporting tools. Another simple but effective app. There's even the source code available.

Filed under: Audio, News, Macintosh

iChatStaus a thing of the past

 iChatStatus used to be the hip iChat plug-in that let you display your current iTunes track in a number of ways (albeit small, but a number). But since Tiger's version of iChat (3.0) hasiChatStatus been out, many people have just simply stopped using iChatStatus. iChat 3.0 comes with the option of displaying your iTunes music track while you're chatting. Plus, iChatStatus hasn't been updated in quite awhile. Sorry iChatStatus. You were good to us before you got mauled to death. We salute you!

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Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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