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Filed under: Fun, Internet, Social Software

Dress up your Tweets with Twitterkeys

Twitter KeysAre you leaving work early to fly off somewhere with your sweetie? You could Tweet that to your followers on Twitter, or you could tell them, "I'm going to ✂ out of work early today and hop a ✈ to Montego Bay with my true ♥."

Adding symbols to Tweets used to involve remembering a whole bunch of keystroke combinations but thanks to TwitterKeys, created by the folks at The Next Web Blog, all you have to do now is cut and paste.

Just drag the TwitterKeys bookmarklet to your toolbar and next time you're looking for a symbol, just click the link to open the directory. Find the symbol you like, copy it (Control + C), then paste it (Control + V) into your Tweet. Pretty sweet.

Two things to note: TweetDeck users will need to change the apps defult font setting to international/utf8 in order to use TweetKeys. Also, Mac users will recognize many of these symbols from the Special Characters set found on OS X. While not all of those characters will work cleanly in Twitter, the ones selected for TwitterKeys will.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Open Source

Hide, show, customize Windows icons with Iconoid

iconoid
Tired of looking at all 67 icons littering your Windows desktop? Sure, you could just clean them up and place just the shortcuts you use most often on your desktop. But Iconoid presents an easier alternative - hide your icons when you don't need them.

Iconoid is choc full of features. You can set it to always hide your desktop icons, never hide them, or hide them based on where your cursor is. You can also choose whether to hide or show the taskbar.

The program also lets you adjust how your icons are displayed. You can select background or text colors or adjust whether a drop shadow will be displayed. You can also save the position of the icons on your desktop so you can quickly restore your desktop settings even after you've moved icons around or changed your screen resolution.

[via Lifehacker and Life Rocks 2.0]

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

DesktopOnTop shows your desktop, no minimizing necessary

DesktopOnTop
Sometimes you want to open a file saved on your desktop, but you don't want to minimize all of the applications you're currently running just to get to it. DesktopOnTop can help. While Windows lets you add a "desktop" toolbar to the taskbar that will let you launch items saved on your desktop, DeskTopOnTop goes one step further and actually shows you a visual representation of your desktop.

If you just want a list, you can right-click on the DesktopOnTop icon in the system tray and get a start-menu lookalike with a list of programs and files on your desktop. But a left click brings up a picture of your desktop. Sort of. The first thing you'll probably notice is that the wallpaper doesn't match yours. If this bothers you, you can either change your desktop wallpaper to match DesktopOnTop (which nobody really expects you to do), or you can select a solid color that looks good with your desktop an adjust the program's transparency level.

DesktopOnTop is highly customizable and light weight. It uses about 8MB of RAM.

[via Freeware Genius]

Filed under: Design, Productivity, Search

ICONlook: icon search engine


When it comes to tracking down some icons for a project -- nothing real fancy, and preferably under some kind of open license -- image searching on Google doesn't always do the trick. ICONLook is a search site that you can try instead: it's specifically for icons, and it has some useful features that make it worth a peek if you're in a pinch. These are generally OS-type icons, for stuff like apps, documents and search buttons, so don't get your hopes up for anything too fanciful. Heck, we couldn't even find anything as wild and crazy as a cat icon on ICONLook.

Selection is not ICONLook's strong point. Even within the categories it's designed for, there's not a lot of variety. On the plus side, many of the icons are available in a number of different sizes, and there are links to the source and the license for each one. This puts to rest any worries that this might be some kind of hack job, or the work of nefarious icon pirates. Instead, what you get is a legitimate, middle of the road selection of licensed icons that will hopefully expand to become more useful.

UPDATE: An astute reader was able to find a cat on ICONLook. We stand corrected, but we still feel the site could use a bigger library. Thanks, Jeff_RE!

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Restore your desktop icon positions with DesktopOK

DesktopOK
If you spend a lot of time changing your Windows desktop resolution, there's a good chance you also spend a lot of time rearranging your desktop icons. That's because every time you change to a new resolution and then change back, Windows tends to knock your desktop icon layout of whack.

A few months back, we looked at Icon Restore, a nifty little tool that lets you save the state of your desktop icons and then restore them. DesktopOK does pretty much the same thing. But unlike Icon Restore, DesktopOK lets you save and restore multiple layouts.

DesktopOK hangs out in your system tray when minimized. When you're getting ready to change your display resolution, you can just pop it open, save your state, and then play with your resolutions as much as you like, safe in the knowledge that you can restore your desktop to that state when you're done. Or you can keep a couple of saved layouts handy for different situations.

[via Confessions of a Freeware Junkie]

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Extract program icons with IconsExtract

IconsExtract
Have you ever wanted to find a program icon so you could apply it to another application or just copy and paste the pretty picture into an image or Word document? While some program icons are clearly labeled as ICO files, others are hidden inside of EXE, DLL, OCX and CPL files. But you can still get at them, using the freeware application IconsExtract.

Here's how it works. You choose a directory to scan and IconsExtract will search through any files that might contain icons. If you search a particular file, like say C:\WINNT\System32\shell32.dll, the search will be super-fast. If you scan your entire program files directory it might take a bit longer.

When IconsExtract is done scanning it'll display a list of available icons. You can save them to ICO or CUR files, or copy an image to your clipboard.

[via gHacks]

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Features, Time-Wasters

Translate text to Zlango for your Zlango-speaking friends - Time Waster


Text messages are all well and good, but the kids these days, they like graphics. So when Zlango launched a service to offer enhanced emoticons and icons for mobile phone and web use, we were suitably impressed. The company came up with a hieroglyphic-like "language," complete with 200 different icons, some of which hold multiple meanings.

While it's not a complete language, you can convey a lot of meaning with those 200 icons. But that's a lot of images to remember. Fortunately, Zlango has gone and offered a couple of new services, including Zlango Composer, an English to Zlango translator. Because you know, there's a wide demand for that kind of thing.

The application is Flash-based, and translates text into images as you type. You can then send messages to your friends, who will likely have a pretty tough time reading them if you turn the captions off. We can't say Zlango Composer is particularly useful, unless say, you're a company focused on icons and you're trying to attract users to your service. But it's certainly fun to play with for a few minutes.

[via TechCrunch]

Filed under: Design, Fun, Internet, Text

Canadian icons at their finest, for free

canadian icon font set

There are free icon sets and icon fonts all over the internet, but nothing is as special as one that represents the place you call home.

10four design based out of Vancouver BC has put up for the taking an iconic font that represents Canadian life. All things Canadian come together in this special set called Adanac, including beer, lumberjacks, kraft dinner, poutine, zambonis, beavers, toques and even John Candy. Nothing says Canada more than this set, and if you feel like screaming Canada in anything you are creating on your computer, make sure to use this set.

To grab the free Adanac font set, visit the site and fill out your name and email, and 10four will send you an email with an address and password for download.

Filed under: Design, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware

Iconfinder lets you search for desktop bling bling


Pimptastic icons can really make a highly customized desktop environment feel, well, cozy. If you're the sort of person who gets all squiggly inside over rendered 3d icon love, Iconfinder is a definite must see.

Just back online after an unspecified absence, Iconfinder lets you search for all sorts of icons just like you'd search for any other web content. You won't find everything you're looking for, but hopefully as they work to relaunch the site we'll see more icons for common tools we all know and love.

Filed under: Design, Developer, Fun, Macintosh, Productivity, Apple, Freeware, Mods

Free high-quality icons - Today's Mod

Pixel Press Icons[Update] Thanks to DLS reader Kevin for pointing out in the comments that these icons are only for personal use. Pixel Press Icons does however have a page of royalty-free 16x16 icons that can be used anywhere.

One of the quickest way to put a personal stamp on your computer is to use custom icons. For those of us that have become addicted to creating the perfect icon set, it can become a mission to search out the most beautiful icon for some specific application or folder.

One place to find some very high-quality icons is Pixel Press Icons. Their icon sets are offered free of charge for use on websites, in software, or on your personal computer. The icon sets are packaged in Mac-friendly drive image files (DMG file extension), although I'm sure enterprising Windows users can find a way to make use of these icons as well.

In fact, if you've got the expertise to share how to download and install a Mac icon packaged inside a Mac image file, please share it with us in the comments.

Filed under: Windows, Windows Mobile

Change the device icon in Windows Mobile Device Center

WMDC iconWindows Mobile Device Center is vista's version of ActiveSync, for synchronizing data between your PC and Windows Mobile PDA or smartphone. When it loads, you get a nice little graphic of a generic PDA and smartphone. But what if you want a picture that looks like the Pocket PC you've got docked in a cradle on your desk?

Michael Railing at PDAPhoneHome figured out where Windows stores the icon file, and how to change it out. It's a little tricky, because it's not enough to create a new icon file and store it in the right directory (C:\users\(your username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\ActiveSync\Profiles\(your profile key)\).

You also need to store a copy of the icon in the Windows directory on your mobile device before making your first connection to Windows Mobile Device Center. So you may have to remove and re-add your device in order for this to work. Railing's also been kind enough to create a ton of icons for various devices for your downloading pleasure.

[via Pocket PC Thoughts]

Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, E-mail, Productivity, Web services, Mozilla, Freeware, Browser Tips

Attachment icons for Gmail

Gmail attachment iconsOoh, now this is cool: Lifehacker points us to a this great Stylish script that gently tweaks Gmail to put meaningful icons next to messages with attachments. Instead of a generic paperclip icon, this puts a PDF icon next to messages with PDF attachments, an image icon next to messages with attached images, and so on for Word docs, Zip files, text files, executables, video files, and so on. Very cool.

In case you're not familiar, Stylish is a great extension for Firefox that lets you set up custom styles for web sites, letting you do little things like the tweak above to things like reskinning or totally changing the layout of other sites, and even Firefox itself. Userstyles.org is a site that has collected hundreds of such scripts and is not to be missed.

[Link and image via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Design, Fun, OS Updates, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Mods

iconaholic.com - Today's Mod

iconaholic.comOne of the easiest and best ways to update a boring desktop is to swap out the ugly default icons for fancy updated ones. For anyone that enjoys making their desktop look as good as possible, they'll want to make iconaholic.com a regular stop. There you'll find beautiful icon updates for applications like µTorrent and Google Talk, amongst other more generic icon sets. What more is there to say? Go get 'em.

Filed under: Design, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Mods

UberIcon - Works great with RocketDock

UberIconA couple days ago Ryan brought us RocketDock, the best Apple dock emulator I've seen so far. While using it, I noticed that it has a setting in the options that allows you to turn on "UberIcon" support. At first I was confused, as I wasn't sure if that was just a mode in RocketDock, but since it didn't appear to do anything, I went looking on Punk Software's site. And lo and behold, I found that UberIcon is its own standalone utility.

UberIcon immediately won me over due to its complete simplicity - all it does is to zoom an icon quickly and smoothly when you double click it from your desktop or anywhere within Windows Explorer. It might not sound like much, but it definitely adds a bit of spice to an otherwise fairly two-dimensional XP desktop. And of course as soon as I had UberIcon installed, RocketDock respected the setting and started to zoom icons when I launched them in the same way they do on my desktop. Sweet!

Filed under: Design, Fun, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Freeware, Mods

IconFactory - Today's Mod

IconFactoryIf you're looking for icon sets to spice up your system, check out IconFactory's free offerings. All icon packs are offered in icontainer, Mac and Windows file formats. Arcade Daze really caught my eye, hearkening back to my days in dingy arcades playing DigDug, Pole Position, and all those classics. Am I showing my age? Oops.

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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