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Posts with tag transparency

Filed under: Windows, Freeware

Shell Enhancer's Got Your Hotkeys and a Whole Lot More


One of our beefs with Windows is that there are some pretty obvious customization options missing. Little things, but things we'd use if they were there. Fortunately, NuonSoft's Shell Enhancer packs a bunch of these features into a single 2.5MB installer.

What can it do? For starters, it allows you to "roll-up" windows (display only the title bar), make any window transparent, minimize applications to the system tray, lock them in position, and even force them remain on top.

It doesn't stop there, however. Also included is a wicked hotkey manager; we particularly like the prepacked "Google selected words." Highlight some text in any window, press ctrl + alt +g, and Internet Explorer will open with your results (you can easily rework it to use Firefox, of course). There's also a thumbnail-enhanced task switcher and a taskbar button mover (it's not click and drag, but it works).

Who doesn't want a little more functionality with a dash of eye candy for their Windows shell?

Filed under: Web services, web 2.0

Twitter Developers answer our burning questions

Twitter on Get SatisfactionSome of our questions about Twitter's recent and well documented downtime have been answered by the Twitter Dev team.

This is a nice move from Twitter, and we've watched a slow progression into open communication and transparency happen over the past few weeks in Twitter-land. They've been using services like Get Satisfaction to open up the conversation with those who are passionate enough to care.

And there are a lot of us who care.

Enough to start 2,146 different topics on Twitter alone.

Some of the Twitter faithful asked obvious questions like "Why Ruby?", while some of the better questions highlighted were "Why wasn't Twitter built as a messaging system from the start?". The answer was quite honest, and it was basically that Twitter was a one day project and it's success was not projected.

Very humbling for a company with funding to come out and talk behind the scenes nit and grit. Check out the full post.

We hope to see more of this from Twitter and from other companies as well.

Twitter has also opened up a Tumblr blog to keep us up to date on all of the important status information.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Office, Productivity, Freeware

PowerMenu - added options for running programs

Power MenuPowerMenu is a small utility that adds a few options to the system menu on any application. This is the menu you get when you click on the icon on the top left of the application's window, or if you right-click on the system's entry in the taskbar. What options do you get? Well, for me the most interesting one is the ability to set the priority of the running program without having to go through the task manager. Other options include setting window transparencies, setting a window to be Always on Top, and the ability to minimize programs to the system tray.

All of these functions have been done in other apps, but this is a nice small little utility that has them all together. If you're looking for a way to do all or some of these things, PowerMenu just might be the way to go. Note that it doesn't appear to have been actively developed since 2002, so any problems you discover with it likely won't be getting fixed any time soon. So far I've had no troubles with it, but you never know, right?

Note that many of the download sites listed don't work, but I was able to use the Veridicus site (which is the domain that the page is hosted under) with no problems.

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Open Source

Vitrite: Lightweight window transparency for Windows

VitriteThere's a lot of apps out there that will let you control your windows' levels of transparency in, er, Windows. Vitrite's snappy tagline is "useless window transparency since 2002," and it does two things: Lets you change a window's transparency by holding Ctrl and pressing the number keys, and toggle the "Always on Top" mode with another keypress. What's it have to recommend it over other such apps? Well, not a lot, really, but it is lightweight (a 43kb download) and open source, which are two things we're big fans of here at Download Squad.

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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