- Recent
- Popular
- Tags (4)
- Subscribers (29)
- Top 10 Things You Can Do with a DVDToday
-
The proliferation of thumb drives and external hard drives has made optical media like DVDs seem a little less handy—but there are still plenty of ways to put DVDs to good use. These shiny, multi-gigabyte discs can run entire operating systems, put movies on your computer and vice-versa, host a robust copy of Wikipedia, and do so much more, if you know how to work them. Check out some of our favorite hacks and tips for getting the most out of DVDs, whether released by Hollywood or purchased at OfficeMax. Photo by MiNe (sfmine79).10. Boot a custom operating system from a DVD.
It's certainly not a trick you can't pull off with a CD, but putting a live-booting operating system on a DVD gives you a lot more space to fit the apps you really want and use, along with any files you keep going back to. You can roll your own Ubuntu system with Reconstructor, - Mmm Free Declutters Busy Context MenusYesterday
-
Windows XP only: When you right-click on your desktop or on a file, do you have to go through two dozen useless menu items before you hit the one you want? Free utility Mmm offers an easy interface for hiding and organizing context menu items—into a "Rarely used" subfolder, for example. With Mmm running, hit the colored button it adds to the top left of the menu to see the configuration area, shown here. Check out the before and after photos of my context menu using Mmm.
Before:
After:

Recently, the How-To Geek explained how to clean up your right-click menu by editing the Windows registry—a fine option for super-savvy users who don't want to run yet another utility to achieve the same end. If messing with your registry isn't your bag, previously mentioned File
- iPhone 2.2 Firmware Update Now AvailableYesterday
-
The long-awaited 2.2 firmware updates for iPhones and iPod touch models hit iTunes at midnight last night, pushing a good deal of new features and long-awaited fixes to the mobile devices. We've already detailed some of the major new features already: Street View with walking/transit directions in Google Maps (iPhones only, unfortunately) and "emoji" face emoticons, over-the-air podcast downloading, and, while not really a feature, it's expected that 2.2 will be jailbroken before you know it. There's a good number of interface and usability improvements too, like improved HTML email formatting and location sharing, stability and menu bar tweaks to Safari, and a few other punch-list items. I'm downloading my 240MB-ish iPod update just fine this morning; tell us your impressions of 2.2 in the comments. - Google Launches SearchWiki for Custom-Ordered Search ResultsYesterday
-
Some logged-in Google users are seeing an interesting new feature enabled on their results pages this morning. SearchWiki adds two buttons to the right of each result that let users move their favorite or most relevant results to the top spot or kill out a result entirely for their page only, as well as add notes for yourself on certain results and add entirely new results to that crucial first page. You (and other users) will be able to see the changes your username has made, along with aggregate numbers for other users' actions (x voted up, x removed). While they're just for your information right now, Google engineers have said they might consider letting group decisions impact global results. I don't have SearchWiki enabled in my account yet, so I can't tell if the "I'm Feeling Lucky" results work with the re-ordering (so cool if so). Check out Google demonstration video below, and tell us what you dig and don't about SearchWiki in the comments. Screenshot from Google Operating System.![endif]-->!--[if>
- Gmail Updates Its Look, Adds ThemesNovember 19
-
Google's beloved web-based email client has always been ripe for third-party design customization (we've always been partial to the Gmail Redesigned skin in Better Gmail, for example), but now Gmail is officially riding the interface customization train by offering 30-some new themes to spice up your inbox. Keep reading for a screenshot tour of the cool new offerings.Ninja

Graffiti

Planets

Candy

Shiny

Mountains
