To have some of your running programs or opened windows minimized to tray could be helpful if you open too many windows. Your taskbar has more space and you might be able to concentrate more on certain programs. Taskbar indeed has its own options to manage the opened applications or folders, but the options may no longer enough in some situations. On the other hand, it is not every application has the ability to minimize itself to the tray. Hence, you might want to try Tray Everything.

Tray Everything could help you minimizing selected windows either from its main window, by clicking the minimize button on every opened window, or by adding a new button to each window. The ability to password protect minimized windows is a great addition. For whatever reason, optionally, you can hide opened windows instead of minimizing to tray.

Tray Everything also enables automatic minimize where all inactive windows will be automatically minimized after certain periods, but you can put any opened window to tray with a single press of a shortcut key if you want an easier way to do it manually instead.

Tray Everything is a portable freeware for Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP. It hasn't been tested on Windows Vista yet.

Download Tray Everything

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How many times have you misplaced your cell phones? How many times you have to use your other cell phones or ask for someone nearby to call the number so that you can find where it is? Have you ever be alone when you lost your cell phone somewhere?

No matter what the cause is, whether you are alone or not, Where's My Cell Phone is an online service that will help you find your misplaced cell phone as long as you didn't leave it on vibrate. Visit the site, enter the cell phone number, and it will dial the number for free. Just wait for your cell phone ringing.



All in all, this is a good alternative to find your misplaced cell phone. Unfortunately, at this time only Canada and US that are supported.

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Sure you can find the brightness adjustment button on your monitor and then repeatedly press it to get to the level you like, but using this free Desktop Lighter makes the work much easier. You can adjust the brightness of your monitor either using a slide bar or utilizing the provided shortcut key. If you often change the brightness level for certain tasks, this utility would be very useful.

Desktop Lighter is licensed as freeware that supports Windows Vista, XP and Server 2003.

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Dealing with duplicate emails within your Outlook Express is a pain. Who wants to spend hours to find which ones that are similar to each other and decide which one to be deleted? Instead of doing this manually, handing over the task to a freeware like Outlook Duplicate Items Remover is a great idea that could save much of our time.

Run the program as soon as you have done the installation and choose "Remove duplicate items" to launch a window where your Outlook folders are listed. Select the folder you want to remove and hit the "Remove duplicate items" button which is located at the bottom of the window. That's it.

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For any low resolution videos you have taken with your digital camera, mobile phone, or webcam, this free online service FixMyMovie can improve the quality of the videos easily. Simply upload your video clips and get ready to download them after FixMyMovie finishes performing the fixing or improvement.



Features:

• Enhance low resolution videos quality that are taken from webcam, digital camera or mobile phone.
• Videos up to 640x480 and 100 megabytes are accepted.
• Increase movie resolution up to 4X to get more details from your videos.
• Fixing dark clips by enhancing the brightness and contrast.
• Capture high resolution screenshots from the uploaded videos.
• Support all video formats.
• Download the enhanced videos in avi, flv or mov.
• Compare the original and enhanced videos side-by-side.

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It is easy for you to get yourself accidentally delete photos on your digital camera, but it is relatively hard to recover the photos since digital cameras usually don't have a built-in tool to do so. Fortunately, there are many software that are made specifically to recover deleted photos. If you don't want to buy anything, you could use photo recovery freeware like Free Art Plus Digital Photo Recovery.

This free photo recovery software enables you to recover accidentally deleted photos even from corrupted or accidentally formatted digital camera memory cards. It doesn't matter if Windows don't recognize your corrupted cards as this program will still be able to perform the recovery. JPG, TIF, DNG, Canon CR2, Konica-Minolta MRW, Nikon NEF, Olympus ORF, Pentax PEF, Sony ARW, SRF and SR2 are the file formats supported. There are some other RAW formats it supports but they might not be fully supported, resulting in possibly some errors in the recovery results.

You can recover deleted photos either directly from your memory card or create an image of the card. The second option is useful if you have a damaged card or a slow card reader. If you choose this second option, then you will need to parse the image of the card afterwards to perform the recovery.

Free Art Plus Digital Photo Recovery is a portable freeware supporting Windows 95 / 98 / Me / 2000 / NT / XP / Vista.

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This free converter does its job good enough in converting videos to iPod MPEG-4 formats. The features it provides makes you able to get the result you want. From the possibility to choose from numerous output quality and resolution presets, ability to convert multiple videos at once, and selecting only certain parts from videos to be converted so there is no need to convert the whole video parts if you don't need to. These whole things make Skuld iPod Converter a good converter that may suit your conversion need.

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If you don't want to use Adobe Photoshop each time you need to split images, then perhaps TileMage Image Splitter could satisfy your need. It is a freeware that can split one single image or even multiple images at once into a given number of columns and rows.

The images supported:

• Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) - *.jpg, *.jpeg
• Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) - *.gif
• Bitmap - *.bmp
• Portable Network Graphics (PNG) - *.png
• Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) - *.tif, *.tiff
• Windows Metafile (WMF) - (*.wmf)
• Enhanced Metafile (EMF) - (*.emf)

TileMage Image Splitter is a freeware that works under Windows 98 / Me / 2000 / XP / 2003 Server. .NET Framework v2.0 or above is required for the program to run.

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Getting bored of having to compress each file before you send it as an attachment in your email? Auto Zip Attachments lets you to forget about it since it will automatically compress any file attachment as long as you use Mozilla Thunderbird email client in sending the messages.

While attachment automatic compression before sending is possible, you can choose to manually compress the attachments by clicking the AutoZip button. Other features let you to password protect the zip, specify the compression ratio, prevent zipping of custom extensions (zip, rar, etc), compressing single or multiple attachments, rename the attachments, and so on.

Download Auto Zip Attachments

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While you can put recycle bin on quick launch, right-click it and select the option "empty recycle bin" to delete all stuff within, this program allows you to do it a little bit faster. RecycleNow is a freeware enabling you to bypass the "right-clicking" step. If you put it on Windows quick launch area, you only need to click its icon once to empty the recycle bin.

It may sound a too simple program to use. But since RecycleNow doesn't require installation and the size is super tiny, I don't see any reason to leave it behind and not use it on my computer. I appreciate anything that could save my time even a bit.

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Downloading multiple photos from Flickr is what this freeware designed for. Instead of wasting your time downloading photos one by one, why don't use Flickrdown? It doesn't matter if you want to download your own photo collection or photos that are uploaded by other users.

With Flickrdown, you can do the download in a few clicks. Search the photos by tags, email address, user names, or groups, select which ones you want to get, and this free program will download the photos to your computer. Microsoft .NET 2.0 is required to run this program.

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When deleting large files, Windows tend to wait for a while. You delete more files, and Windows will just wait longer. This situation is another reason why a freeware like FastCopy is made. This portable application can delete large files faster in Windows. Just select the "Full Delete" option from the drop-down menu within the main window of the program, select the target folder, and hit the Execute button. It will start the files deletion immediately.

Or, delete large files faster directly in Windows explorer

Optionally, you can integrate it with Windows explorer. So, whenever you want to delete files, highlight the files and access the FastCopy delete command through the right-click menu in Windows explorer. The main window of the program will then open and start the deletion immediately once you verify the deletion. If you want to delete without verification, you can configure the program to do so in the shell integration option window.

By integrating the program with Windows explorer, you can choose any file or folder you want to delete. No matter how many the files are. FastCopy runs under Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, 98, NT, Me.

Screenshot of Freeware FastCopy

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Free video software that supports the ability to join multiple video files is everywhere. So, it's pretty easy if you have several video clips that you want to combine into one video file. Use Video Spin, for example, and everything is done quickly. But what this one offer is quite different, and if you want to minimize the number of installed software within your computer, then you should take a look at this free video joiner.

Movavi is a free online video joiner that doesn't only able to join multiple video files with the same formats, but also several videos that each has different format. Say you have flv, 3gp, and mpeg you want to join. Movavi can do it. Just upload the files, give your email address, and wait until you get a message to get the result.

Beside allowing you to add video files from your computer, Movavi allows you to download, convert, and join multiple video files from multiple video sharing sites like YouTube, Google Video, bliptv, break, dailymotion, ifilm, metacafe, myspace, myvideo, and sevenload. Just let it knows the url of the videos, and it will do everything for you. When the movie is ready, Movavi sends the download link to your email.

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Have you ever found your firefox browser suddenly disappeared without warning? You can't even see the Firefox icon on the taskbar anymore. I have already experienced this several times. The solution is quite simple, though. Just press Alt + Tab and you will see the Firefox icon within the window. Select it and Firefox will get back to the display along with its icon on the Windows taskbar.

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Changing drive icon in Windows Vista is easy if you use Drive Icon Changer since it is a free program that has been specifically designed to do the changing instantly. If creating .inf file in root drive sounds too technical for you, or you just want to do it the easiest way you can, then this is the right utility to use. It just takes a couple of clicks to apply custom drive icon for each drive in your Windows explorer.

How to Change Drive Icon in Windows Vista Using Drive Icon Changer

• After downloading the program, run it as an administrator.
• Select which drive you want to change the icon from the drop-down menu within the main window of the program.
• Choose which icon from your icon collection to be used to replace the original drive icon.
• Click the save button and it's all done.

If the result of changing is ugly, you can replace it with another icon as many as you need to or you can just get back to the standard drive icon.

This program changes the drive icon by automatically creating a file named as Autorun.if. This file, along with a copy of the selected icon, are put inside the root drive. Both are hidden files, so it won't be displayed inside the root drive unless you want it to.

Though you can change the drive icon instantly using the program, if you want to learn the autorun.inf file, it only takes a little bit time of yours to be able to utilize the file to manually change the icon drive.

Drive Icon Changer is a freeware for Windows Vista and requires .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to run it on your computer. If you don't have this .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installed yet, then you need to download and install it first. Don't forget to download the vista drive icon pack either.

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John's Background Switcher is a free program letting you to change desktop background automatically at any time interval you want whether it is for every five or ten minutes, every one hour or two hours, every single day or every two days, every Windows start-up, you name it. What makes it different from other automatic desktop background changers is its ability to include numerous pictures from some popular photo sharing sites like Flickr, Phanfare, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, Yahoo! image search, and smugmug.

Other features:

• Aside from the ability to use photos from photo sharing sites as desktop background in automatic rotation manner, it also allows you to simply select your own pictures from folders in your computer.

• Each rotation mode has different setting. The dialog menu where you can select photos from Picasa Web Album to be rotated on your computer desktop background has different options than the options available within the dialog menu where you can choose to use Flickr photos for the wallpaper rotation.

• Supports single monitor and multiple monitors. If you use multiple monitors, you can set it to use the same or different picture for each monitor.

• Apply sepia, grayscale, or desaturate effect to the background.
  

• Auto picture rotation as long as the orientation information exists.
• Set pixel limits that are allowed to be displayed.
• Add calendar to the desktop background.
• Shortcuts for changing desktop background manually.
  

• Create thumbnail mosaic or snapshot scrapbook with customizable sizes.
• Disable desktop background rotation when a screensaver is running.
• Delay automatic rotation at Windows start-up.
• Disable or stop rotating if any specified program is running.
• Export or import John's Background Switcher setting from a computer to another computer.

Believe me, there are still many things you can do with this cool automatic desktop background changer. I've never seen any free wallpaper changer like it. Interested? John's Background Switcher supports Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista (both 32 and 64-bit version). In case you don't have Microsoft.NET 2.0 installed in your computer yet, the setup wizard will download and install it for you.

Download John's Background Switcher

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Somehow, you can't rename a file or folder. You try to move it, but it is unable to be moved. Even your attempt to delete it doesn't work, too. The file/folder is locked. You try to close the Windows explorer, but you still can't rename, move, or delete it. A message comes up say that it is being used by another program, but it won't tell which one is. It only says one of these things:

• Cannot delete file: Access is denied
• There has been a sharing violation.
• The source or destination file may be in use.
• The file is in use by another program or user.
• Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

The old solution would be to restart Windows to be able to delete, move, or rename the locked file/folder. It's a waste of time. If you still do the same way, why don't use Unlocker instead?

With this free program, everything can be done instantly within your Windows explorer. You can rename any locked file or folder using Windows explorer right click menu. You can move any locked file from a folder to wherever you like. Deleting it won't be a problem either. All are done without restarting Windows.



Optionally, you can also use the so-called Unlocker Assistant. With this extra tiny tool, Unlocker will activate itself automatically everytime you try to rename, delete, or move a file that is being locked. So, you won't need to unlock it through the Windows explorer right-click menu.

Unlocker is a freeware and designed to work under Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista. I highly recommend it.

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While shortcuts are very helpful in opening files or folders easier, they can create a problem when files or folders that point to them are deleted. Instead of deleting these shortcuts automatically, Windows decides to leave the task to you. Thus, you may have a lot of invalid shortcuts scattered in your system eating up your harddisk space over time.



Instead of manually searching for the invalid shortcuts one by one, you can hand it over to Orphans Remover. This free program will assist you in cleaning all of the broken shortcuts located at start menu, desktop, favorites, history, recent documents, temp directory, program files, application data, or any folder you specify. Furthermore, you can include the shortcuts that point to files on network or removable drives, ram disks and cd-rom drives in the searching.

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