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I once worked with a woman whose office looked like a hoarder's attic. Apart from very narrow passageways, every inch of space was piled ceiling-high with paper of every sort. The desktop of her Windows PC was similarly strewn with more icons than would fit on a single screen.

She claimed to be able to find exactly what she was looking for with little hunting, both in her office and on her desktop. The woman obviously had found a system that worked for her. If you find yourself struggling to manage the shortcuts and other items on your desktop, … Read more

Sometimes modifier keys on the keyboard may not work properly. If this is the case, you may find that either specific keys will not work, or certain combinations of keys will not work.… Read more

The CTRL key in Windows. Mac users, you ceded all control to Apple but you can still take command. Just use the command key instead of the CTRL key for all of these. Here we go.

The biggest waste of time I see is cutting and pasting. Look at this poor fellow toiling away in the … Read more

Micro-Sys Launcher is a cool little bit of freeware that lets you quickly open stuff--files, folders, apps, and such--from the system tray. You can keep shortcuts to all the programs and files you use most often in one easy-to-access location, and launch them with a click. You can group your shortcuts by hierarchy in a tree view or by program association, keeping more frequently used items together. You can even create shortcuts to quickly launch several items at once.

Launcher boasts a drag-and-drop interface that makes creating a quick-launch shortcut as easy as dragging an icon from, for example, the … Read more

Gmail makes it easy to bookmark different parts of itself. For instance: you can book mark your in-box at mail.google.com/mail/#inbox. That keyword after the pound sign is the key. Change that to #sent and you can book mark your sent e-mail.

Unread mail doesn't have a nifty keyword like that. … Read more

QuicKeys is a long-lived automation utility designed to save you time by letting you convert tedious, repetitive tasks--everything from opening apps to copying files to typing your e-mail address--into quick, painless one-step shortcuts. Although there are numerous options for macro programs on the Mac (including cheaper and even free ones, like OS X's built-in Automator), QuicKeys strikes a good balance of providing an intuitive, visual interface with a veritable programming language that can handle the most complex tasks and workflows.

You can use a wide variety of triggers, with customizable "scopes" (for shortcuts that work in a … Read more

eBay Icon Installer by Iconomize.com creates a shortcut to eBay on the user's desktop, allowing users to ensure that they are going to the authentic eBay site and not a fraudulent one. Although the application works well, it doesn't really do much that a user couldn't do on his or her own.

There is no real interface to speak of; once the program is installed, a shortcut is created on the desktop, and that's it. The icon consists of the eBay logo, and users click on it to go directly to eBay.com. There are … Read more

The browser wars are heating up again. Microsoft's touting the improved performance and security of Internet Explorer 8, dozens of new Firefox extensions are released every day, and, according to Apple, Safari 4 will be even faster than its speedy predecessor. Meanwhile, Opera just keeps chugging along at version 9.64, with version 10 beta 3 now available.

Just a few weeks ago, Google announced its plans to create an operating system based on Chrome. Considering that the browser itself is barely a year old, such plans may be premature. Then again, maybe not. But for right now, I'll keep looking for ways to make the Chrome browser more useful.

Last June, I described ways to change Chrome's default settings. Here's a look at ways to revamp the browser's interface and access some of its useful hidden features.

… Read more

Tidy Start Menu is an intuitive way to organize the programs in your Start menu. Although the program is easy to use, we found that some of the features we most like to see in such programs are available only by upgrading to the Pro version.

The program's interface is clean and moderately attractive. The program comes with nine categories, such as Games, Programming, and Entertainment, and a series of check boxes allows users to specify what programs they would like to have appear in each category. Users can also drag and drop programs from one category to another. … Read more