Grupenet

Updated Jan 11th, 2011

If you’ve used Windows Media Player before you may have noticed that when you minimize it a mini-player in your Windows taskbar will appear. Believe it or not, similar functionality exists in iTunes. I’ll show you how to enable the taskbar player for iTunes.

Firstly, open up the iTunes Preferences under the “Edit” menu. In the preferences window that appears go to the “Advanced” tab. Find the option Minimize iTunes window to system tray and make sure it is unchecked.

Make your way down to the Windows taskbar. Right-click the taskbar, go to “Toolbars” and click on iTunes. Now whenever you minimize iTunes the taskbar player will appear, giving you limited control of your music without having to maximize iTunes.

NOTE: Using the iTunes taskbar player in Windows Vista will disable the taskbar transparency.

One of the tasks a Windows user looks forward to the least is likely to be defragmenting the hard disk. The defragmenter that ships with Windows, otherwise known as Windows Defragmenter (how original), does a horrible job at defragmenting when it comes to speed and resource usage.

I recently found a great freeware defragmenter called JkDefrag which does a very good job at defragmenting. The application is very quick and extremely lightweight, so it has minimal impact on resources. If you’ve downloaded the program, you will notice that there is more than one “version” of JkDefrag. These versions include the GUI version (most people will use this), command line version, and two screensaver programs.

The GUI version is what most people will use. You can also schedule it to defragment by using the Windows Task Scheduler. The command line version is pretty obvious. It allows you to defragment using command line. The screensaver programs allow you to set your Windows screensaver to the JkDefrag screensaver program so your computer will be defragmented every time your screensaver initiates.

Let me know if you know of any other good freeware defragmenters.

Ever get frustrated when a Flickr image isn’t made available at full size? I recently found a great bookmarklet at typewriting.org which allows you to get easy access to the full resolution images stored on Flickr’s servers even if they aren’t made public.

Just drag the following link to your Bookmarks toolbar: Get Flickr Original

Now whenever you see a photo on Flickr which does not have the original full resolution image available to the public, just click on that bookmarklet and you’ll instantly be taken to the full-size image.

I recently stumbled across a great little trick for using the new Google Talk Gadget in a sidebar in Firefox. There’s no need to install any extensions in Firefox as the functionality needed to do this trick is already built in to Firefox.

First things first, add a bookmark in Firefox for the link below. I’d recommend placing the bookmark in the Bookmarks Toolbar for easy access.

• http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client

Next, right-click that bookmark and choose “Properties”. Check the box labeled Load this bookmark in the sidebar and click OK. Now every time you click on the Google Talk bookmark it will open in the sidebar.

You can use this same method with any other bookmark as well, though it only works best for pages that can be viewed at very narrow widths.

Ever notice those little arrow overlays over every shortcut in Windows? Do they bother you as much they they bother me? Glad we’re on the same track. Thankfully I recently discovered a great little application which will get rid of those little arrows. The program I’m talking about is called FxVisor.

After you’ve downloaded and installed FxVisor, launch it and you will immediately be given the choice of removing any arrow overlay from shortcuts or replacing the overlay with a different style which isn’t as much of an eye sore.

If you have removed the arrow overlay, FxVisor will also allow you to re-enable the default overlay. All in all, FxVisor is a great little application which will be of much help to any users who use desktop shortcuts to launch their applications, though I still recommend using differents methods for application launching.

Update
Apparently this will only work on Windows Vista. For those of you using Windows XP, the TweakXP Tweaking Utility will allow you to remove the arrow overlays, supposedly.