Easy: Change Icon Size On-The-Fly

To change your icon size, go to the Desktop, hold down Ctrl and scroll your mouse middle scroller up or down. This will increase and decrease the icon sizes respectively:

Ctrl +

Hard: The Tedious Method in Vista

The other way to change the icon size is a bit harder. In Vista: Right-click the Desktop > Personalize > Windows Color and Appearance > Open classic appearance properties for more color options > Avanced… > under Item choose Icon. Now adjust the size property. Isn’t that tedious?

This post originated at All Things Marked.

Text Reminders

This post originated at All Things Marked.

Download FREE ZoneAlarm Pro 2009

This post originated at All Things Marked.

There are two methods to get around this problem:

1. Turn UAC Off

Go to Start > Control Panel. In the top right search box, enter UAC. The search will return 1 result which will let you toggle UAC on or off. Click on the result and uncheck Use UAC… This will require a reboot, but it will save you time in the future.

2. Copy, then overwrite the HOSTS file

Navigate to the etc folder located @ c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\. Copy the HOSTS file to your Desktop and edit it accordingly. Make sure it’s named hosts, not hosts - Copy. Drag it into the etc folder and when you’re asked to overwrite the existing file, say yes.

This post originated at All Things Marked.

1. Download & Install WampServer 2

First, download Wamp. Now install; a good spot is c:\wamp.

2. Configure Apache to run on an alternate port

By default, a web server runs on port 80. If you’re running IIS, it’s probably running on port 80 and Apache tries to as well. Let’s change it so Apache runs on port 8080.

You’ll see the icon for WAMP is yellow (), meaning not all services are running. That’s because Apache is trying to use port 80, but it’s conflicting with IIS. Click on the WAMP icon and go to Apache > httpd.conf

Scroll down and change Listen 80 to Listen 8080. Scroll down even further and change ServerName localhost:80 to ServerName localhost:8080. Those two changes will tell Apache to use port 8080. To restart WAMP, click the WAMP icon and choose Restart All Services. The icon should now look like

That’s all you really need to get things started. Don’t forget to restart the services every time you change the httpd.conf file.

3. Additional Customizations

Make your websites visible to others

To allow other people on your network to see your sites running on Apache, all you need to do is it clikc the WAMP icon in the systray and click Put Online. It will restart the services and make your sites visible to others. This setting is necessary if you’re on an actual live server environment.

Run multiple sites using different ports

It’s possible to run multiple sites in Apache, you just need to dish out different ports to access them. Below are two blocks of config lines necessary to make two websites run on different ports:


NameVirtualHost *:8080
<VirtualHost *:8080>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/www/site1/"
<Directory "C:/wamp/www/site1/">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>



NameVirtualHost *:8081
<VirtualHost *:8081>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/www/site2/"
<Directory "C:/wamp/www/site2/">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes
Order Allow,Deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>


And that’s about it. Do you have any more tips? Leave them in the comments.

This post originated at All Things Marked.

Use the following command in the command prompt:

subst letter: c:\folder\path

Replace “letter:” with an available drive letter. Here’s an example of mapping my music folder to the M:\ drive:

subst m: C:\Users\Mark\Music

Now, if you want to remove the drive letter mapping, issue the following command on the drive letter:

subst letter: /d

For example, to remove the mapping for my M:\ drive, I would do:

subst m: /d

This post originated at All Things Marked.

The new design of the Firefox download page doesn’t indicate older versions can be downloaded, so to get them, browse to:
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

From there you can choose a version, your platform and language. For en-US Windows users, here’s a direct link to the latest FF2: Firefox 2.0.0.20 [updated 27 January 2009].

This post originated at All Things Marked.

Let’s get rid of this one:

Navigate to your Control Panel and choose Power Options.

Under your current power setting, click the Change plan settings link:

In the plan settings menu, click the Change advanced power settings link:

Scroll down to Power buttons and lid. In the Start menu power button, choose the Shut down option:

Apply these changes and your standard Shut Down button should be in place of the previous sleep button:

This post originated at All Things Marked.

This post originated at All Things Marked.

JamGlue - jamglue.com

JamGlue is a mix-based music service that lets you upload your own music and mix it together to make your own remixes. You can mix songs already uploaded by others or upload any music you have on your computer. The trick to free music at JamGlue is the option to download any uploaded music. That means any music that other users have on the site - whether they’re original music by artists or remixes - can be downloaded.

First, sign up for a free account; you need to be logged in to download. Next, search the site for a song you want. Make sure you preview first to make sure its not the instrumental (music only) or acapella (vocals only) version. Once you find a song you like, click the Download button in the bottom left of the song’s page. This will take you to another page where you have to click Download again, but this is the last time.

Pros

• lots of instrumental tracks
• lots of rap/hip-hop if that’s your thing
• also has some non-rap or hip/hop tracks uploaded, especially newer music

Cons

• the server is quite slow, so sometimes it can take forever to search
• 3-click process to download a track after searching
• lots of rap/hip-hop which might not be your thing
• there are lots of acapella and instrumental tracks which you probably aren’t looking for and might get in the way in results
• many tracks are ripped audio from YouTube videos and therefore have lower audio quality

SkreemR - skreemr.com

SkreemR is a search engine for MP3s. It indexes open directories, blogs, …whatever sites have mp3s on them. It even has a flash audio player for each search result, so you can listen without downloading or you can preview the song before you actually download it.

Pros

• indexes music as a search engine, so there are no music styles of focus here
• does a good job indexing music uploaded to blogs
• allows you to listen to each search result through a flash audio player
• 1-click download after searching

Cons

• large result sets can be hard to navigate through
• each search result has a bunch of info and options which can get annoying and in the way

G2P - g2p.org

G2P (a play on P2P) is a “search” that actually creates a carefully crafted Google search query for what you’re looking for. It directs your search term to Google and looks at open web directories hosting music and any sites Google has indexed with your search term. Of course it adds in some filters for file types and only searches your term for audio files. You can search for a single song or an entire album.

Pros

• leverages Google’s search power with carefully crafted queries for specific results
• create a special query for full albums by making Google search megaupload.com for .zip’s and .rar’s of albums

Cons

• powered by Google, and therefore limited by what Google can find

RapidShare1 - rapidshare1.com

RapidShare1 is is a search-engine / directory for uploaded content on RapidShare.com. You can use RS1 to find full albums that you want to download. Search results to .rar’s and .zip’s can quickly become stale (no longer active), so be aware that it might take some digging to find what you want. Also, the majority of the files are in .rar format, so you will need a program to uncompress them, like 7-Zip or WinRAR.

Pros

• you can download entire albums
• indexes all content on RapidShare, so you can download other stuff too

Cons

• results are often stale (inactive)
• it takes many clicks to download a file (this is a result of the process in place at RapidShare)
• you can only download from RapidShare about 90 minutes after your last download

This post originated at All Things Marked.