If you need a high quality video converter program you are on the right blog. You now have the chance to win a free license of WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe. Digiarty Software (winxdvd.com) have been so kind to sponsor 5 license for this giveaway on my blog and who does not like to win stuff for free So go ahead and enter the contest below to get a chance to win a free license of WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe.

Top features WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe

• Convert videos between all mainstream formats
• Burn DVD’s within the program
• Download and convert YouTube videos
• No need of third-party codecs (160 video and 50 audio codecs build-in)
• Convert Videos for Playback on Various Media Player

 System Requirements WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe

• Operation System: Microsoft® Windows XP, Vista (32 & 64 bit), Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit), Windows 8 (32 & 64 bit)
• Processor: 1GHz Intel/AMD processor or above
• RAM: 256MB RAM (512MB or above recommended)
• Free Hard Disk: 100MB space for installation
• Graphic Card: 256MB RAM (512MB or above recommended)

a Rafflecopter giveaway


You can download a trial version of WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe to check it out (15-day trial).

This is my first giveaway using Rafflecopter, but I have seen it a lot on other blogs and I thought it was worth trying it out here on my own blog. Good luck everybody

The good news is the Microsoft is working on and update to address some of these issues. The new update is called Windows 8.1 “Blue” and Microsoft is going to release the preview at its Build developers conference that is scheduled to take place on June 26th in San Francisco.

As the new version has not yet been released for test it is difficult to say what it will include, but some things has been leaked from Microsoft and as always there are a lot of rumors about this release. In this post I will try to present some of the top features we can expect of Windows 8.1

Return of the Start Button

Windows 8.1 could be the return of the Windows Start button. It might not be the traditional Start Button as we know it, but a lot a indicating that some kind of Start Button will be re-introduced in Windows 8.1.

Boot to Desktop

In Windows 8 it is not possible to boot directly to the classic Windows Desktop, but only to the new Metro user interface. A lot indicate that it is going to change in Windows 8.1. Everything indicates that there will be an option to make Windows start directly on the classic desktop.

More Tiles Size in Metro

The metro interface will be introduced with new increased level of customization. Uses will be able to resize Live Tiles just like we know it on Windows Phone.

Internet Explorer 11

A new version of Internet Explorer is to be released within the Windows 8.1 update. I have not been able to find any information about the news in IE11.

Improved SkyDrive Integration

Windows 8.1 is going to provide better integration for SkyDrive. One of the new feature will be that SkyDrive can be set as the default save location for a variety of different applications. Another SkyDrive feature will be automatically upload of photos and videos to your SkyDrive account.

Final words on Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1 is not a Service Pack and it is not a new Operating System. It is something in between that we have not seen from Microsoft before. The upgrade is a new strategy from Microsoft that means that they are going to release upgrades to their OS on a yearly basis. The upgrade will not be free, but are expecting to be a lot cheaper than a new OS. Some rumors indicate a price around $30.

What do you think? Will Microsoft succeed making Windows 8 more popular with the new update? Please drop me a comment below.

Back in October 2012 I wrote a post about How to disable the Windows Key in Windows for the people that feel the key is more trouble than good. The solution to the issue includes making changes to the Windows registry and creating a long binary sequence to make the tweak works. I got some comments to the post asking for an easier way to make this work. I decided to develop a small utility that make it easier to tweak this little changes to Windows for users without technical experiences.

Download the Windows Key Toggler Utility

Yesterday I finished writing the tool and it is available on my download page here on Techwork.dk. What the program does is that it creates the changes to the registry for you making it all very easy to use. All you need to do is to click on the “Toggle Windows Key On/off” button and restart or logoff your computer. When you log back in to windows the change is effective. If you want to enable the keys again you just Toggle the Windows key On and reboot your computer again.

Troubleshooting Windows Key Toggler

Be aware that this setting is made for all users on the computer and that it requires administrator privilege to make the changes. If you don’t have the rights needed or you have User Account Control (UAC) enabled you will see a message like this:

You can try right clicking the program and select Run as Administrator. That should do the trick regarding UAC. Also remember that you will need to logout your user to make the changes work every time you toggle the Windows Key on or Off. That is because it is a registry setting that is only read when the user login to Windows. Unfortunately that is not something that I can change.

Feedback

I hope that you have found this tool useful and you are always welcome to leave me a comment below if you have any questions or feedback regarding this tool.

The issue looks something like this when you try to run the installer of your program:

Installing Windows Installer CleanUp Utility

Don’t think too much about the fact that the installer says Microsoft Office Update. It properly just means that the tools were developed by the Microsoft Office Team.

The installation is pretty straight forward and the tools are very easy to use. The installer is only 351 KB. My biggest issue was to find the program in the Start Menu after installing the tool

When you start up the tool you will see a list of programs all installed with the Windows Installer technology. It will look something like this:

Before you continue it might be a good time to think about a backup of your system. I have never had any problem with this tool myself, but the tool is making changes to your system so just in case, it might be a good idea to make backup first. When you are ready to move on you simply just find and Select the program you are having trouble with and click Remove. The tool will now remove all entries about the program from the Windows Installer database and the “Programs and Features” list.

When this is done your computer have no references to the program you are having trouble with and you can now install it from scratch without getting the error you saw in the top of this post
If you don’t need to remove other programs you can simply just uninstall the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility again.

Download Windows Installer CleanUp Utility

The tool has been discontinued from Microsoft TechNet, but it still works great and I often use it myself. You can download the tool here on my blog.

Download Windows CleanUp Utility (351 KB)

My Google Analytics Stats for Q1 2013

Traffic Types:

• Search Engines: 68.16%
• Direct Traffic: 22.18%
• Referring Sites: 9.61%
• Other: 0.05%

For Q1 of 2013 my Direct Traffic is higher than my Referring Sites. That is the opposite of what it used to be, but my Search Engine traffic is steady around 68-70 percent. My Bounce Rate is by the way about 81%. That is something that I might want to improve in the future. It would be nice if my visitors would stay a little bit longer to see what else I have to offer :-)

Search Engines:

1. Google: 94.68%
2. Bing: 2.01%
3. Yahoo: 1.68%

When I look at traffic from Search Engines only, Google is still the king of Search Engines, but for the first time I get more traffic from Bing that I do from Yahoo.

Top 5 Referring Sites:

1. Stumbleupon.com
2. t.co (Twitter)
3. Google.com
4. Techtutorials.net
5. Warriorforum.com

Stumbleupon is my new number 1 referring site, but Twitter is also doing well bringing me traffic. The two forums Techturials.net and Warriorforum.com is also bringing me a nice amount of traffic.

Top 10 visitors by Country:

My top 10 visitors by countries look like this for the period. Not much have changed here.

Conclusion of my Traffic Report

Not much have changed since Q4 of 2012. My blog is still a PR3 and my overall traffic is about the same as in Q4 of 2012. My most visit blog post in Q1 of 2013 is by far:

How to invite your Friends to Like your Facebook Page?

That was all from me for this time. I would love if you would drop me a comment below. I would also like to know how your blog has been doing in the beginning of 2013. Any new trends you have noticed when it comes to web-traffic?

What is WMI?

WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is a set of extensions to the Windows Driver Model that provides an operating system interface through which instrumented components provide information and notification. With WMI you can find almost any information about your hardware and software on your system.

How to use WMI Code Creator

When you start up WMI Code Creator you can select what scripting language output you want WMI Code Creator to use under the Code Language menu.

Select Namespace and Class

The next thing you want to do is to select the Namespace and the class you want to work with. There are so many classes and properties to choose from and with WMI you can find almost any information about your computer that you would like. In the example below I have chosen the Namespace: root\CIMV2 and the class Win32_OperatingSystem. As you can see it contains 63 properties about the Operating System. I have chosen the property Caption that contains the name of my Operating System.

While I select my properties I want to query the code window on the right automatically update the code based on the options I choose. When you are done you can choose to execute the code from inside the program or open the code in notepad to make your own changes to the script or to copy it to your favorite Script editor.

That was all I wanted to teach you today. I hope you found this post useful and want to check out this tool on your own. I will love if you drop me a comment below and maybe share this post with your friends.

Download WMI Code Creator

New Features in Internet Explorer 10

At first sight Internet Explorer 10 looks a lot like Internet Explorer 9. No doubt that must of the changes is under the hood, but as you start using it you will find some nice improvements. Some of those are:

• Spelling correction
• Automatic updates
• Improved tab management
• Touch support

The new User Agent of Internet Explore

If it is relevant for you the new User Agent string of IE 10 is:
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/6.0)

Requirements of Internet Explorer 10

As you properly know, IE10 is built into Windows 8, but it has also been released for Windows 7 recently. Users of Windows Vista will still be limited to IE9 and users of Windows XP will be limited to IE8. If you want to test the improved performance of IE10, Microsoft has their own Test Drive site with a lot of fun browser tests.

What do you think about Internet Explorer?

Now it is your turn. What do you think about IE10? Do you think it has a change to take up the fight with browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox or has Microsoft already lost the browser war? Please drop me a comment below and please tell me what browser is your favorite browser.

1. F12 – Save Document As
2. Alt + F then R – Open Recent documents menu
3. Ctrl + Alt + C – Insert copyright symbol
4. Ctrl + Enter – Insert page break
5. Ctrl + Alt + F – Insert a footnote
6. F7 – Run Spell Checker
7. Ctrl + Home or Ctrl + End – Move to first page / last page
8. Alt + Shift + T – Insert time (insert TIME field)
9. Alt + Shift + P – Insert page number (insert PAGE field)
10. Alt + Shift + D – Insert current date (insert DATE field)

This is only a top 10 of my favorites. You can find more great Word 2010 shortcuts here. I have not tested the shortcuts combination in Word 2013, but I expect that most of the still works in the new Word version.

I hope you found these tips useful and would love to hear what your favorite Word shortcut combination is. Please drop me a comment below and feel free to share this post using the share buttons below.

Please meet Carolyn Nicander Mohr from The wonder of Tech.

Biography of Carolyn Nicander Mohr:

I am a lawyer, mother to three teenagers and a wife. I live outside Philadelphia, PA in the US and write for The Wonder of Tech which appears at my own website www.wonderoftech.com and at the website for The Philadelphia Inquirer. I have been living in the UK for almost 4 years, but moved back to the US in 2010.

10 questions I have asked Carolyn

1. What model was your first computer?

Carolyn: An IBM 386 X desktop with a 5 ¼” floppy disk drive amber typeface. That was radically different than the green typeface that  most computers had.
I bought it from a guy who advertised in the newspaper. He sold computers out of his home and I brought along my brother because: a) my brother knows tech and b) I was going to a stranger’s home. The guy was really nice and as we were chatting he mentioned that if he could upgrade the computers anywhere, he would upgrade the computers at a local law firm. He didn’t know it when he said it, but the law firm he mentioned was the law firm where I worked. If my brother hadn’t been there to witness that conversation, no one would have believed that coincidence.

2. Why did you start blogging and why a blog about technology?

Carolyn: I started blogging to help everyday people discover and learn about personal technology. I was an American living in England and used tech to keep in touch with people back home. People hadn’t heard about Skype or GPS (sat nav) units back then so they were very excited to learn about those and other new tech. I gave speeches to organizations about how to use tech to make people’s lives easier. When I moved back to the US, I wanted to continue to share my tech knowledge with others so I started The Wonder of Tech.

I blog about technology because it’s a passion of mine, people are curious about it, people are intimidated by it, and people can benefit greatly from learning about tech. I also love to write so writing a technology blog combines my passions, which is pretty cool.

3. Have you always been a fan of Technology?

Carolyn: Yes, when I arrived at that law firm I mentioned in Question 1, I was hired to advise tech companies about corporate law and intellectual property. I didn’t know tech so the law firm had their tech department train me. I really took a liking to it so they taught me more than they were asked to cover. That was the beginning of my passion for tech.

4. How is it to be a girl in a niche that is still so much dominated by men?

Carolyn: I’m used to being in a male-dominated field. When I started with my first law firm, only three of the one hundred lawyers were women. I now play racquetball with a group that’s mostly men, many of whom are police officers. People might not take me seriously at first, but as long as I deliver, then I fit right in with the guys.

5. Which of your post are you most proud about and why (please include a link)?

Carolyn: I am most proud of the articles I write that help others, especially those with disabilities. Because my blog is not income-producing, I don’t have to depend on traffic to my blog. I will write an article if I believe it could help even one person. I write articles that may have a very narrow audience, but that audience might benefit tremendously by learning about tech.

One such article was Marlee Signs – Learn Sign Language from an App! Marlee_signs-learn_signlanguage about an iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch app that uses videos by Marlee Matlin to teach sign language.  I wrote the article in October last year and the day after Christmas Marlee Matlin appeared on a TV talk show to promote the app. The traffic to my blog was through the roof that day, giving me the heaviest traffic to my blog all year.

So the lesson for bloggers is to write what you think will help people and don’t worry about traffic.

6. What is your favorite app on your smartphone?

Carolyn: Google Maps. I really missed it when it was gone. The app has many functions, but I find it to be especially useful when showing traffic. A creek near us floods a lot and one glance at Google Maps will tell me if the road over that creek is closed due to flooding. 

7. What is your favorite website, except from www.techwork.dk of cause

Carolyn: The Wonder of Tech

8. What is your favorite movie?

Carolyn: Titanic. I saw that movie four times in the movie theaters, twice when I was pregnant with twins.

9. What is your favorite tech device at the moment?
Carolyn: My iPad. Every time I leave home without it, I inevitably regret leaving it behind.

10. What are your goals for your blog in 2013?

Carolyn: To continue to bring exciting and useful tech to my readers. I have been very fortunate to interview leaders of tech businesses about their new tech. I love discovering this tech and bringing news of it to Wonder of Tech readers.

Which do you like the most?

• PC or Mac?

Carolyn: I use and like both but right now my primary computer is a MacBook Pro.

• iPhone or Android phone?

Carolyn: Again, I like and use both, but my current phone is an iPhone 4S.

• Twitter or Facebook?

Carolyn: I enjoy Facebook more because of the personal interaction but Twitter brings me much more traffic to my blog.

• Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer?

Carolyn: Chrome.

• TweetDeck or HootSuite?

Carolyn: HootSuite

Connect with Carolyn

If you want to get in touch Carolyn you can follow her using the Social Media buttons below:

Thank you Carolyn

Big thanks to Carolyn for answering all my questions and for telling about her blog. I have learned a lot more about Carolyn doing this interview and writing this post. It is always fun to know what motivates other bloggers to blog I think. Did you know Carolyn before reading this post? Please drop me a comment below. I am sure that Carolyn will join the comments if you have something you want to ask her.

If you sometime has a PDF document you would like to edit or maybe add your own notes to, this post is something that will interest you for sure. You can of cause buy a very expensive program from Adobe or you can use this free online tool that I will tell you about below.

PDF to Word Converter (Free Online service)

On www.pdftowordconverter.org you can convert your PDF files to Word format for free. All you have to do is to upload your PDF file and enter in your e-mail address. Shortly after you have uploaded the file you will receive an e-mail with a link where you can download your file in Word format (.doc). I have tested the free service myself and it is indeed very simple. I printed a standard Windows test page with my BioPDF printer and uploaded it to the online service. Shortly after I got an e-mail with a link to the document converted to .doc Word format. I opened the document with Microsoft Word and was able to edit the text like in any other Word document. The file will be stored online for 24 hours before it will be deleted again.

Able2Extract

If you need to convert multiple documents you might want to buy Able2Extract instead of using the online version. You can download a Free 7 days Trial version of Able2Extract to check it out. Able2Extract is available for Windows, Mac and Linux systems. Able2Extract is also able to convert PDF to Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and a couple of other formats. With Able2Extract you can also configure Batch conversion of multiple files if you need to convert a big amount of files. Able2Extract is created by Investintech.com that also makes other products used to convert files. A single user license is available for only $99.95. Before you download the 7 days trial version, let me just inform you that it is limited to convert only 3 pages at the time. If you like the Trial version you can activate it to a full version if you end up buying the program.

I hope you found this post informative and will love if you will leave me a comment below or maybe share this post on Social Medias as well.