I almost forgot the last time I blogged about windows 7. The successor to the Vista series..Now, apparently Microsoft didn’t benefit much from Vista, so they decided to copy Macs a bit more and make a more macintosh like OS.

Here are the first look pics of the Windows 7 desktop:

Now thats terribly disappointing…They try to recreate a dock bar like appearance which belongs to the Mac, but fail miserably at doing that…It looks like they made the quick launch bigger…what a joke…The start menu has changed too, but I really am not too impressed with that…and btw clicking on these icons gives a content sensitive, application relevant menu…

There are several changes under the hood…but I am a man of the desktop and you can judge a book by its cover..But, considering this is just the first look and there are changes still to come, Microsoft still might be able to make a difference..After all, when the first preview of the longhorn was released, it was nothing like the Vista we know today…

Wish to make your PC look like windows 7, atleast you can get the wallpaper here

Read the full review of the Windows 7 first look here.

I got a taste for Bumptop after my friend Vijay recommended Ted. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an invitation-only event where the world’s leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration. But, videos of all the presentations at the event are available for free viewing. And the content on Ted is quite remarkably polished and innovations presented at TED are nothing short of praiseworthy. 

Bumptop is the dream child of Anand Agarawala and was created at the University of Toronto. Currently the project is in private beta and is available for download only on an invite basis and I was lucky enough to get an invite. Here is the video from TED.

The Beta version does almost most of what is shown in the video and is quite smooth and polished for beta version.

You get a 3d room interface where you put your desktop icons and then you can just grow and shrink those icons using shortcut keys. The shortcuts are very easy learn and the interface is quite intuitive. But, I really think that touch interfaces would be the right arena to utilise bumptop to their fullest potential. The project makes complete use of the mouse and allows you to organize files on your desktop in best possible manner.

Bumptop is actually a boon for people who tend to have a lot of files on their desktop and need to organize (or disorganize) them. The ability to stack documents, form grids/groups, view images by shuffling through them and allowing you hang priority docs on the walls, combined with the real life physics engine makes Bumptop a shining example of what true Innovation we can bring about even with the current technology.

The collision detection system is really great and you would appreciate the way icons/others dangle when you hang them on the wall.

Bumptop shows that innovation need not always be about new technology, it can be about using existing technology to do new things in newer ways.

However, I did find that it ran faster on my slow XP machine with just 1GB of RAM than on my Vista machine with loads and loads of RAM + a Graphics card (Yeah, maybe I should turn anti aliasing off)

Many of my friends asked me to give them an invite to Bumptop, but its not possible for a user to invite others and the only way to get Bumptop is to sign up for their invite at their site. 

While I was waiting for the invite to come by, I did realize the existence of certain clones of Bumptop. One of them was Real Desktop. Real Desktop is quite a good product but the free version is extremely limited in what it offers and once you get an invite to Bumptop, you’ll not go back to Real Desktop (even if you had paid for it).

And before I forget! Here is what my desktop looks like now

My bumptop interface

Vista gives you two themes to select from, your Aero theme and your windows classic theme. But how long do you stay without getting bored? Get new themes, and install them, before that, you need to follow this tutorial.

More desktop customization, and my search for the free windows manager takes me to Styles XP. But, it is neither free nor is it available for Windows XP….So, my search continues until I find Code Gazer’s VistaGlazz. Vista Glazz lets me install third party themes, visual styles for Vista (and the best part is, it is free..)

Step 1:

Install VistaGlazz and run the program.

Now select the second icon (the one that looks like a shade card (the tick mark will be not be present until you run the program once. Follow the instructions and you are all ready to rock.

Step 2:

You can find vista themes all over the internet. I prefer deviantART for all my desktop customization needs. To illustrate, let us use the Leopard 1.0a theme by Masterhack.

Download the file by clicking on the links on the left of the page. Unzip the file after you have saved it. Copy all the files to the following folder on your hd:

C:\Windows\Resources\Themes

Click on the Leopard.theme and apply it. Done. Enjoy your new theme.

Installation of theme should make sure that you no longer need to use Objectbar as mentioned in my earlier post which lets you make your desktop look like a Mac.

This is how my screen looks like now.

Top secret Geek stuff (what, the vistaglazz app does)

It replaces three files on your hard drive (inside the windows/system32 folder) This enables you to add new themes other than the default themes which Microsoft has provided you with. These files are available for your version of windows at Within Windows

IMPORTANT:

• The theme file is a rar format (a compression format similar to zip) . You will need winrar to unrar it (thanks to Sabrina for reminding me that I need to provide a link)
• This tutorial is only for Windows Vista. For Windows XP, I guess you don’t have an option but to buy Styles XP.
• Do not try this tutorial if you have Vista Home Basic Version.
• In case you have already installed Service pack for Windows Vista, download VistaGlazz from here (instead of the link at the beginning of the post)
• There is a chance that things could go wrong and your computer could explode, implode, crash or become a black hole after trying out my tutorial. So, do it only if you know what you are doing and you are willing to take a risk.
• The author, website or anyone in this universe is not responsible for your actions after reading this tutorial, in fact, they weren’t even responsible for your actions before you read this.

The logo reminds me of some japanese anime weapon which would split open and attack the baddies..but then the browser does exactly does, not just the baddies…defeats all other browsers straightaway…The minute I woke up today, I brushed my teeth and went over straight to start my google chrome download…The installer downloads the file and I keep waiting with bated breath…

We use gmail for mail, gtalk for chat and every browsing session begins with the home page as google and ends with a google search result..so shouldn’t your browser be google’s as well?

Google Chrome is to browsers what Iphone is for phones..The interface is fresh and slick….its very light compared to the slow and bulky Firefox (whoa! I never thought I would say that…well, thats competition…)
But still there is time before I drive the foxes out..I still cannot drive away the fox because of one primary reason - the addons. When you load Google browser, you get to a page which has screenshots of all your frequently added websites, this quite reminds me of the speed dial feature in the Opera browser (though with Opera its user set, and not based on number of visits)..It has tabs which run as different processes unlike in any other tabbed browser…
Another notable feature is, in addition to the usual tabs and windows, you can open something known as a “Incognito” window and anything you decide to open on it, is off record (cool!). Its a browser faster than the Safari and lighter than the fox and renders pages like a miracle…Chrome is something which I would call a smart browser which learns a lot from your browsing habits (automatic search engine preferences, automatic most visited bookmarks and automatic everything…) If you have been using the fox, it even imports everything to continue your browsing experience!
There is another option called application shortcuts which lets you create shortcuts on your desktop, quick launch or start menu for every website/webapp you encounter. Just go to the site and create a shortcut..The shortcut loads using chrome (but sans the home, back and front button…just like a regular application…) Brings the web to your desktop…A full list of features is to be found here

There is still news of a security flaw doing its rounds on the internet, but then till I switch completely to Chrome, I guess I am safe and if I am not, its ok..its a price to pay for such a great browser which is so good even its beta version…So I guess you should stop reading her and go and download it here..

This is one of the fastest reviews I have ever written so the grammar is terrible and the spelling could be wrong in several places…I just wrote this review in such a hurry..

Get more updates on the browser @ Get Google Chrome

Firefox and Google talk are two apps which I cannot really manage without…but then what do you do if you share your PC with someone else? Maybe someone else at home. Each of us have our own collection of bookmarks, addons and of course logins.

So you would need to get Firefox and Gtalk to run multiple instances. The secret to running them is to use Firefox’s in built profile manager. We need to invoke the profile manager by changing the shortcut path on your desktop. Ideally, the target looks like this “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”

Change it to

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -profilemanager.

Run the shortcut and you will come across the profile manager.

Firefox profile manager

Click on create new to start the new profile wizard.

add new profile firefox wizard

But, even now, there firefox would not let you run two profiles at the same time. Which means if you open another firefox instance when one is running, it will still belong to the same profile. Now to work around that, we need to change the path to

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”  -no-remote -profilemanager

Run the shortcut and you will come across the profile manager even if you have one firefox instance running already. Great now you can login two people can login to two gmail accounts at the same time…

Now, Gtalk is not as customizable as Firefox is, but still they manage to give us two workarounds to run multiple instances.

1. Download Google talk. Run it as instance no.1. Download Gtalk labs edition, run it as instance no. 2

2. I do not recommend gtalk labs edition as it is still in limited beta and has quite a few shortcomings compared to the regular gtalk app. So we lets get to playing around with the shortcut target for google talk as well, considering you had a default install of gtalk, the shortcut target should be “C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe”. And yes, its a bit different if you run Vista.  Lets change the shortcut to

“C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe” /nomutex

Gtalks! galore, run as many as you want….

Multiple Google talk instances

Its been a long time since I made desktop customization except for the regular change of the wallpaper that I do…So, I decided it was time to spice up my desktop and decided to go for the MacOS look…I already had the best windows look, since I had Vista. So now how do I go about making my desktop looking like MacOS? First a little basics on the Mac world for all those MS Windows lovers out there…

Macs run the OS X which succeed the Mac OS operating system, and you might be interested to know that all of Mac OSX versions have been named after the big cats family like the OSX puma, panther, Jaguar, leopard and so on…The latest in the line of the cats is the snow leopard..and here we have a screenshot which should make things a bit more clear

Now that we know how the interface looks lets work on changing the interface..The first important part of the OSX interface is the “dock” which you will find at the bottom of the screen..
So, we download that one. I found two free alternatives to the “dock” for windows, one is Objectdock from Stardock and the other is Rocketdock from Punklabs. There are other alternatives too, but these are the two I decided to try out…Stardock has been a company synonymous with the best windows skinning programs like Windowblinds, DesktopX etc..and after trying out both of the products, I decided, much to my surprise that Rocketdock worked better for me, it was simple and easier to use..but I would say that making the choice is merely a matter of random selection.

Now we have Rocketdock installed, lets load it. Add icons, right click the dock to add new icons, separators and docklets (like clocks, weather icons etc..)
I write this post primarily for windows users and so I would know how much have come to love the convenience of minimizing to the taskbar. So, right click on the dock -> dock settings -> General tab and enable the “Minimize windows to the dock” checkbox.
The second app we need to download is, Objectbar. This is for the top bar and also to ensure that you continue to have access to your tray icons and to make the transformation complete.

lets get the last bit of the interface quick now, the wallpaper. You can get the original set here.
The dock icons are usually .png icons and you can download them as per your requirement from deviantART.

And this is how my desktop looks now…

The disclaimer part
I love windows and I love the mac as well. I do not have a Mac. All copyrights, trademarks, brandnames are all properties of their corresponding owners. This is not a post for Mac purists. It is for an ordinary windows user who wants to add some spice to his desktop. It wont change your windows to make it look and feel as good as Mac. you should get a Mac if you want the experience…

The digg labs

Each of the links on the website synthesizes news in a ultra cool visualization…

If you don’t like that one. I don’t know what looks good. The future is here. It is DUGG!! and if you haven’t seen it before. Thank me. I showed you the future….atleast the way to go…And the best part is the real time screensaver which makes your PC look equally futuristic. Keep up with the times…

I have been using twitter fox for a long time now..for the uninitiated, twitterfox is a firefox extension for twitter. But, firefox was acting all weirdly in the morning and I had to close it down for sometime. I downloaded twhirl, the desktop client for twitter meanwhile. Adobe AIR based Twhirl has one of the best interfaces out there and really makes me want to use it just for that…This got me thinking, why plurk which was more closer to chat did not have a desktop client and there I was searching for a client for plurk and I found 3.

Both the applications require Adobe AIR which can be found here.

Plurkair

An Adobe AIR based application which is a desktop application for plurk. I used it, liked it and recommend it. Though I would like a few more features, I need to consider that this application has been developed even in the absence of an API from plurk. Plurkair uses the plurk mobile version of the page and is quite decent for a desktop app. Download it here.

Plurkit

Same as Plurk air, except for a few minor negligible differences.

Plurk Firefox Sidebar

This is to plurk, what twitterfox is twitter. You need the firefox browser, which you can get here. But I am sure you already use it.

A Preview of what a computer could look like by the time your kid uses it …..
(and yeah, ignore the fact that it still runs windows xp….)