Raymond.CC Blog

There are a lot of information can be found on the Internet but unfortunately we cannot believe all of them which is why we need to do further research to see if the information is true or false. Performing research from the Internet normally requires a lot of copying and pasting which saves us the trouble from typing the sentence or words again and again. However in the middle of the copying and pasting process, there are still a few more mouse clicks to be done in between programs and detours.

One example is you’ve heard a lot of good reviews about this restaurant and the official website has their address. Instead of opening a new browser tab/window, typing http://www.google.com/maps address and then pasting the address to locate it in Google Maps, you can simplify all that by copying the address from the website and a click of a button. This is all made possible with a free software called click.to.

Recently I had to get online in Skype a lot because one of the CSS expert which I have been talking to is mostly online there. It is hard to catch him online as we’re both at total opposite time zones so I had to connect to Skype first thing in the morning and then leave it on until I shut down my computer at night. Doing research on software and writing articles involves in opening a lot of programs which causes the taskbar at Windows gets filled up quite easily. Since I spend most of the time waiting in Skype, it is certainly a waste of space when it sits at the Taskbar doing nothing. Moreover I am a traditional guy that has set the taskbar button to never combine so there are really not much space left in Taskbar. Here is how remove Skype from Taskbar when it is connected and minimize to the notification area.

Instant messengers such as ICQ and MSN Messenger used to be a great way to keep in touch with old friends that we no longer see very often but that has all changed today because everyone is on Facebook. As you may have already know, Facebook has a chat feature where it allows you to chat with your friends in real time. One good useful feature found on the Facebook chat is you can go offline so that no one will bother you while you are still logged on to Facebook and able to go through your friend’s profile. If you chat very often in Facebook but don’t want to keep your Facebook account logged in in your web browser, then the official Facebook Messenger for Windows will be very useful to you.

Facebook has finally released an official version of Messenger for Windows operating system that allows Facebook users to chat with each other, see the latest updates from your friends in ticker and get quick notifications about what’s going on right from your desktop without logging in from the web browser.

Recently I am seeing a lot of software embedding Babylon Toolbar into their setup installer. Some of the example software that contains Babylon Toolbar are SUMo NoRK, AnVir Task Manager, ViStart, and The Web Blocker. In fact CNET Download.com Installer used to have Babylon Toolbar but it has been replaced with Blekko. Whether it is Babylon, Blekko, MyStart by Incredibar or any other brands of toolbar, they are all the same. Some people may label these browser toolbar as virus or trojan but in fact it is simply an advertisement software (adware). Although browser toolbar such as Babylon Toolbar are optional but the biggest problem is they are enabled by default and unless you select the Custom installation method, the installer may not even tell you that they’re going to install the toolbar. So after installing the software that you wanted to install, miraculously your web browsers started to show an extra bar below the address bar and you’re searching on some unknown search engines by default.

I wanted to check out and test the Babylon Toolbar myself to see why are people complaining about the Babylon Toolbar.

Software are normally installed in AppData or Program Files folder in Windows. The program icons that you find at Desktop and Start Menu are simply shortcuts that points to the real location of the software. The shortcuts for a file can be easily created from the right click context menu so that you can run the program from any location you prefer without touching or moving the real file. If you right click on the shortcut and select Properties from the menu, the shortcut Properties window will display where the actual file is located, the shortcut key to run the shortcut, run mode and comment. Actually a shortcut file (.lnk) contains much more information than what you’re seeing on the Properties window which can be a wealth of useful information for forensic investigators.

Using third party forensic tools such as lnkanalyser and Windows LNK Parsing Utility (lp), we are able to easily parse LNK files to extract obscure information.

Windows Task Manager is one of the most important tool that is built-in to Windows. You are able to discover which process is hogging on to the CPU or eating up all the memory on your system and also perform basic investigation on running processes such as where it is located, etc. Actually Microsoft could have done a much better job on the Windows Task Manager because it still lacks of many features to help in investigating running processes plus the Windows Task Manager missing tabs and menu problem is still there in Windows 7. There are a few good Windows Task Manager alternatives out there such as Process Explorer and Process Hacker but we’ll be taking a look at AnVir Task Manager today. Actually I’ve mentioned AnVir Task Manager in some of the articles which I’ve written but has never really put it to a full test.

Microsoft added three buttons to the top right of all windows since Windows 95 which allows you to close, maximize/restore and minimize the window. To be honest I can’t remember when was the last time I used the mouse cursor to click on those buttons because I normally use the shortcut keys which is way faster and convenient. Alt+F4 to close, Alt+Space+N to minimize, Alt+Space+R to restore, Alt+Space+X to maximize. It wasn’t easy at first because I have to make an effort to get use the the hotkeys but once I’ve gotten used to it, I am able to manage Windows more efficiently and quickly.

Computer today are very powerful which allows us to open multiple windows until Microsoft had to figure out a solution to keep the taskbar clean. So they came up with combining the buttons at taskbar and even hiding the labels to save space. However, your computer screen can still get quite messy with a lot of Windows opened. This is when eXtra Buttons comes into play.