Taskbar Meters

Taskbar Meters is an open source program that creates simple notification icons on your Windows 7 taskbar. There is an application for CPU, memory, and I/O performance. They turn green, yellow, and red based on your current usage. (The thresholds for these colors can be manually changed). It's a quick and easy way to figure out what your system resource utilization is like! See the example image above.

If you are interested head over to Taskbar's web-site!

Malware Removal Tips

The folks over at How-To Geek have put together some good tips to aid in removing malware. Click here to check it out!

Microsoft Web Matrix

Interested in making your own web-site? Microsoft has released a new product that should help you get started. I haven't dug too deeply yet, but here are some keys point...

• Automatically downloads .Net, IIS, SQL Server Express, etc. as needed.
• You have the option to download and start from pre-existing frameworks (like Wordpress and DotNetNuke)
• You can run the site locally on your machine OR upload it to a server that you specify.

That's all I have for now, but it seems like a Microsoft project worth checking out. Head to this link to check it out!

Ustream; cool live feed web-site

I have no idea how long Ustream has been around, although my guess is it's been on the map for a while and I just never realized. Anyways, my girlfriend's sister had a dance recital in Chicago tonight. We couldn't attend, but we were in luck. The entire recital is streaming on Ustream which was conveniently embedded into a Facebook group page! So here we are, sitting at home and watching her dance. Technology is sweet.

I really have no personal use for live streaming, but it's a cool concept. Head over to their web-site to check it out! http://www.ustream.tv/

cports - TCP Port Viewer from Nirsoft

Ever been interested to see exactly which TCP ports are open and listening on your computer? Cports does just that. It will open a grid like listing of every port that is opening and listening on your PC. It also includes information such as Process ID of the process using the port and shows the local and remote addresses of the connection.

This is useful to find out which programs and services are using what. It can also be used to help recognize and eliminate programs that you don't use. Ultimately the fewer ancillary programs running on your computer the safer you will be.

Head to Nirsoft's web-site to download a copy!

Good Softwarez

Here's a list of good PC tech support software listed by the guys over at Download Squad. I'm posting this for myself mostly - to keep reference of useful tools!

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/11/21/15-free-windows-apps-to-help-you-tackle-thanksgiving-tech-support/

Launchy; easy access to installed software!

Ever get caught up sifting through 'My Programs' or lost in your abundant collection of desktop icons looking for your programs? I've got many different programs installed on my PC and I could spend a long time searching each time I want to launch one. Launchy helps me out and let's me quickly launch any program. Here's how it works...

1. Hit ctrl+alt to open Launchy
2. Start typing the name of your application (as soon as a match is found it will display, you probably won't need to type all of the characters in the program name)
3. Press 'enter' when you have the correct application

That's it... given that I have probable 30-40 different applications installed on my PC this helps me traverse through them effectively. If you are interested in giving Launchy a try click here! (it's free)