Dec
31st

Third Year of How-To Geek: Branching Out and Growing Wild

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It’s the end of the year, the time when everybody looks back at the year before and reflects on what happened. It’s navel-gazing time, people!

Yeah, there’s nothing really of value in this article, so you should check out our awesome Lego Wallpapers instead. I’ll try to make it quick…

Pixels and Charts and Numbers and Such!

Last year we ended up a little short of our 30 million pageview goal, but this year we smashed our goal of 40 million with ease, especially after the Windows 7 launch had the XP users scrambling for answers. I’m hoping next year that we have enough pageviews to require a 24-CPU server—really, just give me any excuse to get a server with 24 CPUs in it!

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If you zoom in on those numbers you’ll start to see just how much we’ve grown… we went from 2.9 million pageviews / month last year to 4.9 million this month. If you include TinyHacker and now Productive Geek numbers, we’re way over 5mil/month for our network.

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The only other interesting stat from Analytics is the number of Google Chrome users, which has hit almost 10% this month, and continues to climb—but it’s not just taking away from Internet Explorer, it’s also taken some points from Firefox as well.

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So let’s take a quick tour through what happened this year…

January 2009: The How-To Geek meets Lifehacker

In January of this year, I started working as a staff writer over at Lifehacker, one of the largest blogs anywhere—and quickly realized that my writing skills needed a lot of work! Working with the crew over there has been a tremendous learning experience for me, and I’m very glad I agreed to it. Every Monday you’ll find my feature articles over there, like this week’s article: You Don’t Need to Regularly Reinstall Windows; Here’s Why.

April 2009: Mysticgeek Starts Handling the Editing

It didn’t take very long before I realized that handling a regular day job, How-To Geek, and also writing for Lifehacker was really starting to be too much to handle. Mysticgeek stepped in to take care of the day-to-day editing and much of the other administration, and freeing me up to take care of other stuff. He rocks! (literally).

May 2009: Asian Angel is Awesome!

When we found out that Asian Angel, the former Lifehacker intern, was available to work for us, we grabbed her as quickly as we could—and it’s one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. Before she came along, our readers would always complain that we didn’t cover Firefox enough—and she’s filled that void with loads of great articles about Firefox, Google Chrome, and now she’s started branching out into all sorts of topics.

It’s really more than that—she’s a wonderful, sweet, caring person that we’re just thrilled to be working with.

October 2009: TinyHacker Launched

We’ve never known what to do with all the extra random stuff that we find, so in October we launched TinyHacker, our random geek links site. It’s random! We’ve got some interesting plans for this site in 2010, so stay tuned.

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Dec
31st

Totally Awesome Lego Wallpapers for Your Desktop

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It’s no secret that we love a great set of wallpapers around here, and when we stumbled on the first Lego wallpaper we knew what we had to do: put together another wallpaper roundup for our great readers!

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You’ll probably note that not all of these images are big enough for some of today’s gigantic screens, so you’ll probably need to either tell Windows to stretch the image out, or put them on a different background color.

The first batch of images are all linked to the same place, a fun Lego-related site called BrikWars. The rest are linked from other places, but you can click on any of the images to get to the download site.

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As a bonus, I found three square images that an enterprising reader could probably sew together, which would be great for a widescreen setup.

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Dec
31st

Consolidate the Windows 7 Taskbar with Jumplist Launcher

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The new Taskbar in Windows 7 is a great new feature, but sometimes you might have too many apps and not enough room. Today we take a look at Jumplist Launcher that allows you to consolidate the app launchers on the Taskbar.

Using Jumplist Launcher

Jumplist Launcher doesn’t require installation and you can run it directly from your hard drive or a flash drive and launch the executable.

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After launching it you’re presented with a configuration dialog screen to begin setting up your jump lists. You can create different Groups and name them to suite your needs. You can browse to program and file directories, but the easiest way I’ve found is to drag shortcuts into Jumplist Launcher.

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You can add up to 60 different Jumplist items.

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After you have created the lists, make sure to pin the program to the taskbar and close out of the app. Then you can still access the items by right-clicking the icon on the taskbar.

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Occasionally there are errors while adding items to the Jumplist, but the problem seems to correct itself right away, so just click OK to the dialog box. If you do get errors or find any bugs it’s recommended to post them on the developers blog.

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Conclusion

For this article we used Jumplist Launcher Version 7 on Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit). It looks like this project is in constant development, and there are still a few bugs, but it works and and can be quite useful. This cool little app is a great way to consolidate taskbar launchers and save space on the Taskbar.

Download Jumplist Launcher

Similar Articles Tinyhacker – Tiny Geek Hacks
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Dec
30th

Mouse Extender Makes Windows Navigation Easier

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Navigation in Windows 7 is a lot easier with the new Taskbar, but it could be easier with everything in one central location. Mouse Extender is a free utility that allows you to navigate through Windows easier.

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This handy utility doesn’t require installation and can be run from a flash drive. After you launch it, you can start building it up with different apps and other items. Right-click to access a context menu where you can add new tabs, files, web sites, and more.

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Dec
30th

Find a Website’s Actual Location with Chrome Flags

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Have you been wanting Firefox’s “Flagfox Extension” goodness in Google Chrome? Now you can get it with the Chrome Flags extension.

Installation

During the installation process you will see the following message window asking for confirmation about installing the extension. Click “Install” to add Chrome Flags to Chrome.

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After the installation has finished you will be presented with this tab (instead of a small pop-up message window) that provides information about Chrome Flags…

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Here is a closer look at the information that Chrome Flags provides for websites.

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Checking the “Chrome Extensions Page” shows that there are no options for you to worry with.

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Chrome Flags in Action

As soon as you visit a website you will notice the small flag icon at the right end of the “Address Bar” showing you where that website’s server is located.

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To access information about the website that you are viewing simply click (left and right both work) on the flag icon. A drop-down window will open showing the country where server is located, the IP address, and a set of clickable links for more detailed/specific information. Notice that you can also view information from WOT and McAfee SiteAdvisor for the website.

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For our example we chose two of the additional information source links to look at. Here you can see the McAfee SiteAdvisor listing…

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And the Google Trends information for the How-To Geek website. Definitely nice…

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Conclusion

If you have been wanting that “Flagfox” goodness in Google Chrome then your wait is over. This is definitely an extension that you should add to your Chrome installation.

Links

Download the Chrome Flags extension (Google Chrome Extensions)

Similar Articles Tinyhacker – Tiny Geek Hacks
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