Send Pictures from Google Picasa Directly to Photoshop for Editing

This is something for Adobe Photoshop fans who also use Google Picasa for managing their collection of photographs offline.

You can quickly add a Photoshop button in Google Picasa that will automatically open the current picture inside Photoshop for advanced editing. That should save some of your time.

Install Photoshop CS3 Button - When you click this link, Picasa launches (if it is not already running) and installs the Photoshop icon.

And not just Photoshop, you can send your Picasa photos to any image editing program like Fireworks, Corel Painter, etc though that would require to learn this Picasa API. The Photoshop button was created by Michael Herf.

SnagIt has a similar feature that’s called Capture Profiles. You take a screenshot and Snagit will directly send that to Photoshop, Outlook, Mindmanager or any other external program.

You can either create your own capture profiles in SnagIt (without learning any complex API) or download ready-to-use outputs from TechSmith.com.

Pirated Software Programs on the Net

You will be surprised to know that the top pirated software on the Internet includes anti-virus programs followed by AutoCAD and Adobe Photoshop.

The CD/DVD burning software from Roxio also seem to more popular among software pirates than Nero. And its strange that Microsoft Office is missing in the following list of most pirated software programs compiled by the Software Industry Association - SIIA Anti-Piracy 2007 Year in Review

Adobe - Adobe Acrobat, Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe DreamWeaver, Adobe Creative Suite

Symantec - Symantec Norton Anti-Virus, Symantec PC Anywhere, Symantec Norton Ghost

McAfee - McAfee VirusScan, McAfee Internet Security Suite

Others - Autodesk AutoCAD, Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator, Roxio Toast Titanium, Ipswitch WS_FTP, Nero Ultra Edition 2007, Intuit TurboTax, Intuit Quicken Home and Business

Have a Computer Problem? Consult CrossLoop For Live Support

CrossLoop, which is an excellent desktop sharing software, could also be the next Elance for hiring tech support professionals who can remotely fix your computer problems in real-time.

Today, they have launched CrossLoop 2.0 that adds a “social” element to this already popular remote desktop sharing software and makes it extremely lucrative to IT Helpdesk staff and tech support personnel.

You can now create a personal profile on CrossLoop website that details your areas of expertise. When you provide remote help to others using CrossLoop, they can rate the session and that feedback is automatically added to your public profile.

See some screenshots of CrossLoop 2.0:

This “CrossLoop reputation” will become an important factor when you go beyond friends and family and decide to provide professional help to potential customers. They can view your history on CrossLoop and decide whether they want to avail your service or not.

Going forward, this CrossLoop database could become the one-stop shop for finding good tech support personnel. And best of all, CrossLoop is still free.

The only downside is that CrossLoop is only available for Windows so they could be missing a large chunk of users who may be running Mac or Linux platforms. In April, Mrinal did hint that were are planning to make CrossLoop available across various platforms.

Installation of XP On a Pre-Installed Windows Vista Computer

DI reader Suresh Telu has a Lenovo laptop that came pre-installed with Windows Vista Home edition.

He plans to install Windows XP on the computer but wiping off Vista completely may void the laptop warranty.

Suresh is therefore looking for an alternate solution where he can install and dual boot Windows XP alongside Windows Vista.

It is possible but before you install Windows XP over pre-installed Vista, here are some important points to consider:

1. You should have a licensed copy of Windows XP.

2. Read your warranty document carefully or consult the customer care to make sure that warranty remains valid when you install a second OS on your computer.

3. You’ll need to create a separate partition (or overwrite an existing one) for installing XP . Make sure there’s enough space on the hard drive.

Now head over to PronetWorks and HowToGeek for a detailed guide on installing Windows XP on your pre-installed Vista laptop. It’s a bit geeky method but nicely illustrated at both the places.

Adobe Buzzword Word Processor Now Available To All

Adobe Buzzword, the web based word process that created quite a buzz, is now open for public without requiring any invitation code.

Buzzword can export you documents as Microsoft Word (.doc), Office 2003 xml or RTF files. It’s surprising that there’s no export for PDF or Flash Paper especially when they both are Adobe technologies.

Make sure that you don’t type obscene or pornographic content into your Word documents as that’s prohibited according to Buzzword’s TOS. [getbuzzword.com]

Stretch YouTube Videos To Fit the Browser Window, Better Than Full Screen You already know about the Full Screen mode in YouTube video player that scales the current video to fill the entire desktop screen. The one big problem with full screen mode in YouTube player is that you cannot do anything else on the computer while the video is playing - you have the exit the FullScreen before initiating any other task. There's however an excellent alternative to FullScreen and that's about auto resizing the video player to fit the browser window. When you resize the browser window, the dimensions of YouTube Video player will change accordingly. Here's how you fit the YouTube video in the browser window: Say a YouTube Video URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 To watch this clip in a resizable browser window without switching to Full Screen, just rewrite the above URL a http://www.youtube.com/v/vr3x_RRJdd4 In other words, just append the YouTube video ID to this URL www.youtube.com/v/VIDEO_ID and maximize your browser. You can then easily switch to other tabs, open new applications or do anything else while the YouTube clip is still playing in the maximum possible screen area.

Firefox Running Slow? Make It Fast Again Without Re-Installation

Problem: You cannot imagine life without Firefox but over time, your favorite browser keeps getting slower and slower. Not only is it slow, Firefox sometimes hangs for no reason, consumes a large amount of memory and CPU usage can climb to 90% or more when you have multiple tabs open simultaneously. You have uninstalled most of the extensions and toolbars, deleted all the cookies and internet temporary files, cleared up the file download queue and disabled the background check for software updates - but none of this has helped you speed-up Firefox. Solution: This is a common problem especially if you have been running Firefox for some time - I don't know why Firefox slows down but here's a small trick to rejuvenate the aged copy of Firefox without doing a fresh install. Step 1: Start Firefox and export your bookmarks as a file on your hard-drive (we'll need them later). Step 2: Type firefox.exe - P in the Run box of Windows. (see screenshot) Step 3: Click the Create Profile button without making any modifications to your existing profile (which is normally called "default") Now when you Start Firefox in the new profile, you are very likely to be impressed with the speed. You can import the bookmarks that you saved in Step 1. If you have made any changes to the Firefox Dictionary, copy the persdict.dat word list file from the old profile folder to the new one. Yes, there won't be any old Firefox add-ons in the new profile but the browser will be extremely quick and won't hog the CPU - just the way you want Firefox to run on your computer. And if you ever need to revert to the old profile, just type Firefox -P again and click the old profile. Nothing is lost.

Email Attachment is in a Different ZIP Format ? Convert It Online

Say your business client sends you a bunch of documents compressed in the some format that WinZip cannot open. How would you unzip and extract documents out of this email attachment ?

Either search Google and download a trial version of some zip utility that can deal with the format ? Or ask the client to resend the documents archived in a format that WinZip can understand.

There’s a third option that’s the simplest of all - use Zamzar which a free web based file conversion service.

Zamzar has just added support for archived file formats - you can upload zip files in any format (like tar, cab, 7z, z2, etc) to Zamzar and it will convert them into more common formats like .zip.

The only downside is that RAR is not supported by Zamzar - you can however extract files from RAR via WinRAR or the new Winzip 11 which supports both rar and bz2 formats.

Make Video Clips

Free Video Editing Software

Though Windows Movie Maker from Microsoft remains the popular choice, CNET recommends open-source video editor Jahshaka for creating videos on a budget - if you take the time to learn the program and actually read some of those tutorials, you’ll quickly discover that Jahshaka is a very serious editing application with a learning curve that will keep you occupied for a while. Wide file-format support, node-based effects, and editing in DV, SD, HD, and film are only a few of the bonus features.

For capturing videos out of your camcorder or digital camera, you can consider the excellent VirtualDub.

My personal favorites include Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, Camtasia Studio 5 and Photoshop CS3 Extended that has an inbuilt video editor for frame animation.

Download Yahoo! Messenger 9 for Windows -- Awesome

Yahoo! today released a new version of Yahoo! Messenger 9 IM client that features new skins (IM environments), more emoticons and a redesigned look-n-feel.

Yahoo! Messenger 9 is a wonderful upgrade for users who regular share web videos and photos with other IM friends.

Now when you paste a YouTube video URL in Yahoo! Messenger 9 chat window, your friends can watch the video clip inline without having to visit the YouTube Website.

Same holds true for Flickr photostreams or any other other photos on the web - you can either paste photo URLs in the IM window or drag-n-drop pictures from the desktop - your friends can preview the pictures right inside the Yahoo! chat window.

Another useful feature - if you are going Offline, you can configure Yahoo! Messenger 9 to forward all the Offline IM message to a your mobile number as SMS text messages.

Yahoo! Messenger 9 is only available for Windows XP and Vista. Download Yahoo! Messenger 9 here. A localized Hindi version of Yahoo! Messenger 9 is also available for Indian users.