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The festive season is not too far away and so I thought of creating some eyecandy using Christmas as a theme. Did my best in Photoshop to make some beautiful hi-resolution wallpapers and then gift-wrapped them into a Windows 7 themepack. Enjoy!

Details:

5 beautiful 1920x1200 widescreen wallpapers.

Windows Sound scheme: Festival.

Download Windows 7 Christmas Theme Pack

Just want these wallpapers? Click here.

It just takes a moment to click the Tweet button on top. :)

[All rights reserved for Windows 7 Christmas Theme Pack]

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Today’s technological scenario is all about integration and making every task simpler and every information easily accessible. Well, similar are the thoughts of UXLabs at Microsoft. They have created a very sleek Facebook client application that brings the complete Facebook experience right on your Windows desktop – Fishbowl.

Although in a ‘trial’ (beta) stage, Fishbowl offers some features that surely will excite Facebook power users. Apart from the seamless integration with Facebook, here are some of the plus points of Fishbowl:

» Fishbowl offers mini-mode which is more fun and less obtrusive.

» Smooth user interface and sleek navigation. It supports drag n’ drop pictures to publish them on Facebook. Furthermore, it can go full screen and play a slideshow of your albums.

» You can update your status, view your friends’ albums, their updates, news-feeds and other notifications.

» “Interest Level”, my favorite feature, helps you filter your stream anonymously in order to avoid boring updates from friends.

» If you are a Windows 7 user, you can monitor your Facebook stream right from your taskbar using jumplists.

If you want to give it a try then click the link below.

Download Fishbowl / 6.6mb

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I have seen many of my friends who recently switched to Windows 7 but have all the nostalgia and love for the aging Windows XP. They are not wrong. Windows XP did rule for quite a long time and I see no reason for someone not to get used to it. One of the many things people still crave for is the Classic Start Menu from the Windows 2000 and XP era. It was a minimalism norm back then. Even Windows Vista has it but Windows 7 doesn’t. So if you are the one using Windows 7 and missing those fly outs of the classic start menu then you might want to check out CSMenu.

CSMenu is a light weight application built specially for Windows 7 that acts like the classic start menu. It does nothing fancy. Just brings back the pure classiness which is favored by millions.

While CSMenu is a freeware, there’s an advanced version too – The Classic Menu with Aero, a shareware. This version give a little eye candy by making the fly-outs transparent.

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Halloween’s gone and its getting cold everywhere. Why not give your Windows 7 some chilling look? Well, so thought I, and made a Winter theme pack.

» 7 beautiful, handpicked pictures from Flickr (thanks to MeanTux). Added a Vignette effect for awesomeness.

» High resolution images (1920x1200, 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio).

» Windows Sounds scheme: Sonata

Download the file by clicking the image below. Double click the .themepack file to set the theme.

Liked the theme? Tweet it to let your followers know. Get more of desktop customization as I will be adding more themes in the future.

This is a very cool trick that saves time and doesn’t require any 3rd party software. If you want any folder or a file shortcut to be placed right in the ‘My Computer’ window, then you can do that by following these simple steps:

1) Make a shortcut of the file/folder (‘Properties’ > ‘Create shortcut’)

2) Place the shortcut in this folder:

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts

Make sure you change <Username> to the user’s name of your computer.

Done! You have now placed a shortcut of your file/folder in the ‘My Computer’. I have tested this on Windows 7 and Windows Vista and it’s pretty neat.

[via HackTheUgly and TWC]

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Last week has been pretty exciting for Microsoft as it launched its most awesome OS ever but I guess the party is still not over. Microsoft is giving out small surprises like never before. There is lots of happening things going on over at Microsoft.com and here’s one example of it.

Recently, Microsoft put up 30+ Windows 7 themes on the Windows Personalization Gallery. Just click on the individual .themepack file, download it and double-click it to install the new themes. Moreover, checkout the new wallpapers in the ‘Desktop backgrounds’ tab.

Visit Windows Personalization Gallery

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Windows 7 have been around for quite a while now and every one is going gaga over it. Amidst all the cheering for Windows 7, I feel bad for Windows Vista owners for being felt left out. Although many Vista owners have already upgraded and enjoying Windows 7 in all its full glory, here’s something for those who haven’t made the switch yet – The Windows 7 Transformation Pack for Windows Vista.

Although this transformation pack has been around for many months, I could only post about it when Windows 7 was finally out. Transformation packs have been around since the age of Windows XP so there is nothing new to speak about. Windows 7 Transformation Pack has the refreshing Windows 7 Theme, Windows 7 Logon, WMP 12 for Vista, New Windows 7 Sound Schemes, Windows 7 Wallpapers and Windows 7 User Pictures.

Use the transformation pack at your own risk because I cannot give you my word for it as I have not tested it myself. On a personal note, I would suggest you to upgrade to Windows 7, because it’s worth.

Download Windows 7 Transformation Pack for Vista

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Windows 7 has definitely introduced lot of features along with eye candy but some people still want their Windows 7 to behave exactly like Windows XP. Well, this little trick is for them. Aero snap feature enables you to maximize / arrange windows on your desktop rather neatly by just dragging the window towards the edge of the screen.

However, you can disable the Aero Snap feature by doing the steps below:

1) Open Registry Editor (type regedit in the Start Menu search bar) and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop

2) In the right pane, change the value of ‘WindowArrangementActive’ to 0.

3) Logoff and login again to experience the changes. Now the windows will behave exactly as it were on Windows XP.

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Recently, Mozilla published on its Wiki about the upcoming Firefox 4.0. Based upon the screenshots, a guy named ‘SpewBoy’ from DeviantArt made its mock up theme. However many other elements need to be added into it in order to get the exact look of Firefox 4.0.

But before we begin, please note that this tutorial will work only on Firefox 3.5. It will not work on later versions like 3.5.1 or 3.5.2. So it is needless to say, if you want to proceed further with the tutorial and you have version 3.5.1 or 3.5.2 then you need to downgrade to 3.5. Uninstall the earlier version first, restart your PC and then install Firefox 3.5. Once you are ready, proceed with the following steps.

1) Download the Strata4.0 theme here (created by SpewBoy. All thanks.) but don’t install it as of now. Just extract its contents into a folder and then launch Firefox 3.5.

2) Now, in the Firefox 4.0 screenshots depicted by Mozilla, the ‘Stop’ button is at the end of the address bar. So we will too place the ‘Stop’ button at the end of the address bar. For this, right-click just below the address bar and a menu will be displayed. Click ‘Customize’ and a window will appear. We are least concerned with this window. Just drag the ‘Stop’ button to the end of the address bar and close that window.

3) Now open the ‘Add-ons’ window (Tools >> Add-ons) and drag-n-drop the ‘strata40_v02.jar’ file from the extracted folder on it. Install the theme and restart Firefox.

4) Now download an add-on called Personal Menu. Install it and you will have three new toolbar buttons next to the Stop/Reload button. Now if you are on Windows XP then skip step 5.

5) This step should be followed by Windows Vista/Windows 7 users only. Download and install an add-on called All Glass Firefox Mod. This will give a superb glassy look to Firefox.

6) Now we need another add-on called Stylish. Install it and you will see a very small ‘S’ icon at the right most end of the status bar below. Right-click it and select ‘Write new style >> Blank style…’. In the window that appears, enter name as ‘Strata Glass Fixes’ and in the big textbox below, copy and paste all the contents of the ‘glasser fixes.txt’ file from the folder extracted earlier. This will fix the display of tabs. Now the tabs will become crisp and clear.

7) Almost there! Now we will customize the download bar according to the one showed in the Firefox 4.0 screenshots. It will be just a green line below the address bar which looks really really awesome and aesthetic. So, take a deep breath, have some water and download an add-on called Fission and install it. Now go to its options and browse for the ‘loading_progress.png’ image file in the extracted folder. This addon basically changes the download bar and shows an image that is selected in its place.

8) The final step. Now we will merge the address bar and search bar into one just as showed in the Firefox 4.0 screenshots (also like in Chrome). For this, download the Omnibar add-on, install it and restart Firefox. If you followed everything right, this is what you can expect:

Enjoy Firefox 4.0 look-n-feel. All the credit goes to the respective add-on creators.

This has something to do with the aesthetics. I am sure everyone of you want some eye candy from time to time. Google introduced themes in GMail to give it a fresh look. But if you further want to redesign the look-n-feel of Google services like GMail, Google Calendar and Google Reader, then there is a very sweet add-on for Firefox that does precisely that. Download Google Redesigned.

This add-on will just change the overall design of GMail, Google Calendar and Google Reader. But the design is purely aesthetic and is surely a welcome change to the default theme. Below are the screen shots of ‘redesigned’ GMail.

The whole world is paying tribute to the King of Pop who really deserved the name and fame that he got throughout his life and even after that. So, I thought to pay him a small tribute by making some awesome Michael Jackson theme packs for Windows desktop. Below are the three themes in various resolutions which can be individually downloaded. The resolutions include the standard 4:3 1024x768, a 5:3 full-screen 1280x1024 and three widescreen versions 1280x800, 1440x900 and 1920x1200. Just click the icon of the desired resolution and proceed to the download page.

Glorious Shine:

Gray Soul:

Immortal MJ:

If you wish to download the whole theme pack with all themes in all resolutions then here to download.

Enjoy MJ! Enjoy Music!