Confessions of an Infomaniac » Utilities

Clean and Speed Up Your Computer With Glary Utilities

Ellen — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 13:10:56 +0000

I have a 2 year old Dell Desktop computer which over time took longer and longer to boot up and start programs. I have this habit of downloading freeware that I read about on blogs like Lifehacker and Download Squad. I also had a problem when booting my computer where I didn’t see the Windows splash screen for a good 5 minutes. Something was definitely wrong with my computer! I was ready to throw in the towel and reformat it and reload all my programs.

Then I read about a free program called Glary Utilities on Lifehacker and decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did because it corrected the problem with booting up my computer and gave me the tools to clean up my computer so it ran faster and it does.

After I installed Glary Utilities I ran the 1 Click Maintenance which included modules that cleaned up my registry, temporary files and removed spyware and adware. Once I did the one click maintenance my computer started up much quicker. I had a lot of invalid registry entries from adding and removing programs.

Glary Utilities also includes modules that optimize, clean and boost the speed of your computer.

Clean Up & Repair

Disk Cleaner
Registry Cleaner
Shortcuts Fixer
Uninstall Manager

Optimize & Improve

Startup Manager
Memory Optimizer
Context Menu Manager
Registry Defrag

Privacy & Security

Tracks Eraser
File Shredder
File Undelete
File Encrypter and Decrypter

Files & Folders

Disk Analysis
Duplicate Files Finder
Empty Folders Finder
File Splitter and Joiner

System Tools

Process Manager
Internet Explorer Assistant
Windows Standard Tools

Glary Utilities

Do you have a program or programs that help you keep your system optimized and clean? Similar Posts:

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slydial Officially Opened to the Public With New Features

Ellen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:31:58 +0000

Back in April I wrote this post, 5 Reasons to Use SlyDial, A Service That Connects You Directly To Someone’s VoiceMail, which at the time slydial was in private beta. Yesterday that all changed and slydial is now open to the public and sporting new features. Just to recap, slydial allows you to call a someone’s mobile phone and have your call sent directly to voicemail without their phone rining. This is a nice service for when you don’t want to speak to the person but want to leave a voice message.

slydial can be used without registering for an account though if you sign up for an account you have access to a couple of great feautures.

Dial By Name — Once you add someone as a slydial contact, you don’t
have to remember or enter their full phone number anymore. Just dial
267-SLYDIAL and enter the first four digits of their slydial nickname
to connect to their mobile voicemail.
Click 2 slydial — At your computer? Click on the “Click 2 slydial”
icon next to your slydial contact and slydial will call your phone.
Once you answer, you will be connected directly to that contact’s
voicemail.

When you register you are given the option of staying with an ad supported free account or a premium account with a pay per use fee of $0.15 per slydial or an unlimited use subscription for $4.95 per month or $29.95 per year.

Their website has been updated and really is quite nice and easy to use. Right off the bat you are given the phone number to dial if you don’t want to register an account, 267-slydial (267-759-3425). Nice and simple. Registering is easy and something I recommend doing in order to take advantage of their new feautures.

slydial works with all major U.S. wireless carriers and calls can be made from a mobile or landline phone. It would be nice to see slydial in more countries, hopefully that is coming soon.

Since registering for an account it occurred to me that it would be nice if I could group contacts, like family, and then be able to send out a group message, say to remind everyone of an upcoming event. This could be part of their premium service and I think would make a nice addition.

What do you think? Is slydial a service you would use and for what situations?

Technorati Tags: slydial

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5 Reasons to Use SlyDial, A Service That Connects You Directly To Someone’s VoiceMail

Ellen — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:10:33 +0000

SlyDial is a free service from MobileSphere, the creators of the text messaging application Joopz, that lets U.S. and Canadian people connect directly to someone’s mobile phone voicemail without their phone ringing. You may be asking yourself why would I use such a service. Others have been wishing for a service like this for ages. I wish it would work on land lines as well but not everyone has voicemail through their phone provider on their land lines but on mobile phones everyone has voice mail.

Think about the reasons for using such a service for a minute.

SlyDial gives you the power of whether you want to talk directly to a person or not.
Call friends and relatives you don’t want to have a lengthy conversation with but leave a nice message, maybe a thank you for a gift or just letting them know you are thinking of them.
If you need to call in sick and your boss uses his/her mobile for communication you can bypass speaking with them and just leave a message (I like this reason).
You are short on time and just want to leave a quick message like confirming the time you are meeting your spouse for dinner.
Leaving a voicemail means you tried reaching the person, they don’t know that you made your call directly go to voicemail.

It’s easy to use SlyDial.

Just dial the 267-SLYDIAL (759-3425) from either a land line or mobile phone,
then dial the 10 digit mobile number of the person you are calling,
listen to a short advertisement,
you are then connected to the number and you can leave your voice mail message.

The first time you call listen to their explanation of the service, it is amusing at times. On future calls you can just start dialing the number you are calling

I made a call to my Verizon phone and went through the steps. After leaving the message I received notification on my mobile that I had a new voice message. It didn’t show that I missed a call and the call is not logged in my missed calls list. I’m not sure on other carriers how it handles the call, whether it says the person missed a call or just that they have a new mail message.

SlyDial is still in the alpha stage where new features will probably be added and they are looking at a premium service to bypass the advertisement heard before connecting your call. I would like to see an option to sign up for the service and the ability to import my contact list from a service like Plaxo and then the ability to just say “Call dad” and be connected. An Outlook plugin is another option which could be part of their premium service as it is with Joopz.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

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Easy Web-based Text Messaging with Joopz

Ellen — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:39:23 +0000

I am totally inept when it comes to trying to type text messages on my cellphone’s keypad. I don’t understand how people can do it without even looking at the keys. So, when a friend directed me to a site where I could send and receive text messages either through my web browser or Microsoft Outlook I went to the site right away.

Joopz enables “web texting” on my computer where I can have two way conversations with friends and family on their mobile phones/devices. Other services like Verizon’s text messaging allows you to send a message from the web but the reply goes to your mobile phone. With Joopz I can have the entire conversation on the web or through Outlook and as long as the conversation stays that way I don’t incur any costs for text messaging on my end (the other person does).

The SMS Forwarding feature allows me to transfer the conversation to my mobile phone if I am going to be away from my computer. When I come back I just turn the feature off. Of course I do incur a cost from my mobile provider when I use the forwarding feature.

With Joopz I can

have a two way conversation from the web or Microsoft Outlook to any mobile phone for free.
create groups from my contacts and send out group messages.
send myself a text reminder for any reason.
schedule messages ahead of time to be received by a contact at a specific time, great for birthday and anniversary messages.

There are also plugins for MySpace and Facebook to have contacts send text messages directly from those applications. They plan on adding a desktop application where you can receive messages directly on your computer. I would also love to see a plugin/widget to add Joopz on a blog or website.

I am currently using Joopz Basic which is a free plan that allows me to send up to 50 web texts per month (I have unlimited incoming messages). If I want to send more than 50 messages and have more control of my conversation history and use the Outlook plugin there is a premium service that costs $2.95 per month or $19.95 per year. There is a 30 day free trial period to try all of the features and decide which plan you want to use.

As a side note, Joopz works great on my iPod Touch when I am connected to a wireless network. I’m sure it works great on other web-enabled mobile devices as well.

If you try out Joopz let me know what you think and if it’s worth the money to go with the premium service.

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Cleanup Your Windows With CCleaner

Ellen — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:56:58 +0000

I am on both my laptop and desktop computers a good portion of the day and utilize them to the fullest. Part of what I do with this blog is review new applications and programs and of course I have to try them out in order to write about them. This leads me to have a great deal of junk on my computer including unwanted programs and temporary files. And, because I do a lot of research using my desktop the time to it takes to start up my computer just got longer and longer no matter how many background processes I removed. Well, a freeware program called CCleaner has helped me get both computers back under control.

CCleaner is easy to install and setup. The program starts quickly and gives you all the tools to clean up your Windows computer system. Clean up your temporary internet files, recycle bin, registry issues and temporary files generated from third-party software. You can also uninstall programs quickly with the list of applications loading much, much quicker than Windows Add/Remove programs feature.

I like CCleaner because of its speed. It really is much faster than its Windows counterparts. Also, a full featured registry cleaner that will backup your registry is great. The best part for me is uninstalling application which listed applications and plugins that didn’t show up in Windows Add/Remove.

I still want to remove a few more programs from my desktop computer but it is running quicker and startup time has been cut in half. Yippee! I don’t have to keep a magazine by my computer for when I have to restart it.

Technorati tags: CCleaner, temporary files cleaner, registry cleaner, freeware

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TwitBin Gets Even Better

Ellen — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 07:37:52 +0000

My favorite Twitter Firefox extension, TwitBin, has recently been updated with some nice new features. I originally wrote about TwitBin in 4 Tools That Make Twitter Easier For Me (and Maybe You), and impressed with the feautures it gave me to use Twitter. The new version is even better. And, TwitBin works with the latest release of the Flock browser (which I am using right now). TwitBin now incorporates the following features.

Time stamps on tweets.
Direct link to person’s webpage if they have one.
Ability to see direct and @ messages.
Refresh rate of 3,10, 30 and 45 minutes.

Overall I really like this new version. It’s nice that I can go directly to a Twitter buddy’s homepage or blog without having to go to Twitter. Plus, the ability to see @ messages is great because at times I missed responses to a tweet and didn’t find out unless I went to my page on Twitter. The new version of Twitbin makes it so I don’t have to go to Twitter anymore, except to change my avatar for Stripper Friday

If you are using either Firefox or Flock as your web browser then TwitBin is a great extension to post tweets and keep you up-to-date with everything happening on Twitter. And, you can find me on Twitter as Infomaniac.

Tags: TwitBin, twitter, Firefox, Flock

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Add Signatunes To Email and Blog Posts Through FoxyTunes

Ellen — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 08:59:42 +0000

Foxytunes has released a new version of their plugin for Firefox that lets you control your media player in your browser (read my review here). In this new release a new tool is included called Signatunes which lets you add music signatures to email and blog posts. At the bottom of this post you can see that I am listening to Blackfield – This Killer as I write this post. Pretty neat.

For this blog, which is powered by WordPress, all I had to do was install the plugin and it added a button which I configured to always insert a music signature. When you click on the link in my music signature it will bring you to FoxyPlanet where you can find out more about Blackfield, listen to tracks and watch videos.

I love Foxytunes and can’t wait to see what they roll out next since this is only Phase 1 of their new release 3.0.

Signatunes currently works with:

—————-
Now playing: Blackfield – This Killer
via FoxyTunes