After a few days of downtime, Miranda finally works again. Miranda is a multi-protocol IM client and it seems AOL cut off its access. They released a patch that fixes the AIM support. WooHoo! I was using Gaim in the interim and it was painful. Miranda really is a much better client than Gaim, IMHO. It has a very low memory footprint, is totally customizable via plugins, is freeware/open source, does all the major IM protocols, runs from a flash drive, and just works and acts like I want it to. Check it out if you haven’t already.

Miranda homepage

geek, windows, freeware, IM

Here’s a handy little freeware Windows application that just might save you a lot of grief at some point. It’s called Snadboy’s Revelation. It does one thing and one thing only – it reveals hidden passwords in applications. For example, Just the other day I needed my database password out of the program I normally use to connect to the database, but the password was hidden behind *******. So, I ran Revelation and got the password out.

Here is how it works. Run whatever program you have that has a password you need revealed. Now run Revelation. Drag the crosshairs from Revelation and point it to the password field. The password text should appear in Revelation.

Another nice feature is that it can run from a flash drive and it’s only 116 KB. Just run the Revelation installer to install it on your computer, then copy the Revelation.exe and the RevelationHelper.dll to your flash drive. I keep it on my flash drive all the time just in case I ever need it in a pinch.

Sadly, Revelation does not reveal all passwords though. Most notably, it can’t reveal passwords in Firefox. I know of another way to get the passwords out of webpages in Firefox though – we’ll cover that at a later date. Revelation does work in Internet Explorer though and it works in almost all of the other Windows applications I have tried it on. Give it a try. If you don’t need it now, you may need it in the future (and it’s fun to play with).

FYI: This post is also at TipMonkies

geek, windows, freeware, passwords

I just stumbled on this quite accidentally. I have Firefox setup to open links in a new tab when I middle-click on a link. Turns out you can also middle-click on a tab to close it. I wondered why there wasn’t an easier way to close tabs (besides mouse gestures).

geek, firefox, tips, freeware, software

Yesterday my sister asked me how she could stop some things from running on startup. Since programs can run at startup multiple ways (startup folder, registry, boot.ini), I pointed her to a freeware program I have been using for a while now – EasyCleaner by ToniArts. Not only does it allow you to manage your startup, it also provides a bunch of other handy things like deleting invalid shortcuts, a better Add/Remove, and managing your registry.

EasyCleaner homepage

geek, freeware, windows, software

All-purpose utility applications that slice and dice and do 100 different things are cool, but sometimes you want an app that does one thing and one thing well. This app falls into the latter category. Neutron synchronizes your system clock with the atomic clock automatically. Just put a link to it in your startup folder and Neutron will sync up your time automatically every time you reboot and will exit automatically after the syncing is done. It’s freeware and the download is only 6kb. Robin has some other good freeware in his software section too – check it out.

Neutron homepage

geek, freeware, windows, software