One of the main development goals for Windows 7 is improving battery performance on laptop systems. Much of that is down to the manufacturer who builds the machine, but Windows 7 also includes a new command line tool for identifying power problems. As demonstrated in this morning’s WinHEC keynote, you can type powerconfig /energy duration:20 and generate a report identifying potential sources of power problems, ranging from poorly configured Wi-Fi to battery-draining background applications. While you can set shorter durations for the test, running for longer identifies more potential problems. The current public builds of Windows 7 don’t have lots of UI elements enabled, so it’s likely that there’ll be a friendlier front-end to this system before the final version arrives — but it’s still a nice tool for the power tweaker.
DIY web site Instructables posts a detailed step-by-step guide for repurposing the keys from an old keyboard as thumbtacks. All you’ll need to pull it off is the keyboard, round-topped push pins, a drill, and some hot glue. It’s quick, easy, and decidedly cool if you’ve got a nostalgic kick for retro computing.
Keyboard Thumbtacks [Instructables]By not permitting results with appended prefixes like Re: and Fwd:, you can quickly find the beginnings of an email thread in Gmail. Simply type -subject:Re: -subject:Fwd: to only reveal conversation starters, and optionally add from:[email address] (where [email address]is an actual email address) to find an email from a particular sender. Too lazy to type all that out? Go to Settings > Labs, enable Quick Links, and scroll down to click the Save Changes button. Now search on -subject:Re: -subject:Fwd: and click Add Quick Link in the Quick Link pane on the left. Give your search link a better name (I went with the highly technical-sounding “Thread Intro Search”) and click OK. Now with one click, search results with only initial messages will appear, and you can further refine results by adding terms and qualifiers to the string already in the search box.
Gmail tip: searching by the first post in a conversation [Rakesh Agrawal's Blog via Google Blogoscoped]Earlier today we took an early look at Firefox’s Private Browsing mode, available in the latest test builds from Mozilla, but a new tab preview panel feature snuck past our radar. Instead of displaying a list of each of your opened tabs by title when you click the tab list drop down to the right of the tab bar, you’ll be given a snazzy tab preview panel displaying thumbnails of each tabs. From there, you can search the titles for as-you-type filtering of results, click on any thumbnail, and tab through the results.
[via Mozilla Links]Not only does Windows 7′s upgraded Aero interface power up your taskbar, but it includes new gestures for managing your workspace — like shaking a single window to clear away background windows. Check it out in the screencast above. When you want to focus on the task at hand on a desktop cluttered with windows, just grab the window bar of the app you want to work in and shake it back and forth to clear away the rest. Another shake will restore the background apps to their former state. You can also drag and drop a window to the edge of the screen to maximise it, and click on its top bar again to restore its previous size. Hit the play button above to see the shake-shake-shake and the drag and drop maximisation in action. Unless you’re a big fan of mouse gestures, you probably won’t use this new feature a whole lot—unless, of course, you wind up running Windows 7 on a touchscreen device.
iPhone/iPod touch only: Popular to-do list manager Remember The Milk has officially hit the iTunes App Store as a native application for your iPhone or iPod touch. Just like the web site, the application is lightning fast and simple to use but packs in some impressive features, including bi-directional sync, offline task editing, and even location awareness for sorting nearby tasks. The catch: In order to use RTM for iPhone, you’ll need to have signed up for a $US25/year pro account. Remember The Milk is a free download from the iTunes App Store. Remember The Milk [iTunes App Store via RTM Blog]
Windows only: Multiple Find and Replace does pretty much what it says — find and replace text strings across multiple documents. It doesn’t have the binary- and archive-searching power of Windows Grep or the command line elegance of Find and Replace Text for accomplishing tasks, but it is tiny and dead simple. I experience some problems selecting a large range of files, and you’ll probably want to click Show Advanced Options button and select Back up changed files for your first few forays. Multiple Find and Replace is a free download for Windows only.
Multiple Find and Replace 1.00 [NonTube Software via Life Rocks 2.0]Minors experience significantly fewer ads online than the elderly in a measure of web page “clutter,” according to a recent report from Nielsen Online. Web surfers under 17 saw the least screen real estate given over to advertising, while those over 65 saw the most. And the more “niche” a site’s appeal, the more clutter generally. Of course, dedicated adbusters can use software like BFilter or reconfigure your router to block ads for the whole family. At what point does the ad volume or tone overwhelm the value of the content or service for you?
Yesterday you saw a fuzzy video demonstration of Aero Peek, one of the new features coming in Windows 7. Peek supercharges Windows’ taskbar thumbnail previews, and lets you view, close, and switch between multiple windows by just hovering over the taskbar thumbnail, as well as pin programs to the taskbar permanently. Here’s a firsthand screencast of what this looks like in action on your desktop.
Mozilla reports that the Firefox market share topped 20% during October. 20% may not sound that big, but when Wired points out the obvious—that it’s one in five web surfers—it somehow seems enormous. Nice work, Firefox!
