Hello and welcome to DIY Tech Tips part 5, once again we are going to show some nifty tech tips that you may not know of that are useful. Visitors that frequent this site will most probably be looking forward to the next stream of tech tips.

Photo editing from Office

You may not know this but the new Microsoft Office 2010 allows users to edit their photos directly from the application. There is no need for use of any photo editing software. Even though it may not be as advanced as software’s like Photoshop, simple effects like brightness, contrast and color saturation can be changed directly.

To do so, simply click on the Picture Tools tab on the command ribbon after inserting any picture. Click on the Format tab to view the editing options.

Rotate a video between landscape and portrait

Many people make the mistake of shooting a video with a digital camera by holding it upright. The end state of the whole recording will appear to have flipped sideways when it is being played back on a TV. You can use the Windows Movie Maker to change the orientation. That program can rotate the video for you so that it will now appear upright.

Use the Windows XP mode

Do not be despair if you are not able to play some of the good old games or run old programs off the new Windows 7 operating system. You can right click on the program icon and click on the Properties tab. Put a tick on the check box to run program in compatibility mode for Windows XP. If need be, you can also choose to run in 256 colors just to suit the demands of the game or program.

Windows 7 quick search

The new Windows 7 has a new feature that merges the search function into the Start Menu. Simply hit the Windows button and type anything you wish to run or find, Windows will search through every single file, program and even web history so that you can get to what you are searching for real fast.

Tag your files for easy access

The Windows 7 new feature called Library is not just a music list or extra folder with duplicated files. Think of it as a grouping shortcut list. For example, you can create a new library list named new songs. Go to your mp3 folders and right click on those songs you wish to add to that library. The next time you click on that “new songs” folder, you get a list of all those songs or files you have tagged. No files are duplicated in any way. So if you create another library called “techno”, you can still tag the same new song to the techno list. Just that it will show up again in that list as well.

Recording Skype calls

A recording of a conversation can come in handy especially if someone you know is well known for breaking promises. There are a few good softwares that you can use for such a purpose.

www.pamela.biz/en/

www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/wiretap

www.audacity.sourceforge.net/

Kill a program that is not responding

There is a new Windows task manager called the Windows 7 Resource Monitor. This program allows you to see what is running and how much resources it is using. Hit the Start button and type “resmon” on the search bar. Hit enter.

Create a password reset disk

If you are the sort who will forget your administrator password, no problem, create a password reset disk. Go to Control Panel followed by user Accounts and Family Safety. Click on User Accounts. You will see a “Create a password reset disk” on the left side of the window.

Follow instructions on screen and keep your reset disk safe, and of course for god’s sake don’t forget where you keep that password reset disk.

Pin your most frequently used programs to the taskbar

Hit the Start Menu and you can drag and drop any program that you use all the time to the task bar of Windows 7. Pining a program to the taskbar is not like creating a shortcut, unlike all previous versions of Windows, the pinned icon is the shortcut and it will not open multiple windows of the same program resulting in a clutter in the taskbar.

Block pop-up dialogue boxes

Web site pop ups are annoying enough, even Microsoft itself has quite a handful of irritating pop up notifications telling you that the latest update is not installed, did you just turn off your firewall etc. Sometimes all these pop ups come up right at the most inconvenient times such as you are in the middle of a game or doing some song recording and “pop” comes the sound from the dialogue boxes. Argghh… install ClickOff from www.johanneshuebner.com/en/clickoff.shtml