I wrote that app back in 2000 (back when Windows 2000 was new and slapping a “2000″ at the end of your app’s name was the in thing to do). Every now and then I get emails from folks asking for an updated version that works with UAC (it wrote to the registry in HKLM which requires elevation nowadays) so they wouldn’t have to run it as admin anymore. I figured it wouldn’t be that much work and it would be kind of fun to write some code again–it had been a while.

I dug up the old C++ code and was quickly reminded of the fact that it was actually going to be a fair amount of work (for me) to make it happen. I changed plans and instead decided to write an application in C# from scratch that would do it all and in what I figured would be a couple hours of work. That turned out to be pretty spot on as today I’m sharing out the first version of DeskTips.

Here’s a screenshot of the data it currently supports (time, date, system up time, CPU usage, computer name, and IP address):

And here’s another screenshot that shows the extent of its current UI:

It’s pretty simple and I’m hoping someone finds it useful. It’ll at the very least serve as a new place I can point the folks who still run good old Uptime 2000 but want an update.

If there’s some other information you’d find useful to add to the list of data it supports, just leave me a comment or shoot me a mail (gus at this domain) and I’ll consider adding it to an upcoming version of DeskTips.

You can read more about DeskTips and download it from its fancy product page.

I’m posting this as I was just about to send this to someone via email to help them through it and figured this could help others too (*and* I can just link to this when I get asked next time). So if you’re on a Windows PC, here’s what I recommend you do to create a properly rotated version of your videos.

1. Start up Windows Live Movie Maker. If you don’t already have it installed, you can install it from here for free.
2. Open up the folder you have the movie(s) you want to rotate in Windows Explorer.
3. Drag the movie from Windows Explorer over to the area labeled “Drag videos and photos here…” in Movie Maker.
4. On the “Home” tab in Movie Maker’s ribbon toolbar (you should be there by default), click on the appropriate button to rotate: ‘Rotate left 90°’ or ‘Rotate right 90°’. At this point, you should now see the video in the correct orientation in the preview pane on the left.
5. You’re now ready to save the video. In the sharing section of the same ribbon toolbar we used in step #4, you’ll see the ‘Sharing’ pane. You can read more about your options here (e.g., save to YouTube, HD or SD file formats, etc.) in the Windows Live Movie Maker documentation.

In my opinion, this is one of the easiest ways to do this for free and using an application that’s coming from a trustworthy source. It is however not all that flexible in some ways (e.g., your options for your rotated video are somewhat limited) but for most folks it should be just fine.

If you’re curious about other ways to do this, here are a few links that may be of interest

• Scott Hanselman’s post on using MPlayer‘s MEncoder command-line tool.
• You’ll find several apps (some free and some not free) by just a quick search on Bing.

Download speed hasn’t changed much since last time but upload certainly has.

• Consistent naming (everything’s ccDismiss now instead of how some parts would show up as ChargeCompleteDisabler in the task window, etc.).
• Fixed a memory leak I had that would happen whenever the Charge Complete was closed. It was tiny but a leak is a leak.
• I’ve shared the source code out as well now (available through the same link above).

Assuming ezclip.exe lives somewhere in your %path% environment variable, one can now type something like ‘dir /s /b | ezclip’ and the output of the dir command will directly be copied to the clipboard.

You can get the latest version from the ezClip page as usual.

This version includes the following improvements:

• Wildcard support (e.g., ‘ezclip copy *.txt’ now works).
• New add command allows you to add to the files you currently have in the clipboard.
• New list command displays a list of the files currently stored in the clipboard.
• Short form commands allows you to use the first letter of each command instead of spelling out the full command name (e.g., ‘ezclip p’ instead of ‘ezclip paste’).

I’ve also shared out the source code as I have in the past. The really cool part about that is that this release was mostly just a matter of integrating changes sent to me by Joel McIntyre, an ezClip user who was nice enough to implement the very useful additions and sent them to me to share with everyone else. Thanks Joel!

You can download ezClip and read more about it here.

This latest version contains a new “quiet time” feature that allows you to specify a time range you want it to not speak during. Pretty simple but useful.

Get the latest version of TickTalker here.

• I had an off-by-one bug that led to 1pm/am being announced as 13 regardless of the 24-hour mode setting. It also was related to making midnight be announced as “zero o’clock.” All better now.
• At startup now TickTalker will register itself with Vista so it shows up in the Volume “Mixer.” This allows the user to configure the volume TickTalker should run at as compared to other applications (e.g., Windows Media Player, Windows sounds, etc.).
• Got rid of the 24-hour mode setting. Will bring it back if I hear back from anyone who cares to have it. Will keep it simple in the meantime…

As always, head over to the TickTalker page to download version 1.0.2.

• The settings dialog no longer shows up behind other windows the first time you bring it up.
• Added a setting that allows you to update the “Speaking Rate” which really means you can now slow it down or speed it up as much as you like.
• Added a “Play Sample” button to the settings dialog that allows you test out your speaking rate and general volume setting.
• Used the same icon for all dialogs–had left the default project icon originally on the two dialogs.

I currently know of one other bug that I haven’t yet fixed. When saving your settings (automatically happens whenever you hit OK on the Settings dialog) and you’re running TickTalker from a protected folder (i.e., C:\Program Files) it currently throws an unhandled exception. I need to look into what the right way to deal with this is but in the meantime, if you’re running it from a folder you have full access to that’s not “protected” you should be fine.  

You can get the latest version from the TickTalker page.