How to: change the start button text on Windows XP

Tired of the boring old “start” button at the bottom left corner of your Windows XP’s monitor? Want something new to replace iit? Well here’s how to change it.

With a few modifications in the Windows Registry, you can replace the “start” text with anything you like. Great for achieving a new, custom look for your Windows XP. So let’s get started.

Step 1: Modify explorer.exe

If the warning didn’t scare you enough, then the title of this step probably did. Yes, we are going to change Explorer, the backbone of your Windows XP, but don’t worry. Everything should be safe as long as you follow the steps closely.

As explorer is a binary file, we need a special tool to modify it. One of the best ones for this purpose is Resource Hacker. There are of course others that will get the trick done, but we will be using RH this tutorial so I recommend installing it to avoid making mistakes. Install it and let’s continue.

As always before changing anything. you want to back up. So open My Computer and navigate to   and look for explorer. Copy paste it to a safe location on your hard drive.

Now that you’ve backed it up, fire up Resource Hacker and find the same explorer.exe.

When you’ve found and opened explorer in RH, navigate to String Table -> 37 -> 1033. The “start” value is on line 4, after the 578. Change the text “start” to anything you want, making sure you keep the quotes. In this example. I changed the text to xptricks.net.

Press the Compile Script button to make Resource Hacker put together the code. Now click File and Save the script as explorer.exe. into C: \WINDOWS\inf or another C: \WINDOWS subfolder.

Note: make sure you choose Save AS, NOT just save!!

And that’s all for the first step! Now let’s move onto the second one -modifying the registry.

Step 2: changing the registry.

By now, you have a modified explorer sitting in the /inf/ subfolder, so we need to tell Windows to use that one, instead of the original one still resting untouched.

To do this, we need to make just one simple registry modification. To open up the registry, press start (something else soon  ) -> run and type regedit.

In the registry editor window that opens, navigate toHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon and look for the registry entry “shell”. Click it.

Change the explorer.exe to inf/explorer.exe or whereever you saved the modified explorer.

And believe it or not, you’re done! All you have to do now is reboot or log out and bacö in to see the changes. Enjoy your new custom Windows XP start button!

Set Website as Your Desktop Background

Here is an simple but interesting tweak that is applicable on Windows.You can set a Website(Webpage) as your desktop background. The site in background works as a normal site and opens the link in new window.Now u can search all your google querries on your desktop itself.

Steps:

1: Right click your desktop and go display Properties.

2: Select Desktop Tab, Click on "Customize Desktop".

3: In Desktop Items window Select "Web" tab.

4: Click on "New", add ur websites url and complete the wizard.

5: Apply setting and OK.

Making Your Own Internet Radio Station

If you want to set up a broadcast but either don't want to pay the fees for Live365, go through the trouble of configuring your computer for SHOUTcast, or just cannot devote your computer's time and resources to being a dedicated server, there is still an option. You can broadcast from your computer whenever you want, for practically nothing, using only your dial-up connection (or broadband connection if you have it). 

The Radio told here is made using SHOUTcast and winamp. Making your own Internet Radio Station is much easier than u think it to be. Follow the simple steps mentioned in the video.

Steps to make Internet Radio Station:

1. Go to Listen2myradio.com
2. Click on Sign Up.
3. Enter your Username, password, email etc here.
4. After that you have done, you should be able to login. So just login with your username and password
   
5. Go to Radio Installation.
6. Enter your admin and Broadcast Passwords. Its easy of they are same password. Also enter your radio name and URL to whatever you like.
   
7. Click Install.
8. Click on Turn ON/OFF. Turn ON ur radio. 
9. Go to preferences for more detail about your radio.
10. There is your Broadcast address you need later.
11. Now goto SHOUTcast.com.
12. Click on Download/Be a DJ.
13. Now you need to get winamp. So download it from there.
14. After this go back to shoutcast.com to download the plug-ins for your winamp and install it.
15. Then open your winamp and open preferences (Ctrl+P) and click on the DSP/Effects subcategory under the plug-ins.
16. Click on shout cast plugi. Then click Configure Active Plug-in.
17. A SHOUTcast source window will open there.
18. Now for the connection, Go back to your preferences. Copy and Paste your IP and port addresses. Then put your Broadcast password and Encoder to 1.
    
19. Then in Yellowpages tab choose your description and post your radio URL which you can get from again from radio preferences page.
20. Enable Track Title, that help listeners know the track getting played.
    
21. Now Goto Encoder Tab and choose whatever encoder setting your sound card can handle. Remember High rate will give good quality sound.
22. Now  goto input tab and make sure Input device set to winamp.
23. Now finally goto output tab and press Connect.

Your Internet Radio station is set. Go play your best songs on winamp it will be broadcasted to your radio URL and people around the world can listen your best collections. SO enjoyyyyyyyyyyy.............. :)

Photosynth - Coolest Imaging and Social Technology

Photosynth, a new service available at photosynth.com that will change the way you experience and share photos. Photosynth is a software application from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object. Pattern recognition components compare portions of images to create points, which are then compared to convert the image into a model. Users are able to view and generate their own models using a software tool available for download at the Photosynth website.

Process

The Photosynth technology works in two steps. The first step involves the analysis of multiple photographs taken of the same area. Each photograph is processed using an interest point detection and matching algorithm developed by Microsoft Research which is similar in function to UBC's Scale-invariant feature transform. This process identifies specific features, for example the corner of a window frame or a door handle. Features in one photograph are then compared to and matched with the same features in the other photographs. Thus photographs of the same areas are identified. By analyzing the position of matching features within each photograph, the program can identify which photographs belong on which side of others. By analyzing subtle differences in the relationships between the features (angle, distance, etc.), the program identifies the 3D position of each feature, as well as the position and angle at which each photograph was taken.

The second step involves the display of and navigation through the 3D point cloud of features identified in the first step. This is done with the publicly downloadable Photosynth viewer. The viewer resides on a client computer and maintains a connection to a server that stores the original photographs. It enables a user to, among other things, see any of the photographs from their original vantage point.
The Photosynth D3D based viewing software is only available to the Windows Vista and XP operating systems. The team recently released a Silverlight version of the viewer.

Capabilities

• Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle
• Zoom in or out of a photo
• See where pictures were taken in relation to one another
• Smoothly change viewing angle between nearby photos
• Smoothly zoom in and out of high-resolution photos
• Find similar photos to the one you're currently viewing
• Send pictures

TED sixth sense technology

I can't really describe Sixth Sense in a line. Sure, it is a system that projects information about what surrounds you over objects' surfaces, but it's also much more.



Basically, Sixth Sense is a mini-projector coupled with a camera and a cellphone—which acts as the computer and your connection to the Cloud, all the information stored on the web. Sixth Sense can also obey hand gestures, like in the infamous Minority Report.

However, instead of requiring you to be in front of a big screen like Tom Cruise, Sixth Sense can do its magic—and a lot more—everywhere, even while you are jumping hysteric over Oprah's sofa.

The camera recognizes objects around you instantly, with the micro-projector overlaying the information on any surface, including the object itself or your hand. Then, you can access or manipulate the information using your fingers. Need to make a call? Extend your hand on front of the projector and numbers will appear for you to click. Need to know the time? Draw a circle on your wrist and a watch will appear. Want to take a photo? Just make a square with your fingers, highlighting what you want to frame, and the system will make the photo—which you can later organize with the others using your own hands over the air.

But those are just novelty applications. The true power of Sixth Sense lies on its potential to connect the real world with the Internet, and overlaying the information on the world itself. Imagine you are at the supermarket, thinking about what brand of soap is better. Or maybe what wine you should get for tonight's dinner. Just look at objects, hold them on your hands, and Sixth Sense will show you if it's good or bad, or if it fits your preferences or not.

Now take this to every aspect of your everyday life. You can be in a taxi going to the airport, and just by taking out your boarding pass, Sixth Sense will grab real time information about your flight and display it over the ticket. You won't need to do any action. Just hold it in front of your and it will work.

The key here is that Sixth Sense recognizes the objects around you, displaying information automatically and letting you access it in any way you want, in the simplest way possible.

Clearly, this has the potential of becoming the ultimate "transparent" user interface for accessing information about everything around us. If they can get rid of the colored finger caps and it ever goes beyond the initial development phase, that is. But as it is now, it may change the way we interact with the real world and truly give everyone complete awareness of the environment around us.