In XBMC one of the things that is probably the most important is to get the software hooked up to your personal media. This includes media from all of your various collections like videos, pictures, and music.

We've already shown you how to change the background images used by the various menu entries on the home screen, but the Weather menu can be tweaked even more if you're using the Aeon MQ 3 theme. There is a nifty feature buried in the skin settings that lets you use dynamic weather backgrounds that change based on the current time of day and local weather conditions.

Yesterday we covered how to install new skins in XBMC, and today we are going to show you how you can customize the backgrounds skins use for each of the entries on the main home screen menu. When I hover over the movies menu, for example, mine will rotate through over a dozen photos that I downloaded of my favorite movies.

When you first get rolling with XBMC out-of-the-box, you may not be overly enthusiastic about the appearance. By default XBMC 11 ships with the Confluence skin that, while it looks clean, can easily be replaced by one of the other user-made skins. The most impressive one that I found is the Aeon MQ 3 skin which sports a very modern look that is sure to impress anyone that sets eyes on it.

One of the problems you may encounter when setting up your XBMC on your TV is that it doesn't fill the entire screen or portions of the picture are flowing off the screen. If that ends up being the case, there is an easy way to correct the problem either using the software for your video card or settings in XBMC.

If you are using multiple instances of XBMC throughout your house one thing you'll definitely want to consider is setting up a shared MySQL database that can be used to retain data about the media you have. A good example of this is saving the status of where you left off in a video.

If you're trying to treat your XBMC install like a settop box there is no doubt that you'll want to get a remote control working with it. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases it's not as simple as just plugging in a USB IR receiver and using a remote that was made for the computer.

Yesterday we covered the hardware I chose for building my HTPC, which I'm using solely for watching and streaming video content from sources that are online as well as on my local network. After I got the hardware all put together I started to dive into the software, and I made some notes that may help anyone else who is trying to optimize the performance of their XBMC computer.

I have been a long and faithful Windows Media Center user for years. The big reason I always chose to go with Windows Media Center was that it provided a better experience than cable boxes for recording and watching television shows. I've always loved how easy Windows Media Center is to set up on one central PC, and then extend it to any room using an Xbox 360.

If you're seeing choppy video playback on your computer it could be because you are watching a video whose quality is too high for the hardware you're using to view it. Because of how videos are normally encoded they use a variable bitrate as opposed to a constant bitrate.

Windows; Mac; Linux We've covered an abundance of file/folder syncing apps over the years, and they all have their own strengths. Synkron is an open source synchronization utility that can really boast the fact that it is cross-platform. The screenshots may lead you to believe it is a basic backup utility, but deep down it is rather full-featured.

Windows; Mac There are some good Twitter clients out there for desktop operating systems, such as MetroTwit on Windows, but there is always room for more. If you haven't found one that you've liked you may want to take a look at Janetter. This free app is packed with features including real-time timeline updates. As your friends post their tweets they will instantly appear in the application.

Windows only I know some people who like how basic the Print Screen functionality is when it comes to taking screenshots, but they also wish that it was a little bit easier to save a screenshot to a file. Generally the process involves pasting the screenshot into Paint, and saving it from there. That's quite a few extra steps it takes.

Windows; Mac; Linux Trying to read or modify large XML files can be a rather tedious job, but with the right tools it can obviously be a lot easier. The cross-platform Java-based XPontus XML Editor is free, and has the right features that make parsing an extensive XML file a breeze.

Windows only If you are working on a bunch of different projects it might be nice to know how much time you are spending on them… especially if it's for work. The free Windows app called WatchMe tries to tackle that issue by providing a countless number of alarms that can keep track of your time.

Windows; Mac A couple of months ago I wrote about a VPN service that provides you with 300MB of free bandwidth every month, and with it you could choose between using a U.S. or U.K. server to tunnel your traffic through.

One of the capabilities I love in Google Chrome is that it can sync most of my data across all of my browsers. It does a really good job of making sure my extensions, preferences, themes, bookmarks, passwords, and more are always available to me no matter which computer I'm on. The concern you might obviously have with doing something like that is how secure is your information?

Windows only I don't know very many people anymore that use screensavers on their computers, but displaying a nice photo collage might be worthwhile if you still enjoy having something flashy on the screen when your computer is sitting idle. I came across a pretty nice one that was started a few months ago, and I'd say offers the right amount of options without being overkill.

Windows only There are some keys on the keyboard, such as the caps lock and scroll lock keys, that can be annoying if they accidentally get turned on without you realizing it.

Windows only We've covered a bunch of different applications that can be used to bulk rename files and folders, and normally they all have their own strong points. Bram is another one of those utilities, and like the others it has some features that set it apart from similar apps.