Mac only Do you hate the drop shadow that appears around all the windows and menus on your Mac? If you search around there are hidden settings on the Mac that you can modify to have the shadows disabled while taking a screenshot, but being able to disable them 100% of the time was a little tougher for me to find.

A few weeks ago we wrote about a free audio converter that was pretty nice, but when installing the app it tries to also put a bunch of third-party software on your machine. I made sure to point this out, but our readers stepped up and mentioned several other apps that are both free and clean. One of them, called winLAME, was recommended by Ian and really caught my attention.

There are some things I never understood with Microsoft. For example, why was it never possible until Windows 7 to have a keyboard shortcut for creating a new folder? Or for that matter why was there not even a toolbar icon you could add to perform that action? At least in Windows 7 they finally assigned Ctrl+Shift+N for creating a new folder, but that's not the only thing that's perplexed me.

At work I use Outlook to manage my email and calendar, but I was looking for a way to sync my calendar with Google. It wasn't that long ago that Google decided to release an Outlook syncing tool so that you're able to do exactly what I wanted. Well, almost what I wanted.

So many people have unlimited SMS text messaging plans on their phones these days that a lot of services, such as Twitter, are using them as a way to notify users of updates. By doing this users get a simulated push notification experience without needing to have a push-compatible device.

One of the things that I really like being able to do on my MacBook Pro is monitor the temperature of various parts of my laptop, and also control the speed of the fans. Using the iStat Pro widget (review) I'm able to read the temperature of my hard drive, CPU, GPU, heatsinks, wireless card, and more. If you want you can take it a step further and even control the speed of your fans.

Have you ever been working on a project where you wish you had a copy from a few hours or days ago before you made some changes? Most people never think about being able to setup a system that manages revisions of files (a.k.a. version control) because they think it's too complicated, but it takes only minutes to do using the free Cobian Backup software.

VLC is one of the most well-known media players out there, and it's been almost 4 years since they've released a major new version. VLC 0.9.0 is on the horizon, and it packs in 2 years of development... so you can expect some great things. There's just one gotcha: Windows 98/ME and Mac OS X 10.3.9 are no longer supported operating systems.

On your computer there are probably just a handful of folders that you access everyday, and wouldn't it be nice to make them even easier to access? One way to do that is to assign your most used folders to drive letters on your Windows machine, which puts them just a click away from your mouse.

For me using a computer without keyboard shortcuts would be like trying to cut the grass with a pair of scissors. Sure it could be done, but it would take a lot longer to accomplish a task that should take no time at all.

Notepad++ is definitely one of the best text editors for Windows, and pretty soon it will be getting even better. The new Notepad++ 5.0 is currently in Beta, and it includes a feature I've been waiting a long time for: auto-completion! As you can see in the screenshot above I was writing a bit of HTML, and as I started to close the "center" tag it offered to auto-complete it for me.

One of the Firefox extensions that I've absolutely fallen in love with is Update Scanner. It is capable of scouring any website for changes, and can display a notification within the browser when it finds that the content is different. That's handy for websites that don't have RSS feeds, or maybe you're waiting for an online store to get something in stock.

Windows only Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way for you to dominate those "shoot the monkey" ads that popup all over the place? Just imagine all of the fame and glory you would receive from your friends! You just need one tool to get the job done... a mouse auto-clicker.

Windows only When it comes to photo editors there is definitely no shortage of them available. It's almost a guarantee that a Windows user can find a freeware application that will do all the things they want, and more. Some prime examples are Paint.NET, PhotoFilter, and the feature-rich Photoscape. Today we've got another one that we would like to add to our favorites: Photo! Editor.

Windows only One of the things that I thought was pretty cool with my Mac was that it lets you rotate your desktop backgrounds at set intervals using images on your computer. That got me wondering what kind of solutions are available for Windows users that do something similar, and what I happened to stumble upon is a real gem.

Google Docs just added what I consider to be a feature that is needed to help bridge the gap between desktop and online word processing. They added a page view (as expected) that is typical of any desktop word processor, and it's almost like getting a live print preview while you work. To access the new setting go to the View menu, and select the fixed-width page view option.

Mac only When on a Windows computer one of the things I always did was make the Taskbar twice the normal height. The reason I did that was because it would then show the date in addition to the time, which is something I use quite regularly. Sure I could have hovered my mouse over the time to see the same information, but that often took more time than was necessary.

Windows only Today we've got an amazing freeware application for Windows that actually serves two different purposes. Give a hardy welcome to LocatePC. First and foremost it will keep you informed of your computer's whereabouts by sending you an email either on a daily basis or anytime the IP address of the machine changes.

Windows only It seems as though Apple's Expose feature has really struck a chord with Windows users. There have been Expose clones for what seems like forever, but it wasn't until Switcher that I became really impressed with what a feature like Expose could offer to a Windows user. Unfortunately to use Switcher you have to be running Vista with Aero enabled.

Yahoo, just like Google, has decided that they need to start taking steps to protect users from malicious search results that they might be serving up. They're calling the new feature SearchScan, and it is powered by McAfee's SiteAdvisor.