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Being a writer, distractions have always been problematic, their intrusion on the process of writing an annoyance that can often render a presumably easy writing task into one that occupies more time than you’d like.

CreaWriter is a very helpful tool that frees you of the many distractions that exist when using a word processor. Whether it’s that flashing icon in your task bar or the minimized Firefox tab that’s calling your attention, the modern experience of writing has become an endeavor hindered by our immediate access to other forms of information.

This tool wipes away all of those distractions, leaving a clean slate (literally!) on which to ply your writing.  As seen above, nothing else exists no your screen but the page to which you’re putting your words. You can further customize it, including the ability to add both background images and ambient sounds – both of which can be disabled, if you prefer just a white space.

In the digital age, distractions are inevitable, no matter how determined we are to avoid them. However, programs such as CreaWriter mitigate the frustration that results from them, making it a little easier to finish what you’re trying to compose.

This is a free program that’s available for Windows only, and you can grab it here.

Last week, I told you about a neat tool that adds certain features to your right-click Windows context menu. Well, here’s another helper of sorts, with an even more impressive array of features that render the right-click context menu an immediately available – and quite powerful – tool you can use to manage files and folders on your computer.

Lammer Context Menu updates your right-click context menu with several useful additions that many of you might find handy.

With this tool, you can:

• Mount a virtual drive
• Copy paths
• Select specific file types within a folder
• Search within a folder
• Register DLL files
• Open a command prompt

As you can see, some of the features are a good deal more powerful than your basic commands. Additionally, it offers even more advanced options, allowing you to access the path operations screen where you can manage files based on wildcards.

This is a free utility available for use on Windows (working with both 32bit and 64bit versions).

You can grab it here.

If you’re a user of Twitter, that social networking phenomenon that depends upon succinct bursts of information from its community of members, you might be at risk of having your password compromised.

Twitter has begun issuing alerts to certain users, notifying them of the need to change their password. It reads as follows:

“Due to concern that your account may have been compromised in a phishing attack that took place off-Twitter, your password was reset.”

This is in response to phishing attempts that have resulted in users unwittingly surrendering their login information to hackers.

Phishing refers to a process where unscrupulous sorts set up a bogus login screen that dupes unsuspecting users into giving their user name and password away. The phishers then use that compromised account to send messages to other users, using the same scheme.

Aiming to thwart a recent series of phishing scams, Twitter has been informing users that they should change their password if they happen to be following an account by the name of @THCx. It’s suspected that this account may have been created for the purpose of phishing for passwords.

Geek Choice advises you to be very mindful of who you share information with. When logging into ANY account, always make sure to look at the url located in the address bar. Should there be anything that looks peculiar, it’s possible that it’s not the actual site you wish to log into.

Stay vigilant and protect yourself.

Want to maintain strict control over what’s running on your computer, keeping an eye on the use of your resources and restricting the operations of any process all the way to the farthest depths of your system?

WinPatrol Plus is a popular and extremely powerful tool that allows Windows users to monitor every aspect of their system, taking the core features of your Task Manager and amplifying them considerably. From controlling what launches at your startup to alerting you of any sudden change in your system, this is for the you users who always exercise vigilance when operating your system.

Normally retailing for $40, the developers of WinPatrol Plus have announced a special promotional offer, making it available for just 99 cents!

Good for ONLY today, this is an offer you might find difficult to ignore.

You can read about what this tool does at the developer’s site.

If you’re interested in owning this, visit either their site or purchase it off the Yahoo! Store.

When navigating through your Windows file menus, you often find yourself performing a number of tasks, from altering the timestamp to creating new folders. In the Geek Choice office, one of my jobs entails the management of certain directories, which means the creation of multiple folders and management of the files contained therein are routine tasks.

Aiding in this process is an extremely helpful utility called JDContextMenu, a utility that updates your right-click Windows context menu with a number of helpful additions. This application bundles various features that you’d otherwise have to perform multiple clicks to use, including them all in your right-click context menu.

Some of those features include altering the time and date of a file, creating new folders (where you can, in fact, generate multiple new folders at once), copying the full filename to your clipboard, and running an MD5 checksum to assess the integrity of a file.

These are all tasks that you can perform right now, but JDContextMenu consolidates them in one convenient menu, sparing you those extra clicks executing them would normally require. If you’re someone who spends a considerable amount of time managing the folders on your computer, this might be something to look into.

You can grab JDContextMenu here.

NOTE: This is my 100^th blog, something of a special occasion. For those who’ve followed the Geek Choice blog from its inception, you know that I’ve tried to keep the public as informed as possible, linking you to helpful utilities and updating you on news that’s relevant to your computing experience. As long as I’m here, I will continue to contribute to this blog, keeping you informed and making your life on the PC a little bit easier.  If you ever have feedback to share, never hesitate to drop me a line.

The much delayed but greatly anticipated Firefox 3.6 is finally here, introducing significant improvements in this popular browser’s performance and functionality.  From increased speed to stronger security, improved font management to one click themes, this is a considerable step up from its predecessor.

Over here at the Geek Choice office, we’ve been using the various iterations of the Firefox 3.6 beta, keeping you apprised of their release. Almost immediately, we were impressed by an observable uptick in its performance, with greater speed and decidedly impressive rendering of pages.

These are the following additions to Firefox 3.6:

• Firefox 3.6 will alert you if your plug-ins is out of date, offering you links from which to grab the most recent versions. This is of particular significance when dealing with the likes of Adobe Flash, which has come under fire for its security leaks.
• Full Screen video is available, which sees Firefox play any free streaming videos in a Full Screen format if you so choose.
• Instant Themes are made available by the Personas Gallery. When visiting the gallery, you  can select a theme and see how your browser would look if implemented. If the theme’s to your liking, apply it with just one click.
• What you’ll immediately notice is just how much faster it is. Through more efficient management of memory and better handling of Javascript, the speed of Firefox 3.6 is unmistakable, second only to Chrome.

For a more detailed explanation of just what this update introduces, Mozilla has included release notes that give a nice overview of what’s included.

Firefox 3.6 is free and available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers.

You can download it here.

In this era of social networking, where the internet has become our main channel of communication, sharing pictures has become a routine activity.

Finding hosts for those pictures is as easy as surfing to any number of free sites that offer storage and linking of as many pictures as you would like, where the simple generation of a fresh url allows you to link your image on whichever forum you’d like to broadcast the latest exploits you’ve captured.

Zscreen is an amazingly convenient tool that not only captures screens from your computer, but it also uploads those images to you the most popular image sharing services you on the net – TinyPic, ImageShack, Flickr, TwitPic, and others.  Additionally, those urls can be minimized with url shortening services like TinyURL and bit.ly.

Supporting more than two dozen services, Zscreen captures content and shares it, sparing you the hassle of having to visit a website to upload those images. Once the image link has been generated, you can share it with as many people as you’d like.

This is an excellent tool for those of you with a penchant for sharing pictures. It’s free and easy to use, but available only for Windows users.

If you’d like to make use of Zscreen, you can get it here.

Some of us are particular about the appearance of our desktop, annoyed by the clutter that can result from having too many icons scattered about. If you’re someone who likes to keep their desktop free of icons, while still retaining the ability to launch those apps which would otherwise be available, FLS Launcher is a free tool that affords you that luxury.

Once installed, this application can be launched from either the system tray — where you’d simply click on the corresponding icon — or accessed by moving your mouse cursor to the upper-left corner of the screen. After you’ve opened it, a window will pop-up, offering you a tabbed interface that’s easily navigable and customizable with additional tabs and icons for those applications you wish to include. You have the ability to drag and drop applications as you please,  between the computer and this utility, exiting the launcher once it’s fashioned to your choosing.

FLS Launcher is for the neat freaks amongst us, amongst whom I admit membership. It keeps your desktop free of the clutter and gives you quick access to your favorite apps.

I should note that there are two versions: a donation version, which offers the full set of features for a small contribution, and a freeware model that has 90% — pretty much all you’d need — of the utility’s functionality for free.

This is for Windows only and can be retrieved here.

A few blog posts ago, I touched upon Microsoft Security Essentials’ recent accolades from AV-Comparatives, an anti-malware testing group that compares various anti-malware solutions and ranks them accordingly. As reported, Microsoft Security Essentials is one of just two anti-malware packages — the other being F-Secure Anti-Virus 2010 — that were rated “very fast” in every test category included in the company’s comparisons.

Adding to that initial honor, AV-Comparatives has also given Microsoft Security Essentials the award for the best performance of those programs tested.  Subjecting the competing anti-maleware solutions to a variety of tests derived from real-world scenarios — downloading, extracting, copying, encoding files, application launches, etc. — gave a  clear leader in Microsoft Security Essentials.

What became most noticeable was how little Microsoft Security Essentials demanded of a system’s resources, contributing to AV-Comparative’s decision to rank it as the best-performing anti-malware solution that you can get for free. Brisk performance in every major category, while being light on resources, is reason enough to give this highly recommended anti-malware program a look — particularly when you taking into consideration that it’s free, outpacing those solutions that cost money.

Proving its mettle against the competition, Microsoft Security Essentials is a great tool to protect your computer with.

Read AV-Comparative’s findings here.

If you’re interested in using Microsoft Security Essentials, you can find it here.

At Geek Choice, we pride ourselves on being the #1 solution to your troubleshooting needs, servicing customers the nation over with our signature brand of exemplary customer service and peerless technical expertise. While our job is to assist you, we also love to keep the public informed, offering them tips that they can use when having any questions about their systems.

If your computer begins experiencing problems, resulting in error messages and the occasional system crash, the source could be any number of issues. Without some idea of what’s occurring, you’re left in the dark, with no solution to your issue.

Windows Surface Scanner is a helpful utility that might shed light on where the problems are originating. Completely free, this tool inspects your hard drive, locating any physical errors that exist. We should note that this is not a repair tool, being only a means of diagnosing what might be causing your frustration.

If problems are uncovered and you’re unclear on how to proceed, we’re here to help.

You can download Windows Surface Scanner here.