Add "My Computer" To Your Vista Taskbar

If you like to have the quickest access possible to folders on your desktop, which usually means putting something onto the taskbar if possible. You can add the Computer menu as a folder on the taskbar for the easiest access to your drives. You could also use this tip for any folder you want.

To add a folder to the taskbar, just right-click on the taskbar and choose the Toolbars menu, and then click on New Toolbar.

Just find the folder that you want… in this instance we'll select the Computer icon and then click on Select Folder.

Now you can see the Computer folder right there on the taskbar. If you click the little arrows it will pop up and let you browse through all your drives.

Make Your Safari Web Browsing Private

With all of the problems of identity theft, advertisers tracking your every move through cookies and problems with privacy these days, finding a way to keep your web browsing more private has become important for everybody.

The new Safari beta has an option called Private Browsing that will keep all pages from being added to the history, items from saving in the downloads window and the auto fill for searches.

Turning this mode on is simple, just open Safari and click on Edit and select Private Browsing.

You will get a confirmation screen with a general overview of the Private Browsing feature. Click OK.

Delete Files Older Than x Days on Linux

The find utility on Linux allows you to pass in a bunch of interesting arguments, including one to execute another command on each file. We'll use this in order to figure out what files are older than a certain number of days, and then use the rm command to delete them.

Command and Syntax

find /path/to/files* -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;

Note that there are spaces between rm, {}, and \;

Explanation:

The first argument is the path to the files. This can be a path, a directory, or a wildcard as in the example above. I would recommend using the full path, and make sure that you run the command without the exec rm to make sure you are getting the right results.

The second argument, -mtime, is used to specify the number of days old that the file is. If you enter +5, it will find files older than 5 days.

The third argument, -exec, allows you to pass in a command such as rm. The {} \; at the end is required to end the command.

This should work on Ubuntu, Suse, Redhat, or pretty much any version of linux.

Fix for Firefox memory leak on Windows

This seems to help out with the memory usage quite a bit. Generally, when you minimize a window the memory usage goes way down because that application isn't active. Unfortunately, Firefox by default doesn't adhere to this behavior. Here's how to force it to.

Type the following into your address bar in Firefox:

about:config

You will want to right click anywhere in the window, choose New, Boolean, and enter in the following text:

config.trim_on_minimize

To change the value you can either doubleclick, or right-click and choose Toggle. You will have to restart Firefox, but after you do, you should notice the memory usage go way down whenever you have Firefox minimized.

Display Hidden Folders in XP

By default, Windows XP keeps important system files and folders hidden to keep people from deleting files they shouldn't.

To show hidden files, open My Computer then Tools and click on Folder Options.

Click on the View tab, and then click the radio button for "Show hidden files and folders"

Now when you go back into explorer you will see additional folders you were not able to see previously.