It only took two days for somebody to come through on my offer of a bounty. Reader Shawn wrote in with a link to Vista Thumbnail Sizer, a utility written by Andreas Verhoeven, that performs exactly the features I was looking for.

Vista Thumbnail Sizer will let you increase the size of your taskbar preview windows to any size that you’d like. You can even add a fade-in animation.

Here’s the default Vista preview size:

And here’s what it looks like if you crank them up really big. You can make them even bigger if you want. The great thing about this is that Thumbnail Resizer uses the compositing engine built into Vista, so if you are playing a video, the video plays in the thumbnail just like the default ones do.

Installation

All you have to do is download, unzip, and launch the application, set the size that you’d like, and the effect takes place immediately.

Note: Because this utility mucks with internal stuff in explorer.exe, use this at your own risk.

There are some requirements for this software to work:

• Software must be started for it to work. (more below)
• Must be run with the same privileges as explorer.exe. (Meaning you can’t run it as administrator)
• DWM (Aero) must be running. The taskbar previews only work with Aero enabled, and so they won’t work in Vista Basic at all.

If you want this effect to happen every time you restart your computer, you’ll have to copy the utility into a permanent folder somewhere, and then create a shortcut to avethumnailresizer.exe in your startup menu with the -hide switch. To quickly get to the startup folder, open up explorer and paste the following into the address bar.

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Create your shortcut however you’d like (right-click and drag works best for me). Once you’ve got your shortcut created, open up the properties page and then add the -hide to the end of the Target line, as shown here:

Now when your system restarts, you should always have the previews. If you want to change the size, just launch the utility again and change them.

There are a couple of command line parameters accepted by the Resizer as well:

-kill	Kills the application
-show	Brings up the dialog window (default)
-nohook	Starts the dialog but doesn’t add the effects
-hide	Start up but don’t display the dialog

Download Vista Thumbnail Resizer from How-To Geek (local copy since the source is now dead)

Download Vista Thumbnail Resizer Source Code from How-To Geek

I’m quite pleased with the results of this experiment… the community responded immediately. I got at least 20 emails within a day of posting the bounty. I may put up more bounties in the future.

This is a guest post by Joel Thomas (Mr.Byte) from www.lytebyte.com, where he writes How-to tips about Windows, Office and Internet Applications.

Most of us like me love to keep the icons and some files in the desktop for quick access but ironically I love a clean desktop too. But there is a simple tweak without any additional tool to get the best of both worlds, you can hide the desktop icons & files and create a custom keyboard shortcut to access those icons and files.

Step 1: Hide the desktop icons and files.

Right click on the Desktop, go to View and uncheck the option Show Desktop Icons. Now you will have a clean desktop.

Step 2: Create a Desktop shortcut to open Desktop Folder.

All the items in the desktop are stored in the folder under your user name.  Click on Start button –> (your username) –> Desktop folder.

Right click on the Desktop folder and click Send to -> Desktop (Create Shortcut). This will create a desktop shortcut to open desktop folder.

Step 3: Assign a Custom keyboard Shortcut to open Hidden Desktop Icons and Files.

Now open the desktop folder like mentioned in step 2.

Right click the keyboard shortcut for desktop you have created just now and click Properties.

Open Shortcuts tab and click on Shortcut Key box. Now click ALT + CTRL + any letter key to create a custom shortcut and click OK. I usually use ALT + CTRL + D to open desktop folder and Win + D to show desktop.

Now you can open all the hidden icons and files in the desktop in a folder to have a quick access at the stroke of a custom keyboard shortcut.

Been hearing about the freshly redesigned (and customizable) new-tab interface in Google Chrome? Now you too can start enjoying all that redesigned new-tab goodness with a simple tweak.

Note: You will need to be using the newest Dev Channel release of Chrome (version 3.0.191.3) to activate this. To get your installation of Google Chrome set up on the Dev Channel, check out our article here.

Before

A quick look at the old new-tab interface…looks ok, but time to have fun with the new design!

Get Chrome Set Up for the Redesigned New-Tab Interface

You will need to do a little bit of prep work to get Chrome ready to display the redesigned new-tab interface. Locate the shortcut(s) for Chrome and right click on them. Select “Properties”.

Once you have clicked through, you will see the “Properties” window with the “Shortcut” tab displayed.

In the address area for “Target:” you will need to add the following command to the end of the target path making certain to leave a single space in between the final quote mark and the redesigned new-tab interface command.

Here is an example of what the the target path should look like…

Or as an example, here is what your target path could look like if you have enabled extensions, user scripts, and the redesigned new-tab interface.

Once you have that finished, click “Apply”, then “OK”.

What the Redesigned New-Tab Interface Looks Like

When you start Chrome and open a new tab, this is the default layout that will display for you. If this style does not suit your needs or is not aesthetically pleasing to you, it is very simple to customize the layout (wonderful!).

To make changes to the layout, go to the upper right corner of the tab window. You will see three buttons there. The first is to display thumbnails of webpages, the second is to display those webpages as a list, and the third allows you to hide or display thumbnails, the webpage list, recent activities and recommendations.

The New-Tab Interface with a list of webpages instead of thumbnails…

 

Hide the webpage thumbnails and list…

Want the ultimate in blank? Hide everything!

Additional Thumbnail Options

As you can see in the screenshot, you can now pin webpage thumbnails to the tab page permanently or delete them by clicking on the “X”. You can also drag-and-drop the thumbnails to suit your preferences.

Have fun with the redesigned New-Tab Interface!

If you like it plz comment.......

The brain is known to perceive information before it reaches a person’s awareness. Until recently, there was little way to determine what specific mental tasks were taking place prior to the point of conscious awareness.

Now scientists at Rutgers University, Newark and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), have found a way to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and can peer into the brain to uncover accurately how information is processed before reaching awareness.

"It’s the same principle experienced during a car accident. The car accident actually happens tens of a milliseconds before you are aware you have actually been hit," explained Stephen Jose Hanson, psychology professor at Rutgers, who led the study.

"By looking at the back of the brain, we can ’read out’, for example, that a person is looking at dogs and cats before they actually know they are looking at a dog or a cat," he added.

The research also suggests that a more comprehensive approach is needed for mapping brain activity and that the widely held belief that localized areas of the brain are responsible for specific mental functions is misleading and incorrect.

In the recent past, much of neuroimaging has focussed on pinpointing areas of the brain that are uniquely responsible for specific mental functions, such as learning, memory, fear and love.

But this latest research shows that the brain is more complex than that simple model. In their analysis of global brain activity, the researchers found that different processing tasks have their own distinct pattern of neural connections stretching across the brain, similar to the fingerprints that distinctively identify each of us.

Rather than being a static pattern, however, the brain is able to arrange and rearrange the connections based on the mental task being undertaken.

"You can’t just pinpoint a specific area of the brain, for example, and say that is the area responsible for our concept of self or that part is the source of our morality," said Hanson.

The findings, based on a study of 130 volunteers, could also pave the way for earlier diagnosis and better treatment of mental disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, by offering a means for identifying very subtle abnormalities in brain activity and synchrony.

In tech publications, forums and even here at CPATechAdvisor.com, the world seems to have gone crazy over the idea of “cloud computing.” But before we go marching lock-step down this particular road, accounting professionals need to take a hard look at the benefits (and the problems) of cloud computing.

The concept of “cloud computing” isn’t as foreign as it might seem at first. Basically, there are three types of services: infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service. In all three cases, the concept of the cloud is that we take the service off of the desktop and put it in another location — or distribute it over many locations — for access by the Internet or other network.

Thus, you can have hard drives and printers that are in the cloud as your infrastructure. Your operating system may be accessible through a web browser. Major forms of accounting software are already operated as online services.

Sound familiar? It should be. It is basically the resurrection of that old, nasty mode of computing called client/mainframe. That is, we’ve put a modern, Internet-style spin on client/mainframe computing, much in the manner of putting lipstick on a pig.

Client/mainframe computing has been dead for a couple of decades now, except in the most insular of environments such as mega-corporations and educational institutions. For those who may not remember it, client/mainframe was a style of centralized computing that effectively gave the organization better control over its data, better security, more streamlined workflow and substantially lower costs.

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, said instead of thinking of the service as a social tool to connect with friends, he wants Twitter to be seen as a communications and information network for discovering and sharing what is happening right now.

This was part of a discussion at Fortune Brainstorm Tech about the company, perhaps the most talked-about new tech startup over the past year. Stone talked about how the "level of awareness is greater than the level of engagement," for the service, starting with things like Twitter search. The service is growing very quickly - 77 percent of the conference attendees said they were using it - but the company only has 55 employees.

Repeatedly pushed on how the company will make money, Stone said that when you become a tool that is relevant, important, and timely, there's lots of ways to make money. But "we need to focus on value before we optimize for profit, "he said. The plan is to start raising revenue this year..

One step towards doing this is the launching today or tomorrow of "Twitter 101" with use cases, best practices, etc. for small businesses. On the other end of the spectrum, Best Buy is launching a Twitter help service. Stone said there might be room for commercial accounts, with extra features that would make Twitter more valuable to businesses.

He didn't discuss any specifics about the stolen documents that recently appeared on TechCrunch other than to say they weren't specific financial plans, just an indication that the company was thinking big.

Why did Twitter grow so much this year? Stone said it took a couple years to become an "overnight success." All sorts of individual events added up, he said, starting at South By Southwest in 2007 and continuing through the service being used to pass on information very quickly, to the publicity the service caught from celebrities . All of this had a cumulative effect.

He also agreed it was a lot of the value comes from the whole ecosystem, and how the APIs have allowed for lots of products that build on Twitter, such as TweetDeck.

In general, he said Twitter would always remain free, and he thought the open exchange of information would be both valuable and important. Making money wouldn't detract from the protesters in Tehran, he said; indeed, the company needs to makes lots of money to be a "force for good" in the world.

Originally posted to Michael Miller's blog, Forward Thinking.

Andrew Maynard is a scientist and emerging technology adviser. He blogs at 2020 Science and tweets as @2020science.

Some of the most entertaining, informative and mind-blowing science videos on the web come from TED – the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference. Challenged to give the “talk of their lives,” the world’s top scientists and science communicators have been dazzling audiences – many of whom are thought leaders, trend-setters and entertainers – for years now. Most of the best talks are now freely available on the internet, but sifting through hundreds of video clips to find the real gems can be hard going.

To make things easier, here are five of my favorite TED Talks on science. The selection rules were simple:

- Was I engaged within the first few seconds?
- Was I entertained, inspired and challenged?
- Would my kids understand the talk? and
- Together, do they tell a story?

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1. Crochet coral and complex math

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What on earth do coral, complex mathematics and the craft of crochet have in common? Plenty, according to science writer Margaret Wertheim, who shows how crocheting a “coral reef” can help make sense of some really tricky math, while drawing attention to distressed coral reefs around the world. Stunningly inventive.

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2. Beyond Evolution – Engineering Biology

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Four billion years of evolution have led to organisms that can reproduce, survive the harshest environments, and convert simple chemicals into complex ones. Tapping into this “natural technology” is an engineer’s dream – but is it possible? Genomics pioneer and science maverick Craig Venter says it is. Venter envisions a future where we program biology the way we program computers now.

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3. Life On Mars?

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Is there life on other planets? If there is, how would we find it? Controversial, eloquent, thoroughly engaging, Penelope Boston talks about the possibility of finding life on Mars and elsewhere in the Solar System.

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4. Recreating the Universe’s Beginnings

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Why are scientists so excited about smashing subatomic particles together at near-light velocities? Physicist and ex rock-star Brian Cox explains why the Large Hadron Collider in Europe – part of the largest physics experiment in history – is far more than an extra in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. Okay so I’m a fellow physicist, but I still found Brian’s talk stunning.

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5. Is this our last century?

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Finally, the big picture. Sir Martin Reese – Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society and author of the book Our Final Hour – presents an expansive perspective on humanity’s place in the universe, and asks what our future might hold.

These five TED talks on science tell a story about the complexity of the universe and our place in it. And they do it with panache – no boring science lectures here! What’s more, there’s plenty more where they came from. If you have other favorite TED science talks, please feel free to share them in the comments.