The problem is that a password must be easy for you to remember, but hard for someone else to guess or crack. Is Roboform the answer?

Managing Passwords is a Pain

There are programs dedicated to trying to guess your password. Avoiding words in the dictionary, common names, and sequential numbers or numbers tacked onto the end of those words will do a lot to make your password more secure. It also makes your password harder to remember.

Once you have a hard to guess, but easy to remember password, you’re not done. You should use a different password on each site. Why? If you use the same password on multiple web sites, then if someone gets your password from any of those sites, they can log in as you anywhere you’ve used that password.

You may not care if someone gets your password to a simple web app you tried one time two years ago, but if you use that same password at your bank, for PayPal, or for Facebook it might be a disaster. It’s not just small web sites thrown together quickly that have their password stolen, but large companies like Valve and Sony.

The solution? A password manager will remember and store the login information for all your websites. It allows you to quickly create random passwords for each site and then recall those credentials when you next need to log in. You use a single strong password to protect all of these passwords. Here we’ll look at the popular password manager RoboForm.

Access Anywhere

RoboForm offers two versions of their password manager. RoboForm Desktop works best for the user who only needs to access their passwords on that one computer or doesn’t trust storing their data in the cloud. RoboForm Everywhere allows you to access your passwords on multiple computers along with your phone, tablet, and other devices.

RoboForm Everywhere automatically syncs your password data between your devices so a new login created on your laptop will be available on your desktop or phone later. It also creates a backup of all your data. The data is stored online with AES 256 encryption derived from the master password you select and all transfer is protected using SSL encryption.

Installing

Installing and choosing a browser

You first download the application from the RoboForm web site. RoboForm can integrate with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera by default. You can also choose to also save data for forms in Windows Applications. You will next need to choose if you want to use the software as RoboForm Everywhere or RoboForm Desktop.

As part of the installation you will be asked to choose a master password. This should be a hard to guess or hack password and will protect all the other passwords stored in RoboForm. Take time to make this a very good password, but also ensure you can remember it. Your data is secured using this password and if you forget it, you cannot recover or recover your password data.

For the RoboForm Everywhere install, you will also need to enter a RoboForm Everywhere password. This will protect your cloud stored password data and allows you to sync the passwords between multiple devices. You must remember the master password, but can store the RoboForm Everywhere password in RoboForm itself.

Once the install completes, you will see a new toolbar in your browser. You can control and access all the features of RoboForm from this toolbar.

Easy Logins

RoboForm Prompting to Remember Password

A suggested name based on the domain of the site will be provided though you can change this name now or later. If you click the Save button, the information that you entered on the form will be stored in RoboForm and protected using your master password.

RoboForm Remembering Password

Whenever you create an account for a new web site, RoboForm can create a random password for you. The randomness makes these new passwords hard to guess. In addition having a unique random password for each site you access means that if one password is hacked, the hackers cannot access your other web accounts.

Normally a random password would be hard to guess, but RoboForm will remember it for you as you only need to remember our master password.

RoboForm Generate Password

For more general password selection you can select if the created password contains uppercase letters, lowercase letters, digits, and special characters such as punctuation. The more types of characters included in your password, the more secure it will be, but many sites have restrictions on what characters allowed in the password. Finally if digits are includes, you can select the minimum number of digits included in the password.

The strength of the created password will be shown at the bottom. You will generally want to create the strongest password that the site’s rules allow.

Filling Out Forms

RoboForm Identity Editor

Pricing

A single license to use RoboForm Desktop on one computer costs $29.95. A one year subscription to RoboForm Everywhere costs $19.95, but the first year is available for only $9.95.

The Everywhere subscription lets you install the program on as many devices as you own, where you must buy a separate desktop license for each device you want to use it on.

Conclusion

Hacking has become big business and they want your accounts. Using unique and hard to guess passwords will go a long way to protect your identity and data.

For most users with multiple computers and other devices like phones or tablets RoboForm Everywhere will provide the best option. While some may be concerned about having their data in the cloud, the data will be encrypted and using a strong master password will keep it safe.

However you use it, RoboForm will give you a safe and secure way to protect your logins and help ensure only you access your accounts.

AutoHotkey is a free, open-source application that allows you to create and run scripts to automate your workflow. Let’s see how easy it is to program with AutoHotkey and automate your workflow.

Getting Started

Download the installer (regular version or portable) and walk through the installation wizard. Once you have launched AutoHotkey for the first time, you’ll be asked if you want to launch a sample script.

If you haven’t used AutoHotkey before, it’s a good idea to start with the basics.

Sample Script for AutoHotkey

The Basics

An AutoHotkey script is a text file with executable commands. The script will contain hotkeys and hotstrings, and sometimes other commands. 

A hotkey is also known as a shortcut because it triggers a command (for example, Win+N launches Notepad). A hotstring is a hotkey that is more than one charcter (like expanding fyi to for your information).

Create a Basic Script

One of the most common uses for AutoHotkey is to launch applications, documents, or websites.

For example, let’s create a hotkey to launch Notepad by pressing the Windows button plus the letter N. Open your favorite text editor and create a new file. Add the following line to your file #n::Run Notepad and save it with the extension .ahk. Then run your script by double-clicking it, and your new hotkey should launch Notepad. This is what your script file looks like.

Notepad.ahk Script to Run Notepad by Shortcut Win+N

This example is a single-line hotkey because it is only one command: launch Notepad when I press Win+N.

Multiple Line Scripts

If you want to execute more than one command, you set it up a little differently. Put the first line beneath the definition and the line last should be a return.

An example would be if you want to launch Google in your default web browser and launch Notepad, all with one hotkey.

#n::
Run http://www.google.com
Run Notepad.exe
return

Launch Google and Run Notepad with Win+N

If you want to launch a program that isn’t built into the system, like Notepad++ instead of Notepad, specify its full path. This is how you would launch Notepad++ when you hit the shortcut Win+N.

Script to Run Notepad++ on Win+N

Sending Keystrokes

AutoHotkey gives you the ability to send keystrokes to applications. Let’s say you have to type a company greeting regularly and you want to make a script for it. When you type Control+Alt+G in a text area, your greeting will appear.

Script for Control+Alt+G to Send a Phrase

With the above script, AHK will send “Thank you for contacting AppStorm. My name is Sydney. What can I help you with today?” to the active window, such as an email, Word document, or form field.

If you change windows while AutoHotkey is sending the keystrokes, they will move to the new active window. Also, make sure you are in the text area you want before typing the shortcut.

Sending Mouse Clicks

In order to send mouse clicks with AutoHotkey, you need to use Windows Spy or AutoScriptWriter to find the exact coordinates. Let’s start with a script to play Pandora when it is paused.

Launch Windows Spy and make Pandora your active window (Windows Spy will stay on top). When the cursor is hovering on the play button, Windows Spy says the mouse position is 144, 347 in the active window, so these are the numbers I will use for my script.

Getting Coordinates for Pandora Play Button in Windows Spy

The script I am using says to look for an active window titled Pandora, and if that window is found, click the coordinates given.

IfWinExist, Pandora
{
   WinActivate 
   Click 144, 347
}

We can add additional commands to this script, such as launching Pandora if it’s not already open, and doing all of this when you press a hotkey. So, let’s say you want to play music on Pandora when you press Control+Alt+M. If Pandora is already open, it will send a mouse click to play. If Pandora is not open, it will launch the application.

Script to Launch or Play Pandora on Control+Alt+M

Other Possibilities

You can have multiple commands in one script file. For instance, I have a script I always run that has commands for different hotkeys to launch applications, and also to map certain keyboard shortcuts like plain text pasting. This way you only have to run one script all the time to access these commands.

Another cool feature to help automate your workflow is to manipulate files and folders. You can add and remove text, overwrite files, and do so many things. AutoHotkey also lets you repeat a series of actions many times by using a loop.

You can also use variables, perform math operations and manipulate your clipboard data. A very useful script is to paste your clipboard in plain text when typing a hotkey. To paste plain text when typing Control+Alt+V, use the following script.

Paste Clipboard Contents in Plain Text on Control+Alt+V

AutoHotkey gives you the option to convert scripts into .exe files so they can be run on a computer that doesn’t have AutoHotkey installed, allowing you to create your own apps.

You can also remap keys and shortcuts to customize your keyboard for more efficiency during your everyday routine. AutoHotkey allows you to manipulate your machine in almost any way you want, opening your workflow up to unlimited possibilities.

Learning Curve

Programming with AutoHotkey is fairly easy, especially if you have some programming experience. The language is very simple to learn and understand, and running and using existing scripts can be done by anyone.

AutoHotkey’s documentation is incredible – you can easily read through and understand how to create your own scripts.

Community & Development

According to the website and Github, AutoHotkey hasn’t released a new version or changes since 2009. However, the forums are actively maintained so you can get help from other users easily and quickly. You can also find scripts that others have written to enhance your productivity.

AutoHotkey is a wonderful tool that gives you the opportunities to automate tasks so you can improve your workflow. For more documentation and scripts, visit AutoHotkey.com.

By participating in this giveaway, you’ll get a chance at winning a copy of an award winning game hand picked by the editorial staff. Join me after the jump to find out more!

Update: We’re keeping this contest open for one more week considering the enthusiastic response from our readers. All the best, dear readers!

Compared to the initial award winning PC release, the Enhanced Edition features lots of new and exciting content including additional hours of gameplay: New major adventures set in previously unseen locations, expanding the story and introducing new characters, mysteries and monsters.

How to Enter

All you have to do is follow @windowsappstorm on Twitter and click the link below to send out the resulting tweet (or just copy and paste), then leave a comment below with a link to your tweet.

In this roundup, I’m going to be looking at the best apps available to make your listening smoother and more exciting.

Spotify

Spotify, in my opinion is the most capable on-the-go app for music. However, for all the added features there is a charge of £10.00 a month for the Premium. This gives you the ability to play your playlists offline and have unlimited access of the database which contains millions of tracks.

Now that Spotify is closely linked with Facebook you have the ability to explore and play your friends playlists. If you don’t want to pay the subscription fee, you can try the 48 hour free trial or just use it as a free app, without some of the extra features.

Price: Free
Requires: Windows Phone 7.5 or higher
Developer: Spotify Ltd.

Rhapsody

Rhapsody is an online music subscription service. Similarly to Spotify it has access to millions of songs, playlists and new releases. Rhapsody has a radio feature which is also available on Spotify, being able to create set playlists of specific genres or artists.

This app allows you to listen to music anywhere you are, whether at home or out and about, Rhapsody’s features will always be at your disposal. This app now can stream music even when the app is closed, making it easier to suit your needs. Overall, in my opinion if you are paying for a subscription service, Spotify is the victor as Rhapsody lacks the ability of offline mode.

Price: Free
Requires: Windows Phone 7.5 or higher
Developer: Rhapsody International Inc

I hope this roundup of my favorite music applications for Windows Phones helps you to find a greater and wider variety of music for your own personal pleasure. Hopefully, these applications will help you to enrich your music life, even if it’s non-existent at the moment.

Please comment with your views on these apps. If there are any worthy applications I’ve missed, please let us know in the comments below.

Plex is a free, partially open-source, cross-platform app that allows you to manage and play videos, music, photos and more from a local or remote computer.

Getting Started

You can use any computer for your media center, but make sure it’s powerful enough to run Plex the way you want to. I am using a three year-old Acer desktop that runs 24/7. I also recommend backing up your computer and media files.

You may want to organize your media files before you start if you are planning to do so. I like my media to be meticulously organized, but if you don’t care about that you can simply dump it all into one or more folders on your hard drive(s). Plex will scan everything and give you a friendly UI to manage and playback your media.

The first step is to download Plex onto your computer. Because we’re going to setup a media server that can be played remotely, choose Plex Media Server. Walk through the installation wizard and launch Plex.

Download Plex Media Server

Adding Media

Once you’ve launched Plex for the first time, you’ll come to a screen where you can begin adding your media. Choose the type of media from Movies, TV Shows, Photos, Home Movies and Music.

You’ve greeted with a popup where you can add folders where your media files are stored.

Add a Folder to Your Plex Library

Once you’ve added all the folders you want, Plex will begin to scan your media library and gather metadata to organize your collection. Depending on the size, this process could take a few minutes or much longer.

Media Manager

Now that your media has been added and scanned by Plex, you can view your categories and make sure all metadata is correct. Here is a screenshot of my TV shows section of my library.

As you can see, Plex displays my shows nicely with artwork, which is so much easier than going through my folders in Windows Explorer.

List of TV Shows in Plex

Automatic MetaData

When scanning your media, Plex will ask different agents (like IMDB) for information on the different media types (like TV shows). Here is detailed episode information for season six of 30 Rock.

Episode Detail for TV Shows

Configure Your Settings

Configure Plex’s settings how you want. Give your Plex server a friendly name so you can be recognized by other devices; if left blank, Plex will use your computer’s name.

Change how Plex updates and scans your library folders. You can also manage agents, languages and transcoding settings, but I left mine set to default.

Configure your Settings for Plex

myPlex

One of the best features of Plex is the ability to use myPlex to playback your media when you’re not on your local network. Setup a myPlex account and you’re ready to put Plex on your other devices. We’ll get to that next.

Connect to myPlex for Easy Connection

Playback on Other Computers

If you want to playback your media on a different computer, you need to install the Plex Media Center app. Once you’ve gone through the install wizard, Plex Media Center will launch. Plex Media Server is available for Windows, OS X and Linux.

To login to your myPlex account, go to Preferences > System > myPlex and enter your email and password. Now you can playback your media from this new computer, whether you’re on your local network or on a foreign network.

Playback Media on a Different Computer

Sorting Media

Plex gives you options for how to sort your media by rating, title, year, genre, etc. The app will also keep track of which episodes and movies you have and haven’t watched so you can easily stay on top of your viewing.

Sort Movies by Unwatched

Mobile & TV Playback

Plex also comes with apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows 7 mobile devices. The mobile apps are $4.99 each, which is a small price to pay for mobile playback of your media library. Sign into your myPlex account to view your media library like you would on a computer.

iPhone and Android Plex Apps

iOS | Android | Windows Marketplace

Plex is also available for TV devices like Roku, Google TV, LG Connected TVs, Xbox and Playstation 3.

Plex Channels

In addition to your personal media, you can stream content from online channels like NBC, Netflix, Picasa, CNN, Hulu and more. Channels update automatically and many are in high definition.

Wrapping Up

While Plex was originally a fork of XBMC, it has since become a media server app of its own. Plex is a fast, powerful media server that  free to use on computers plus your television, and cheap to use on mobile devices. It’s really an incredible piece of software that leaves little to be desired when streaming your media to multiple devices.

The developers of Plex have taken their freeware hobby project and turned it into a commercial business so you can be sure your favorite media server app will continue to be improved.

Now that you’ve seen what Plex is capable of and how easy it is to set up a home media server of your own, you should give it a shot.

If you’re working on a lengthy document and want to re-order paragraphs, cutting and pasting is often the easiest form of editing and the clipboard is also used as a temporary store when you capture a screenshot with the Print Screen key. This is all very useful, but Clipboard Magic helps to make the clipboard even better.

Used at its most basic, the program can be used as a replacement for the standard clipboard that has the advantage of being able to store more than one item at a time – a restriction that limits the usefulness of Windows’ own tool. It can also be used as a permanent store for frequently used snippets of text that can then be added to a document using a special keyboard shortcut.

Downloading and Getting Started

Pay a visit to the CyberMatrix web site, click on the Products link at the top of the page followed by More at the bottom. In the Freeware section click the Download link beneath Clipboard Magic and then click the link to grab version 5.00 of the program.

Run through the installation in the usual way and then select the option to launch the program before clicking the Finish button – you can then read through the tips that appear, or just close the popup window and get started with the program.

Clipboard Magic is a great free alternative to the standard clipboard

Configure the Basic Settings

Before you start using Clipboard Magic, it is a good idea to spend a moment or two configuring some basic options. If you cannot already see the main program window, right click the icon in the system tray and select the Restore option from the menu that appears. Now click the penultimate button in the toolbar to display the options screen.

You should set Clipboard Magic to start with Windows

There are numerous settings that you might want to consider here, but as the aim of installing Clipboard Magic is to replace the standard clipboard, it makes sense to tick the Start On Boot option in the Loading Options section so the program is ready for use as soon as Windows starts.

To the lower left of the dialog, you can use the Hotkeys section to configure the keyboard shortcuts that are used to bring the main program interface into view (this Restore function can be activated by pressing Ctrl + Shift + R by default), as well as the shortcut that is used to paste each item that you have copied to the clipboard in reverse order (this is Ctrl + Shift + P by default).

Using Clipboard Magic

As you browse the web, read emails, or create documents of your own, you can use the clipboard in the usual way – just click Edit > Copy in an application or use the Ctrl + C shortcut to copy highlighted text.

If you switch to Clipboard Magic (or press the Restore shortcut you have configured), you’ll see that the copied items are listed in reverse chronological order.

Clipboard Magic keeps an extensive list of text snippets that you copy

When you want to make use of the text you have copied to the clipboard, use the pasting shortcut you have created. The first time you press the shortcut, the most recently copied section of text will be pasted, the second time it will be penultimate selection of text, and so on.

It is also possible to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + the numbers 0 – 9 to paste a particular item from the list and this option proves useful if you build up a list of clips that you use on a regular basis.

If you want to paste in a more random order, you can click a clip in the list switch to another program and use the standard Ctrl + V pasting shortcut to paste the currently selected item.

Working with Clips

Just because you have copied text in a particular order, it does not necessarily follow that you will want to paste in the same order. You can re-order the list of clips that you have collected by simply dragging and dropping items to a new position in the list.

Remove duplicate clips to clear out the clutter

Should you find that you have accidentally copied something more than once, you can click Edit > Remove Duplicates to clear up the list. From the same menu you can also access the Suspend Clip Archiving if you want to temporarily stop using Clipboard Magic and revert to the regular Windows’ clipboard.

Clips can be edited in the list before they are pasted into a document

You may well decide that you need to edit a clip before pasting it into a document. To do this you can just double click a clip in the list or select on and click the magnifying glass toolbar button. Make any changes or additions you want and then click the zoom out button.

As your list of clips grows, you may find that it becomes more difficult to locate individual text snippets. To help make things easier to home in on, you can use a color-coding system. Right click a clip and select the Change Background Color option before selecting a color. In this way you can easily assign a color label to clips that meet certain criteria.

Color-coding is just one way to make clips easier to identify

Another option for anyone who finds that they are copying a large amount of text is to save individual clip lists that are tailored for different purposes – one for business letters and one containing stock IM replies for instance. Clip lists can be saved and loaded via the File menu.

Wrapping Up

There are plenty of alternative clipboard tool available, but Clipboard Magic has a great balance of ease of use, range of features and level of customization available; take it for a whirl and see what you think.

Security is something that everyone should be concerned about. We don’t really want our financial or personal information out in the bad, bad world, do we?

To that effect, Windows ships with inbuilt security software as well as the option to download the free, and excellent, Microsoft Security Essentials. A lot of users I know eschew from these and tend to with other dedicated security software — antivirus, antimalware and firewalls amongst many others.

Personally, I really love MSE but seeing as I already have a pseudo-lifetime license for the excellent AVG security suite, I’m just going with it.

What about you? Are you content with what you have or do you use dedicated, third party security software? If so, which suite are you using? I want to hear about your experiences here.

So vote away and as always, we’d love to hear your thoughts – simply post a comment below!

“I’m already sold, just show me how the heck to do it”, I hear you say. Today, we’re going to take a look at the most popular screen recorder known to man. Yes, I’m talking about Camtasia Studio. Let’s find out what makes it so popular and if it’s worth your while — join me after the jump.

Screencasts

For newbies, Screencasts are digital recording of a computer screen, probably with an audio narration in the background. Simply put, screencast is for video; whereas screenshot is for image.

Screencasts are widely used in educational videos, product presentations, podcasts, and much more. Surprisingly, Windows doesn’t have any native implementation for which would’ve made a lot of sense, leaving us scouting for third party options.

Overview

Camtasia

Camtasia Studio was developed by TechSmith(the same team who gave us SnagIt). It is the one of the finest screen recorders available in the market today. It eases up the process of creating professional video presentations, screencasts with just a click of a mouse. Their Mac version is so popular that it actually overshadowed its Windows counterpart for so long.

Getting Started

Just a click away

Once you install Camtasia, you can watch a quick tutorial that walks you through the application. Recording with Camtasia is really simple, all it takes is a mouse click. Just click ‘Record’ and Camtasia silently work in the background without getting in your way.

Background task

One interesting feature that caught my attention is the integrated webcam, which is a pretty nifty feature and is particularly useful when giving out a presentation. Another important thing to note is that the audio track is separate and editable. This makes it easy to remove the unwanted background noise without much effort.

Integrated support for YouTube/ ScreenCast.com upload and Import/Export of captioning files(useful for producing captions in multiple languages) are also great features especially for corporate users. Ability to record presentations directly from PowerPoint is an added bonus for Office users.

Usability

Quick effects

Camtasia sports a typical 3 panel layout pretty similar to older versions of Flash. Nothing great here, though, they’ve put in some extra effort to declutter the interface. The recorder opens in a separate window to avoid confusion.

Once the recording is done, Camstasia creates a temporary recording file and this information is available on the left pane and you can view a live preview on the right hand side.

Interactive sceencasts with Callouts

All the special effects are directly available on the main window and you just need to drag and drop to use them. Displaying audio waves to indicate recorded sound on the timeline is a nice touch, making it even easier to edit.

Pricing & Support

Camtasia is a premium product, and as with all other premium products, it comes at a huge price, $299. The support offered by the team is terrific. They’ve an extensive knowledge base which should resolve most of your queries.

Should you have any further queries, their staff are quite friendly and addresses the issues promptly.

Other Thoughts

On the flip side, the output file size is too huge -232MB for a 2 min video with the default preset. At this pace, I’d exhaust my 2GB free Screencast.com limit and my datacap within 15 minutes.

You can try following this tutorial on how to optimise your output, but it doesn’t do any wonders. This is certainly a deal breaker for most of us.

There are a few other minor irritants like fixed height design(especially while working with CallOuts) and stuff, but these are pretty small that you can live with.

Wrapping up

Camtasia has a plethora of features at your disposal, turning your PC into a monstrous presentation engine. It’s great for serious people like the folks at Tuts to create awesome screencasts but for a casual user like me it’s too bloated.

Plus the software itself is too expensive, priced at $299. If you need full fledged, professional screencasts, without a steep learning curve, this one is for you. But if you’re a casual user just looking to take some occasional screencasts, I’d suggest you to look for other free alternatives, like Screenr.

How was your experience with Camtasia? Have you used any other screen recorder? Feel free to join us in the discussion below and Thanks for reading.

Is Steam the answer to PC gaming’s woes? Does Steam really supply what the PC gaming market needs? Let’s find out!

A Little Retrospect

I realized that the brick and mortar gaming industry is dead and began buying games off the internet soon after. Online you have the luxury of searching for the best prices and compare games, but it does take a long time to find the best deals.

Luckily, I stumbled over Steam. Steam is a database with over a 1000 current games to access. Providing information on each game by the developers and all the persuasion needed to convince you to buy that game you desire.

Steam is takes game discovery and distribution to a new level and gives you the freedom to purchase a game and play it without leaving your computer seat! The main appeal of Steam are the prices of the games as it often offers the cheapest prices around with discounts and specials on games every day.

If you’re not the paying kind, the service offers many free games as well. Even if you are not currently playing Steam games on your PC, this application still recognizes them and allows you to use the same features. Big MMOs like Guild Wars have taken massively to Steam and many players use this software to enhance their gaming experience.

Overview

Steam was developed by Valve Corporation, famous for gaming series’ such as Counter Strike and Half Life, in 2002. Now Steam has over 30 million active users.

Services within Steam give you daily special offers which is a helpful tool to recognize new games appearing on the market. For example, if I were to buy the newest Call of Duty for £39.99, Steam would provide free of charge Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1. These offers attract people to join Steam’s millions.

On Steam’s webpage you have access to many options, including forums, support and a community section for friends and clans to join up and play together. Steam also offers regular updates and automatically downloads the latest features to your computer.

Steam Webpage

Also, the cloud feature of Steam is executed brilliantly. The system stores all of your game progression and statistics for your account. If you have Steam downloaded onto three PC’s you will be able to play the same game at any time on each of the different platforms. This is a very helpful tool if you ever have to wipe your hard drive, you will not lose your progress. However, you will need to download the game on every computer to be able to transfer progress.

Interface

From the login screen, you have the ability to either log in with a Steam account or if you use PS3 network you can sign in with the same account. After logging in, the store appears as your home page, showing all recent price reductions and the best buys.

The next tab along is the library which is a list of all your downloaded games were you will also be able to add non-steam games to this list. This allows you to use Steam during game play. Next along is the news section which shows all major revelations in the gaming world with price cuts on games too.

The final tab is the community which is the network of all your friends. From here you have to ability to join and set up groups and clans. You will be able to add friends, change your profile and view your gameplay statistics.

Steam has many options to enable you to view your application with lots of freedom, to change the layout, to show add-on features and change the general appearance.

Steam Game View

Buying Games

The way you buy games through Steam couldn’t be easier. After selecting your desired game and adding it to your cart, Steam offers many secure payment methods such as Visa, PayPal and Mastercard. After purchasing the game, Steam will start the download to your library. After the required time, you are free to play the game as much as you like. It’s that easy!

Buying a Game

Steam Integration in Games

The most important feature is Steam’s integration in games , offering many extra features which help you communicate with friends and surf the web.

By pressing shift+tab in Steam connected games, you have access to the in-game interface. This shows friends lists, achievements and screen shots. From this screen you are able to chat with friends through instant messaging and using a video call to talk with microphones.

There is a feature for web browsing, allowing you to browse without leaving your game. Editor’s note: This feature may sound pointless but viewing pictures of adorable kittens makes the wait to respawn that much more easier.

Steam Interface In-Game

Conclusion

Ultimately, I believe Steam is the way forward in PC games. With regular price drops, games at low prices and the amount of fun you have with games is awesome, Steam is one of the very best services for PC gamers.

Even if you are not using Steam for buying, use it to support games with the in-game interface. If you are a regular gamer or play occasionally, I highly recommend downloading Steam and giving it a try — you won’t regret it.

Please feel free to comment if you would like any more information or share your experiences with Steam!

This time, for extra fun, here are some small and harmless applications that will aid you in your quest for mischief.

Fake Format

Imagine your friend going out for a cup of coffee and coming back to find out that his precious files are being deleted. This application will do just that by creating an illusion of formatting the hard disk.

Just open it, select the ‘Full’ option and click ‘start’. Watch as your friend frantically presses the ‘Cancel’ button in vain. It even displays a summary just like the standard windows summary.

The only way to close this app is to wait for it to finish fake formatting and then press close. It closes with a nice little message that your friend has been pranked.

Fake Format

Random Burper

If you want to find out how your colleague at office looks when he is red-faced with embarrassment, then you should try this app.

Open it and lo, it runs a hidden program that burps at random intervals. I am not talking about the small ones. Big and loud, brother! The ones you get after eating umpteen number of cheese burgers.

The app has an inbuilt feature to increase the system volume to max so that it is loud and clear. The only way to close this app is to move the mouse pointer to the far top left of the screen and out pops up an about us screen and the program is closed.

loud and clear!

Mr. Clippy

The office assistant in the older versions of MS Office was discontinued due to, frankly, I don’t know why. I always liked the puppy.

And most of us may be familiar with the default assistant, Mr Clippy. Now it is available as a prank application that when run shows up at regular intervals (60 secs by default) displaying useless notifications.

Customize the notifications by creating a text file as “clippy.txt” in the folder where the application is located and typing messages that you like in it. A message with a question mark is displayed with yes/no buttons.
The time interval can be customized by navigating to the folder where the application is using the command window and typing “clippy.exe [time interval] [norandom]”.

The norandom option tells Clippy not to display messages at random, a useful feature when displaying custom messages.

Annoying Clippy

The only way to close this app is to move the mouse pointer to the far top left of the screen. An about screen pops up and the application is closed automatically.

Blue Screen of Death

“When the shadow of death blots out my joy
And erases the face of the sun…” – William L. Wallace

What better way is there to make your friend panic than the dreaded Blue Screen error? No wonder it has been known as the “Blue Screen of Death”.

Behold the BSOD screensaver which is capable of scaring the wits out of your unsuspecting friend, at least momentarily. This screensaver simulates a Windows blue screen error accurately. For this to work properly,

• Move the screensaver to Windows->System 32 folder.
• Then right click on the desktop and select personalize.
• Open screensaver settings and select “Sysinternals Bluescreen”.

This application cycles between different Blue Screens and simulated boots once in every 15 seconds.

Give ‘em the Finger

It appears and disappears fast. But it delivers a powerful message in a short and sweet way. This is my favorite prank application.

Run this on an unsuspecting friend’s computer and watch how he reacts when his mouse gives him the finger.  You can configure the finger to flash at intervals of your choice by navigating via command prompt to the folder where the Finger is and typing “Finger.exe [interval]”.

the mouse tells you to...

Auto Correct Prank

This is not an application that can be downloaded, rather an alternate use for the auto correct option in MS Word.

The autocorrect feature in MS Word is highly useful especially in case of typographic errors. But how can you use it to prank someone? It is quite simple.

• Open “Word Options” from the start menu (I use MS Word 2007).
• Under “Proofing” select “Autocorrect Options”
• Type the text you want to replace in the “replace” text box and the alternate text in the “with” text box. For example replace “Dear sir” with (dunno if appstorm will allow me).

Auto prank

Note: Opening some of these applications may cause your antivirus to go bezerk. But, as far as I know, they do not contain any virus.

Wrapping Up

So there you go — a handful of ways to drive your friends and colleagues crazy. Have you tried any of these yet? Any hilarious results? Let us know in the comments below and thank you so much for readgin!