Vista Desktop Themes » Gadgets

iPhone Emulator

sOliver — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:18:39 +0000

Have you been looking for a way to test your iPhone application or to try that new iPhone game “online” ?
Well, everything is possible. There are many iPhone emulators available on the net. Let’s review some of them!

IPhone Emulator vs. IPhone Simulator

Make sure that you know the difference between simulator and emulator. An emulator can run the real iPhone applications while a simulator only simulates functonalities. If you want to play the iPhone games, you will need an emulator!
Difference between emulator and simulator

iPhone Emulator Firefox:

At one of the sun.com blogs I found an ~~emulator~~ simulator for Firefox. It basically allows you to simulate the iPhone browser. You can download the firefox plugin here: Firefox iPhone ~~Emulator~~ Simulator. The file you can download at that site is a .xpi the firefox plugin file format. To install the plugin simply unpack the zip and then drag and drop the file into the firefox. It will then automatically install the iPhone ~~emulator~~ simulator.

This comes in handy when you want to find out how your own website looks on an iPhone. Be aware of the fact that this simulator does not change your user agent. To do that you will need another plugin that allows you to switch the user-agent.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

User-Agent info for the iPhone:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en)

Online iPhone Simulator

Don’t want to install another firefox plugin? There’s a great alternative! You can simply go to http://www.testiphone.com/ and then browse to your own website or do whatever you want to do.

iPhone Emulator for Mac:

You can get a real emulator for MAC.
There’s an SDK (Software Development Kit) for the MAC that lets you emulate the iPhone for real.

What you can do is to install MAC OS X and then dual boot Windows Vista and Leopard. Boot Leopard, install the SDK and you can run your emulator. Because that is a lot of trouble to emulate an iPhone, there’s a great alternative

Download iPhone Emulator Torrent (MAC)

iPhone Emulator for Windows / PC

There’s a tool that allows you to really emulate the iPhone on Windows. There’s no need to install the iPhone SDK, although it would be pretty interesting! The tool I’m talking about can not only emulate the iPhone but also the Palm Pre.

Go to http://www.genuitec.com/mobile/ and download the emulator. Install it and start developing applications for the iPhone.

iPhone emulator and development environment – no need for the iPhone SDK
iPhone application development for Windows
Palm Pre emulator and development environment
Mobile Web development environment
PhoneGap support for cross-device compatability
Other popular smartphone emulators (coming soon)
Blackberry Storm simulator (coming soon)
Google G1 emulator (coming soon)

Note Mobione only works on Windows XP and Windows Vista not Windows 7!

Play iPhone Games Online

Don’t want to check your website on the Iphone or develop an iPhone application? If you want to play the iPhone games online, simply go to

http://www.ipfun.org/

The site is loaded with iPhone games that you can play online without downloading anything.

Unlock your iPhone 3G

To unlock your iPhone simply download RedSn0w 0.9 – it’s the best iPhone Unlocker that you will find anywhere. 100% working solution.

Download RedSn0w 0.9 – Unlock iPhone

Project Natal on your PC?

Brian — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:55:36 +0000

You may have heard about Project Natal for the Xbox 360 (as we previously reported), but did you hear that it will be on PCs as well? Windows Vista users will be able to use their gestures, movements, and voice as controls.

Project Natal, in case you do not know, is a way to game without using a controller. Microsoft says that controllers intimidate some people and that they want there to be a system without any barriers. In a way this is Microsoft’s response to the Nintendo Wii, but this goes beyond the Wii. No controllers means no broken TVs, noses, and many other items the WiiMotes destroyed. You will even be able to sing that virtual tennis racket without breaking Moms vase. If you are crouching in real life then you will be crouching in game too. I NEED to play Street Fighter using Project Natal! My house will need a new foundation after a few “Blanka Rolls”.

Recently Bill Gates stated that the technology behind Project Natal will be used toward other devices such as TVs and Computers. Imagine instant messaging someone by talking and when you smile “J” will pop up. The possibilities are endless. Windows users will be able to use this technology and we will prosper from it. Maybe this will be what we need to shut all the Mac fan-boys up.

Is Project Natal a good thing? Or are people lazy enough already?

Be sure to check out the video of Project Natal.

Blue Blu Twitter Client

sOliver — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:27:15 +0000

It’s Blue Blu!

The uber-awesome-incredible Twitter Client:

Blu Twitter Client

Download it here.

It’s Twitter on a whole new level. The client itself is very stylish and has a lot of fun features. A little blue bobble is moving from time to time, when you enter a message a big number is counting down (140 is max) in the background and most importantly you can add certain tweeps to your “favorites”. It’s a waste of time if you would try to unfollow all the people you don’t want to listen to, instead mark all those tweeps who deserve it as your “favorite”.

One of the best twitter clients out there, if not the best. And it is working totally fine on Windows 7!

Alarm Clock that plays MP3

sOliver — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 06:46:34 +0000

Wouldn’t it be great to wake up and hear your favorite songs in the background?

Many people already have a wake up playlist or just use the built-in radio many alarm clocks have.

If you don’t have an alarm clock with a built-in radio or anything similar, here’s an easy solution for everyone.

One of the best tools to set up a wake up playlist is Jakes Alarm Clock. The website looks like it’s from the 90′s and the tool doesn’t have a fancy web 2.0 like interface – but it does what it promises and it’s very easy to manage your alerts! It even runs smoothly on Windows 7 (which I currently use).

I’ve just added “David Bowie – Let’s Dance” to my wake up playlist. I love that song!

What do you add to your playlist?

Cheers!

Football Gadgets & News Reader for Vista

sOliver — Mon, 25 May 2009 12:22:49 +0000

The UEFA Informer Gadget tracks football matches scores, fixtures and teams standing in real time for all UEFA Competitions and major domestic leagues from UEFA zone like English, Italian, German, French, Spanish, and more (35 countries).

The new version of the Gadget with the possibility to create user menu from any quantity of preferred competitions.

There are plenty of great football gadgets for vista, but only some of them really provide useful info.The UEFA Informer Gadget is one of them. To keep track of international leagues this is the best tool.

Another very useful gadget has been submitted by flywork.

NewsReader is a simplest and easy-to-use Vista gadget to read RSS feeds subscribed with Internet Explorer

You can download it in our “user-submitted gadgets section” here.

Do you know any other great Vista Gadget we should know of? Submit them!

Vista-compatible eBook Reader

sOliver — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 15:28:19 +0000

Well, at the moment there is quite a hype about the Kindle 2.0.

The Kindle is an eBook Reader that allows you to read eBooks on a mobile device with a large screen and very sharp text. The text on the display is as sharp as a newspaper: Eink Technology (electronic ink) is a big advantage and will even allow you to read in the sunlight.

Because everything on this blog is about Vista, I thought I would try to find out which eBook Reader does fully support Vista and which not.

First of all I suggest to get an overview of all good readers here:

http://ebook-reader.biz/

Sony eBook Library version 2.5.00.09170 adds support for 64-bit Windows Vista (on the 505 and 700 only). The Kindle supports Vista too, but the Kindle 2.0 seems to have problems with Vista 64bit!

Support Vista (32-bit):

- Kindle 1.0
- Kindle 2.0
- Sony PRS505
- Sony PRS700

Support Vista (64bit):
- Kindle 1.0
- Sony PRS505
- Sony PRS700

Reported Problems:
- iRex iLiad
- Kindle 2.0 (Vista 64bit)

Unknown:
- Ectaco Jetbook

By the way, through the Kindle you can subscribe to blogs and newspapers. A built-in wireless internet connection that you don’t even have to pay for is integrated into the Kindle as well. Pretty cool if you think about it. Might be worth a try!

WindowBlinds 6.3 Review

sOliver — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:54:18 +0000

Well I finally decided to give WindowBlinds another try. First of all some general information for all who don’t know this handy tool:

WindowBlinds is a program that enables Windows users to completely change the look and feel of Windows users interface. Users customize Windows by using visual styles (skins) created for WindowBlinds. With these skins, WindowsBlinds can change the look of titlebars, borders, buttons, taskbars, Start menu, progress animations, toolbar icons, Explorer views, and virtually every other part of Windows!

Features

Explorer backgrounds feature. This allows users to change the background of their explorer windows and control the color and opacity. 30 different background textures can be selected by the user including no texture, wet paint, various marbles, and ice effects.
Support for 3 additional title bar buttons on per pixel skins. These support roll up, help, always on top and command buttons.
Support for dialog background bitmaps – This was disabled on Vista in previous builds.
Added additional glass explorer sections. These will show up in the future
SKS6 builds.
64 bit build synced with 32 bit version.
Blue edge on logoff dialog cancel button removed Tweaks to dialog background bitmaps Misc tweaks
Note that the 64 bit XP build has not been updated. 32 bit apps on 64 bit XP will support the new per pixel buttons, but 64 bit apps will not.

To use the very common .WBA format you will need WindowBlinds . For a cheap fee of $19 bucks you are getting a lot of content. By now there are whole sites that offer thousands of WindowBlinds themes. Let’s see what’s available out there.

Content

WindowBlinds is the most popular skinning tool that is available, therefore there are thousands of themes that are *exclusively* available for WindowBlinds.

There are many resources where you can find premium themes for WindowsBlinds:

- Customize.org

- Stardock’s Library 500+ Premium themes

- DeviantArt WindowBlinds themes

Most themes I would consider as premium, the quality is extraordinary high! A great community creates new and fresh themes 24/7.

Content: 10/10 Points (Big advantage here)

Installation / Usability

The installation is very easy and there is not much you have to do to install a theme. In WindowBlinds you only have to do two clicks to apply a theme, but if you try to apply a 3rd-party Windows theme it will usually be a lot more difficult and will require several tweaks before it will even work (e.g. patching the uxtheme.dll). Of course it’s more challenging to install a 3rdparty theme, but most of the time you will get better results using the easy WindowBlinds-method simply because there are so many great themes available and you can still fine-tune every detail!

Usability: 9 /10 points.

The latest WindowBlinds release is 6.3 by now:

WindowBlinds 6.x [CD]

Version 6.3 adds new layering effects to windows, faster performance, and texture options for skins.

Want to see 6.3 in action - click on image to enlarge

One of the real advantages of WindowBlinds is that you can style stuff your normally can’t. For example you can add background images to the Explorer, which would be nearly impossible without WindowBlinds.

Click on image to enlarge:

Mastering Tinker

sOliver — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:21:42 +0000

Tinker – that Vista Ultimate Extra we love so much can sometimes be a real pain. Some levels seem to very difficult and almost impossible to get through. For example Set 01 Level 15 is one of those difficult levels.

If you don’t know Tinker find out more about it here.
You can also still submit tinker levels through our submit system.

Here’s a guide how to master even the most difficult levels.

MchWaltes89 from youtube created those video guides you might find useful to get a clue how to get through a certain level.

Set 01 Level 15

Set 1 Level 1-10 HQ

Set 1 Level 11-20 HQ

Set 2 Level 1-10 HQ

Set 2 Level 11-20 HQ

I hope that helps Ken Mayer and edel! Good luck guys. Have fun!

Vista Sidebar for XP

sOliver — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 15:42:21 +0000

Do you run both XP and Vista ? Or have you tried to tweak XP to make it as beautiful as Vista?

If yes, you will be happy to hear that the Vista Sidebar Gagdet is available for Windows XP now!

Yep, this is not a screenshot of Windows Vista, it’s a tweaked XP. You can download the Sidebar gagdet at DeviantArt, thanks to joshoon!

The gadget is using the original Vista Sidebar, so you can also get more Gadgets from the Windows Live Gallery. By the way, did you know that you can convert Google gadgets to Vista or XP? This little tool (called Amnesty Generator) will help you to get all the cool Google gadgets! I am going to write a review and tutorial soon how to use it, so stay tuned!

Get a Windows 7 gadget for Vista/XP today!

sOliver — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:50:23 +0000

One of the new Windows 7 features is called AeroSnap, which improves the management of desktop windows. You can maximize/minimize desktop windows by dragging a window to the taskbar; if you drag it to the left side of the screen it will automatically fill half of the screen. This can be helpful if you have to switch between applications a lot or if you want to split windows.
For designers this might come in handy to place working tools on the right side of the screen and the image itself on the left side. By the way it will also work on two monitors!

Alright, you want to grab this Windows 7 gadget now?
Get it here! Keep in mind that this is still a beta, so please report possible errors.

Requirements:

Netframework 2
Windows Xp, Windows Vista

Windows 7 Themes

Please also visit http://windows7themes.net for more information