When I had a second monitor on my Windows laptop one of my must-have apps was Ultramon. A great little application allowing you to have greater control over your programs, wallpapers and extends the start bar across each monitor. The thing I really liked was that you could assign hotkeys to move your program windows between monitors. Something that would prove to be quite handy (especially when Windows would screw up and throw programs to a monitor that didn’t exist when you were in single monitor mode).

For Mac users, a new app called SecondBar, which is still in its early stages, is the beginning of something similar to Ultramon. At the moment, it only duplicates the menu bar over one other monitor, and according to the developer, only works for some programs. A recent mention in LifeHacker has sparked development again so it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

The one thing I really hate about automatic Windows updates are the ones that require you to reboot and pester you with that annoying popup asking if you want to reboot now or later. Clicking Later only delays the inevitable and sure enough, you’ll see that popup a few minutes later asking you the same question.

Now what makes Windows think that if I clicked Later before that in just a few short minutes after, I’d change my mind? Why not trust that I will reboot when I’m good and ready?

I always wondered if there was a way to disable this, and while I didn’t find a direct solution, this little application is pretty much the next best thing and is good enough in my books.

Shutdown Guard pretty much does exactly what it says. It “guards” your Windows from being rebooted, shutdown or even logged off.

Any time one of those actions is attempted, Shutdown Guard will prevent it, and then pop up a little balloon in the task tray allowing you to continue the action if you want. Obviously ignoring the notification let’s you work on without any further disruption.

Compatible with Windows Vista as well, except the confirmation is much more in your face as shown in the developer’s wiki entry.

I heard about Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope a few weeks back through their presentation at TED and today, I saw an article featured on the MSN website about it’s public beta finally released.

The WorldWide Telescope takes images from numerous sources such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) and compiles them into a single user friendly interface allowing people of all ages to essentially fly though space and view planets and galaxies one would never normally see.

While the software may be in beta, it all runs quite well. It’s very similar to Google Earth in the way that the images are streamed to you as you require them which makes for a very lightweight application storage-wise but heavy on the internet connectivity and graphics requirements.

None the less, I highly recommend everyone check it out at least once and be sure to give the final a try whenever that may be.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace allows Office 2003 and 2007 users (with the workspace plugin available after you login) to store and share their files online from anywhere with internet access. The service is completely free to use and looks to be a pretty neat solution for people to manage project files with remote users or even just to use personally to gain access to stuff you might need at work or elsewhere.

Files can be grouped in Workspaces so that you can have multiple projects on the go at one time.

Looks to me like it’s Microsoft answer to Google Documents except with a direct tie to Office vs an online interface.

Update: So I had a chance to give this a go and while it’s great for a single user to access files between home and work, the plug-in needs a little work. I tried sharing a workspace with a friend and unfortunately, it appears that shared workspaces are not accessible through the Office plug-in. Hopefully Microsoft will fix this since to me it’s a pretty big missing component.

We all like to have choices in the applications we use, right? Here’s a pretty great list of the top 50 applications commonly used and their open source alternatives.

The list contains a mix of applications for Windows, Mac and Linux so everyone gets to join in on the games!

One of the neat features of Windows Vista is its ReadyBoost technology which allows the use of a USB 2.0 flash drive for system cache. What was once limited to just Windows Vista, is now availble to Windows XP users by way of eBoostr!

Not only does eBoostr give you the features of ReadyBoost, it adds a few extras on top making it even more powerful than what Vista provides. From the eBoostr website…

• Vista’s ReadyBoost benefits on your Windows XP® machine;
• Smart caches frequently used applications and files for maximum performance speed up;
• Supports both USB and non-USB removable media devices, as well as additional hard disks;
• Allows up to 4 devices for simultaneous smart caching;
• Cache file size of up to 4GB on each device;
• Compatible with all ReadyBoost® ready devices.

A free trial is available for download which will only work for 4 hours after each reboot, or a full version can be purchased for $29 giving you a full year of upgrades to the date of your purchase.

I haven’t tried it yet as I don’t have a USB device I can use at the moment, but I’d be very interested to hear from you if you do give it a go!

Anyone who uses a Blackberry with the Redirector probably knows that while their Outlook mailboxes are spam free from using spam filters (or at least cleaner), their Blackberries unfortunately aren’t so lucky. One of my clients uses a Blackberry and has Cloudmark Desktop installed which works great, except that all the spam that comes in still gets forwarded to the mobile. The issue apparently has to do with timing. The Redirector essentially gets the jump on the email before anything else gets to process it allowing spam to sneak by. But, with this simple fix, all that should come to an end!

Step 1. Go to Start > Run and type “regedit” and click OK.
Step 2. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software >Research In Motion > BlackBerry > Redirector. Change the value of the ProcessMailDelay entry to 30. If this value fails to address the issue, then modify the value to be 60.
Note: If the ProcessMailDelay value is not present, create it as a DWORD Value and set the Value data to Decimal 30.
Step 3. close the Redirector and Desktop Manager applications, then restart both to force these changes to take effect.

Mac users who purchase Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac Standard Edition, Office 2004 for Mac Standard Edition Upgrade, or Office 2004 for Mac Student and Teacher Edition between the dates of November 1, 2007 and January 14, 2008 are now eligible for a free* upgrade to Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition.

All you have to do is register your product on their site here: http://www.microso…suitedeal/

And when Office 2008 officially comes out January 14, 2008, Microsoft will ship you a shiny new upgrade! Well… About 6-8 weeks later anyways. So uhm… How come we Windows users don’t get this offer too?

*Free as in you pay for shipping and handling.