Lifehacker's recent System Tray Show and Tell got me feeling really self-conscious about the things that show up on my computer's SysTray. While there are several items that I don't mind keeping an eye on there are a couple of Windows processes that I really don't think need constant monitoring. A perfect example of this is the Windows Local Area Connection icon that sits with a perpetual red X because my laptop is hooked up with WiFi.
Why do I need to see this icon if I never use the wired connection?
I did a little playing around and managed to find two ways to hide the icon. One doesn't appear to work all the time so I'll provide both just to be safe.
Removing the Local Area Connection Icon
This works perfectly for the wireless connection icon but on my machine it doesn't seem to work for the wired one. The first, really simple, option is to completely disable the connection. To do this you can double click the icon to open the Network Connections listing. Once this is done just right click the Local Area Connection item and select Disable.
In the long run this isn't really an ideal solution mostly because it involves completely turning off the wired network adapter. To avoid turning it off you can right click the listing and instead select "Properties."
Under the "General" tab look for the two check boxes and de-select them both. This should disable the icon while leaving the adapter activated.
Last Resort: Hide the Local Area Connection Icon
On my machine this didn't work - it did work to hide the Wireless Network Connection icon though. If you hit the same wall I have a work around that might help both here and in general for hiding icons in the SysTray. To get started right click the taskbar and then "Customize" under the "Notification area" heading.
The next section shows a list of all the items that are currently, or have recently, appeared in the System Tray. Under the "Behavior" column you can change the rules for each of the items - just select "Always hide" to keep the icons hidden.
One of my favorite Windows tweaks involves the creation of a windows shutdown button. It's one button you can click to shutdown your workspace ASAP. Besides being a dead simple shutdown - it's dead simple to setup.
Here's how it works:
- Right Click your desktop and select 'New -> Shortcut'
- When the 'Create Shortcut' dialog appears type "shutdown -s -t 0"
- You'll then be asked to name the shortcut, "Shutdown" should work nicely. This finishes the Create Shortcut dialog.
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As I mentioned earlier this week I finally broke down and bought a new cell phone. My Samsung SCH a930 arrived yesterday and was one heck of a surprise. While I've only made a few calls so far I've been playing around with it a lot and am quite impressed.
Being the geek that I am one of my first priorities was to grab a data cable and Sandisk Micro SD 2 GB card so I could get some audio, video and images onto the phone. Thanks to an old Lifehacker post I also came across BitPim, an open source Personal Information Manager, that makes syncing just about everything VERY simple.
So far I've added custom wallpaper, updated my addresses through my Laptop (rather than through the keypad) and even played around with some of the calendar.One of the best features here is the ability to move pictures to and from your cell without worrying about sending pix messages or trying to text them. It's a great way to save on those extra charges.
If you're looking to backup your cell and want an easy open source solution check out BitPim. You can see a list of supported phones here.
Everton, from Connected Internet, posed an interesting question today concerning robots.txt and WordPress. It got me thinking about what exactly I do and don't want indexed by Google. It also got me reviewing my Google Webmaster Tools account to see how Google was doing while indexing my site.
What followed was an afternoon of reviewing the way robots.txt works as well as how the meta tag for robots works. I had originally planned on just implementing the changes and leaving a comment on Connected Internet but ultimately it was more deserving of a full post. Read the Rest of this post
About a month back I wrote a short post about creating a more functional 404 page. At the conclusion of that post I hinted at the fact that I'd be writing again about a special addition to the 404 page that might make it a bit more functional. I thought now would be a good time to fulfill the promise I made back then.
Occasionally visitors come looking for content that's not where it used to be. Maybe it was deleted, maybe it was moved, maybe it was lost - who knows. As I mentioned in the previous post it sometimes helps to add things like a tag cloud, a more pronounced search bar or even a plugin like Landing Sites to treat your users to another way of locating content on your site.
Recently I added something new that I thought I'd share. While it's nice to be able to find content on your current site, if you've removed content (for whatever reason) it may pay to direct your users to the Google Cache. Read the Rest of this post
