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Do you know how to touch-type but your speed is more like that of one who hunts and pecks? Does it take many minutes to key in comments or a FaceBook profile? If so, you may just need some typing practice. And the "Addictive Typing Lessons" add-on for Mozilla Firefox can help.

This add-on provides 26 types of lessons, everything from mastering a few keys to typing complete sentences to words combined with a variety of punctuation characters. Plus, you can even create your own lessons. Your WPM (words per minute) or CPM (characters per minute) is recorded along with your average and best speeds, mistakes made, and time spent in the extension....

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Abaiko Disk Space Monitor for Windows 2000 and above can monitor your hard drives and alert you when free disk space reaches a specified level (defaults to 5%). Upon reaching the defined critical level the program can show a warning, play a sound, and/or execute an application. The application also can be configured to send disk usage reports every few minutes or hours (in either text or HTML format), and can increase the report frequency when the disk usage is at a critical level.

Another useful feature in the application, accessed by the "File Size Chart" tab, is the scanning of any drive or subfolder for the 50 largest files or folders contained therein. This can help you determine if any folders on a network are being used for non-supported activities (such as hosting music or movies), or if someone needs to remove backup files as they are taking too much space....

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Google's front page, while normally showing the company logo, occasionally shows a 'Doodle' related to a local holiday, a famous person's birthday, or an event of local or global significance. Some of these doodles are quite elaborate, and perhaps you've seen one and would like to use it to replace the normal Google logo.

With the "Favorite Doodle" extension for Google Chrome you can browse through a library of previous Doodles, including some you may not have seen as they were targeted to certain areas. Then, with the click of a button you can make any Doodle replace the graphic you see when visiting Google's home page....

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SuperEdi is a freeware Windows text editor with multi-document support and multi-level undo and redo. Geared toward programmers, the application includes syntax highlighting for a variety of languages including C#, HTML, PHP, and SQL.

Other features include an integrated FTP browser and uploader, text sorting, find and replace with regular expression support, and bookmarks. Frequently-accessed text clips can be added to the "Tools" - "Clips" menu. Plus, HTML documents can be previewed....

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As one of the more... well... unique extensions for Google Chrome, "Upside Down" does exactly as the name states - it flips web pages upside down. The extension is invisible except for being found in the "Extensions" menu, perfect for a prank (though I take no responsibility for any repercussions!)

Please don't play this trick on someone about ready to do their taxes, pay bills online, or perform other important tasks....

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Having difficulty keeping up with your collection of books? Forget if you own a particular cook book, or if your technical library is up-to-date? bookTome is a freeware application for Windows XP and up that lets you manually enter your book collection. Or, import data directly from Amazon. You can browse your entire collection or only those from a particular author, search for a specific book, look only at books you have read or not read, and create a wish list of books. Plus, print a list of books or details of particular books for your own use, or for distribution to others if you are part of a book sharing club.

Database management tools include backing up the database daily, importing or exporting the database to/from a CSV file, and you can even create a mini website based on your book collection. Instead of just listing books in your blog, show details complete with optional image thumbnails!...

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Those looking for another option to mass-rename files on Windows machines can try out Rapid File Renamer from Abaiko Software. The application offers a visual File Name Designer allowing you to choose how files should be renamed, as well as a preview mode before renaming files.

Options include changing text case, adding today's date or file dates in a variety of formats, adding an auto-incrementing counter, cutting or replacing text, and adding text. You can add include or exclude masks to only rename certain matching files in a directory....

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Many DOS commands in the different versions of Windows are similar but may support different parameters. Plus, newer versions of Windows may support new commands or retire older ones. Thus, if you wish to write a batch file that can run on different types of machines, it may prove beneficial to determine the version of Windows on which the batch file is running. This way the batch file can execute commands appropriate to the operating system.

The following batch file will determine whether or not the machine is running Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000, or Windows NT. It can easily be modified to support other versions of Windows as necessary or to set an environment variable based on the version of Windows detected. Note that for this batch file to correctly discern between newer versions of Windows Server and consumer versions of Windows, it is more convoluted than batch files you may see elsewhere. I have explained the reasoning below....

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In Windows 7, have you ever opened an application or window, seen it appear in the Taskbar, yet the window or application is not visible on the Desktop?

Due to a mis-configuration, switching of screen resolutions, or switching back and forth between using multiple monitors, it is possible for a window / application to appear at a location not currently visible on your Desktop. In Windows XP, right-clicking on a window's Taskbar icon opened a menu that you could use to move it back. However, in Windows 7, right-clicking on these Taskbar icons do not pull up such menus. Thus, how can you make the windows / applications visible again?...

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Do you frequently access Wikipedia when looking for more information about a subject while browsing the web in Google Chrome? Tired of having to open the site in a new tab, perform the search, then jump back to the previous page you were browsing?

With Wikipedia Companion you can add a Wikipedia button to the right of the Google Chrome address bar. Click it and a pop-up Wikipedia browser appears where you can perform a search on top of the web page you are currently viewing. Plus, if you are bilingual you can configure the browser to perform one-click switching between editions of Wikipedia in a different language....

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