For those of you out there who are most perturbed by Google’s search tracking, worried about the fact that Google knows who you are and what you’re searching about.
Each time you hit the “Google Search” button, you know that someone at Google can find out what you’re upto.

GoogleSharing Selectively Routes Search Traffic Through a Proxy

There is a Firefox addon for those of you who don’t like Google snooping on your searches – GoogleSharing.

This addon routes all your google search traffic – and only your Google search traffic – through an anonymising proxy server, so that Google hasn’t a clue what you’re upto.

Other Google services, like Gmail, are not affected by this addon – just your searches.

GoogleSharing aims to:

1. Provide a system that will prevent Google from collecting information about you from services which don’t require a login.
2. Make this system completely transparent to the user. No special websites, no change to your work flow.
3. Leave your non-Google traffic completely untouched, unredirected, and unaffected.

GoogleSharing, as the name suggests, mixes requests from different GoogleSharing users and routes them through a proxy server, leaving Google with no clue as to who is asking for what.

You can find out more about GoogleSharing here, or just go ahead and download the experimental Firefox addon from here.

If you’re a full-fledged Thunderbird user, you might have gotten annoyed at the number of times you have to start a browser to quickly open a link someone has sent you.

More often than not, our browsers are seriously slow – it would take Firefox, for example, five whole minutes to start up with all those tabs and extensions.

In fact, that could even be why you migrated from a web-based email service to Thunderbird in the first place!
But you still have to open links, and for that you need a browser…

WAT opens URLs in Thunderbird Tabs

Web Application Tab is an addon for Thunderbird that allows you to open links and webpages right inside Thunderbird – in a tab!

That’s right. No need to fire up your bloated old browser to quickly check a link or update your Twitter.

WebApplicationTab is a Thunderbird addon, and thus works wherever Thunderbird works.

You can Download the addon from here.

You might also like to automatically shrink photos before uploading them.

One of the regressions in Windows 7 is the removal of a feature that was present in older version of Windows, including XP – the option of remembering the positions of individual Explorer windows.

That option was especially useful for multi-monitor setups, where you will probably have lots of windows open and would like the operating system to remember where they should be placed. Instead, they open in the wrong place each time, and then have to drag them where you want.

This may not sound like a big problem, but once you’re used to this happening, it not happening can be a big pain in the neck.

Shell Folder Fix Brings Window Position and Size Saving Back

ShellFolderFix is a small program for Windows 7 that brings back position and size saving to Windows Explorer’s folder windows.

It’s a small application that runs in the system tray, and, once configured, you never have to touch it again.

You can download ShellFolderFix from here

You might also want to know how to partition your hard drives in Windows 7, or how to fix the login screen hanging problem.

Most modern hard drives have a feature called SMART – Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology, that allows applications to find out what your hard drive is upto. What the current temperature is, the RPM of the platter, number of reallocated sectors, etc.

Disk Smart View is a Hard Drive SMART viewer for Windows

If you’re on Windows and you want to view your hard drive’s SMART information, this NirSoft tool is just for you.

It’s a tool whose whole point is to read SMART information off hard drives and present them to the user.

This can be very useful – for example, the reallocated sectors count will tell you how many sectors of your hard drive have been reallocated due to them going bad, and this will give you an idea of when your drive is going to crash on you.

You can download Disk Smart View from here.

EASEUS Partition Master Professional as most know is considered by many as the best hard disk partition management tool and system partition optimization software. Easeus Partition Master Professional is for both basic as well as advanced users as it has a very simple user interface that basic users can understand and use and has all advanced partition functions for advanced users. It is compatible with Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 32/64 bit users.

Related: 5 Free Tools That Help You Completely Erase Data From Your Hard Drive

EASEUS Partition Master Professional feature list:

The latest version of EASEUS Partition Master tool is 4.1.1 and here are the salient features

• Extend system partition to maximize computer performance.
• Resize/move/delete/format/create partition and lots of useful features.
• Backup all data or copy entire hard disk to another without Windows reinstallation.
• Operate directly on the disk map with the drag-and-drop and preview the changes.
• Create bootable CD/DVD in case of system boot failure.

For detailed features, click here.

EASEUS is giving away the full version of  EASEUS Partition Master Professional 4.1.1 worth $31.96 for FREE until Feb 1st, 2010. Make use of this wonderful opportunity and download the (free for now!) best partition manager around!

Microsoft has acknowledged a strange problem with Windows 7 – the system hangs for half a minute on login if the wallpaper is set to a solid background instead of a wallpaper.

Consider the following scenario:

• You have a computer that is running windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.
• You set a solid color as the desktop background.
• The Desktop Window Manager Session Manager service is running.
• You log on to the computer locally.

In this scenario, the Welcome screen is displayed for 30 seconds during the logon process.

The problem is not a fatal one, but it can be irritating. However, there’s an easy fix that Microsoft has provided.

[Image credit: AddictiveTips]

Download Windows 7 login hang hotfix here

Sometimes even you have no idea what your computer is up to. The hard disc LED starts flashing, things become slow, the Windows task manager shows the processor usage to be phenomenally high.

And then it goes away as quickly as it came, and your computer is as responsive as it used to be. Was that a bad dream? Or did it really happen? You can only keep wondering… unless you catch it when it happens next time.

What’s my Computer Doing?

What’s My Computer Doing is a small Windows program that tells you exactly that – what you computer is doing. It tells you what program was accessing the hard disc and what programs used the processor, and this will help in catching the culprit.

Along with the names of the program, this nifty utility will also provide all the details you require – including a security signature (if any), known problems, all kinds of information about the executable, and even links to find out more about the program, including the program’s homepage (if any).

In fact, What’s My Computer Doing will even give you the option of terminating the process and even to uninstall it!

If you want to track down that errant program and give it a good hiding, this the the program that will let you do so.

Download What’s My Computer Doing from here, and run it on your Windows 2000, XP, Vista or 7 machine.

Don’t forget to tell us about the programs you caught wearing out your hard disc, and remember to clean out your registry, just to be on the safe side!