Aero, Transparency, VistaGlazz, Windows Vista

This new application from Microsoft Research puts together various technologies they have been developing with their Live Labs and high-resolution pictures from numerous imaging satellites into a pretty cool experience.

WorldWide Telescope is created with the Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™ and allows seamless panning and zooming around the night sky, planets, and image environments. View the sky from multiple wavelenghts: See the x-ray view of the sky and zoom into bright radiation clouds, and then crossfade into the visible light view and discover the cloud remnants of a supernova explosion from a thousand years ago. Switch to the Hydrogen Alpha view to see the distribution and illumination of massive primordial hydrogen cloud structures lit up by the high energy radiation coming from nearby stars in the Milky Way.

Download: Microsoft WorldWide Telescope

Microsoft, Microsoft Research, Satellites, Telescope, WorldWide Telescope

When using multiple monitors with Windows the taskbar only appears on the primary monitor. Even with the new Windows Vista this problem still remains. UltraMon from Realtime Soft has been able to solve this problem for many years and now also supports Windows Vista.

Monitor 1 (Click to enlarge)

Monitor 2 (Click to enlarge)

As you can see from the above screenshots the taskbar is extended across both monitors and shows the running applications for each monitor. UltraMon has this and many more features. You can download it from the link below.

Download: Realtime Soft UltraMon

Display, Dual Displays, Multi Displays, Realtime Soft, Taskbar, UltraMon, Windows, Windows Vista

This vista gadget for μTorrent which will enable you to control your torrent downloads and uploads from your Windows Sidebar. It has the ability to begin a torrent by simply dragging and dropping .torrent files or .torrent URLs straight onto the gadget. It also includes a convenient search box.

 WebUI Interface in μTorrent must be enabled for the gadget to function.

Download: Windows Live Gallery

Gadget, Microsoft, Torrents, Vista, Windows, μTorrent

A-Patch allows you to customize your Windows Live Messenger with over 80 options including the ability to remove the big advertisement located on the contact list, disabling the nudge delay timer allowing you to send consecutive nudges without having to wait a few seconds in between. Other useful options include removing buttons such as “Activities”, “Windows Live Today”, and dozens of others buttons, multi-msn, show idle status of other users, and so on.

Download: A-Patch for Windows Live Messenger

A-Patch, Messenger, Microsoft, Patches, Windows Live

Microsoft has finally made this plugin available to download which allows users to search for commands in the Office applications directly from the Ribbon. They can then quickly those commands by a numbered keyboard shortcut, giving quick access to commands or tools if you don’t know where they are in the Ribbon bar.

Search Commands helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Microsoft Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Just type what you’re looking for in your own words and click the command you need. Search Commands also includes Guided Help, which acts as a tour guide for specific tasks.

Download: OfficeLabs Search Commands

Microsoft, Office, Office 2007, Ribbon