Traffic Stat

My Tech Quest’s traffic stat for last month, June 2009 is as follows :

• Visits : 30,773 (-2,850)
• Pageviews : 54,891 (-1,828)

Money Made Online for June 2009

• Google Adsense : $ 185.02
• Infolinks : $ 17.85
• Affiliate Sales : $ 20.03

Total money made : $ 222.90

Top Content of the Month

• Download Free Serial Key for Full Version SpeedUpMyPC 2009
• Add Bing Search to IE and Firefox Search Bar
• How to Lock Your PC using USB Pen Drive?
• How to Download Old Bing Homepage Wallpapers?
• How to Password Protect Any Windows Software Application?

The traffic in term of both visits and pageviews were slightly lower as compared to previous month’s traffic. Despite lower traffic, I’ve earned more from Adsense. I’ve made $50 more money compare to the previous month. However, I didn’t achieve my goal of earning $200 from Adsense.

For this month, I set a target to earn at least $250 from Adsense. But first, I need to attract more traffic. Besides that, I hope that my feed number will be more than 200 by the end of the month. Tell you the truth, I am sick and tired looking at my feed count which has stayed between 190 - 200 for the past few months.

How your blog doing last month? Feel free to share your earning and traffic figure for last month.

Are you searching for free security applications on the internet to help you get rid of malware and spyware from your computer? But you don’t want to waste your valuable time to hunt for these tools and download them separately.

Anti-Malware Toolkit is the best solution to you. It is a free application that helps you get the programs you need for computer security. Anti-Malware Toolkit acts as a downloader and one stop that automatically downloads all of the recommended anti-malware programs for you, to help you keep your computer safe, secure and clean from malware. It saves you a lot of time, because you can get all the security applications through Anti-Malware Toolkit, instead of wasting time wondering around the web to get the right security software.

Some of the best security applications offered for download in the Anti-Malware Toolkit are popular anti-malware applications like CCleaner, Spybot S&D, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Hijack This. Others are Spyware Blaster and SUPERAntispyware. Just select the applications that you prefer and click the “Download” button to begin download the setup installers.

Besides the security applications, Anti-Malware Toolkit also recommended a score of useful applications for download like Firefox, avast, Avira Antivir, IObit SmartDefrag and more. Also in the download package are great utilites like Unlocker, Windows Installer Cleanup, Process Explorer.

In addition, you can grab 7 anti-virus uninstallers directly from Anti-Malware Toolkit.

Read also - Completely Remove Your Anti-Virus Software With 8 Anti-Virus Removal Tools

Anti-Malware Toolkit requires .NET Framework 2.0 to work perfectly. With so much great applications that you can download directly from Anti-Malware Toolkit, this security software downloader is definitely the application that you don’t want to miss.

Download Anti-Malware Toolkit

GoneIn60s is a small application that allows you to recover any closed application within 60 seconds after it being closed. This application is most useful when you’ve closed any program which you have no intention to close it in the first place and what’s worse is that you haven’t save the data. Such incident does happen to you and me once in a while.

The good news is that by using GoneIn60s, you can re-open your accidentally closed program during the 60 seconds period. GoneIn60s has the ability to delay the shutdown of your programs. The program you have closed isn’t actually closed the moment you hit the close button. After hitting the close button, the closed program will goes into hidden in your memory for another 60 seconds.

GoneIn60s will sit quietly in the system tray. If you want to recover the closed program, you will have 60 seconds to look for the yellow lightning bolt icon in your system tray, right-click it and you will see a list of recently closed programs.

Now, select your closed program that you want to re-open and your closed program will pop up back in no time, without any information being lost. Thank goodness! To restore all recently closed programs in one go, just double click on the icon.

You can actually adjust the 60 seconds time period to the figure that you prefer. Just head for the Settings page and customize it.

Plus, if there are some programs that you’d prefer to shut down immediately (Programs that you don’t want GoneIn60s to save in the memory), you can create a whitelist of apps to close every time (Write it under the Programs to ignore).

GoneIn60s is free for download and compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

Download GoneIn60s

On my previous post, I have shown you how to download old Bing homepage wallpapers directly from your Firefox and Internet Explorer browser.

Today, we are still talking about the same topic but this time we are gonna use a third party application to carry out the wallpaper downloading process.

(Image Credit - Life Rocks 2.0)

Bing Downloader is a tiny application (just 10kb) that allows you to easily download daily wallpaper images from the Bing decision search engine site.

Bing Downloader is easy to use. No installation required. Just run the exe file and the image will be downloaded automatically to your PC. All downloaded wallpapers are stored in a folder called “BingImages”. The folder is created in the same directory as your Bing Downloader executable file.

The app requires .NET Framework 3.5 to work. Thanks, Nirmal.

Download Bing Downloader

Need to speed up your slow PC but don’t want to go through all those difficult and time consuming tasks to fine tune your PC?

SpeedUpMyPC 2009 is Uniblue’s award-winning and top rated PC performance enhancer that helps you to boost your PC’s speed. Using SpeedUpMyPC, your system settings, disk clutter, RAM and CPU are all automatically scanned, cleaned and optimized for peak performance.

Other features include :

• Super Charge Internet Performance - Optimize your Internet connection. Clear all history including unnecessary and private data saved by your browser. Significantly reduce page loading time and enjoy faster surfing.
• Disable Processes - Hundreds of processes are running ‘under the hood’ of your PC right now. Some are fine. Others are malicious. SpeedUpMyPC allows you to disable or quarantine the evil ones.
• Clean Up Unwanted Garbage - SpeedUpMyPC cleans everything up from cookies to saved forms, making your PC not only smoother to run, but also enhancing your privacy.
• Take Control of your PC - Monitor and control all PC resources. Free up RAM for power-hungry programs, and dedicate more CPU time to all those programms you want running faster.

The price tag for a copy of SpeedUpMyPC 2009 is USD$29.95. With all these great features, I believe some of you will not mind spending a little money to purchase this software. But hold on a second, because the good news is you can grab yourself a copy of SpeedUpMyPC 2009 free of charge, saving you almost 30 bucks.

Currently, there is a great promotion that offers you a free genuine serial key for SpeedUpMyPC 2009 software. To receive your free genuine serial number to activate your full version of SpeedUpMyPC 2009, please follow the instructions below.

1. Visit the promo page.
2. Enter the required details and click “Submit”. Make sure you use valid email.
3. Now, check your inbox for SpeedUpMyPC serial number. Note the key.
4. Download setup installer of SpeedUpMyPC and install it.
5. Once installed, click on the yellow “Register Now” button and use the serial number to upgrade SpeedUpMyPC to full version.

SpeedUpMyPC requires the latest Microsoft .NET 3.5 framework. If you don’t already have it, don’t worry, SpeedUpMyPC will automatically install .NET itself.

This free full version of SpeedUpMyPC includes 12 months of ActiveProtection - product updates and support.

Antivirus for Wordpress is a new security plugin that is designed to protect your Wordpress blog against exploits and spam injections.

This plugin will run a daily automatic scan on your Wordpress blog, or more specifically, it scans your current Wordpress theme folder for malicious injections and warns you of any possible attacks. You will be notified via email if Antivirus for Wordpress finds any attack.

This plugin is easy to setup. Just install the plugin on your Wordpress plugin and activate it. In the settings page (Settings > Antivirus), you need to check the check box to enable daily antivirus scan and send the administrator an e-mail if suspicion on a virus.

You also can run a manual scan on your blog templates folder. Just click on the “Scan the templates now” button. The scanning process is really fast. The scanning result will appear in no time. Look like my template folder is free from malicious injections.

Nowadays not only your computer needs antivirus software, your blog needs it too. Just give it a try.

FreeFixer is a free Windows utility that helps you to scan your system for potentially unwanted software, such as adware, spyware, trojans, viruses and worms, and allows you to remove them.

FreeFixer works by scanning a large number of locations where unwanted software has a known record of appearing or leaving traces. This removal tool is easy to use. After complete installation, just launch the program. On the main window, click the “Start Scan” button to begin scanning your system.

The scanning process takes about one to five minutes. The scan locations include the programs that run on your computer, the programs that starts when you reboot your computer, your browser’s plug-ins, your home page setting, etc.

After complete scan, scan results for each category (e.g. Browser helper objects, Internet Explorer toolbars, processes etc) is displayed. Here, you must decide by yourself on which unwanted file or software that should be removed. Tick the items that you want to remove and click Fix. However, you must be extremely careful not to delete legitimate system files, because you may damage your system.

If you are not sure about a certain file, you can click the “more info” links for each item in the scan result. Clicking the more info link will open the FreeFixer web site with additional information about the item. Or you can also save log file of your scan result and consult the volunteers in one of the FreeFixer helper forums.

FreeFixer is freeware and compatible with Windows 2000, XP, 2003, 2008, Vista and 7 RC1.

Download FreeFixer

My Windows taskbar always looks crowded because of my over multi-tasking habit. I love to work with a lot of software applications on my computer. On my previous post, I’ve introduced TrayDevil, it can minimize any application to the Windows system tray to save valuable space on your taskbar. Applications that do not require lots of user interaction are the best candidate to be minimized to the system tray.

Similar to TrayDevil, Tray Everything is a small application that allows you to minimize any running app to the system tray. Unlike TrayDevil, you can carry Tray Everything on your USB stick because this utility is portable.

Since there is no installation required, just run the TrayEverything executable file from the zip archive. On the main window, you will see a list of the currently opened programs with their associated windows.

Just double-click on the program from the list to minimize it to the system tray. An icon representing the minimized window will appear at the system tray.

Besides sending apps to system tray, this freeware comes with a few interesting features. If TrayDevil can be used as a quick reboot and shutdown tool, Tray Everything on the other hand, allows you to completely hide the minimized window from the tray, which mean that the icon is not shown in the tray. Also, you can hide the window and protect it with a password. This feature is a bonus for you if you want to hide any application from other people.

Other features include :

• Add minimize-to-system-tray button in the title bar of each window.
• Group icons of the same application in one single icon
• Automically minimize inactive windows to the system tray after a certain period of time.
• Assign hotkey for minimizing windows with a single key press.

Tray Everything is free for download and works prefectly on all version of Windows.

Download Tray Everything

TrayDevil is a lightweight windows utility tool that allows you to minimize any window (program, folder, website etc. ) to the system tray. This tool is extremely useful if you always work with a lot of programs at the same time on your Windows. You can choose to minimize some of the running applications to the system tray, so that your taskbar is not too crowded.

After installation, TrayDevil will sit at the system tray. To minimize applications to the system tray, you can use one of the two available methods.

• Left click on the titlebar of the window that you want minimize to system tray while holding the Ctrl(default), Shift or Alt key, or
• Simultaneously left + right-clicking the titlebar.

A standard icon of your minimized application will appear at the system tray. I’ve tried on my Google Chrome. You can see the Chrome icon at my system tray.  When you right-click on the icon, you will see the following options (see screenshot below).

Well, this application is more than just a tool to help you save spaces by minimizing any running application window to the system tray, it also comes with a lot of powerful and useful extra tools.

This free window to tray minimizer tool can hide the trayclock, disable a window’s Min, Max and Close button, set windows on top, shutdown, restart, standby, hibernate, logoff, lock your system and turn off your monitor. All these functionality can be accessed directly from the system tray. Just right-click the TrayDevil icon at the system tray and select your prefer task.

TrayDevil can acts as a quick reboot and shutdown tool for your Windows. You just need to left or right-clicking the TrayDevil icon to restart or shutdown your system. Middle(wheel)-clicking the icon will lock your computer.

Plus, TrayDevil gives you an option to automatically run a program before it shuts down your system, triggered by a CPU-usage threshold. It is ideal for backup purposes.

Also, you can define hotkeys for most functions. You need to go to TrayDevil settings to configure it. There is a lot more options that you can configure from the TrayDevil Settings. Feel free to explore it.

TrayDevil works prefectly on all versions of Windows.

Download TrayDevil

Safe Calculator is a lightweight program that look similar and has full functionality of a Windows calculator, but it is more than just a normal calculator, in fact Safe Calculator is a discreet safe that allows you to encrypt a single file with confidential information like your usernames and passwords, and make the file disappear into the application itself.

This freeware is portable, therefore no installation is required. To use Safe Calculator, first run the calc.exe file. The main window is just look like the Windows calculator. You can even perform calculation using it.

To enter the safe mode, you need to enter the PIN (default PIN is 123) and click MS. Your calculator buttons will change similar to the screenshot below.

To store the file in the safe, click on the “+” button and then hit the “=” button. Browse the directory and select a file that you want encrypt and hide.

The file is stored and encrypted directly within the calculator executable and can only be viewed after a PIN is entered. For the description of controls or available commands, press the F1 key on your keyboard or hit the Help button.

You can change a new PIN by clicking on the New PIN button. To return to standard calculator mode, click on the MC button.

Safe Calculator works perfectly on all version of Windows. I’m not sure whether it works on Windows 7. Maybe you can try it and let me know.

Download Safe Calculator

Yesterday, I wrote about an interesting web tool, it’s called Bing vs Google. This tool allows you to search Bing and Google search engines at the same time and compare their search results side by side.

Today I came across a unique tool called Blind Search. Blind Search allows you to compare the search results between Google, Bing and also Yahoo. Then, you need to decide and vote for the best search result. It’s either Google, Bing or Yahoo.

What’s so unique about this tool is that after you enter a search query, three sets of search results will load in three different columns and you don’t know which results that belong to Google, Bing and Yahoo because the branding and logos of the search engines are not shown. Here is an example of search query that I’ve made.

To vote for the column (search engine) that best matches your search query, just click on the “Vote for this search engine” button on the respective column. After casting your vote, the logos of the search engines will be revealed on each column.

Blind Search is built as a fun experiment by Michael Kordahi. If you feel like trying, just go ahead, make a search query and cast your vote for the best search result.

So which search engine that get the most vote from you? Google? Bing? or Yahoo?

So you are using Google search all this time. With the recent launch of new Bing search engine, you try it and are very satisfied with the search results. Now, you are dilemma to decide your default search engine. Well, you don’t need to, because you can use both Google and Bing at the same time.

Bing vs Google is an interesting web tool that allows you to search Google and Bing at the same time and compare both search results side by side on a single page. Using this tool, you can find out which engines with the most relevant results.

For Firefox users, there is an add-on that allows you to add both Bing and Google search to the Firefox’s search bar. All you have to do is visit this page and click the “Download Now” button.

Besides Bing vs Google, here is another similar tool that allows you to create side-by-side search comparisons, in four languages and five international regions. It is developed by German SEO company, Blackdog.

Hidden File Scanner is a free tool that scans drives for hidden files that scattered across many directories on your Windows.

Hidden File Scanner is portable so no installation is required. You can straight away run the executable file. On the main window, select the drives that you want scan for hidden files. You can choose to scan all drives if you want to, just click the All Drives link.

Before you hit the Scan button, you can specify whether to exclude system files, exclude directories from the search. This way, the search results are more logical to view. After complete scan, a list of hidden files will be displayed in the main window. From there, you are allow to unhide or delete them.

In addition, Hidden File Scanner also does a quick scan at start up to detect the appearance of autorun.inf files on all devices including removable medias. If such an autorun.inf file is found, a dialog box will pop up where you can either delete, unhide or inspect the content of the autorun.inf. This tool will automatically rate the autorun.inf files as normal, hidden, suspicious or dangerous file.

Note that you must not simply delete any hidden files found, you might screw up your system. If you have such files, and their file name does not help you to identify the file, right click it and open the file information dialog. You will see for most executable files the copyright of the executable file, which might help you identifying it. Thanks, Technix Update!

Download Hidden File Scanner

Namechk is an interesting web service that enables you to check the availability of your desired username on more than 120 websites including dozens of the most popular social networking and social bookmarking websites like Digg, Facebook, StumbleUpon and Twitter.

To check your username, simply type your prefer username in the text box and hit the “chk” button. This web service works really fast. It takes only a few seconds to check for available usernames.

Using namechk, you can ensure that your desired username is still available on the majority of the most popular sites.

Internet Messaging (IM) has become a part of our lives. In fact, hundreds of millions of people use Instant Messenger to stay connected. While this technology gives us the convenient to connect with our friends and family, we should always aware of certain privacy related issues when using this IM program. For example, someone might be listening to your private conversations. You know that you will not be 100% safe on the internet.

To combat this issue, BitDefender has comes out with a free encryption tool, it’s called BitDefender Chat Encryption. This tool will protect your instant messaging conversations on Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger through a simple and automatic encryption process.

To use BitDefender Chat Encryption to encrypt all your instant messaging chat sessions, you and your chat partner need to install this encryption tool on both of your computer. Also you and your chat partner must use either Yahoo! Messenger (v8.1 or newer) or Windows Live / MSN Messenger (v8.5 or newer).

This tool is an “install and forget” application. After installation, no any additional setting is required. When a conversation is initiated, the encryption procedure will begin automatically.

BitDefender Chat Encryption works perfectly on Windows XP SP2 and Vista.

Download BitDefender Chat Encryption

Sharing the same computer with others can give you hard time to keep people from running or executing your personal software applications or games. The good news is you can protect sensitive applications on the computer from an unauthorized access by password protecting the programs.

Read also - How to Lock/Disable Access to Any Applications in Windows?

By password protecting the applications, only you who know the correct password can run the programs. Here are two tools that you can use to password protect any applications on your Windows.

Game Protector

Game Protector is a freeware that can protects any game with a password. Not only games, this tool also allow you to password protect any application on your Windows as long as it is executable (.exe) formatted file.

Game Protector has a straight-forward interface. To password protect any game or application, first you have to browse and select the executable file of the game or application. After that, enter the password to protect the file.

Game Protector has a good feature that allows you to change the icon and the file name of the executable. It is very good to use on your personal games, so that they just look the same as other normal programs in your Windows. For example, you can let “World of Warcraft” seem as one “Excel” document, so your boss or parents can’t find these games that you are playing.

The final step is to click the “Protect” button. Before that, you can check the “Create Backup” option to create a backup. Once protected with passwords, your games and applications executable files are safe from unauthorized runs both on your computer, and even when you copy it to other computers.

When any user tries to open the game or application, a window will pop up and prompts for a password. So there is no way other people can launch your program unless they know the password. To remove the password or to unprotect the executable, click the “Unprotect” button.

Download Game Protector

Empathy

Empathy is a free and lightweight portable utility that allows you to password protect any executable (.exe) file on your computer.  This freeware can modify an exe file so that it will require a password to open.

The steps to set password to your executable file is the similar to Game Protector. On the main window of Empathy, you browse for the executable file that you want to protect with password, then type in the password. After that, click on the “Protect” button. Like Game Protector, you can create backup. Use the “Unprotect” button to remove the password protection.

Once an application is protected, it will stay protected even if you copy them to another location or even to another computer, no matter which operating system do they use.

Download Empathy

A keylogger is a program that able to record each keystroke the user types on computer and saves it into a special log file. In most of the cases, keylogger is used to steal important information, like credit card numbers, passwords etc.

There are also some parents who use this program to monitor their kids’ activity while using the computer and surfing the net. Most of the time, you may not aware the existence of this program on your computer because usually it runs in the background, hidden from your eyesight.

Realizing that someone may spy and steal your confidential details using keylogger software, you must equip your computer with anti-keylogger software to block the activity of keyboard monitoring program.

DataGuard AntiKeylogger 2009 Free is a Windows freeware utility that helps you to prevent keyloggers from monitoring and storing your key presses. This free anti-keylogger software provides you with basic anti-keylogger protection against keystroke logging and clipboard capturing. Currently, it protects your privacy from 5 types of keyloggers.

After installation, this anti-keylogger program will sit at the system tray and runs in the background. It doesn’t require much attention from the user. It does everything automatically.

Download DataGuard AntiKeylogger 2009 Free

Memory Improve Ultimate Free Version is a free memory optimizer software designed to improve or boost up the performance of your computer system memory, by freeing up and compressing the system memory.

This application silently sits and monitors your system RAM memory from the system tray. On the main window, the Memory State box will monitor and detect the system memory usage in the background, and display your current state in real time, such as great, good, medium and bad. You will know when to free up your memory by referring to the memory state.

To free up memory, click the “Re-claim” button on the main window of Memory Improve Ultimate or right click the Memory Improve Ultimate icon at the system tray and select Reclaim memory.

When you need to free up more memory space, you can use the “Defrag” button to compress the memory. However, do not use the defrag feature frequently. Use it only when you really need a lot of free memory space. Below the Defrag button are the defrag parameters that enable you to set desired parameters for compressing memory task.

Download Memory Improve Ultimate Free

It doesn’t get me long before I started to fall in love with Bing. One thing for sure that I love is the wallpapers featured on the Bing homepage. Bing loads fresh wallpaper every day and I love each and every one of it.

If you don’t use Bing on daily basis, there’s some great images that you’ve already missed. In case you miss any of the wallpapers and want to have a look at them, actually there are two arrows (near the copyright icon) in the bottom-right corner of the Bing.com homepage that allows you to browse the previous or older wallpapers that featured on the site.

Since you can browse through all the older wallpapers on Bing, it would be a great idea to download those images and set it as your desktop background wallpaper. Here is how you can download the old Bing homepage wallpapers.

You need to open Bing search for United States (English). Now, open Bing.com and click on country name at top right part of the screen. In the country listing, click United States (English) - it is second last in the list.

Now click on the arrows (at the bottom-right of Bing homepage) to navigate wallpapers from previous dates.

(Image credit - tothepc)

In Internet Explorer to copy wallpaper, just right on the image and click save background as. Firefox users can goto Tools > Page Info > Media and then save the wallpaper image from the list of images. Thanks, tothepc!

I believe everyone has heard about the recent launch of the Bing search engine by Microsoft. Currently, this replacement for the MSN Live Search has created a buzz all over the web. Now, everyone is talking about the Bing search engine.

I am sure many have tried Bing and started to fall in love with it. If you really find that you like Bing, then you should add Bing to your brower’s search bar.

Add Bing to Internet Explorer’s Search Bar

To set Bing search engine as the default search engine in your IE, visit this Bing Search IE Add-on page, click on the “Add to Internet Explorer” button. A pop-up will appear. Check the option that reads “Make this my default search provider” and hit “Add”.

Add Bing to Firefox’s Search Bar

Visit the official Bing Add-On page, click on the “Add to Firefox” button to add Bing search to the search bar.