Hang on to your paint brushes because there's a new form of art that outpaints Picasso, Monet, or Van Gogh.

Yeah that's right. It's ASCII Art! Otherwise known as text art or drawing pictures with notepad!

ASCII art, unmatched in its beauty, simplicity, and it's uniqueness to use the common keyboard characters to graphically draw a picture, amazes most computer users!

Take a look at what I did in a few minutes!!

How did I do it?

Fine alright. I admit that I didn't completely make this piece of art by myself, but I did get the help of a very useful piece of software. ASCII Artist!

Drawing a picture is not nearly hard as typing one up. However, what if there was a way to 'type' a picture in less than a few seconds? Wouldn't that be cool? You can draw a flower by using 0s and 1s. You can paint a car and show it off to your friends. You can even compose an image of yourself with excruciating detail, making it look exactly like the original picture!

Luckily, for you, there is a way and here's what you need to do!

• Download ASCII Artist.
• Select a picture.
• Click 'Make ASCII Picture' and you're done!
  

It's so easy. Like 1,2 and 3 and your ASCII masterpiece is done!

Download ASCII Artist today!

Ever had a long link such as: http://www.somesite.com/somefolder/somesubfolder/somepage.html?

Have trouble remembering it? Have trouble sharing it with your absent minded friends? Just can’t be bothered to re-visit again without bookmarking it?

Hmm, seems like there is a lot of lazy people these day, but fortuneately for you guys, today, we take a quick look at Url Shorteners.

What is a Url Shortener?

An URL shortener shortens your URL or link. So for our above example, would it be nice if we shortened:

http://www.somesite.com/somefolder/somesubfolder/somesubsubfolder/somepage.html

To:

www.tinyurl.com/somesite?

That way, you just need to remember the URL Shortener tinyurl and the bit after it, somesite, so that when you visit www.tinyurl.com/somesite, it takes you to the long and bothersome website: http://www.somesite.com/somefolder/somesubfolder/somesubsubfolder/somepage.html. Neat huh?

More, How do URL Shorteners work?

For this example, we will use TinyUrl, because it is the most popular URL Shortener. URL Shorteners work simply by these steps:

1. Go to TinyUrl

2. Enter your long url

3. (Optional). You can set a set a custom name, known as a alias, for your tinyurl

3. Click ‘Create TinyUrl’

4. Success. Now you can copy and share your URL

Now What?

Now that you are done with making your short link, you can share it with your friends on facebook, myspace, and so forth. For example, i can now email my friend saying:

“Hey man, check out my blog! http://tinyurl.com/my12345blog“

The advantages of shortened urls are that they are easy to remember and extremely short compared to your original url.

More Services of TinyUrl

TinyUrl isn’t the only url shortener out there, there is also:

1. Adf.ly

Adfly gives users the ability to shorten their long url and also earn about 1 cent each time someone visits your URL. If you have a lot of friends or a popular internet blog that receive a lot of visitors, adding an URL shortened with adf.ly can earn you heaps. Sign up here.

2. Tiny.cc

Tiny.cc is similar to TinyUrl, both shorten links and allow custom names. The only difference is that tiny.cc is shorter. You can check out tiny.cc here.

3. Goo.gl

Goo.gl is another popular URL Shortener service. Being provided by Google, goo.gl is similar to tiny.cc and tinyurl.com, with the exception that it does not allow custom names.

4. Bit.ly

Bit.ly was a popular url shortener until TinyUrl and Tiny.cc gained popularity. Bit.ly allows users to sign up, something TinyUrl and Tiny.cc does not offer, and track the visitors to their link. Bit.ly does not offer custom url names.

5. Ow.ly

Even though it is not as popular as the above 4 services, ow.ly is another great URL shortening service that does the same function as the rest; shortening an url. Ow.ly does not offer custom names, and requires an annoying captcha code, but overall is worth checking out.

It's normal to be tired of staring at your Windows shutdown screen for minutes everyday. After finishing using our computer, most of us know that it takes at least a minute to shutdown, but what if there was a faster way?

What if there is a way to shutdown your computer in less than a second? The time looking at the endless 'Shutting Down...' can be used to do better things. Wouldn't you agree?

Fortunately for you, today, at XetoWare, we have released a free software than you can download and install within seconds, just like other XetoWare programs. It's called 'Fast Shutdown'. Fast Shutdown allows you to choose from it's menu:

• Fast Shutdown. This shuts down your computer in less than three seconds.
• Fast Restart. This restarts your computer in less than three seconds.
• Instant Shutdown. This shuts down your computer almost instantly, however can cause data loss to unsaved work.

Just make sure that you save all your work before shutting down or restarting, or else a project that you've worked two hour on can all be lost!

What to do now?
Download Fast Shutdown and stop spending your waiting for your machine to shutdown. Download HERE.

The name hotkeys is simply any combination of a set of keys preset to run or do something. Hotkeys are composed of the keys on your keyboard, and are commonly known to close windows, minimize windows, switch windows and so forth.

To further clarify the meaning of hotkeys, consider this. The keys Alt and F4 exist on your keyboard. Alt is on the bottom row of keys on your keyboard, whilst F4 is on the top row. If you are on a website or folder and you press both keys at the same time, then the window will close. Why? Because Alt-F4 is a hotkey, and its primary function is to close your current program.

Examples of Hotkeys

Every operating system has a specific set of hotkeys, Windows for example have:

Alt-TAB: By pressing this hotkey, you switch to the next task. So for example if you are working on a word document and you switch to Internet Explorer, you don’t need to click on the taskbar again to go back to your word document. Just press Alt-F4.

Ctrl-C: We all know to copy some text from one place or program to another, we can right-click on the selected text and click copy, but did you know there is a faster way? Press Ctrl-C over the copied text, and volia, you just took a shortcut and copied your text!

Ctrl-V: To paste text, especially for most computer novices, clicking on the spot you want to paste and the right-clicking [Paste’ would do the job, however, as expected their is a shortcut to this. Press Ctrl-V over the desired spot to paste your text, and volia your text is pasted!

Ctrl-A: Ctrl-A is a simple way to select all the text in a single textbox or document. For example, if you press Ctrl-A right now, you would see the whole page selected. You can then further copy and paste the text somewhere else.

Ctrl-Shift-Escape: This is a hard one for those computer rookies, but a fast and convenient way to bring up a very important tool for tech lovers; The Windows Task Manager. The Windows Task Manager does a lot of things, for more information, Google it up. Primarily, you can open up Task Manager by right clicking on your taskbar and selecting ‘Task Manager’, however Ctrl-Shift-Escape does the same thing, hence another hotkey.

Why are Hotkeys Important?

This question has a pretty straight-forward answer. Hotkeys are faster. It’s like a technical shortcut. Would you rather take a long route to get to a destination or a shortcut that takes less time and effort to get the same result? I thought so. You can work faster and more efficiently by using your keyboard instead of your mouse!

More on: Hotkey Utilities

Having been using Windows for more than ten years, anyone would realize that the windows hotkeys are a bit limited to functionality. As a matter of fact, you cannot assign your favorite website or your favorite program to a specific hotkey(s), and this for some is a problem, as not being able to launch Internet Explorer from typing ‘GoInternet’ anywhere on your computer may be a efficiency issue for some.

Programs exist such as Hotkey Utility, a simple utility to associate specific Hotkeys and Words to any program/website/function.

For more information on Hotkey Utility, visit the author’s website at http://www.xetoware.com

How to Play FLV Files

Flash Videos are the most common type of video used around the world. Websites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, Facebook, Myspace and so on, all use Flash Videos (FLV Videos) for their audience. Unfortunately, most video players, such as Windows Media Player DOES NOT Support FLV files, and that’s where XetoWare’s FLV Player steps in…

How To Play Them

If you use XetoWare’s FLV Player, you will be able to navigate backward and forward through videos and play them in a loop. You can also adjust the volume, mute it, and adjust the size of the player. The Settings menu provides some basic control over program behavior, such as opening a new player window when double-clicking on an FLV file and remembering previous settings. We believe in comfort and simplicity therefore, we also offer full-screen resolution and drag and drop support; simply drag a file in to FLV Player and it will play automatically!

To sum it up, because of our belief that everyone deserves a fair go, we provide free customer support and technical assistance. Download FLV Player today!