ObjectDock - Must-have desktop utility!

If your someone who likes customiszing your desktop for maximum productivity and easy access, you'll adore ObjectDock! ObjectDock is a nifty little desktop enhancement for Windows quite similar to the taskbar in the Apple Mac.

UPDATE: 11/19/2009:

I recommend using RocketDock over ObjectDock for this same purpose since it is freeware and has support for several themes and addons.

Basically, it contains a little dock which can be placed anywhere on the screen. The dock contains shortcuts to application programs, folder locations as well as websites. It is completely customizable and the interface is super smooth! You can place the dock on any edge of the screen- top, bottom, left or right. Adding items to the dock is literally a piece of cake! You just got to drag and drog the application or folder to the docklet & it'll create an icon for that applet. To remove shortcuts from the docklet, simply drag them off from it. They simply vanish into thin air!



ObjectDock acts as a handy utility especially if you access some specific folders or websites or programs on your computer very frequently. Instead of browsing to that folder every time, you can directly access it from the dock. Also, if that folder contains subfolders, you could directly go to that subfolder by customizing the dock icon to produce a drop-down menu. It really does cut down effort and saves time! It also contains useful little applications called docklets which display weather, clock etc.

The standard installer comes with the ObjectDock library of icons. You can even use you own icons for the docklets. The dock can be customized for various animation effects when you move your mouse over it. It is completely skinnable & with over 100 hundred skins available for download online, you can make the dock look supercool as compare to those ugly Windows icons!

ObjectDock can be customized to display all running applications in the dock as well. It can almost replace the standard Windows taskbar! Also, it has a smaller memory footprint as compare to other Windows dock softwares...still if you find the system taking too much load, you can reduce the number of animation effects and quality to increase speed.

The best part is that this software is available completely free of cost!
Download from HERE

Of course, the paid versions contains added features like tabbed docks, multiple onscreen docks, support for system trays etc., but you'll have to shell out a cool $20 for that!
You can check out the official site here - Stardock ObjectDock

Here's a screenshot of the ObjectDock on my desktop with not much frills-


Give ObjectDock a try! You'll love this functional super sleek software!

Image to text converter

Ever wondered how those bits of text were written to look like an image?

For examle:

Well its very easy using TIM Text to image Converter!

This neat little bit of code developed by the coders at donationcoders.com works great at this purpose!

You can check out the original page of this software here.

The download link in the previous link requires you to download two separate files and then extract the contents of one into the other for it to work.

I've simplified that for you by already doing the extraction part and hosting the ready product.

You can download it from here. UnRar and run Tim.exe to use!

The program converts an image (jpg or bmp) to a text, which looks like the image in grayscale. You can choose any monospaced font and any font size you want to format the text with, and also any set of allowed characters. The result can be saved as text and then you can format it correctly in a text editor, or you can save the image of the text already correctly formatted.

You could also save your converted results in an image format (jpeg, gif) just as I have done in the above image.

If you are unsatisfied with the result of your converted image;

Try to change color mapping so that the line is more steep, it improves contrast. Look at the histograms to decide where the line should lie. You could also play with the color sliders.

What works best for me is, bloating up the source image to a higher resolution and then converting the enlarged image.

Another very impressive converter is an online one;  TEXT-IMAGE.com

You can choose between HTML, ASCII and Matrix output results for your image.

Again, if you are unsatisfied with your result, enlarging the image will help.

If you do happen to know of any other more efficient converter, I'd be pleased to know. Do leave details in the comments for this post. Thanks and keep coming! :)