Visual Controls Updated, Remove Third Party Control Panel Applets

The Windows control panel is one of the central hubs of the operating system. It links to administrative tools, lets you maintain your system or troubleshoot it. Third party applications can – and will – add their own icons to the control panel which in itself is not a big issue. Examples of programs that do that are Oracle’s Java, Adobe’s Flash Player, or Nvidia with its control panel.

When you uninstall those programs later, it can happen that their icons in the control panel stay behind. That’s only the icon then with no functionality attached to it anymore.

Visual Controls was created back in 2008 to give Windows users an option to remove third party control panel applets from the operating system again. You can use the software to remove leftover icons or to remove icons from existing programs that you do not want to appear in the control panel.

You can start the program right after you have unpacked it on your system. It requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 or higher to run, which is a given on the majority of operating systems it supports The new version is now fully compatible with Windows 7, and Vista, XP and even Windows 2000. The developer has improved compatibility with older versions of Windows as well in this release. Please note that Visual Controls requires administrative privileges to run.

The program lists all third party control panel applets in its interface once you have started the application.

 

Just uncheck the applets that you do not want to see anymore in the control panel, and click the apply button afterwards. Applets are listed in alphabetically order, another change in the new version. Once you hit the apply button you will notice that the selected items have been removed from the control panel. You can add them again at a later time by repeating the same steps.

The developer has added several command line arguments to the app which extend the functionality further. You can use the command –enable-global-mode to disable select control panel applets for all users of the system, and –disable-blacklist to display first party applets as well. Both options can be extremely useful for system administrators.

The developer has improved Visual Controls significantly. Better compatibility, and the command line options are especially noteworthy in this regards.

Manage Additional Control Panel Extensions
Display All Windows 7 Control Panel Tools At Once
Put Anything you want into the Control Panel
Quick Launch Control Panel Items From The Windows 7 Taskbar
Companel, Manage My Computer, Control Panel Items

Manually Control Your Mac’s Fans with Fan Control

I hope the title wasn’t too obvious. Now if you’ll excuse my blatantly obvious headline, let’s get down to talking about Fan Control – a great and free app for Mac OS X 10.4+. Download it here. While we all love Macs for their great design, part of the sacrifice of having such pretty looking hardware is 1) not having enough ventilation for heat and 2) the fans often aren’t spinning fast enough (to keep noise down). Normally if you find your Mac laptop getting way too hot for your liking, you just have to live with it. Wouldn’t it be nice to have finer control over your $1,000+ toy? Fan Control delivers where Apple doesn’t, allowing you to manually adjust your fans’ speeds to your specific liking.

After you install Fan Control, it will appear as another panel near the bottom of your System Preferences menu. Once you activate it, you will be greeted by a screen similar to the one you see above (though your view will differ depending on your Mac’s model and how many fans you can control). You can adjust the upper and lower temperature thresholds, along with the slowest speed for each fan. Normally when I use Fan Control, I want to cool my MacBook Pro down, so I adjust the upper threshold all the way to its lowest setting so my fans crank up to 6,000 RPM. While this control scheme is very no frills, it gets the job done and the speeds adjust almost instantly. While it would be best if Apple released a native utility, that’s probably never going to happen, so download Fan Control – a great substitute!

Are there other fan control apps you like better? Why? Let us know in the comments!

Update All of Your Social Network Settings from One Page with Bliss Control [Social]

If you use more than one social network—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, Google+, and others—updating your profile picture or bio at once can be a pain. Enter Bliss Control. This webpage is simple one-stop landing page for getting to your social network management settings.

From the same folks who made the previously mentioned Notification Control launchpad for cleaning up your web services' email notifications, Bliss Control is a useful tool to bookmark. Rather than have to click around on every single service to find where to update your info, just start from Bliss Control and find the setting in the easy drop-down.

Bliss Control doesn't require your login information to any of the services it supports, it just directs you very quickly to the right settings pages on each service. Services supported right now are: Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Foursquare, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, Meetup, Path, Instagram, and Flickr.

You can change your bio, username or password, email, email settings, profile picture, design, 3rd party permissions, and so on. Delete account and recover password are also two quick settings offered.

Sparrow for iPhone Features Intuitive Swipe Control, Smart Contact Lists, and More [IPhone Downloads]

iOS: The popular email client for Macs, Sparrow, released its iPhone version today. On top of sporting a similar look to the desktop client, the app comes packed with a few handy features, including swipe control of the entire interface, a smart contact list that sorts your contacts, and a few features that will be familiar to those who use the Mac version.

The desktop version of Sparrow is our pick for the best email client on Mac OS X and for the most part the mobile version sticks to the same design. You control most of the app with swipe gestures instead of button presses, it imports pictures from Facebook of your contacts, and its most handy feature is that it lists you most frequent contacts at the top of a list instead of alphabetical order. It also has the same threaded conversation view as the desktop client, a great search engine, a quick sender switch, and one feature iPhone users have been asking for since the iPhone was first introduced: a mark all as read button.

Two big problems with the iPhone version of Sparrow should be noted. First, it doesn't support POP email accounts. If you have your own email server and it uses POP, don't bother with Sparrow. If you're on the likes of Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, AOL, or your own with IMAP support you'll be fine. However, the other big caveat is that Sparrow does not support push notifications. This means you have to manually check your email and you won't be notified when new mail arrives. It's a pretty big missing feature that you should consider before checking it out. Sparrow is available now in the iTunes App Store for $2.99.