Transform Windows 8 into Mac OS X

Don’t like the way how Windows 8 is shaping out to look like when it is released? Prefer the look and feel of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system? Then you may be interested in the Mountion Lion Skin Pack for the Windows 8 Consumer Preview which changes the interface of the operating system significantly.  The developer has promised to release an update once Windows 8 final is released by Microsoft so that this should not be of concern right now when installing the skin pack.

What makes this total conversion interesting is that it does not require you to patch system files by yourself or to prepare the operating system in another way. The Mountain Lion skin pack comes with a single installer for 32-bit or 64-bit editions of Windows that will do all the installing and configuring for you.

The full download has a size of about 35 Megabytes and you need to know that some of the programs that it will install require the Microsoft .Net Framework 4.0. This should not be an issue though as support for it is integrated natively into Windows 8. You should pay attention to the installation process as you may end up otherwise with the Babylon Toolbar. The rest of the installation is straightforward and very comfortable. Just follow the installation instructions and restart the computer afterwards.

The installer gives you the option to uncheck third party programs from being installed. For the best user experience it is however suggested to keep the default configuration. You end up with more than ten different programs, including popular applications such as Rocket Dock, Xwidget or Moveex.

The log in screen looks identical, but the rest of the operating system will look more or less like a copy of the Mac OS X Mountain Lion operating system.

If you are used to work with Mac OS X you will probably feel right at home. Pure Windows users on the other hand may need some time getting used to the skin as it changes several interface elements significantly. The Windows taskbar for instance is moved to the top of the screen, while the dock is listed at the bottom of the screen.

You can uninstall the Mac OS X skin pack like any other application on the system, and you end up with pretty much the same system as before. When I uninstalled the skin pack, only the top position of the Windows Taskbar was not changed by the process, but it took less than ten seconds to move it back into its bottom position.

The Mountain Lion theme for Windows 8 may not be after everyone’s liking, but those who want to give it a try benefit from the straightforward installation and uninstallation of the total conversion.

If you ask me, I’m not a fan of total conversions as they are never as good as the original. I had a few usability issues when I tested it and decided to uninstall it rather quickly again.

How to add search providers to uTorrent’s torrent search

Despite the route that uTorrent has been taken in the last year or so, it is still one of the most popular Bittorrent clients on today’s Internet. When you look at the feature set you will notice that some of them are not really that well known in comparison to others. While you probably know about the uTorrent apps store or uTorrent Plus, you may not know that you can use uTorrent to search popular torrent websites.

When you look at the client’s top right corner you will notice the search form there. While it may look as if this is a search for local torrents that are currently processed by the client, it is in fact a torrent search engine that allows you to search various online torrent indexing websites from within the Bittorrent client.

All you need to do is type a search term into the form and either hit the enter key right away to search the default torrent search engine or click on the down arrow next to the search icon to pick one of the available search engines from the list.

By default, only BitTorrent and Mininova are available. A click on manage search providers opens a configuration menu that you can make use of to add or remove torrent search engines from the program.

To add a search engine you first need to know its search url. Visit the search engines’s website and search for TEST or another phrase that you can easily identify when you look at the web address of the results page.

A search for test on the Piratebay for instance displays the following web address http://thepiratebay.se/search/test/0/99/0

All you need to do know is to remove everything after search from the address and add that address to uTorrent. For the Piratebay, you would add Piratebay|http://thepiratebay.se/search/ to uTorrent’s list of search engines. You should not have issues adding public torrent search engines to uTorrent.  Please note that searches are opened in the default system browser and not in uTorrent directly.

Have another uTorrent tip that you would like to share? Feel free to leave a comment below.

Want to try YouTube’s Carousel Look? Then do this

It seems like Google is constantly trying out new designs and testing them on the live side by randomly selecting a percentage of the user base. The latest design that is currently making the round is YouTube’s carousel design which changes the frontpage in a fundamental way.

I need to point out right away that this is only working for me if I’m not logged in on the site. Once I log in, the frontpage changes to the old design which stays there until I log out again at which point the new carousel design comes onto the screen again.

Before we look at how you can activate the new design on your computer, you are probably interested in how it looks like once you have activated it. Take a look at the screenshot below to find out.

What you basically get here is a full screen view of video recommendations. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure where your own video stream and subscriptions would fit in here, but would say that they are added somehow to the stream dynamically.

The design itself looks optimized for small screen devices, probably with touch, as it is making the selection process a lot easier on the screen.

To test out the new design you need to do the following in your web browser of choice:

• In Google Chrome, open YouTube.com, and press Shift-Ctrl-J
• In Firefox, open YouTube, and press Shift-Ctrl-K
• In Opera, open YouTube, press Ctrl-Shift-i, and switch to Console
• In Internet Explorer, open YouTube, press F12 to open the web developer toolbar, and switch to Console

Paste the following code into the form and hit enter. In Chrome you should get an undefined message and see that the frontpage is switched right to the new carousel design.

document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=eKxEWQ3xcc8; path=/; domain=.youtube.com";window.location.reload();

When you are done testing and want to switch back to YouTube’s old page design, you can either delete all cookies that the site has stored on your computer, or log in which also gets rid of the design for the time being. Check out the excellent Web Browser Maintenance guide over at Loginhelper for information on how to clear the cache and cookies in your browser of choice.

Do you like the new homepage layout?