The first ting you need is a good software to create nice artworks. You can go for simple software like, MS paint, Gimp, or some advanced tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Painter, Maya, 3DStudioMax, Pro-E, etc. Next thing you need is a graphic tablets or pen tablet to create artwork by your hand. If you have a pen tablet and some  software, you can create stunning artworks. Many people believes that traditional pencil and paper are hard to beat, but just look at how the computer sketchpads with digital styluses changed the way of drawing and sketching.

Graphic tablets

Wacom Bamboo
(http://www.wacom.com/)
When we consider the graphic tablets, Wacom is the most dominant company in the pen tablet field. There Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet is a handy tool to design nice artwork. The Bamboo series of tablets offers a new way to work on your computer, with options for activities like photography, art and sketching, digital inking, and general navigation using multi-touch gestures.

XP-PEN Tablet
(https://www.xp-pen.com/)
XP-Pen offers a range of products for digital artists and graphics designers. They have Deco series, Deco Pro series, Star series and Artist series tablets. Easch model have their own features to create realistic artwork. The Deco Pro series equipped with double wheel and trackpad functionality to create an improved experience for professional level creation.

Huion
(https://www.huion.com/)
Huion offers a range of PEN tablets for artwork and digital drawing. The digital pens are ergonomicaly designed and the comfortably designed silicone grip releases fatigue.

Gaomon Tablets
(https://www.gaomon.net/)
Gaomon tablets are designed with passive electromagnetic resonance technology that combined with 10mm sensing height frees the digital pen from wire connection. It ensures users more flexible drawing conditions and also improves the working efficiency.

SmoothDraw
(http://www.smoothdraw.com/)
Next thing you need a software. The SmoothDraw is an easy natural painting and digital free-hand drawing software that can produce high quality pictures. Support many kinds of brushes (pen, pencil, dry media, airbrush, bristle brush, image hose, etc.), retouch tools, layers, image adjustment, and many effects. It works great with tablets and Tablet PC, moreover it is a freeware.

CamStudio
(http://camstudio.org/)
If you want to record your computer screen activity to demonstrate your skills a screen capture tool is essential. CamStudio is  a free tool which can record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos.

If you have an ipad or android tablet there are some handwriting note-taking apps are available for tablets. You can use apps like Quill or PenSupremacy to record pen strokes. You can find some nice app from ipad and android store.

What is your opinion about these methods? Can you find any other alternative methods to do the job easily ?

Internet Download Accelerators

As the name says, download accelerators are for speed up or accelerating the download speed. Sometimes you want to postpone the download for sometime. Sometimes you want to categorize downloads, then this tool will really help you. Think of another situation, you are going to download a big file from the internet using your favorite web browser. You got the link and the download started, but after some time the connection dropped and the downloaded paused/stopped for a while. What to do? You have to restart the download. The result, you have to download one more time from the beginning! You may wish that if it has equipped with resume capability. The following tools have all the/some of the above mentioned features, read on.

Free Download Manager
(http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/)

Like you, we are also interested in free software’s. So begin with a free download manager. Free Download Manager is a powerful download accelerator and organizer for Windows and Mac. It supports Windows and Mac OS. One of its main feature is, it can download videos from popular websites, it has  HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/BitTorrent support Proxy support. You can adjust traffic usage, organize downloads, control file priorities for torrents, etc. You can download large files and resume broken downloads. The software can boost all your downloads up to ten times. IT can process media files of various popular formats. The tool is equipped with simple URL drag and drop feature, you can drag URLs right from your web browser. Like other accelerator you can simultaneously download multiple files. FDM is  compatible with the most popular browsers Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer and Safari.

Internet Download Manger (IDM)
(https://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/)

Internet Download Manager (IDM) is one of the most top rated tools to increase download speeds. This tool can increase speed by up to five times, it can resume and schedule downloads.  The resume capability will enable it to restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or power outages. One of the unique feature of Internet Download Manager is the smart download logic accelerator having intelligent dynamic file segmentation and safe multipart downloading technology to accelerate your downloads. Unlike other download managers and accelerators Internet Download Manager segments downloaded files dynamically during download process and reuses available connections without additional connect and login stages to achieve best acceleration performance. Internet Download Manager supports proxy servers, FTP and http protocols, firewalls, redirects, cookies, authorization, MP3 audio and MPEG video content processing.

JDownloader
(http://jdownloader.org)

Like FDM JDownloader is also a free and open-source download management tool. We can start, stop or pause downloads, set bandwidth limitations, auto-extract archives etc.

Download Accelerator Plus (DAP)
(http://www.speedbit.com/)

Download accelerator plus uses its dynamic acceleration engine to download the very same file using multi channels from the original source as well as other publicly available sources to make the best possible use of the bandwidth available to you for the fastest possible download time. A feature that we first observe in DAP is preview Videos while Downloading. You don’t wait for the videos to finish. To use the feature, while downloading, click the Video Preview link to play the file and make sure the content you are downloading. Video to MP3 features helps you to download videos from YouTube and convert to MP3 music files.

Orbit Downloader
(http://www.orbitdownloader.com)

Orbit Downloader helps to download files such as video/music/files from Myspace, YouTube, Imeem, Pandora. You can download streaming media, social music, social video, movie, flash and file from anywhere include Pandora, YouTube, Yahoo, Myspace, etc.

Xtreme Download Manager (XDM)(https://sourceforge.net/projects/xdman/)

It is also a powerful tool to increase download speed up, they are claiming up to 500%. You can save streaming videos from YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Google Video or any other website. Other cool features are,  resume broken/dead downloads and schedule downloads. XDM seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera, Safari and all popular browsers. The tool uses a sophisticated dynamic segmentation algorithm, data compression and connection reuse to speed up the download process. Xtreme Download Manager supports HTTP, HTTPS and FTP protocols, firewalls, proxy servers, automatic proxy scripts, file redirects, cookies, authorization etc.

Conclusion

You may notice that most of the service discussed above supports all types of files, video and mp3 downloading facility. Most of them can accelerate download speed up to five times, some of them claims more than that. Download resume is a nice feature, parallel downloading by splitting files into pieces is a nice feature used by IDM. Internet download manager (IDM) and Download accelerator Plus are the Titans in the download acceleration tools category. They are staying afloat in years and are selling large in number. Free Download manager (FDM) is the poor man’s download manager, as it’s available free. Most of them can download videos from popular video sharing sites like YouTube and Social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. Some can download MP3 files from music site like  Pandora, etc. DAP has a cool video feature, you can view the video while downloading. Now you can download any type of files from internet efficiently and fast.  Which tool you are using, kindly share your thoughts.

To take a screenshot of a map (thinking you don’t have any screenshot capture tool), enter a destination or point of interest to find the location, adjust the map using the zoom button or using your mouse. If everything ok, align the map on your screen and press ‘Print Screen’ button on your keyboard. Now the full image on the screen is captured as a screenshot. Now open an image editing program such as Microsoft Paint or Paint.net. Create a new document in the program and paste the image (Ctrl+V) on the program. Find the crop tool to crop the image and save the map as any one of the popular image formats like jpg or png.

The best way is to use the ‘Snipping tool’ or any other screenshot tool to capture the map. If you are using the Snipping tool, you can use the pen and highlighter tool to mark the road, driving direction and places to visit using different color pens. You can highlight tourist spots. You can plan the driving directions and finally, you can save it as a popular image file like jpg or png. Another way is, if you are using Chrome or Firefox browser, use extensions like ‘Awesome screenshot’ to get the screenshot of the webpage. You can save the screenshot and can open it later to edit it in image editing programs. You can add driving direction to it by opening it in Paint.

To take the screenshot you can use Greenshot, it is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows. You can use Jing to create images and videos of what you see on your computer screen. Another tool is Skitch from Evernote. Which is your favorite tool? Which method are you using to mark and take a screenshot of your driving directions and route map?

Desktop Applications

Notipage

(http://www.notipage.com/)

This is the first application we want to introduce. NotiPage is a free webpages monitoring software. Once you’ve configured a monitoring alert related to a specific webpage, NotiPage will automatically check this webpage on a periodic basis until all the set criteria are met. At that time, NotiPage will warn you by a visual and audible alert.

Website Watcher

(http://aignes.com/)

WebSite-Watcher is a powerful website monitoring tool, perfectly suited to the beginner and advanced user alike. It can monitor web pages with a minimum of time. Logins to a password protected page can be recorded with the integrated Check-Macro feature. These macros are executed when WebSite-Watcher checks the bookmarks for updates. Efficient way to monitor forums for new topics and replies using forum templates. Works with all major forums including phpBB, SMF, vBulletin, IPB, etc. The full version of website watcher software is available on a 30 day free trial. The best thing is you can tracks an unlimited number of pages and you can choose to ignore HTML tags, image, numbers and dates. Track entire sites without having to specify each page individually. As well as web pages you can track RSS and Atom feeds, but this feature is not really a replacement for a fully fledged RSS reader.

UpdatePatrol

(http://www.updatepatrol.com/)

Monitors web sites, blogs and text files for changes and also monitors PDF files for changes. This web page monitoring software makes following hundreds of web sites and blogs as simple and fast as checking your e-mail. This web page monitoring software costs US $69.95for the Standard Edition or US $129.95 for the Pro Edition with additional advanced features.

Copernic Tracker

(http://www.copernic.com/)

Copernic Tracker automatically looks for new content on Web pages, as often as you like. When a change is detected, our Web site tracking software can notify you by sending an email, including a copy of the Web page with the changes highlighted, or by displaying a desktop alert.

Internet Owl

(http://www.internetowl.com/)

Internet Owl watches web pages for changes. Tell it which web page to watch, and it will check for changes periodically, and send you an email when the page changes.

Online Tools

ChangeDetection

(http://www.changedetection.com/)

ChangeDetection.com provides page change monitoring and notification services to internet users worldwide. Anyone can use our service to monitor any website page for changes. Just fill in the form below, we will create a change log for the page and alert you by email when we detect a change in the page text.

InfoMinder

(http://www.infominder.com/)

InfoMinder is a hosted subscription service that allows you to track changes to web pages, blogs, RSS feeds and wikis. Trial version is free for 30 days and track up to 10 web pages.

Femtoo

(http://femtoo.com/)

Femtoo is a revolutionary way to track changes in any public web page. You simply choose which web page you wish to track and whenever the content changes, you get notified. Femtoo allows you to select specific parts, even multiple parts of a web page.  Premium accounts of Femtoo starting from €1.20 per month.

ChangeDetect

(http://www.changedetect.com/)

ChangeDetect provides web page monitoring services. Receive an automatic e-mail notification whenever content changes on your favorite webpages. The free trial version of this service allows you to track a maximum of 5 pages and lasts for two weeks.

WatchThatPage

(http://www.watchthatpage.com/)

WatchThatPage is a service that enables you to automatically collect new information from your favorite pages on the Internet. You select which pages to monitor, and WatchThatPage will find which pages have changed, and collect all the new content for you. The new information is presented to you in an email and/or a personal web page. You can see an example of the watchthatpage email here and a guided tour from here.

Follow That Page

(http://www.followthatpage.com/)

Follow That Page sends you an email when your favorite web pages have changed. It is a simple web based application.

Versionista

(http://versionista.com/)

Follow entire Web sites and receive e-mail alerts when differences that meet your regular expression filters are met. You can monitor and record any entity’s total online presence, including social media, blogs, and other Web sites.

Google Alerts

(http://www.google.com/alerts)

Another free option is Google Alerts. Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your queries. Enter a search query you wish to monitor. You will see a preview of the type of results you’ll receive. You can also search inside a website like ‘webpage site:website.com’.

Browser Add-on

Update Scanner

(From Mozilla site)

Monitors web pages for updates. Useful for websites that don’t provide Atom or RSS feeds.

Page Monitor

(From Chrome extension)

Page monitor extension allows your browser to monitor changes to web pages for you. It can inform you whenever a particular page changes without you having to go and check every time. To use, simply go to a page you would like to monitor, click on the Page Monitor icon and select “Monitor This Page”. You’re done! Now whenever this page changes, the monitor icon will display a notification on its badge. Of course, you can repeat this for any number of pages.

How is the list? Did you loved the products? Which one you pick, desktop? Web based or a Browser Add-on?

First, we have to go through the traditional way. Windows has a System Configuration Utility, you may hear it as MSConfig. This is a useful tool for managing and controlling startup programs. You can access the MSConfig, on Windows versions XP and prior, click Start -> Run, and in the run box, enter “msconfig”, on Vista and 7, type “msconfig” into the search box in the main menu. The System Configuration Utility appears as shown in the below screenshot. Click the Startup tab (the last tab). There you will see a list of programs that start when your computer starts.To stop a program from automatically launching when you boot the computer, uncheck the box next to its entry. Remember, take appropriate precautions when disabling items in MSConfig, some items are necessary to start up and working of essential tools like antivirus. You can also do this easily using some dedicated tools. Some of the highly useful tools are discussed below.

Starter
(http://codestuff.tripod.com/products_starter.html)

The starter is a free application which allows to view and manage all the programs that are starting automatically whenever operating system is loading. The tool enumerates all the hidden registry entries, startup folders’ items and some of the initialization files, so that the user could choose to temporarily disable selected entries, edit them, create new, or delete them permanently. This tool can also be used to list all the running processes with possibility to view extended process’ information (such as used DLLs, memory usage, thread count, priorities etc.), and to terminate selected process. The starter is a freeware, the user interface is pretty simple and has a lot of options that are self-explanatory. It works well on Microsoft Windows 9x, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista operating systems.

Autoruns
(Download Autoruns)

This is a tiny utility for startup monitor which shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login, and shows you the entries in the order Windows processes them. These programs include ones in your startup folder, Run, RunOnce, and other Registry keys. You can configure Autoruns to show other locations, including Explorer shell extensions, toolbars, browser helper objects, Winlogon notifications, auto-start services, and much more. You can easily manage processes using the clear user interface.

Argente
(Download Argente)

Many applications, when you install, are configured to run automatically when Windows starts, which is not always necessary. Argente StartUp Manager is a utility that displays all the applications that start with Windows. You can block elements like spyware and adware from automatically loading that follow your movements on the Internet and consume the bandwidth of your connection. 

Quick Startup
(Quick Startup at glarysoft)

Quick Startup is a quick and simple startup manager designed specially to speed up Windows boot by delaying some programs auto-startup after system boot, or removing unnecessary programs that snatch resources to launch themselves at the system boot. Quick Startup works to arrange the auto-start programs and makes enough resources for system boot, speeding up PC loading to the fastest performance,you can see the application screenshot.

Advanced Startup Manager
(Unfailingsoft Advanced Startup Manager)

Autorun management is with just a few clicks, you can put any program, file, folder, or Internet connection on a special list, and then it will start automatically whenever you log into your system. Advanced Startup Manager offers user-friendly interface, full support of drag and drop, fast operation, and reliability.The tool has a nice interface to manage the process.

Cleaner: Startup Manager
(http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner)

You may notice this simple tool and may have used this tool. But most of the users don’t know that it is also equipped with a startup manager. CCleaner removes unused files from your system allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up hard disk space. The tool also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. It contains a fully featured registry cleaner and startup manager. This is our favorite tool,  to be frank this is the only tool needed to do a disk cleanup, registry cleanup and handling startup programs.

What is your opinion about the tools? Each tool has its own feature set and tools. You can choose your own tool. If you want an all in one tool CCleaner is the best tool to consider. The time tested tool comes with disk cleaner, registry cleaner and startup manager, moreover it is free to use!