PrtScr: stylish, “cool” screen capture program

FreewareGenius has a post about PrtScr, a stylish, “cool” screen capture program.

• Capture modes: capture full screen (click “PrintScrn” twice), rectangular region, or freehand region of any shape. [Update Sep 14, 09] also supports capture topmost through Alt+PrntScrn hotkey.
• Hotkey: program is activated by clicking “PrintScrn”; you can optionally change it to any other hotkey combination.
• “Annotation”: will let you perform drawings with the mouse on screen right before you capture, which sounds like a great thing but in practice is of little use.
• Delays before capture: right click the PrtScr icon in the system tray to request delays of 5 or 30 seconds (not changeable).
• Editing: there is no internal editor; however, click “edit” and your captured image is opened using your PC’s default image editor. To find a good editing/annotation app and change the default image editor on your PC see this post.
• Multiple monitors: supported.
• Rescaling: (i.e.resizing the image) is possible before saving.
• Title and comment: you can add a title and/or a comment on-the-fly as you capture a screenshot

Making big posters

Sometimes you just have to say it big… on a big poster.  But who has a giant printer to make them?

Who needs a giant printer?  All you need is a way to blow up whatever you want on the poster, and print it in blocks that fit the paper for the printer you already have.

Examples:

Posteriza is a FREE online service that features:

• No installation required. No weird files on your system
• Use any Windows printer
• Use any paper supported by your printer. Any size. (A4, A3, Folio, Letter, etc)
• Posters can be any size you want. Using this program you can ever cover an entire whole wall of of your house!
• Use any font installed in your system for text
• Use any photograph as background. Supported formats are BMP, JPEG, PNG, EMF and GIF. Uou can even use just part of a photo!
• Choose predefined type and color for the frame

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An old friend of this blogger is shareware (try before you pay) “for making BIG posters, signs, banners, certificates, and murals, printing them up to 100×100 feet. POSTER combines the best features of graphics, word processing and desktop publishing packages together with special features for printing large posters or banners. All text and graphics are enlarged and printed over multiple pages.”

POSTER is distributed as shareware: you can download it and try it for free, but you are limited to printing 10 posters or banners. POSTER registration costs only $18 , and removes the 10 poster/banner limit, provides support and upgrades for a year, and gets you a disk with the latest version of Poster and a set of 100 fancy borders.

PrintWhatYouLike lets you do just that

“Ever print a web page only to find your printout is full of ads, empty space and other junk you don’t want? PrintWhatYouLike is a free web page editor that gives you control of how web pages look when printed.”

Enter a web page URL and get a printable page back without ads, widgets and other stuff. Or use the Bookmarklet. Free service, still beta testing.

This could be very useful for sites with lots of ads, or a distracting background.

Labels and more using autofillPDF-Labels

autofillPDF-Labels 1.0 has “free, fillable PDF label templates for U.S. letter-size label sheets. Fill in your information in one field and watch as your information automatically fills all label fields within that sheet! All you need to do is download and open up a template, fill a label field and hit the Tab button on your keyboard! Print your labels in an instant.

A complete collection of “Basic Formating” templates for address, shipping, mailing, CD labels as well as file folder, round, name badge, business card and all popular Avery labels sizes are available – among many more choices! PDF is an ISO International Standard: ISO 32000-1.”

4 types of Auto Fill “Basic Formating” templates for labels and business cards available:

• A) Autofill all label cells with the same information in seconds.
• B) For Shipping/Mailing labels, autofill information for FROM and TO – excellent for multiple shipments to one address.
• C) For Shipping/Mailing labels, autofill information for FROM & insert manually different information for TO
• D) Autofill image insert and text for popular size labels and business cards,
• Also, templates for manually inserting different information into each label cell

PDF Pad – when you still have to put it on paper

PDF Pad is a site to download printable documents for specialized purposes:

• Calendars
• Flags
• Graph Paper
• Smith Chart
• Staff Paper
• Storyboards
• Sudoku

No registration, no obligation.

Disketch CD Label for discs and cases for CDs and DVDs

Disketch CD Label Software “is a free CD and DVD disc labeling software for Windows. It allows you to create CD and DVD disc labels as well as cover images for CD and DVD jewel cases. You can import your own art work, or set a simple background colors and organize artist information along with track lists.”

For Windows 98/2000/XP/2003/Vista.  Use at your own risk.

Vista and older printers

PC Magazine (October 2008) had a possible solution for Vista owners when Vista refuses to install the older kernel-mode printer drivers:

1. Start

2. Run

3. enter gpedit.msc to launch the Group Policy Object Editor

4. Under Computer Configuration, double-click Administrative Templates, select Printers.

5. Find the policy Disallow installation of printers using kernel-mode drivers and double-click it.

6. Set to Disabled.

7. Click OK, close the Group Policy Object Editor, and reboot.

8. Try installing your old driver now.

Use at your own risk — this was intended to discourage crashes caused by badly-written drivers.

Not quite paperless programs

Lifehacker has a list of their top 10 Printable Productivity Tools which allow you to use paper more effectively,  when you can’t avoid using it.

Unprinting a bad print job in XP

Internet Fixes has instructions on how to get rid of that print job that won’t let anything else print.  (This is also a great site for all sorts of help on problems.)

If the printer was not turned on, or it jammed, or one of a number of other problems cropped up, Windows XP may just keep insisting on trying to print that one bad job, and not allow anything else to go through. Sometimes web pages may have a stray code that fools the printer and causes it to flake out.

You can see the print job in the queue by going to Start | Printers And Faxes and double-clicking the appropriate printer. While the queue lists Printing as the status, the job never prints, and other print jobs begin to stack up behind it.

If you cancel the jammed print job, the Status column indicates that you’ve deleted it. However, it never completes the delete operation, and the jammed print job remains right where it is. Frustrating, right?

When you encounter a jammed print job, your first instinct may be to reboot the system, which may flush the jammed print job from the queue, or at least give you a chance to delete it when it boots up again. But there’s an easier way.

Follow these steps:

1. Open Control Panel, and double-click Administrative Tools.
2. Double-click Services.
3. Scroll through the list of running services, and select the Print Spooler service.
4. Click the Stop Service button on the toolbar.
5. 5. After waiting a moment, click the Start button on the toolbar.
6. 6. Close Services, and close Administrative Tools.

When you return to the print queue, the jammed print job should no longer be there. If it is, you should now be able to delete it normally. Keep in mind that you may have to manually update the queue by selecting Refresh from the View menu.