Stop Kindle Fire from auto-changing wallpapers

Okay you’ve rooted your Kindle, added tons of new stuff. But you end up bowing to the default wallpapers of the KF every time you wake up your Kindle. Not good. You want to retain your wallpaper you set last time and don’t want your KF to change it when the screen goes off. Its easy to retain your settings.

You will need:

• Rooted Kindle Fire. Learn how to root our Kindle Fire here.
• Root Explorer App or any other explorer app like ES File Explorer or Astro File Manager etc. Any explorer which will let you mount your folder as a read/write will work.
• If you have rooted using Kindle Fire Utility, then you would also probably have the Go Launcher EX now. Its not really necessary, but it will be good to have this so you can install Live Wallpapers. Yay!

This is what we are going to do.

1. We are going to set up a wallpaper (not live wallpaper) and this wallpaper will stick on the apps background. After the change to the folder, this wallpaper cannot be changed. If you want to change it, you need to undo the permissions change we do, then change the wallpaper, and revert the folder permissions. But good news follows; You can set up live wallpaper for your KF Home and KF Lock screen. You can do this using the Go Launcher EX.
2. Now here is what you actually need to do.
3. Using Root Explorer navigate to this folder.

   data/data/com.android.settings/files

   
   
   
   
4. Press and hold the wallpaper item.
   
5. Select Permissions on the pop-up.
   
6. Uncheck the boxes for Write.
   
   
7. Done.

For easier access, you can bookmark this folder or create a favorite for shortcut access.

Now set up your wallpaper for Home and Lock Screen, and they wont change until you change them. Have fun!

Disclaimer: I’m not responsible for anything that happens to any device after following my posts. They work for me, and that’s what I’m sharing.

Fake Work Desktop Wallpapers to fool nosy co-workers

Everyone at least once in their life have experienced or will come across nosy co-workers who always want to spy on what you are doing or which website you are browsing now. Sometimes you can just avoid them other times you may not be so lucky. But here's a way to at least fool them have have some fun at their expense.

Enter Fake Wallpapers...!!!

Yes, I'm talking about the desktop wallpapers and how to trick co-workers by making your own wallpapers.

Open a document which is very obvious to anyone in your team which says "project related".
It could be a word document or a power-point presentation, or maybe a special application or software used in your team. If you use multiple monitors, open these documents or applications in all the monitors in maximized mode, in other words - cover up your screen with work related stuff.

Tip: 
Hide your Desktop Icons for authentic look. Right-click on your desktop, go to View, and then un-check "Show Desktop Icons". 

Fun mode: If you want to have fun, you can open up a spreadsheet or a word doc and prepare a fake report or document, which can say something like "Downsizing Proposal, prepared by (your name)", or "Monthly Appraisal Report for (insert your co-workers name who always annoys you)".

Look out for such fake documents at the end of the post to download.

• Once you have set up your screen as you want, hit "Print Screen" key on your keyboard. 
• Open MS Paint, or any other picture editor and press Ctrl+V, or right-click and Paste. 
• Make sure the screen resolution is the same as your monitor screen resolution, and if you have multiple screens, the resolution will correctly include all your monitors. Don't worry if you make mistakes, a couple of trial and errors will not matter. 
• Now save your picture in a high resolution .png or .jpg file. The reason why its required a high resolution is because it should look very real and not arise suspicion. 
• Now set this image as your wallpaper. Voila...!!! Now everybody thinks you are working all the time. 
• Tip for people who use multiple monitors, if you use Windows 7, then follow the below steps to make sure you wallpaper displays correctly. 
• Right-click on your desktop and click Personalize. 
• Click on Desktop Background. 
• Browse for your wallpaper location, and select it. 
• Make sure picture position is set to "Tile" so that your wallpaper displays correctly over multiple monitors. 
• Click Save Changes. 
• Now your are set too. 

Advanced Tip: 
After you make several such fake work wallpapers you can put them all in one folder. To make your life easier, create a new folder in "My Pictures", and name it "Work Wallpapers", and store all the wallpapers in there. 

• Right-click on your desktop and go to Personalize. 
• Click on Desktop Background. 
• Browse for your wallpaper location folder "Work Wallpapers". 
• Click on Select All button. 
• Select "change picture every" to a preferred time and check Shuffle. 

Now your wallpaper rotates, and you don't need to worry about your nosy co-worker suspecting your fake wallpaper. 

Now here are some fake work wallpapers for you. Of course you can make your own, or write your requests or screen resolution in the comments section and I'll make you special wallpapers.

The below wallpaper is about 4MB; I have not compressed it on purpose. I can make other sizes for similar wallpapers. Just send in the requests.

Tip: 
To make this wallpaper look authentic on any screen resolution, select the "Tile" option in your wallpaper settings if your monitor is smaller than this wallpaper, or select "Center" if your monitor is bigger than this wallpaper. 

Also below is the PDF Version of this document, in case you want to make it yourself.

Fake Report

Now go have some fun.

I'll add more such fun wallpapers often, I mean, for how long can you constantly work on just one report right? ;-)

Wallpapers for Desktop Organization

I see that many of you are using the wallpapers from one of my previous posts or trying out to make your own wallpaper. So here's another set of wallpapers for you to use. Going forward I'm going to make similar wallpapers of different screen resolution so that everyone can use it. If there is any particular screen size you prefer, just write in the comments and I'll make one for you. I'm also going to include an "unlabeled" version so you can name each section anything you want or leave them unnamed.

1024x768

1280x1024

1024x768

1280x1024

I have also included low resolution (quality) versions of the same wallpapers if you want to download even more faster.

1024x768

1280x1024

1024x768

1280x1024

Hope you enjoy them. More coming soon...

Learn how to make such wallpapers yourself.

Organize desktop icons with wallpapers

I've talked about how to organize icons using Fences. According to me that is the best free way to organize your icons. But I am tempted to write this post as well because my work laptop does not let me install any programs (yeah! I know the admin rights stuff). So I thought I would design a wallpaper with boundries which can help me organize/group icons. The idea is not new but I just wanted to write it down, so sorry if you've seen similar posts else-where on the web.

How to create the wallpaper:
I've created the wallpaper using MS Paint in Windows 7. I prefer the Paint in Windows 7 because it is so much better than the old MSPaint. And its the easiest to work with and available on all PC. Of course you can use any other software and even go professional with Adobe Photoshop. For me, I don't want to spend a lot of time creating a wallpaper I might want to change every few days or so, or change the layout often according to my needs.

How exactly to do it? It is completely driven by how many boxes you want, what color you want and what size you want. Let your imagination and needs guide you. You can see the wallpaper below to give you an idea. Or you can search the web for inspiration.

Additionally you can add titles on the boxes like - Personal, Urgent, Working, Archive etc to help you.

You can spend as much or as little time on this. The very basic wallpaper you are seeing below was created in less than 5 minutes. You can add photos of your recent vacation or your favorite movie poster.

Another important thing you need to note is that you need to uncheck the option for "Auto Arrange" in the context menu upon right click on your desktop. Also you may uncheck the option for "Align Icons".

Note - some Windows 7 PCs have the issue of re-arranging the icons on reboot. Unchecking the "Align Icons" helps a few.

And obviously you can use this idea on any OS or even your cellphone. I've created a few sample wallpapers. Of course feel free to use (the size may not fit all monitors, this is just a sample). And do write back if you like it or need more wallpapers. I will add more wallpapers in future.

Update [7/26/2011]: More wallpapers...

Update [2/23/2012]: More Wallpapers!!!

Click here to go the the newer post on Wallpapers for Desktop Organization.

Screen Resolution: 1024x768

Screen Resolution: 1280x1024

Screen Resolution: 1024x768

Screen Resolution: 1280x1024

Paint.NET: Free Photoshop Alternative

I love using Photoshop, but what I hate about it is its long learning curve (if you want to learn everything it does, as in my case) and the fact that it eats up most of the memory on my computer. And not to mention it's expensive.

So what if you want some software to do all (well, most) it does and does it for free. Ta-da. Paint.NET. For a little history, check out for Paint.Net on Wikipedia.

It is one cool image editing software, can compare with Adobe Photoshop.

Main Stuff:

• Edit in layers (like photoshop). 
• Has Adjustments like brightness, contrast, hue, saturation etc.
• Has Effects like Artistic, Blur, Distort, Noise etc. 
• History. 
• Tools.
• Plugins. 
• Windows only <-- sorry Mac users.
  

I don't want to go on to explain all the bits of Paint.NET. So here are a few screen shots to give you an idea.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm falling in love with this software, as I use it more and more by each passing day.  Maybe you should try it, especially if you always wanted to do some magic using Photoshop, but were confused or scared because you were clueless (I was, the first time I launched Photoshop). Hope this helps. 

Splashup.com – free online photo editing (Photoshop style)

If you don't have Photoshop, but would like to edit a photo in a similar style online then try http://www.splashup.com/

It is an online tool for editing photos, in layers. Has all the basic options that are present in photoshop and you can also share them in picasa, flickr, facebook etc.

Here is how the tool will look in your browser. Give this a try. You might like it.

Picnik.com – Free online photo editing

If your are into photo editing or if you like to add extra effects to your photos then this tool is for you. I am not telling this is the best tool available, but i really liked it because of its features and ease of use, and ways of storing the photos.

The link is www.picnik.com

It has -

• Many many editing options like crop, rotate, red-eye etc.
• you can add embellishments, effects, texts etc.
• make collages and scrapbooks
• special effects

You can pull photos from your computer or any major online album like flickr, picasa, facebook etc and after you have made changes to your photo you can upload them back as new photo or replace. You can also email to anyone.

If you are looking for some fun, then check out this site. They also have a premium account giving more features.

Scrapbooking Software

Here are a few scrapbooking software you might want to checkout before using one, or may be you can use all of them together according to your needs.

http://www.scrapbookflair.com/
Download the software for free. Gives you free backgrounds, embellishments, and design templates. Really easy to use and cool. Save as jpg etc.

http://www.mixbook.com/
No Download required. Make scrapbooks online and share them free. Order for prints for a small price.

http://freedigitalscrapbooking.com/
Free. Do not give any software, use your own, like photoshop or any other image editing tool. They give millions of embellishments. Check out the site for more info. Can order prints online.

CoolText.com – Free graphics generator

If you want some nice, cool images of texts really fast then www.CoolText.com is one of the sites you might be interested in.

You can create nice images, change color, font, size, shapes, effects etc to suit your needs. There are no ads, or added ad image within the logo you create. So it completely free and very easy to use. You can also create buttons with effects while roll over. This is very similar to creating texts and easy and instant.

Here are a few images i created using www.CoolText.com.

Very handy if you need to jazz up your site or blog within seconds.

PhotoMix – Digital Scrapbook

There are many digital scrapbook out there, and i have tried many of them, Photo mix is one of them, and is good for beginners (i repeat, for beginners) and for those who want scrapbooks made very fast (like those people who don’t have the time or patience).

PhotoMix can be downloaded from http://www.photomix.com.

There is also a free version available, but it allows to save only in photomix format, so you cannot print them out, or email. So one has to buy the software to save it in jpg, bmp, or put it as a desktop wallpaper etc. It costs around $30, but for at money or a little more, one can go for a more sophisticated digital scrapbook.

Downloads from the site include – templates, backgrounds, cliparts, addins etc. All of them are free, except a few addins costing $4-$8.

Since most of the things are ready, one can just drag and drop photos and save them. Scrap pages can be ready in minutes, even without using templates.

Few drawbacks – Not many editing features, just the basics. Very very basic interface, also looks kinda primitive. The software has not been updated since 2005. And also one can find a lot of bugs in the software.

Nice to use if someone gifts you this software, else i would use my $30 for something else.

Make online Cartoons

Ever wanted to make cartoon strips for your school project or some posters and thought it was a tough job. Then this site is perfect for you.

Toondoo.
http://www.toondoo.com/

It's simple to signup, cos it's free. And it is very easy to get started with as well. There are hundreds of pictures to use within the cartoon, which includes - backgrounds, people, props, effects and even different types of fonts and balloons. You can the cartoon strips online or on your computer.

And if your are planning to become a cartoonist, then you can also build a story by creating a series of strips.

Check out this website. Its cool and userfriendly.

Email Icon Generator - to protect email ids from spam

Have you regretted giving out your email id and then receive a lot of spam? That has happened a lot of times to me. But here's a solution.

This website gives your email id as an image, and you can download this image and insert in any mail, blog, forum etc. And it's free and instant.

http://services.nexodyne.com/email/index.php

And here are a few samples...

There are many more other providers, so it gives you the freedom to select what you want. This is one of the best ways to protect your email id, and also it's very cool. Now don't you want to show it off...