Most readers would agree that it’s a pain to resize images. It’s pretty easy to do so when you use a tool such as Photoshop, but consider the system resources used just to resize an image. A simple tool such as MS Paint or Gimp can be used to resize images too, provided you have the time to do it manually. However, the Image Resizer Powertoy can make it even simpler and more efficient to resize images.

With the Microsoft Image Resizer Powertoy, all you need to do to resize an image is to right click the file and click on “resize pictures”. You will then be presented with a window where you can choose from a set of predefined and commonly used resolutions, or you can enter your own resolution into the custom box. The program will automatically resize the image to the given resolution, keeping the ratio so the image does not appear stretched or compressed.

Download the Microsoft Image Resizer Powertoy, a small 521 KB application.

Twitter sends out SMS alerts every time you receive a direct message or a nudge, provided you have chosen to receive such messages. However, Twitter does not send you messages each time you get a reply. When using services such as Vakow! to post messages on Twitter, it would help if you were able to get those replies to you via SMS as well. That’s where we at Harmless Geek come in. =)

If you have activated your mobile number with Twitter, then skip to the next paragraph. Else, head over to your Twitter devices page and activate your mobile number now.

Provided you have five minutes to spare, this tutorial should be pretty easy and straight-forward. Follow the steps:

1. Setup another Twitter account. Try to have a short username for this account, even if it doesn’t make any sense. This account is only for you and for the purpose of receiving @replies. For the purpose of keeping the public timeline clean, make this account “private”.
2. Create an account on Twitterfeed or any similar service.
3. In the following URL, change username to your Twitter username (handle). Also change username2 to the second Twitter account you created at step1.

   http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=username+-username2&show_user=true

4. It should look something like this, where 9_6 is my primary Twitter handle, and santoshgs is the second account I created.

   http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=9_6+-santoshgs&show_user=true

5. Now copy that URL and head over to the Twitterfeed account you created on step 2. Create a new feed with the login details of the second Twitter account, and use the URL we previously created. Include just the title or the description, but not both. Keep the update frequency to a minimum. It should look something similar to the following photo. What we have completed till now is making Twitterfeed post the search feed for your username to your second Twitter account.

   

6. All that remains now is that you follow your second account and activate device updates. (Pardon the username in the following crude image. It should actually be your second account handle.)

   

That’s it. You’re done. Now get @replies SMSed to you wherever you are! Remember, you read this FIRST on Harmless Geek.

You have a picture. It’s not that interesting. Of course, a picture is a lot better than a thousand words of text. But still, the picture isn’t up to the mark. You want to spice up the picture. Add a funny speech baloon or two. That’s fine, but then, it’s rather painful to keep adding a speech baloon every now and then, isn’t it?

Meet SayTweet. SayTweet makes the best use of your photo and your latest tweet.

SayTweet lets you upload a picture (or link to one available online), tag the people with the their twitter user ids, and creates a canvas - your original picture plus the latest twitter update in a speech bubble. Now the awesome part is that this picture is dynamic, and the speech bubble is updated to your latest update from twitter!

So what’re you waiting for? Headover to SayTweet, upload/choose a picture and create a canvas of your own!

Have Fun!

See what we at Harmless Geek have cooked up!

Missed any of our posts last week? Now’s the time to catch up on some of the best of the previous week.

A round up of the best posts of last week.

Featured Video: GTA 4: First Person Shooter mode

News: McLaren vs. Ferrari battle of the tech world

Linux: Five Text Processing Tools for Linux

Windows: Free registry defragment tool

Helpful Tips: Power Up Your Twitter - 11 Tools

Gaming: Need For Speed: Undercover game map

Websites: Backup Your Twitter Timeline

Let me take the pleasure of welcoming you to Harmless Geek. The Harmless Geek is not a single geek. It’s a group of geeks, consisting of six talented young authors - Aravind Jose, Kunal, Preshit, Sathya, Subbu, and yours truly, Santosh.

Having seen so many sites around us that only wrote about United States centric news, startups that will basically be startups forever, and sites whose sole purpose is to reblog a smaller blog’s writings, we wanted to bring all the best stuff on to one single site, without burdening our readers with too much.

We hope that we will provide some good information to you, the end user, without swamping you with stuff that you will never need. We aim to be that perfect site in your RSS reader that only displays a few informational posts every day, without overloading your feed reader with garbage. Read on to know more about what we write.

The Harmless Geek is an excellent source for finding new software for Windows, Linux, and Mac, that we hope will go on to help you in some small way. These are the software that we at Harmless Geek use almost every day in our lives. We simply love it.

As I already said, we are here to help you. Check out some of the best tips and tricks which include online services such as Google Reader, and also software such as Windows.

Occasionally, we write reviews of fabulous new web services, or drop a note about a particular web site that we liked. Our Websites category will keep you informed about all that. We simply love this category.

At Harmless Geek, we’re not all about written material. We do like our videos. The videos category has some of our best picks ranging from gaming videos to a little humour as well.

We occasionally do write about gaming. We love our PlayStations and our PCs. We’re geeks after all.

There are more categories that we are planning to add. If you want tell us something, be it a tip, a private comment, or anything at all, we’re here. Simply drop us a message at anytime of the day. We love our readers, and we love any feedback from them.

Finally, be sure to help us out by adding us to Delicious and Technorati. And don’t forget to subscribe to our feed. We have a whole list of subscription options too. It’s free, and you get the entire article content.

See, I told you, we really are harmless, and we’re geeks!

We're your Harmless Friend

The Twitter-crazy Harmless Geek authors:

• The Harmless Geek
• Aravind
• Kunal
• Preshit
• Sathya
• Santosh
• Subbu