This is how you go about to do just that (not fall asleep, but schedule the computer to …)

1. Start the Windows Task Scheduler (Click The Start-button, and type “Task” or “Schedule” in the Search Field)
2. In the Action Menu, you find the option called: Create Basic Task. This will open the Task Wizard.
   
3. Give the Task a Name: "Sleep when I do", and click Next.
   
4. Choose when you want the task to run (Daily), Click Next
5. Now choose what time we want the computer to shut-down. In this example I chose 2 am. Click Next.
   
6. At this point Windows want to know what kind of task to run, choose “Start a Program” and click Next
7. In the Program Field, type: shutdown
8. In the Add argument field, type: -h t 60 f (or -s t 60 f )
   
   Translated this means, hibernate, give 60 seconds timeout to stop action, and force shutdown of any running application.
   (For other options see the list below)
9. Click Next
10. Click Finish

And that is it.

Shutdown Options

s = shutdown
h = hibernate
l = logoff (not shut-down)

t xxx – timeout (give the user a chance to abort)
f – Force shutdown  of running applications
p – Force action without timeout or prompt

How to modify scheduled task

If you want to modify or delete your scheduled shutdown task, open up the task scheduler and click on “task scheduler library” in the left sidebar. The task will be listed there as “Sleep When I do” (if that is really what you called it.

At Windows Guides, we do our very best to bring you the best tips, advice, and freebies. In this guide, we share the first part of 100 of the best free icon packs available online. The posts are broken into two because of the size of the images needed to preview each pack. For those on dial-up, 7.14MB of images may be a little much—hopefully by splitting this post into two parts, you’ll be able to get the most out of these great downloads.

Looking for the second part? 100 Free Icon Packs for Windows [Part 2 of 2]

Looking for even more icons? Icon Packs on Windows Guides.

Flurry Icons for Office

Vacation

Function Icon Set

Windows 7 Library Icons

Basic set

Basic Set 2

Watercolor Free Icon Pack

Crysigns

Oddiy icons

Flurry Icons for Audio 3

Flurry Icons for Gamers vol.2

MinIcons

fractal.design.system.pack.2007

SEM Labs Web Blog Icon Pack

PC Social Media Icons

Hydro Pro icons

Isloo

WooFunction

Onebit free icon set

Onebit free icon set #2

256×256 Business Icons

FRESH Add-on

Amakrits PNGs

Flurry for the Web

GiNUX

CISTM icons

Web Injection

Copenhagen

WP WooThemes Ultimate Icon Set

25 Free Social Networking Icons

iPhone 4

Feedicons 2

Nixus

Phuzion

Gnome 2.18 icon theme

borken icons

Windsor

Professional Red Icons

Computer Hardware

Nurture

Social Buzz Icon Pack

Aire Icon Pack

Le Esta Icon Set

Free eCommerce icons

Brushed Adlua Icons

Free Glossy Blogging Icons Set for Bloggers

Social Networks Pro Icons

Grunge Peeling Stickers Social Media Icons

Milky – A free stock vector iconset

Must Have Icons

On to 100 Free Icon Packs for Windows [Part 2 of 2]

Looking for even more icons? Icon Packs on Windows Guides.

At Windows Guides, we do our very best to bring you the best tips, advice, and freebies. In this guide, we share the second part of 100 of the best free icon packs available online. The posts are broken into two because of the size of the images needed to preview each pack. For those on dial-up, 7.14MB of images may be a little much—hopefully by splitting this post into two parts, you’ll be able to get the most out of these great downloads.

Missed the first part? 100 Free Icon Packs for Windows [Part 1 of 2]

Looking for even more icons? Icon Packs on Windows Guides.

iVista 2 PNGs

Designer Icons – Professionally Hand-Crafted Free Icon Set

Icon Pack 2

Web 2.0 Gift

Radium Icon Set

Black glamour

Summer Collection icons

Shine

Light Dock Icons

Vintage Stamp Social Media Icon Pack

Icon Pack

Coquette Part 2 Icons

Niome PNGs

Onibari Leopard Made

Onibari light

Glass Icon Pack

Coquette Icon Packs

Pry Black icons

Eko Folders

Crystal Project icons

Crystal 256X256 PNGs

Icon Pack 2 Custom Icons II

Office dock icons

GNOME Desktop icons 2.20

De Freu. -Icon Pack.

“Where Are My Money” Icon Set

Sketchy Web Icons

Balloon Icons

Developpers Icons

Aeon

Simplistica icons

Noiro Icons

Icon Pack 2 Custom Icons III

Web Application Icons Set

facebook ui icons vector

Strawberry Milkshake – System Icon Set

Finance

Glossy Grayscale Icons

Aesthetica Icons

KX2 Assembly Line: Computer Pack V1

NX10

Flurry Icons for Social Media

Flurry Icons for Audio 2

Weby Icon Set

11 Free Video Sharing Icons

Flurry Icons for Gamers

JB: Insomnia Collection

Circles III : Gaia

Adobe CS4 mini icon set

Primo icons

Back to 100 Free Icon Packs for Windows [Part 1 of 2]

Looking for even more icons? Icon Packs on Windows Guides.

Recently, I asked iTunes to organize my music directory (getting music from different sources other than just the iTunes store left it a little messy and I decided I’d let iTunes do its thing) and it did a great job; however, it left a bunch of empty directories. Although these empty directories didn’t pose any performance impact, they just looked… messy and I decided I’d delete them. I started doing this one by one and soon realized I had over 50 empty directories and sub directories. Being lazy, I decided to run a command to remove these directories. I’ve done this a lot in Linux so I figured it was easy; well, not quite, but it’s also not that hard. In this guide, I’ll show you what I did and hope you can find this useful in some way.

Remove Empty Directories Using the Command Line

Note: “Directory” and “folder” interchangeable terms in this context.

What I decided to do was list out all directories and parse them out to a batch file. To do this:

1. Open the command prompt (press Winkey+R, type cmd, and press Enter.)

2. Change the directory to the base directory containing the empty folders and sub-folders. In my case I switched to the Y: drive with the command:

y:

and then changed to my iTunes music directory with the command

cd Y:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music

3. Run the following command:

dir /ad/b/s | sort /r >>out.bat

This command does the following:

dir - Runs the directory command

/ad – Selects files with the “directory” attribute i.e. all folders

/b – Base listing i.e. just folder names

/s – Include sub-folders

| – Pipe output from the dir /ad/b/s command to the following command (sort.)

sort - Sort the output

/r -  In reverse order. So, when we get to the next step we’ll be able to delete empty subfolders before we delete the parent folders (otherwise the parent folders wouldn’t be seen as empty.) When making this guide, I missed this parameter and couldn’t work out why it was only deleting some folders — before realizing there was a pattern to the results.

>>out.bat – Created an output of the command in out.bat in the same directory you’re working in (in this case, the iTunes music folder.)

4. Now open out.bat in a good text editor that can handle regular expressions (RegEx) i.e. Notepad++. We’re going to modify this output to turn it into a series of commands that with remove the directories (RD) one by one without deleting directories with files in them (default for the RD command.)

5. Press CTRL+R to open the Replace tool. Replace the first part of the directory path (i.e. Y:\Music\iTunes) with RD “[Directory path] RD in front of it. This basically adds RD (remove directory) to the front of every line:

i.e.

Find: Y:\Music\iTunes\iTunes

Replace: RD “Y:\Music\iTunes\iTunes

Note: Do this in either Normal or Extended search mode.

6. Now to add a double quote to the end of each line. You can either do this manually (which I am too lazy to do) or by using a regular expression (you could also do it in word using paragraph marks as your search criteria.)

You’ll want to find each line and replace it with the line and a double quote i.e.

Find: ^(.*)$

Replace: \1″

Click Replace All to update the whole file.

7. Now add the word PAUSE to the end of the batch file to show the output in case there are any errors:

8. The next two steps are optional but I advise you do them to ensure your directories are empty.

As Windows creates thumbnail files by default, directories with media files in them will likely have a thumbs.db file in each of them. First, you’ll need to show hidden files and then search the base directory for thumbs.db and delete them all (even in the folders that still contains files that you don’t want to delete.)

9. As iTunes also adds a bunch of .jpg files to each directory (that it didn’t clear up when rearranging them), you’ll need to delete these too. Search for *.jpg and delete them all (this will delete the files from directories you want to keep but iTunes will replace them if needed.)

10. Now the fun part: double click your saved batch file to run it. Click Run when prompted.

11. As we added the PAUSE at the end of the file, the command prompt will show us the output. Notice a lot of directories were not deleted as they are not empty. That’s a good thing.

12. Now go to the directory and check that the empty folders are deleted.

This may take some time the first time you do it, but I am sure it will save you a ton of time in the future.

Please note: Only activate and use this account if you have a need to do so (i.e. tinkering with system files on a non-critical PC.)

Learn, in this guide, how to activate the hidden administrator account in Windows XP (Instructions for Windows Vista/7.)

Activate the Hidden Administrator Account

To active the administrator account, you should do the following (please note the administrator account is available in Safe Mode without registry editing.)

Open Regedit and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\SpecialAccounts\UserList

Create a new D-WORD value of Administrator with value of 1.

Now exit the Registry Editor.

Set a Password for the Administrator Account

The first thing you should do is set a password for the administrator account. To do this, click Start > Control Panel and double click User Accounts:

Click on the newly-created Administrator account:

Click Create a password:

Type a password and click Create Password:

Have fun and remember to make backups and only modify system files on a non critical PC/image.

In this How To guide I will be showing you how to create your own Start Orb for Windows 7.  I’ll be using Photoshop CS5.  Sorry to those who use alterative software.  I’m sure you’ll be able to follow using your preferred software however.

Step 1.

Start by creating a new document in Photoshop (Ctrl+N).  Match your settings to the screeny.

In this guide i have used 100% DPI, if you use 125% or 150% DPI then you’ll have to adjust the image size and the ‘Orb’ size accordingly.

125% DPI – use 66 x 198px
150% DPI – use 81 x 243px

Select Black as your foreground colour (D) and fill the background layer (Alt + Backspace).

Step 2.

Time for a bit of mental arithmetic. We must vertically divide the image into three.

I also like a nine pixel border as guide, to start working with the Orb.

Make sure Rulers (Ctrl+R) are visible and the Move tool (V) is selected.

Set the ruler to display Pixels by right clicking the white rule and selecting Pixels.

Click the Ruler and drag to these points.  At this point, you may find it handy to open the Info pallet (F8) to check your coordinates.  Click the small icon and set it to Pixels.

Horizontal Guides:

9 Pixels

45 Pixels

54 Pixels

63 Pixels

99 Pixels

108 Pixels

117 Pixels

153 Pixels

Vertical Guides:

9 Pixels

45 Pixels

Your image should now look, totally ridiculous!

Step 3.

Find the image you want to make into a Start Orb (preferably larger than forty pixels by forty pixels).  Open it in Photoshop and check it’s 72 Pixels/inch. (Ctrl+Alt+I)

We need to copy the image (Ctrl+A – Ctrl+C), switch over to your Black background and Paste (Ctrl+V).  A new layer will automatically be created, named “Layer 1” .  Double click the “Layer 1” text and rename it “top”.

Before making any adjustments to the size, change  the “top” layer into a ‘Smart Object’.  Do this by right clicking the “top” layer and selecting Convert to Smart Object.  (If you need to remove backgrounds etc. convert after your modifications).

You’ll know it’s converted by a small icon in the layer pallet.

Now we need to resize so it fits in our guide lines.

Use the Free Transform tool (Ctrl+T).  Grab a corner node, hold Shift and resize to fit.

Step 4.

Be sure the “top” layer is centred in the top guide box.

Duplicate (Ctrl+J) the layer, select the Move tool (V) then Shift Nudge down (Shift+↓) five times and nudge down (↓) a further four times (54 pixels).  Rename this layer “middle”.  Duplicate (Ctrl+J) the “middle” layer and repeat the Nudging.  Rename this layer “bottom” and drag n drop the layers into the appropriate order.

You should now be looking at something like this.

This is where the fun starts.  Adding the effects to the different button states; Normal, Hover & Clicked.

Adding glows to Hover & Clicked is quite common but off course, experiment to your hearts desire!

top = Normal

middle = Hover

bottom = Clicked

Step 5.

To those new to layer styles, double click the “middle” layer to bring up the Layer Style dialog box (Generally speaking you wouldn’t add any effects to Normal).  Here you can change the appearance of your orb.  As I mentioned, adding a glow is common so that’s what we’ll do.  Under Styles, click Outer Glow and check the check-box is ticked.  You can play around with many settings here but for this basic guide, will stick to colour and size.

Make your changes and then repeat on the “bottom” layer adding a subtle change.

You can, at any time change the glow (and many other things) by double clicking next to Outer Glow text in the layer to bring up the Layer Styles dialog box.  You can toggle the effect with the eye-ball.

Step 6.

Once you are happy with the different effects, we must deal with the alpha channel for transparency.

Merge the different Orb layers (Ctrl Click top, middle & bottom).  Right click and select Merge Layers.

All three Orbs will now be on one layer.  Ctrl-Click the image preview in the layers pallet.

You’ll see marching ants around the Orbs.

Select the Channels pallet and create a new channel.

Select the Brush tool (B), right click your image and set the Size to 200 pixels and the Hardness to 100%.  Change your foreground colour to White (X)

Click over your image once.

Step 7.

Deselect (Ctrl+D), click the RGB channel and switch back to the layers pallet.

Press Ctrl+Shift+S to bring up the Save As dialog box.

Save the image as a 32bit Bitmap file;

Now back in Photoshop, go to the History panel.

Go back to a state before the merge eg.

Then go back to Save As and save as a .psd.  You should do this so you can modify your orb again.  You’ll have to create the new alpha channel  and wot-not though.

And that is how to make your own Start Orb.  I know this has been a massive read and might seem like a nightmare but once you’ve done it a few times it’ll be a breeze!

You may need to slightly tweak the sizes and positions of the orbs, experiment and have fun.  If you like you can share them with our forums.

How To apply the Orb to your system;

A quick and easy way to apply your Orb to your system is to use this tool.  Check out the Readme file for instructions.

Or you could checkout our guide on how to do it manually.

New to using the command prompt? Check out the Windows Command Prompt Beginner’s Guide

Earlier today, we looked at how to launch the command prompt in Windows and how to run it with elevated permissions as an administrator. Now, we’ll learn how to customize the user interface of the command prompt. Specifically, we’ll learn the following:

• How to Customize the Command Prompt
• How to run a Transparent Command Prompt

How to Customize the Command Prompt

To customize the command prompt that comes bundled with Windows:

Open a command prompt, right click the title bar, and click Defaults.

On the Font tab, you can customize the font and size:

On the Colors tab, you can customize the text and background colors:

Click OK, close the command prompt, and open it again:

You can also set the color of the background and text by referencing this chart and using the color command:

For example, color F0 will result in ‘F’ bright white background with  ’0′ black text:

How to Run a Transparent Command Prompt

To get a customized command prompt, I recommend downloading Console2 by Marko Bozikovic (bozho.)

Extract the downloaded file to C:\Program Files\Console2 (C:\Program Files (x86)\Console2 for 64 bit users.)

Note: You can extract this wherever you like but Program Files seems like a logical place to me.

Add Console2 to Your Start Menu

This step is optional but highly recommended if you want quick access to Console.

1. Right click on Console.exe and click Create Shortcut.
2. Rename the shortcut to cmd2 and put it on your start menu.

Now, when you want to access the command line, press Winkey, type cmd, and click cmd2.

Customize the Default Look of Console

We’re not done yet; to customize the look of Console from its default:

You can either use the format menu or modify the XML. Let’s modify the XML (it’s more fun that way.)

Go to the directory of Console, make a backup of console.xml, and open console.xml with your favorite editor (I use Notepad++ and highly recommend it):

Note: These instructions work for Console-2.00b146-Beta_32bit. As newer versions are released, these values may change.

Note 2: These instructions are to change the console to the look like the example at the top (and bottom) of this post. Of course, you can change the values to whatever you like.

Go to line 3 and change rows to 20

Go to line 24 and change bold to 1

Go to line 28, change show_menu to 0 and show_statusbar to 0

Go to line 33 and change type to 1, active_alpha to 200, and inactive_alpha to 200

Go to line 93 and change title to any title you want on the window

Go to line 95 and change r to o, g to 128, and b to 0

The end result:

Have fun with it!

Download Console2

Download Console2

FindThatFont 1.0 – Organizing made simple 

The main idea behind FindThatFont is to make is easy to find that very font you need for your design. This application let you create and set categories for each font on your system. You can then sort your fonts accordingly. However FindThatFont does only read fonts installed in the Windows Font Folder, but the developer promise to add functions from other font management programs, like Enable / Disable fonts from different locations.

Interesting idea

FindThatFont! offers an extension manager and allows developers to modify or extend the program with endless many features. So far there is only one extension available, but if the developer gets this right I’m sure many more will follow.

AMP Font Viewer – Powerful yet Easy

AMP Font Viewer comes packed with a great deal of functionality. In addition to preview fonts you can enable/disable fonts from various locations. It has a built in search function that allows you to search for partial names – keeping you from scrolling through the entire font-list. Another Feature which I love, is the ability to temporarily enable a font. This allows you to use a font on a certain job, without having to disabling it afterwards. A great function for those fonts you only use now and then. AMP Font also offers several options for managing and organizing fonts in categories.

What caught my eye

The “Scratchpad area” which is a small Notebook-like window where you can play around with your fonts to see how it behaves in different settings.

NexusFont – Going Portable

NexusFont might just be my new favorite. As you know I’m a graphics Designer and I have tons of fonts at my disposal. One of the things I look for in a powerful Font Manager is the ability to temporarily enable fonts. NexusFont goes beyond that. The usual functions aside, NexusFont let you search for and remove or rename duplicate fonts. It has an automatic enabling function that makes all listed fonts in NexusFont available to other programs.

What really caught my eye

It’s Portable! NexusFont can be installed on your USB Flash Drive. If you travel a lot, you can keep all your fonts on the flash drive, boot NexusFont on any computer and you’re all set. Never be without your fonts ever again.

Downloads

FindThatFont

AMP Font

NexusFont

Microsoft is planning to release the beta of Internet Explorer on September 15, 2010. Before the beta arrives, we can see many of the new features in the Internet Explorer Platform Preview.

The most recent Platform 4th was released on august 4.

Since the beginnings of Internet Explorer, it’s had two main problems: support of web standards and poor performance.

Better Performance

The web browser has become more and more complex over the years. This complexity is the reason why these programs need to be optimized at maximum.

JavaScript engine

JavaScript is a key part on every browser. This language is used to create interaction with the user at client side.

When a web server sends site content to a browser it uses a scripting language. This script is the same regardless of if you are using an AMD, Intel or a MAC, or an iPad. This is good for the server because there is no needed for different versions of the same page for every environment but it means the browser needs a way to render the code on your computer. Thus, the browser uses a component that interprets, compiles, and executes the code.

If your computer has more than one CPU core, Internet Explorer 9 can execute this in parallel so this process is completed in a very smooth way.

Better Usage Of Hardware

Browsers are not a very optimized programs with respect to hardware usage.

I’m sure you have experienced that your computer has problems showing some web pages. Sometimes it may be due to your browser was rendering something very complex. The website can be very complex but have your ever thought: how is possible that your computer is capable of rendering a full 3D game but has problems with Internet pages?

The reason for this is that these applications have never taken advantage of the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU.) In other words, they don’t use the acceleration features of your expensive graphic card.

Internet Explorer 9 is going to change that.

Better Web Standards Support

What exactly does this mean?

For a web designer is very frustrating and time-consuming to have to create different versions of your webpages for different browsers.

[Ed note: We were promised better standards adherence in IE8 and things did improve somewhat so I look forward to IE9's take on markup and coding standards.]

Here’s a list of the enhancements made in the current version of Internet Explorer Platform Preview:

Enhanced CSS3 Support

CSS is a language used to describe the look and formating of a web page. CSS specifications are made by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). CSS3 is currently under development but this doesn’t mean that browsers cannot start implementing the standards.

Have you ever noticed that many pages look better in Firefox and Chrome even with the same content?  Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t support CSS3 so other browsers are one step ahead on this.

The main improvements right now are:

• Rounded corners via border-radius property.
• CSS3 background and border features.
• The opacity property.
• RGBA, HSL, and HSLA color models.
• CSS3 fonts properties and new web font formats.
• CSS3 media queries.
• CSS3 namespaces.
• CSS3 values and units.
• CSS3 selectors.

ECMAScript feature enhancements

Internet explorer 9 is going to be more compliant with JavaScript standards. We all hope that this drive that the same code works on every browser. We will see if this happens.

Added HTML5 support

HTML5 is the latest version of HTML; some see HTML 5 as competition to Flash.

For now, Microsoft claims that Internet Explorer 9 Platform has the following HTML 5 features:

• The video and audio elements
• The canvas element
• The Selection interface
• Improved parsing of HTML elements
• Text selection APIs

SVG features

SVG is yet another another language/markup (I think is impossible to know how many languages and formats are related to browsers.)

You can use SVG for describing two-dimensional vector graphics. The idea behind SVG is very simple: if you use a formula instead of a grid of pixels for describing a graphic then the image is not going to have distortions when you resize it.

This is the same idea that is behind the True Type Technology (fonts that can be used in any size without losing quality.)

Right now the platform has implemented the following SVG features:

• Basic shapes: rectangles, circles, ellipses, lines, polylines, and polygons
• Clipping, masking, and compositing
• Coordinate systems, transforms, and units
• Document structure, metadata, and extensibility functionality
• Gradients and patterns
• Interactivity
• Linking and views
• Painting and color
• Paths, including full capabilities of the path element and d attribute
• Text

Developer Tools additions

Chrome and Firefox have their own tools that make a web developer’s life easier; Internet Explorer 8 doesn’t have these sort of features; however, Internet Explorer 9 offers the following for developers (in the current Platform Preview):

• Console tab
• Network tab
• UA switcher tool ( You can modify the browser type and version that your browser sends to the web server )
• Real-world performance measurement

This post was created using this information Internet Explorer Platform Preview Guide for Developers.

What’s your take on IE9? Plan to upgrade early? Are you a web developer and hold on to the hope that IE9 won’t break your sites?

But EXIF also stores more information than that.

If you’re a fan of the CSI series (or any other crime fighting series), you have undoubtedly seen that they from time to time try to verify if a photo has been altered in any way. What they draw their conclusion on, is the EXIF Data stored in the file. What they don’t tell you is that some equipment also stores your GPS-position which may lead someone to your home adress, phonenumber, income etc.

Personal information at stray

In todays digital world, many share their photos on sites like Facebook, Twitter etc. without any concern. Some may blur out faces and other revealing “information” in the photos, but leave personal information available for anyone who knows where to look.

First off, NOT ALL photo equipment store personal information. But how do you know that yours don’t – if you don’t check ?

There are some Cameras that has GPS or GeoTagging features. But for the most part, Cellphones are the ultimate culprit as many nowadays have built-in GPS.

Imagine this scenario: You take pictures around your house, showing off the expensive home cinema system, new car, cellphone etc. You upload these pictures to your public folder. If any of these pictures have your GPS-Location stored in the EXIF, anyone can find your address from the GPS Coordinates (using Google Maps). Then a quick search on Yellow Pages (or similar) reveals who lives at the address, then a new search can reveal your phone number, your tax and income and so on. All of which can lead to identity theft.

Try for your self, and see if you can figure out who lives here.

I’m not writing this to scare you, but… well, okay maybe I am… Just a little…

Cameras

Cameras such as the Ricoh Caplio 500SE, Nikon Coolpix P6000 or some higher-end mobile phones, have a built-in GPS receiver and store the location-information in the EXIF header. Recorded GPS data can also be added to any digital photograph on a computer, either by correlating the time stamps of the photographs with a GPS record from a hand-held GPS receiver or manually using a map or mapping software. The process of adding geographic information to a photograph is known as geocoding. Photo sharing communities like Panoramio, locr or Flickr equally allow their users to upload geocoded pictures or to add geolocation information online.

Cellphones

Most of Nokia’s N-series mobile phones (such as the N95) are equipped with a GPS receiver, using Location Tagger all  images are tagged with corresponding GPS coordinates when GPS signal is available.

The second generation of iPhone (known as the iPhone 3G) by Apple Inc. is also equipped with a GPS receiver, and uses the receiver to GeoTag photographs taken with the device. I’m sure this also applies to Generation 4.

The first generation iPhone is not equipped with GPS, but use a service provided by Skyhook to triangulate and approximate the location (at which the picture was taken) using nearby cellular phone towers and WiFi hot-spot signal strength data. The Skyhook service provides approximate location information which is then added to the EXIF-data associated with the picture.

Also mobile phones with the Android operating system can GeoTag images with the included camera application.

How to check your images

The EXIF information can be read by a number of programs, called EXIF Readers. Not every program can read all the information, depending on how new your equipment is or which EXIF version it supports. I use a free program called KUSO Exif Viewer.

KUSO Exif Viewer can search online maps like yahoo maps, googlemaps etc. using the GPS information found in your image.

Download KUSO [Freeware]

Ensure your privacy

Before you upload a photo to an online site, make sure you first remove any (or all) EXIF information stored in your photo. This can be done with free programs like EXIF Tag Remover. These programs remove what is considered private data. A side from protecting your privacy, you also get smaller image sizes as a bonus.

Download EXIF Delete [Freeware]

Edit or Modify Exif Information

Another program that not only allow you to view or delete EXIF information is a Shareware tool called: Opanda PowerExif Editor. Which also allow you to edit and add Exif Data. My reason for mentioning this last, is that this actually not a free program thou they distribute a light version as shareware.

Download Opanda [Shareware]

To summarize

If you want to protect your privacy, Make sure you really delete all personal information from your images, not just the visible parts.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif

http://www.digicamhelp.com/glossary/digital-photography-glossary/