For all you cord cutters out there, we have compiled of a list of the Top 5 sites to view movies and documentaries online for free. Read on for the full list.

Vimeo

Vimeo is, in my opinion, YouTube’s cooler bro. While YouTube is known for silly and/or fun videos, Vimeo is for the serious artists and film makers. Start by exploring the various categories and you will be surprised by the excellent content they have on offer.

BBC Film Network

The BBC is very rightly known for excellent programming but did you know that a section of their website is dedicated to promoting documentaries and shorts (short films) from independent up and coming British film makers. The collection is really quite good. Just browse on a lazy Sunday afternoon and you are sure to catch something of your interest.

The Internet Archive

This list would have been incomplete with a link from the Internet Archive. Their goal is to have a copy of the Internet, for keep sakes, you know. And that means that they have an excellent movies section too. Head over to their movies archive, which is very well organised, if I may add and have fun.

Classic Cinema Online

If you’re a Classic movies buff, look no further than Classic Cinema Online. Whatever your preferred genre, they’ll have something for your interest.

YouTube Movies

Forget what I said about YouTube’s silly pet videos. Over the last couple of years, the YouTube team has been hard at work building a formidable collection of documentaries, movies and TV serials, all in full HD glory, so that, well, if you’re bored of all the pet videos there is something more interesting for you to watch.

These were just some of the places you can head to and find some nice movies to watch for free. Of course, there are sites such as Hulu and the like that don’t work outside the US, but if you really want you can watch movies on Hulu from anywhere in the world, so that’s one more excellent resource to add to the list.

Are you a cord cutter ? Do you like to watch movies and documentaries online ?

The qwerty keyboard layout was introduced more than a century ago and while almost all other forms of technology have improved drastically since then, the same can’t be said for the keyboard arrangement we use.

Introduction of Qwerty

Contrary to popular belief, the Qwerty layout was NOT introduced for either typing efficiency or comfort. In the early days of typewriters, typing very fast would jam the keys. So, the Qwerty form was used to reduce the typing speed and hence prevent the typewriter from getting jammed. Unfortunately, the convention has continued till date and we still follow the age old layout on our computers and touch screens in spite of the presence of newer and better keyboard layouts.

Why is Qwerty Inefficient?

If you are a qwerty user and very satisfied with your keyboard format, consider this fact. Ideally, when we rest our hands on our keyboard, our fingers are placed on the a,s,d,f and j,k,l,; keys. Now take a look at the chart (source: Wikipedia) below which shows the alphabets most frequently used in the English language.

Comparing this chart with the home row of a qwerty layout, one can easily observe that only 2 alphabets – a and s, are the most frequently used on the home row while the rest of the keys do not function as much. It is quite evident that finger movement is more while using other alphabets on the top and bottom rows and more the finger movement; less is the speed and typing efficiency.

The above may seem only good for theory purposes, but tools such as keyboard layout analyzer can give you detailed statistics and a practical insight about keyboard layouts and their efficiency. To compare, all you need to do is enter the text which you want to compare against various keyboard layouts. Text can either be entered by you or chosen from pre-defined options like Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland, Most Common English Words or Most Common SAT Words. Then various factors such as the distance travelled by our fingers while typing, use of a particular finger and the how often we switch our fingers and hands are taken into consideration to generate an overall score.

We performed several test including the text of this post and in almost all the cases the Qwerty layout scored the least. Another interesting aspect of the test was that the Colemak and Dvorak keyboard layouts performed much better and were pretty close in terms of performance.

Given the choice between Colemak and Dvorak, either of them can be an efficient alternative to Qwerty. However, we recommend using the Colemak layout particularly because of its easy to adapt nature along with many others.

Are you satisfied with the current layout of your keyboard ? Would you like to switch if that’d lead to greater efficiency and faster typing speed, not to mentioned, increased productivity?

There has also been talk among the wildlings, aka Android and other operating systems we don’t take the name of users, that the iPad mini is just a reaction to Amazon’s wildly successful (?) Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7. Some of these user’s just can’t think of any good reasons so just keep blurting out, WELL STEVE JOBS SAID APPLE WOULDN’T MAKE A 7″ TABLET.

Well, guess what, Steve doesn’t run the company anymore. God bless his soul.

All speculations aside, I think the biggest reason Apple is going to release an iPad mini is because Steve said they won’t.

Confused? Don’t be.

If you’ve been following Apple’s growth path for the last few years, specifically how Apple has handled the iPod lineup over the years, the answer would be clear. Apple doesn’t go after market share. Period. Not in the initial years at least.

Apple released the iconic iPod and no one thought it’d be such a big hit. This was a comparatively expensive product that people really didn’t think they’d need. Well, guess what. Everyone bought it regardless. It was a massive success and sure enough, Apple released an updated version and by the time the original iPod was in it’s third year, Apple released the iPod mini and then the nano and then the shuffle and so on.

The point I’m trying to make is that this is how Apple has always worked. Release a ground breaking product, reap profits for a few years. Make another model, catering to a different segment and reap more profits. Unlike competition, Apple leaves a lot of holes in the market initially and then fills them up one by one depending on the market’s reaction.

Now, take the case of the iPhone. Apple released the iPhone with 2G first, then 3G and then gave it a speed boost with the 3GS and moved on to the iPhone 4. Now, with the 3GS and iPhone 4, Apple finally had two models that could run their current version of iOS without getting bogged down. iPhone 4 became the flagship model and the 3GS was sold at a reduced price.

Now, Samsung’s strategy in selling their Galaxy tabs is on somewhat similar lines. They probably have a Galaxy Tab model all the way from 4″ to 10″ and will probably have launched a few more in between by the time you read this. And the strategy seems to be working for them so far. But it really hasn’t dented the iPad’s sales.

I don’t think Apple’s decision to release the iPad mini has anything to do with the perceived success of the Kindle Fire or the Nexus 7. Apple probably is in a much better position than any of us to find out just how many of these other tablets have really been sold.

I think the iPad mini always figured in the broad plan and the reason it’s being released right now is because it’s elder sibling has pretty much cornered it’s market and this just happens to be a good time to get the fence sitters into the ecosystem, just like the iPod mini and the shuffle did.

If you’re a home user, though, all this doesn’t really matter to you. Sure, it helps to have seperate permissions for different users on the system, if you’re sharing your computer with, say, your sibling, but configuring ACLs for home a user is a little overkill, if you ask me.

If all you need is a way to password protect certain important files from the prying eyes of your siblings, kids or pesky neighbors, Linux doesn’t offer anything *out of the box*. Fear not, though, we have just the right tool for you.

Password Protect Files

mcrypt is a utility designed to encrypt/decrypt a file using standard encryption techniques. If you don’t have mcrypt installed, you can install it with the following command.

apt-get install mcrypt

To password protect a file execute the following command

mcrypt <filename>

The above command will output something like this.

khera@khera:~$ mcrypt test1
Enter the passphrase (maximum of 512 characters)
Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers.
Enter passphrase: Enter password here
Enter passphrase: Repeat password here

File test1 was encrypted.
khera@home:~$

By default, mcrypt creates a new encrypted file with the extension .nc added to the original filename and leaves the original file intact. If this is not what you want, and you’d rather not have any traces of the original file, use mcrypt with the “-u” option.

mcrypt -u <filename>

This will ask you for a password as usual and the only difference will be that when the command finishes executing, the original file, test1 in the above case, will be deleted.

Decrypting a Password Protected File

So, now you know how to password protect file but what about decrypting it.

Turns out mcrypt does that too. Just use mcrypt with the “-d” option and it will decrypt the file for you after confirming the password with you.

mcrypt -d <encrypted filename>

The output should look something like this

khera@khera:~$ mcrypt -d test1.nc
Enter passphrase: Enter password here
File test1.nc was decrypted.

Like, in the encryption phase, mcrypt doesn’t delete the original file by default and if that is what you want, use mcrypt with the -u switch.

mcrypt -u -d <encrypted filename>

This will decrypt the file and delete the original encrypted file leaving no traces of it on your computer.

How was that for an easy encryption/decryption utility?

Uniclau is a web based startup that can revolutionize the way users enter their password and it makes apt use of the device that is always with us – our mobile phone. The use of a cell phone to authenticate a user is certainly not new, and we had earlier reviewed the use of mobile phone to make your google account more secure.

With Uniclau you can do away with the hassle of remembering the username and password for any of your online account. To use the service, visit the Uniclau home page and install the uniclau extension for your browser and also the application for your iPhone or Android phone. Once that is taken care of, open the application from your phone. First time users will be prompted to set a pin and their email address which will have to be verified.

Installing the extension on your browser will display a QR Code next to the login field whenever you visit a website. All you need to do is scan this code from the uniclau application on your phone. For the first time for every website, you will have to enter the username and password associated with that account on your phone. For every subsequent access, scanning the code will automatically log you into the website on your browser.

Since scanning the QR code from your phone is all that is needed to log into a website, it can become risky if you ever lose your phone. However, that is also taken care of and a pin needed to start the application ensures that only an authorized person can use the unicalu app on the phone. In fact, added security measures such as defining friends and saving a PUK code can even protect you even when you lose your phone or your associated email id gets compromised.

Overall, uniclau is an impressive service that can remove all the woes of incorrect password attempts due to different password for each of our online account. Having said that, the service can also be slightly annoying at times as it occasionally displays the QR code when there is no login field on the page. However, I am pretty sure that upcoming updates will fix the problem.

So, if you have a working internet connection on your smart phone and a long list of passwords to remember, Uniclau is certainly the way to go.

How do you prefer to manage your passwords ?

Search the drawers for an 8GB Thumb Drive. The Mountain Lion installer is about 5GB so anything more than that should do. Insert the key into your Mac.

Now, find the Mountain Lion installer that you copied away safely earlier. If you don’t have it, download it again from the Mac App Store’s Purchases section.

When the download completes, the installer will launch. Quit it.

Use the Finder to browse over to the Applications folder if you just downloaded the installer or the folder where you copied the previously downloaded installer.

Right click the Installer icon and select the Show Package Contents option.

Browse to the Contents/Shared Support folder.

There will be two files in this folder. We are interested in the DMG file named InstallESD.dmg.

Right-click this file and select the Open With->Disk Utility option.

This will open Disk Utility and you should be able to see your USB key as well as the InstallESD DMG file in the left side column.

Select the USB key and click on the Partition tab.

From the Partition Layout tab, select 1 Partition and then click the Options button below the partition layout graphic.

Make sure that the GUID Partition Table radio button is selected. Click Ok and hit Apply. If Disk Utility warns you about your disk being erased, click Ok and let it proceed.

Now, select and right click the InstallESD DMG file in the left column and choose the Open Disk Image option.

Select the newly mounted Mac OS X Install ESD volume and click on the Restore tab on the right side.

The Source field in the Restore tab should now be set to Mac OS X Install ESD. In the Destination field, drag and drop the partition that we earlier created on the USB Key and then press the Restore button.

This will copy the contents of the Installer image to the USB key.

You can now use this USB key as a bootable installer on any Mac.

If you still think you’re ready for the first version of Apple’s latest, greatest, this guide should help you prepare your Mac for the onslaught!

Backup

I cannot stress this point enough. Please make a backup of all your important documents before upgrading. While, Apple definitely tests their installation process hundreds, if not thousands, of times, this is a computer and murphy will strike when you lease expect him to. Since, I use Time Machine for backups, I always have a backup of my data with me. I still verified if all was well with the data and proceeded to the next step.

Take a backup of your data and thank me later.

Verify Disk/File System

This is a step that I’ve not seen anyone recommend but it is, in my opinion, the most important step in the whole upgrade process. Mac OS X uses the hfs file system for storing all your files. Normally, a file system is something the user should not be concerned with, but when things go wrong in the file system, the user has the most to lose. A bad sector on the hard disk or an error with the file system structures can lead to data loss and more.

Reboot your Mac and press and hold the Option key when the computer is booting up. This will bring up a menu that’ll let let you select the recovery partition to boot into. Now, select the disk utility option from the window that pops up on the screen.

When Disk Utility launches, select your hard disk volume from the column on the left and click the Repair Disk button on the right. Depending on the size of your hard disk, this process might take a little time. Use this time to find a spare USB drive or an external hard drive with atleast 5 GBs of free space. We’ll need it for the next step.

Download Mountain Lion

This one’s easy!

Reboot your computer back to Lion and start downloading Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store. It costs $19 and Apple really couldn’t have made it easier to download it. The installer is about 4.6GB so this might take a while, if you like in a Bandwidth impoverished countries of the world like I do.

When the download completes, the installer will launch automatically. Quit it (Use Command+Q since the installer doesn’t have an option to quit).

Go to the Applications folder and copy the installer (named Mountain Lion Installer) to the spare disk you found earlier. This is needed because once Mountain Lion is installed the installer is deleted and to use it again you’ll have to download the full 4.6GBs again, which may be a little painful.

Installation

That’s it! You’re all set to install Mountain Lion. The installer itself is pretty simple and doesn’t require too much user intervention. Let the installer do it’s magic.

The RAM is arguably the most important part of your computer. Apart from the processor, of course, but without some kind of memory, even the process is pretty much useless. A computer, without RAM, cannot run any application that you tell it to and might as well be a dead paper weight.

If you’ve noticed unusual freezes and random operating system/application crashes on your computer, the RAM should be your first line of diagnosis. The RAM on a modern computer is composed of millions of cells that store the data for the computer to process and failure of even a single cell can cause weird errors that can be extremely difficult to diagnose.

Memtest is an open source utility that verifies the RAM installed on your computer for any defects. Since, this is an open source tool, there are versions available for practically every operating system and I’m going to use the Mac OS X version of memtest today since that is what I’m most familiar with. You should be able to use the same command line switches with the version of memtest available for your operating system.

Download MemTest For Free

Memtest is available as a free download so just download it to your computer and unzip the file. You should now have a .pkg installer that you can just double click to install memtest. This installer does nothing other than installing the memtest binary to /usr/bin.

To start testing the RAM on your computer, launch Terminal.app and execute memtest.

Sharninders-iMac:~ sharninder$ memtest all 1

The above command will make memtest run through it’s complete test suite once. In general, it is better to test at least twice, or even let it run for a few hours if you want to be completely sure. If you don’t specify any number after the “all”, memtest runs indefinitely and will have to be stopped by pressing the ctrl+c key combination manually.

If Memtest throws up an error or memtest itself freezes, you’ll know for sure that the RAM is bad. If not, well, time to start diagnosing other parts of the computer.

Memtest for PCs

If you’re not running a Mac, you can still use memtest to diagnose the RAM of your PC, though the process is a little different. For PCs, memtest is distributed as images that you can burn onto CDs or USB flash drives.

Download one of the many pre-built images and burn it to a CD or to a USB flash drive, depending on the image. Now, shutdown your computer and reboot it using the CD/USB Key that you just burned. That should start Memtest straight away. Let the diagnostics run for a while or till you’re sure that the RAM has been tested thoroughly.

Have you ever had the RAM in your computer go bad ? How did you diagnose it ?

With memory capacity of our phones increasing exponentially, managing all your files, folders, music, applications on a few inches screen is no more convenient. This is where Wondershare MobileGo for Android comes into play. Install the free software on your windows computer and you are set to explore your device from a much broader prospective, quite literally.

Connection to your phone can be done through a USB cable or Wi-Fi although you need to install the android counterpart to connect via the latter option. Once connected, the interface is extremely neat and user friendly. The first thing you will probably notice is the screenshot of your phone. The two buttons underneath it can be used to save the screenshot on your PC or to refresh the screen.

The large green and blue buttons on the right of your phone screenshot lets you perform 1 click backup and restore of your phone’s content. You can back up your contacts, sms messages, calendar entries, call logs, playlists and the apps on your phone.

Separate icons for Music, Videos, Photos, Contacts, SMS and Apps are provided so that you can manage them individually. Some of the features include the ability to set your ringtone, add or edit contacts, send SMS’s and installing or uninstalling apps. Adding or removing files to or from your phone and memory card can also be done effortlessly.

Overall, Wondershare MobileGo is highly recommended for anyone looking for an easy yet effective android management tool. However, it has one limitation – your phone must be with you in order to connect with your PC.

To be able to control your android phone remotely, try Phonedeck. Although it does not provide as much control over your phone as in case of Wondershare MobileGo, yet it is good for those who often forget to carry their phones with them. To use Phonedeck you need to create an account, download the mobile application and sync your phone with the phonedeck cloud dashboard.

Once that is done, log into the phonedeck homepage from any browser, irrespective of where your phone is, to manage it. The activities tab will show you your recent activities and you can filter it according to missed calls, incoming and outgoing calls or only sms. The contacts tab displays all your contacts in alphabetical order and you can view the contacts and merge or delete them. The Insights tab is an interesting addition as it shows you statistics such as number of calls or sms’s made in a week, month or year, the average call duration and top contacts etc.

The top bar contains a search bar and icons for sending SMS’s or making phone calls. The last icon (present on the right) shows the battery status of your phone and also contains a ‘Locate this phone’ function which triggers a soft ding sound on your phone even if it’s in the silent mode.

All in all, both MobileGo and Phonedeck are excellent android management tools. While the former demands that you have the phone with you to manage it, the latter requires a working internet connection on your phone. Because of the differences, both the tools will satisfy consumers of different needs and requirement.

Do you use any computer application to manage your phone? Do let us know which management tool would you prefer for your phone?

Perform automated actions on saving files

Wappwolf is an automator for dropbox which means that you can have certain actions performed automatically when you drop files to specific folders in your dropbox account. A lot of actions are available such as automatically upload pictures to your facebook or google+ account, convert files to pdf or ebook, zip it, email it and many more.

Backup Your Website or Blog

Ask any webmasters and you will know how important it is to keep a backup of one’s website. My BackupBox makes this process automated by scheduled backups to your dropbox account. All you need to do is connect your account from where you want to transfer the files. Available options include FTP, SFTP, MySQL, Dropbox, Box, Skydrive and Google Drive. Once you set your source and destination, you can choose for a one time transfer or scheduled transfers on an hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Receive Files Publicly

Emails are not the most convenient means when it comes to receiving files, especially large ones. DropItToMe allows users to receive files from anyone directly to your dropbox account. Register with the site and set your upload password get your file upload url for your DROPitTOyourname page. On visiting this link users will have to enter the upload password before uploading a file. This prevents any unwanted upload from unknown users.  File size of upto 75 MB is supported by the service. Check the screenshot which shows the page for uploading files into my dropbox account.

Save files directly from a url

If there is an online file that you want to store into your dropbox account then downloading it to your computer and then transferring it to dropbox is unnecessary hassle. You can easily overcome it by using SideCloudLoad as it lets you save a file directly from its url into your dropbox. All you need to do is enter the file url and your dropbox credentials.

Save Emails and Attachments

If saving directly from url or receiving files publicly is not enough for you, this service can save your email attachments into your dropbox folder. Visit SendToDropbox and connect your dropbox account to get your @sendtodropbox.com email address. You can share this email id with anyone and all emails and attachments received at this address will be saved into an ‘Attachments’ folder in your dropbox account. Also, you can add the sendtodropbox email address to the forward list in your existing email id so that all emails and attachments sent there are also saved into your dropbox account.

Do share with us if you use any cloud based services for your storage needs and if you found the above services useful. If you haven’t started using Dropbox, yet, get your free account here. Don’t wait !