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How to completely disable Web Search in Windows 10

2015-05-28T23:43:00.003-07:00

Microsoft has integrated web search from Windows 8.1, in addition to the native search available in previous Windowseditions. Thus when you search for anything on your Windows computer, if you’re connected to web, web search results are displayed automatically. This is also continued with Windows 10, and here Cortana – the voice assistant leads the flag.

Now, some users may be okay with fact that web results are displaying additionally even when they don’t looked forward for them. However, some other community of users may not be convinced with this fact. The reason behind this could be unnecessary data consumption by your system in order to fetch web search results. Thus, if you also belongs to latter community of users, you may want to disable web search results completely from being displayed in Windows 10.

Here is what you need to do:

Disable Web Search in Windows 10

1. In Windows 8.1 or later; Pro & Enterprise Editions, press Windows Key + R combination, type put gpedit.msc in Rundialog box and hit Enter to open the Local Group Policy Editor.

2. In the left pane of Local Group Policy Editor window, navigate here:

Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Search

3. Moving on, in the right of above shown window and scroll down to look for Settings named Do not allow web searchand Don’t search the web or display web results in Search. Both of these are Not Configured by default. Double click on any one of them:

4. Finally in the above shown window, select Enabled and click Apply followed by OK. Enable the other Setting in similar way. Close Local Group Policy Editor now. Reboot the machine to make changes effective. After restarting the machine, you’ll find that web search results are no longer displayed. In case, if you later want to get web search results, simply restore both policies to Not Configured status.

Glary Disk Cleaner: Free disk cleaning tool for Windows

2015-05-28T05:42:00.000-07:00

There are already so many free junk file cleaners available for Windows – the most popular of them being CCleaner. So why then are we again covering another one? Because life is all about having options, and Windows ecosystem offers so many freeware options that one has to check them out and see what suits you the best.

Glary Disk Cleaner comes to from the well-known Glarysoft house. It offers a handy way to clean up your hard disk. It can scan your PC thoroughly and locate the temporary, unused and unwanted files cluttered on your hard disk and delete them in no time. Although Windows has its built-in disk cleanup utility, but sometimes you may feel the need to use a third party app.

Glary Disk Cleaner

Glary Disk Cleaner is a simple tool which takes no time to download and install 0n your PC. The program has a very user-friendly interface and even a novice computer user can use it without any hurdles. You can choose to run the program right after its quick installation. It simply scans the hard disk of your computer, locates the temporary files and removes them.

Glary Disk Cleaner starts scanning your PC immediately after you launch the program and gives you a quick list of files stored on your PC. You can either select the files and remove them manually or choose to delete them all in one go.

The Disk Cleaner checks the Windows, your web browsers as well as the applications installed on your PC and locates all the temporary and unused files including temporary files, cache, system log files, error report files, invalid and broken shortcuts, browsers cache and much more.

The list of files also display the path, size and format of files located giving you and option to check the file before you delete it. You can view the file in its folder, check its Properties and exclude from the removal list if required.

I don’t know if it was the size of my hard drive or the lesser number of temporary files stored on my PC, but the program actually took just a few seconds to scan my PC. Usually when a PC is under scanning, the CPU usage increases which tends to slow down the PC for the time being. But there is nothing to worry about when using this freeware.

The program is very simple and effective and I didn’t find any noteworthy issue in the program. It scanned the PC quickly and also deleted the files in no time. In short, it did is job! It is a pretty decent piece of software from the makers of Glary Utilities and can help you keep your system clean.

You can download it here.

Sputnik: Best free desktop RSS Feed Reader for Windows

2015-05-28T05:25:00.003-07:00

Nowadays, many people prefer to read their daily news on tablets and computers via different RSS feed readers, as they can consolidate all the news in one place. You can certainly start using Feedly, Flipboard, etc. those work great as a feed reader. However, if your days start with a Windows PC and ends with the same, here is a free desktop RSS Reader, that assists users to read their most favorite blogs right from the desktop. Sputnik is probably the finest desktop client to read RSS feed. It is free and portable!

Sputnik – Free Desktop RSS Feed Reader

Sputnik comes with nearly all the popular features of a typical RSS reader like Feedly. It is even possible to import feeds to this client in a click. To begin using this software, you will need either the website address or its Feed URL or exported feed file, which you can get from any third party RSS reader.

If you have this URL or file, you are ready to start using it. After opening Sputnik, unzip it and double-click on the file to open up. Right after opening it, you will see the following screen:

You can add your favorite sites manually or you can import feeds from any exported file. To add a site, click on Add feedbutton and enter your site URL or feed URL. If you want to import feed from file, just click on the Import feed from file.

If you add site, it will be added immediately. However, if you import file, it will take a couple of seconds to be added. After being added, your reader will look like this:

In the left hand side, you will get all the added sites and in the right hand side, you will get the latest articles. You can maximize your window and start reading. The next article will be placed at the end of one article. You can also click on any particular site to read particular news only. If you want to read the same news in your browser, click on the article title.

To add more sites, just click on Add feed button.

After that, write down the desired site URL or RSS feed URL. You can also select a category to categorize your sites.

Finally, hit the Done button. Your site will be added instantly.

Sputnik settings and keyboard shortcuts

You can change the number of articles that you would like to display on a single page. You can also delete articles which are older than particular time.

This desktop client also has some useful keyboard shortcuts, which can help you navigate through numerous sites:

Right Click: Mark current article as read and jump to next article.
Space bar: Same as right click.
Up/Down Arrow: Scroll up and down
Left/Right Arrow: Next and previous article
Ctrl + Left/Right Arrow: Jump to next or previous page
Enter: Mark a category as read.

Sputnik can help you to get rid of a cluttered RSS feed reader. You can easily read various websites right from desktop. You can download it from here. The development of this freeware has however been discontinued now.

Easy Context Menu freeware lets you add Program or Icon to Right Click Menu

2015-05-28T05:21:00.001-07:00

The Right-Click Context Menu in Windows, offers useful options. Although, Windows does not let you add or remove anything from context menu via any UI, you can use a third-party software like Easy Context Menu to customize it. We already have freeware like the Right Click Extender or Context Menu Editor, that let you add or remove context menu items. Today let us have a look at this free tool.

Easy Context Menu for Windows

Easy Context Menu (Earlier Bluelife Context Menu) is a context menu editor that helps users to add any installed application to the context menu or any image or icon to the context menu item.

The download package consists of 2 files. If you are using 32-bit Windows, click on EcMenu.exe and if you have 64-bit Windows, click on EcMenu_x64.exe. You don’t have to install it since this is a portable software.

All the preset items that you can add, are categorized in various sections such as Tools, System Tools, Turn Off Options etc. A very useful feature of this tool is that you can add different items to the context menu for different locations. For instance, you can add a set of tools to the desktop context menu and a different set of apps to the This PC context menu. Similarly, you can also add or remove options from the Folder Context Menu, File Context Menu, EXE File Context Menu and so on.

Add preset program, tool and option to Context Menu

To add any preset app, tool or power option to the Context Menu, just make a tick in corresponding box and apply your changes. The very first button with the mouse icon refers to Apply Changes.

Context Menu Cleaner

The fourth button with mouse icon refers to Context Menu Cleaner.

Context Menu Cleaner will let you remove any added program from the right-click menu.

To remove an item, just remove the tick-mark from the corresponding box.

Easy Context Menu List Editor

By default, Easy Context Menu will allow you to add only those programs, tools and options, what are already included in the list. However, you can also add your own favorite program to the context menu, by using the List Editor. You can add image, audio or any other item to the context menu.

To do so, click on List Editor button, which is the third button from the left. Next, click on Add New and selectApplication Files(*.*) from the drop-down menu. Next select the desired program file. It is also possible to rename the file, change its location in context menu, let Windows open the file with administrator privilege and more. One all is done, click on Save Changes. Your item will be added to the context menu.

Delete all programs from Context Menu

Suppose, you do not want to use the selected options in the context menu and wish to delete whatever you have added. At such times, just click on Uninstall All – the second button with the mouse icon.

You can read more about Easy Context Menu and download it from its home page.

FireFTP: Free FTP / SFTP Client for Firefox browser

2015-05-28T05:12:00.001-07:00

FireFTP is a popular, free, secure, cross-platform FTP/SFTP addon available for Mozilla Firefox browser, which provides an easy and intuitive way to access FTP or SFTP servers. It is one of the top extensions available for Mozilla Firefox with over 616,601 users downloading it. Today we are reviewing FireFTP version 2.0.23 and will show you how to use FireFTP in Firefox.

FireFTP for Firefox

You can manually surf the available add-ons available in the firefox browser and install them or visit this link using your Firefox browser and then click on “Add to Firefox” to add it.

Clicking on the “Add to Firefox” button will open up a prompt, where it asks if you want toe install the addon. Click on “Install“.

When you are done, it prompts you to restart the browser. Restart the browser and you are now ready to use it.

Features of FireFTP

FireFTP is absolutely free with cross-platform support. Works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
It is Secure as it has support for SSL/TLS/SFTP providing encryption to combat fraud.
Synchronization support is great as it keeps directories in sync while navigating.
Directory Comparison feature compares directory content including sub-directories.
It is Available in more than 20 languages and supports UTF8 character encoding.
It automatically reconnects and resumes file transfers in the case of network interruption.
Supports Search/Filtering,Export/Import accounts,Remote Editing,File Hashing: Generate hashes of files (MD5, various SHA’s),Drag & Drop.
It has built-in integrity checks of transfers (XMD5, XSHA1)
File Compression using Mode Z,timestamp Synchronization, Proxy and FXP support,Advanced properties like CHMOD, recursive CHMOD, thumbnails etc, IPv6 support are the other important features.

How to use FireFTP in Firefox

Launching FireFTP is easy, as it is integrated directly into the browser. Head over to browser menu and find the Developeroption. Expand the Developer option to find the option as shown below in the picture.

Click on the FireFTP option to launch the window in the browser. You can also launch it by navigating to this link using address bar: chrome://fireftp/content/fireftp.xul

That should open up the FireFTP interface with local file explorer. You may click on the images to see the larger versions.

In order to login to your server using FireFTP, Click on the “Create account” option which opens up a new dialogue asking for the credentials for your server. Fill in the required details like Hostname, port number, username, password etc and proceed. You can also save the details with a desired profile name for future use.

On successful login you should be able to view your server files in the right hand side of the FireFTP window.

It is so simple! If you are looking for a light-weight free FTP client, you can start using FireFTP. We hope this tutorial helped you in getting started with this FTP client.

5 Powerful and Most Useful Excel Features you need to know

2015-05-07T23:27:00.004-07:00

Microsoft Excel is the most useful and easy tool for business analysts. It has large number of useful formulas, features and bundles of interactive charts. But, most of us are not known of all of them and there are some more features which are powerful and easy to use to make our work simpler. You might not have noticed some of the useful Excel 2013 features like Sparklines, Slicers, Conditional Formatting and other formulas which add value to your work. In this article, I will take you through them and will give you an idea on what are those and how to use them.

Most Useful Excel Features

Among many Excel features, there are some hidden features which are easy to use and you many not know all of them. Without any further delay, we will look at 5 such Excel features.

Sparklines

Sparklines were first introduced in Excel 2010 and are used to represent visualizations for the trend across the data in a row. It fits in a single Excel cell and saves the space on the worksheet. This is a cool feature and is very easy to use. Calculating the trend for row data and placing the visualization in the single excel is really a great feature to use.

In order to create your own Sparklines, select the range of data. Click insert on the ribbon and select the type ofSparklines (Line, Column or Win/Loss). Next, enter the range of the target where you want to show the Sparklines. For more information on how to create Sparklines, visit Office Blogs.

Conditional Formatting

Conditional Formatting is a well known feature of Excel. It is used to visually present the data based on the conditions met. It is also useful to create heat maps. This would be helpful to find the interesting patterns by exploring the data effectively.

To create the heat map, select the data and head over to the ribbon. Under Home, click Conditional Formatting and then click Color Scales. Now, pick the color scale. You can even set the color scale by editing the formatting rule. For more information on Conditional Formatting, visit Office Support.

SMALL and LARGE Functions

We all know about MAX and MIN functions. They give you the maximum and minimum values of the selected data respectively. But, in order to find the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or nth largest or smallest value of the selected range if data, we can make use of LARGE and SMALL functions respectively.

In this example, in order to find the top two products for each month, we made use of MATCH and INDEX functions along with LARGE and SMALL functions. For more information, visit SMALL and LARGE functions.

Remove Duplicates

Do not blame me for mentioning this feature in this list. It is very important to get rid of redundant data from the available huge amount of data. It is one of the best ways for cleaning and organizing the data and so thought of having it in this list of powerful Excel features. Removing Duplicates feature was introduced from Excel 2007 and is helpful to remove duplicates which is the most important problem which we face.

To remove duplicates, select the data and head over to the ribbon. Under Data, click the Remove Duplicates button and what you see the data without duplicates. For more information on how to Find and Remove Duplicates, visit Office.com.

Slicers

Slicers act as visual filters. It helps you to visualize the subset of data as a connected chart or as a raw data. For example, if you want to show the trend of sales of various products, then you can create the interactive sales trend chart using Slicers. Based on the product you select, respective chart is shown. Slicers were first introduced in Excel 2010 and enhanced a lot in Excel 2013.

In Excel 2013, if you want to add Slicer to your charts, select the data range and click on insert > Slicer. Now, select the part of the data you want to use as a filter. In the image above, Product column is used as a filter. How here for more information on how to use Slicers.

For more details on these features and to download the example workbook, visit Office Blogs

Screen To GIF: Free software to create animated GIF Image within seconds

2015-05-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

GIF image is highly sought file format amongst tech bloggers, who often write on how-to guides, as well as meme makers. Hence today we will look at a free yet extremely helpful software named Screen To GIF that helps you produce high-quality animated GIF image within a few moments.

Create GIF image using Screen To GIF

ScreenToGIF is probably the simplest way to record your screen and turn them into a GIF image or motioned image. This particular tool includes a number of handy features and tools, that will assist you in editing the GIF image before finishing.

To start with, download portable ScreenToGIF on your Windows PC. This is a portable software as well. After downloading this portable GIF image creator software, just unzip the file and double-click on it to open. You will see a window as follows:

The very first thing that must be set is to change the aspect ratio or the window size depending on your requirement. The default size of 484×209 is comparatively small for most.

Once you have et the default image size, you can start recording your screen by clicking on the Record button. To stop the recording, simply click on Stop button. Right after recording the screen, you will get a window that looks something like the subsequent picture:

Now, you have a whole bunch of options to edit the image before finalizing. You can add the following to your image, after recording:

Add text
Add quick caption
Add image frame or title frame
Edit frames
Change animation speed
Crop image
Use transitions
Add border around image
Export specific image frame (More information are written below)
Delete selected image frame (More information are written below)
Use filter: Blur, Sepia, Gray Style

Get a still image from GIF image

Apart from creating the GIF image, you can also export a still image from the recording. ScreenToGIF helps users to change the frame number that will be captured in each second. If you have set a huge number, you will get more frames or images. This is what “Export specific image frame” means.

ScreenToGIF Settings

Screen To GIF doesn’t come with a huge number of settings. Instead, it has fewer but very useful features.

Use custom GIF encoding or paint.NET encoding
Change loop – use custom loop
Show or hide mouse cursor
Show or hide mouse clicks
Use hotkeys to start and stop recording (F7 – Record/Pause & F8 – Stop)
Change aspect ratio
Change number of frames to be captured in a single second

Download Screen To GIF from here and start creating quality GIF images on your Windows PC.

How Old Do I Look website from Microsoft

2015-05-07T23:07:00.001-07:00

Everyone wants to know – Do I look younger or older than I actually am? Well for all those who have this question, there is now a website that can guess you age and your gender from any photograph.

How Old Do I Look

Microsoft recently released a Face detection API. Based on this API, it took a couple of developers just a day to put this website together. This website allows users to upload their photograph. The API then tries to guess the age and gender of any faces recognized in that picture.

Face APIs are a part of Microsoft Project Oxford, which provides state-of-the-art algorithms to process face images, including gender, age, recognition, alignment and other application-level features.

The key components of this website are:

Extracting the gender and age of the people in these pictures.
Obtaining real-time insights on the data extracted above.
Creating real-time dashboards to view the above results.

We also got real-time insights to learn more about how people were using this tool. For instance, we assumed that folks would not want to upload their own pictures but would prefer to select from pre-canned images such as what they found online. But we what we found out was that over half the pictures analyzed were of people who had uploaded their own images, said Microsoft.

The results were not bad too. The website put my age at 47, whereas I am a couple of years older than that.

Go visit how-old.net and see what it has to say about you. Let us know if it guessed correctly about you.

Uranium Backup Free review & download

2015-05-07T23:02:00.001-07:00

There are plenty of free backup tools available. Even the default backup tool that comes with Windows 8.1 is good enough to let you take different backup sets of the data you want. You also get to choose between overwriting backup sets and incremental backup sets. However, most people prefer third-party backup tools as they offer more functionality. This review of Uranium Backup Free checks out it features and ease of use.

Uranium Backup Free review

The download and installation was easy. There are no third-party apps that are bundled into the installation, as of date, so you need not worry about it installing toolbars and other browser add-ons. It is just the Uranium backup program that is installed.

Once installed, you can access it from the System Tray by right-clicking on its icon or by clicking on the desktop icon. In both the cases, the first thing you have to do is to create backup sets and set destinations for the backup sets.

Too many restrictions

Unfortunately, the free version has plenty of restrictions. One that I would like to mention in particular is that it won’t support incremental backups. This means that every time you run the backup using Uranium, you will be creating a different backup set or you will be overwriting the previous backup depending upon the folders you chose.

Though the image above shows you plenty of destinations to back up, all except the first are available only in the paid versions. With the free version, you can only select a place on your network or on an external hard disk drive for backing up the data. You cannot even use the DVD burner with the free version. Now, that is way too much of a limiting factor, that may make people away from using Uranium. As it is, people nowadays prefer to back up their data to cloud instead of DVDs, etc. If that option is present but cannot be used in the Uranium Backup Free, people are sure to be frustrated.

In short, the free version of Uranium backup tool will serve only those users who like to create a full backup of their data and copy it to external hard disk drives. There is no point in backing up data to the same hard disk drive even if it is a different drive letter as the hard disk is the same and if it crashes, all the drives on it will be inaccessible.

The application is good only for users using external hard disk drives for backing up data. For others who would like to back up to cloud etc, Microsoft, Amazon and Google are the answers (for free backups). If they want to go paid, IDrive, ADrive, Mozy etc are better as they offer backups directly to the clouds.

Using Uranium

Assuming that you are one of the group that prefers local hard disk backups to external storage on network or USB connected hard disk drives (or even on a desktop with two hard disk drives), you have to first create a data set that needs to be backed up. This, you can do by selecting Create Data Set option in the File menu. You will get a dialog box that will let you browse and select the backup folders and files using check boxes. Once you are done, selecting the files to be backed up, you have specify the destination folder.

To specify the destination folder, click on the first option under the lower section of the right side of the Uranium window. It says “Click here to add a destination folder for this backup“. You can see it in the image above.

Clicking on any other option will ask you if you wish to upgrade.

Anyway, once you are done with creating backup sets and setting destination for it, you can run the first backup manually by clicking on “Run selected backups” in the File menu. Some of the best things about Uranium are that it compresses the backup files and folders before copying them to backup destination and it offers encryption for the backed up files. But I did not see any option to set up scheduled backups or incremental backups. This means it overwrites the previous backup set whenever you run the backup set manually. The only method available to avoid overwriting is to select a different destination (folder) before you manually run the backup using the Uranium interface or the system tray icon.

Verdict

Uranium Backup Free is a good choice if you back up your data locally to some other hard drive connected to your computer. The paid version has options to back up to cloud but the free one doesn’t.

Encryption is present, so you can be sure about secure backup. You can save configurations using a password in the Settings menu. Beyond that, it is simply a tool offering minimal features. If you wish to back up to cloud, either purchase the Pro version or use one of the tools mentioned above. You can download Uranium from their website.

There are some other good free Imaging, Backup and Recovery Software available on the Internet. Moreover, there are also some free online backup tools that you might want to consider if you wish to back up to cloud and if your backup needs are small. Besides this, you may also use Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive for backing up, although they are more of sync nature. That is, if you delete a file or folder from the local disk, it will be deleted from the cloud storage too. An advantage is that instead of deleting them forever, the deleted items are moved to folders called Deleted Items or Trash and they stay there until you empty them manually or if they exceed the quota of Trash (in Google Drive). They can be used as backup in case you want the latest version of your backup sets on the cloud.

AnyDesk: Best Free TeamViewer Alternative

2015-05-07T22:59:00.000-07:00

If you are working as a team, this is impossible that you haven’t heard about TeamViewer. If you are looking for aTeamViewer alternative, then this free software called AnyDesk may interest you. This fast remote desktop software has DeskRT, a new video codec at its core.

AnyDesk review

As AnyDesk is a free portable software. If you want to use it for a long time, you can consider installing this using its installer.

To get started, at first, download AnyDesk on both the PCs. Next double-click on the executable file to open it. You will get a window that looks like the following picture:

Teamviewer alternative

A unique code will be appear on your screen. You can find this type of code, only if the software is not installed. Otherwise, you will get the unique with the Computer name.

Now, just enter this unique code of one PC in another PC’s AnyDesk window – under Remote Desk tab and hit theConnect button.

That means, if you have two PCs called “A” & “B” and you want to access “A” from “B”, just copy the code from “A” and paste it on “B”.

After hitting the Connect button, you will get the Windows Firewall popup for this new connection. Just allow it to access AnyDesk.

At the same time, you will get a confirmation pop-up on the second PC that you want to access from your primary PC.

You can hit the Accept button or consider checking few options. The options are as follows,

Allow to hear sound
Allow to take control
Allow to use clipboard
Allow to block keyboard and mouse

If you remove the tick mark from corresponding option, the feature will be unavailable. Otherwise, the main PC owner will be able to access everything.

Chat with Friends using AnyDesk

AnyDesk allows users to chat with the connected PC owner. Just click on Chat button from the primary PC and write down your message.

The message will appear on the second PC.

AnyDesk also provides some other options after connecting. You will see the following options on your screen:

Change view mode (full screen, original, shrink, stretch)
Quality: best audio/video quality, balanced, optimized, according to connection speed/data speed
Show/hide remote cursor
Allow/prevent mouse and keyboard control
Take snapshot.

Considering all things, AnyDesk is really a useful tool. You can download AnyDesk from here. As of now, you can use AnyDesk to connect with only Windows PC’s.

PC Win Booster: Keep your Windows PC free of Junk Files

2015-04-22T03:45:00.000-07:00

If you find that you are running out of disk space on your Windows PC, you need to run the built-in Disk Cleanup utility or some good free junk file cleaner. Today we will have a look at one more freeware called Soft4Boost PC Win Booster.

Hard disk is the storage device of a PC which holds all your important files and data. The Windows operating system and various other programs create the temporary files and many other junk files during installation and running. All these files get piled up on your hard disk, and hence the hard disk may run out of free space. Thus, it becomes imperative that we delete the junk temporary files regularly.

This tool will help remove junk files. Not hundreds, but thousands of files get piled in the hard disk of our computer system over time, which includes cached thumbnails, temporary files, cached files, setup files, log files and much more.

PC Win Booster

The main overview of this freeware is simple and displays everything. The software scans your PC and detects all the junk files stored in various folders. It lists all the unused, obsolete and harmful files cluttered in your PC.

Just click on ‘Start Scanning’, the program will scan your PC thoroughly and give you a detailed list of junk files.

It includes the following modules:

Junk File remover
Duplicate Files Finder
Unwanted Toolbar remover
Program Uninstaller.

The Duplicate Finder module of the program finds duplicate files, identical pictures, and duplicate documents if stored in your system. Unlike the other similar software, PC Win Booster compares the documents by their content, and not just the names. To use this function, select the search rule, click on the Duplicate Finder button, select the search directories and click on ‘Start Scanning’.

Moreover, this program also finds and removes toolbars that may be installed on your web browser and remove them easily – which the built-in Windows program remover may not be able to.

PC Win Booster has 11 different skins, so you can change it if you want. However, I didn’t find any of the skins beautiful enough to be changed.

You can download it from here. It brings along a program Soft4Boost Secure Eraser with it – however, it is harmless and can be easily removed using the Control Panel.

How to display seconds in Taskbar

2015-04-22T02:30:00.001-07:00

The Taskbar Clock in Windows, displays the date and time. The day, month and the year are displayed – and the hour and minutes are seconds are displayed. In this post we will see how to display second in the Taskbar Clock.

Before we proceed, it is important to know, why Microsoft did not build this capability into the Windows operating system to begin with. Was the constant blinking of the colon too distractive?

Said Microsoft,

The blinking colon and the constantly-updating time were killing our benchmark numbers. On machines with only 4MB of memory (which was the minimum memory requirement for Windows 95), saving even 4K of memory had a perceptible impact on benchmarks. By blinking the clock every second, this prevented not only the code paths related to text rendering from ever being paged out, it also prevented the taskbar’s window procedure from being paged out, plus the memory for stacks and data, plus all the context structures related to the Explorer process. Add up all the memory that was being forced continuously present, and you had significantly more than 4K.

Now that we know why the Windows Taskbar Clock does not display seconds, let us move on.

We have already seen how to how to add day of week to taskbar clock,no let us see if we can add seconds to the Taskbar Clock time.

Display seconds in Taskbar Clock

There is no way to natively display seconds in the Taskbar Clock. If you wish to do so, you will have to use 3rd-party free tools like T-Clock Redux or TClockEx.

T-Clock Redux in an enhanced fork of Stoic Joker’s T-Clock 2010. Apart from letting you display the seconds too, it offers many other features. It works on Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 too. TClockEx is such free tool that can help you show seconds. This one also lets you tweak additional options in the Takbar Clock.

How to change MAC Address in Windows 8.1

2015-04-14T22:36:00.001-07:00

A MAC Address or Media Access Control Address is a unique identifier assigned to every Network Interface Card. In this post, we will see what is MAC Address and how do you change a MAC Address in Windows 8. We will also touch upon MAC Address filtering, lookup and spoofing.

What is MAC Address

Whether you are using a wired network or a wireless one, you need a network card to connect to other computers and to allow other computers to your computer. While most of us believe that it is the IP address that is significant in contacting another computer on the network, it is not the only factor. More important than IP (Internet Protocol) address is the MAC (Media Access Control) address – an address assigned to the network interface card, so that it is identified on the network.

A Network card is a term used in short for a Network interface card. We call it NIC for short. Every NIC has a MAC address – just like a postal address so that the data packets travelling on your network can reach the correct NIC and from there, your computer. While the IP address is the software part of the Network Interface card (Network card or NIC), the MAC address is hardware address, without which data packets will just keep on roaming on the network, as they do not have any address where to deliver the data. Each data packet on the network has a header containing MAC address of the computer you wish to connect to and then the data. The last part of the data packet will contain a bit to ascertain if the data bit was correctly delivered or was it corrupted or changed during the transmission.

MAC addresses do not appear when you click on Open Network Adaptors in the Windows System Tray. Unlike IP addresses, that are provided by your ISP or network admins, and may be static or dynamic. MAC addresses are assigned by the manufacturers of network interface cards (NIC). These MAC addresses are built into the cards and are resolved using a method called Address Resolution Protocol. This Address Resolution Protocol first obtains the IP address of the computer to be contacted and then resolves it into the MAC address before embedding it into header of the data packets so that they are delivered exactly to the computer intended and not to any other computer in the network.

Structure of MAC Address

A MAC address is separated by full colons, as is the IP address (IPv4 addresses). But unlike only four numeric characters separated by full colons to make it look like a four digit sets x 4 parts, the MAC address is a combination of alpha-numeric characters. It is a set of six characters separated by six full colons. Also, unlike the four characters used in IP address per set, the MAC address employs only two characters per set. Here is an example of a MAC address for your understanding:

00:9a:8b:87:81:80

You can see that it is six sets (parts) divided by full colons and can contain both alphabets and characters. The first two or three sets indicate the code of manufacturers of the network interface card just like the first two sets of IP address tells you where you are located.

How To Locate MAC Address of NIC (Network Interface Cards)

To locate the MAC address of your network adaptors, you have to go to the command line. Press WinKey+R, type cmdin the Run dialog box that appears and press Enter key.

Type getmac /v /fo list and press Enter key. The output for each of your NIC adaptor (network adaptors – wired and wireless) will be displayed.

Change MAC Address in Windows

It is not advised to change the MAC address on networks as it may create conflicts and sometimes, may fail to appear on the network. But if you want to change the MAC address for some reason, it is an easy process.

1. Press Windows Key + Break to open System Window

2. Click on Device Manager to the left side of the System Window

3. Once the Device Manager dialog appears, look for the category named Network Adaptors

4. Click on the plus sign preceding Network Adaptors to see all the Network cards attached to your computer;

5. Select the network adaptor whose MAC address you wish to change

6. Right click on the network adaptor and select Properties

7. Click on the Advanced tab.

8. In the list of available options, select Locally Administered MAC Address or Network Adaptor; note that only of the two options will appear based on the type of your network adaptor

9. When you select one of the above options, you will get a text box saying Value.

10. Type a six digit alphanumeric code in the Value field after selecting the radio button; note that you do not have to type the dashes or full colon; if you wish to type 00:4f:gH:HH:88:80, you simply type 004fgHHH8880 without any dashes or full colons; adding dashes may result in error

11. Click OK to close the dialog box

12. Close other open dialog boxes (if any) and close the Device Manager

That is the simplest method to change the MAC (Media Access Control) ID of the network adaptor.

MAC Address Spoofing and Filtering

Spoofing is a method by which you change your MAC address to someone else’s MAC address. That is the common notion in the world of Internet. Spoofing is useful when your network won’t let you in due to MAC filter restrictions. Hackers too indulge in MAC address spoofing.

When you change the MAC address using the above method, you are actually spoofing the MAC address. The hardware MAC address remains the same, but is given preference only when there is no other address. If you want to revert to the original MAC address, just follow the above steps and instead of inputting a value, select the radio button that says “Not Present” or “No Value“. That will get you back your original MAC address.

MAC addresses are especially useful when it comes to protecting your network from unwanted connections. All you have to do is to authorise only the MAC addresses that you wish to connect to the Internet or the network. This you can do it easily using third party programs. You can also filter MAC addresses manually by going to your router page and entering the MAC addresses that are allowed to interact with the router.

Most useful Websites on the Internet that you must visit

2015-04-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

Most of us surf the Internet daily. But when exploring, how frequently do you came across useful websites? There are a lot of useful websites you may be visiting at least once. But sometimes, you may feel at a loss and wonder which site to visit. In such cases, some of these websites may interest you. Here os a list of useful & interesting websites, some helpful, yet others just for fun. Some of these may interest students as well. Visit them when you are bored!

Most Useful Websites

I will take you through few useful websites among many. I felt really amazed after knowing them and thought of sharing them with you. So, let’s jump in to the list without any further delay.

dictation.io

It is an online dictation website. You can start speaking and the words you speak appear on the screen with the help of online voice recognition in the browser itself.

zerodollarmovies.com

This website provides you the list of movies which you can watch on YouTube for free. You are also provided with instant search. Watch your favorite movie on YouTube for free!

screenr.com

This helps you to record whatever you do on your Windows desktop and share the URL with any one you want. You can even upload the recordings of your desktop straight to YouTube.

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is a knowledge-based search engine. It gives you the solutions – not like other search engines, which just give you the links to other websites.. Get to know how best you can make use of Wolfram Alpha.

lmgtfy.com

‘Let Me Google That for you’ is very useful if your friend is too lazy to Google. Visit the website, enter the search and share the generated link with your friends.

Rainy Mood

When you are feeling bored or irritated, just visit this website. It generates a rain sound and you will feel comfortable for sure.

Soundrown

It is similar to Rainy Mood, but offers some more options. You can listen to rain sound, birds voice, sound generated at coffee shop, train sound and many more sounds all at once to boost your mood.

e.ggtimer.com

Use this website as an online timer to complete your daily tasks. You can set the timer for 5 minutes or 10 minutes or any time you want.

Microsoft 15 minute webinars

Want to know how to use Microsoft Word, Excel or any other Microsoft Office help? Then, you must visit this website for sure. You will get to know how to use Microsoft Office products.

copypastecharacter.com

If you want to use any special character which is not present on your keyboard, then this website will be very helpful. It provides you with a wide variety of special characters.

followupthen.com

It helps you the send email reminders. If you want to perform a task at a particular time, then this would be helpful. It will remind you of the task by email.

random.org

You might need to generate random numbers or flip a coin and more. This website would help you for sure.

tubemogul.com

Wondering how to upload a video to other video sites along with YouTube? Then, this website will help you to upload videos to other video sites like Daily Motion, Vimeo and more, with a single action.

hundredzeros.com

Are you fond of reading novels and books in Kindle? This website allows you to download free kindle books.

similarsites.com

If you want to find similar sites to the website you are interested in, then this website helps you to find them. Just enter the website address for which you want to find similar sites and it generates a list of similar websites.

downforeveryoneorjustme.com

This website will be let you know whether the website you want is down only for your or for everyone.

mailvu.com

This one will help you to send to video email using your webcam to anyone.

privnote.com

This helps you to create text notes and will self-destruct after they are being read. Create notes, share the link and once the recipient reads the note, it get destroyed. The service will even notify you once the note gets destroyed.

mixlr.com

It is useful to broadcast your audio. You just concentrate on what you need to speak and this website will broadcast your audio all over the web.

10minutemail

Want to beat spam? If you want to use an email address somewhere, but are not interested in receiving any updates from the service or website, use this website to generate a temporary email address which will be valid for only 10 minutes.

Useful Websites for Students

Here are some useful websites which may specifically interest students.

Create Love Charts

If you want to create neat flow charts, network diagrams and more, you can use this website. It is very easy to create any kind of flow chart.

codeacademy.com

Want to learn any programming or need to code online? Visit this website and learn coding online.

Essay Typer

Want to correct content for the topic? Visit this website and enter the title. Keep on pressing the “Enter” button and you will see that content being generated for you on the screen automatically. It is advised to read the content thoroughly, before you take it down.

polishmywriting.com

Use this website to check grammar and spelling errors. Place the content you wrote in the place provided and it shows you the grammar and spelling errors.

Khan Academy

I hope this does not require any introduction. Just head over to the website and there are various free lessons available for most of the courses.

6. Lumosity

This website provides you puzzle games and brain storming games. Visit this website when you have some time and take up te challenges offered.

Disk SpeedUp: Freeware to Defragment and Optimize Hard Disk

2015-04-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

Glarysoft Disk SpeedUp is a completely free tool to analyze, defragment and optimize disk space in quick time and enhance your computer performance. The freeware is easy to use, without any toolbar or adware and boasts an intuitive interface.

The user-friendly interface offers basic functions:

Analyze the disk
Defrag the disk
Defrag and optimize the selected disk/file/folder
Automatic defrag (when PC is idle)
Automatic shutdown (when defrag completed and schedule preset)

Apart from the above the tool features advanced settings to meet advanced requests.

Disk SpeedUp Freeware Review

When the download of the application is complete, installing it will take a minute. Initially, you will see the main application window split into 2 tabs dedicated to

Defragmenting tasks
Configuring settings

If you observe the image closely, you will find all drives along with their capacity limit, free space and fragmented space and status are shown in the list. You can select any of the features and perform an analysis to evaluate the defragmentation status.

The results of the operation performed are shown in the Report tab, which includes the file name, the number of fragments, the size, and the path of the files.

Boot Time Defrag is a feature that permits a user to defrag main hard drive before Windows even starts, which under normal conditions cannot be defragmented since they’re in use while Windows is running.

The handy utility also allows you to schedule the program to run on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

For optimizing purposes, first select the hard drives you want to optimize and then choose Defrag and Optimize from the File menu. Thereafter, go to Tools > Options > Optimize.

The menu option holds the optimization settings that you can change. Under Move large files to the end of the drive you will notice the following four options:

Minimum file size: This option can be altered to one of ten file sizes from 10-100 MB.
Files that were not accessed in last month: Any file that not accessed in a month is automatically moved to the slower portion of the hard drive.
Files in the Recycle Bin: All files under the Recycle Bin will be moved.
Files in the selected types: Below this option you will find other useful options like Archives, Movies, and Disk Images.

Disk SpeedUp is a useful defragmentation software for Windows. It doesn’t hang up or crash. It has small download size and is pretty easy to install quickly and start defragmentation of files/folders as well as whole hard drives. The only shortfall is it doesn’t work from the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer.

It is available as a free download from its home page.

Any Uninstaller: Free alternative to Windows Program Uninstaller

2015-04-14T21:44:00.001-07:00

You can free up lots of space on your PC by uninstalling the programs you aren’t using. Moreover, when you uninstall unwanted software, you might just end up speeding up your Windows PC too, as it will even remove the start up entries and background processes which te software may be running, everytime your computer starts. While you can always use the built-in Uninstall feature in the Control panel, some third-party free uninstaller software might end up doing a better job. Any Uninstaller is a freeware which can help you uninstall, modify or repair any program easily.

Any Uninstaller for Windows

Soft4Boost Any Uninstaller works like the Windows standard program uninstaller, but comes with a few extra features which help you to get rid of the stubborn software on your computer system easily. It is a useful tool and a free alternative to Windows default program uninstaller.

This is a portable program with a user-friendly interface. Just download the program and run it. The program takes a few minutes to scan your PC and bring up a list of the programs installed.

Navigate the list of programs, select a program you want to remove and click on ‘Uninstall’ from the bar on top. You can also modify or repair the programs from your PC. After uninstalling the program, Any Uninstaller runs a cleanup on your PC and deletes the remnant files related to that particular program. The program also scans the PC thoroughly and shows up a list of all registry tracks and file tracks of the uninstalled program and deletes them.

The customizable interface of Any Uninstaller allows you to change the skin. There are 11 options of skins to choose from. Just click on ‘View’ button and select the skin you like. The program comes with a free lifetime update service plus unlimited free technical support for its users. Furthermore, there are many different language packs available for the users worldwide.

You can download the Any Uninstaller from here and remove all unwanted programs for your Windows PC.

Dukto: Cross-platform file sharing & transfer tool

2015-04-05T02:02:00.002-07:00

Dukto is a free tool designed to share files and information over LAN. Available for a variety of platforms, Dukto can be very useful if you share files very frequently over different devices. Dukto is available for almost all the popular platforms like Windows, Windows Phone, OS X, iOS, Linux, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Open Pandora and Maemo. The tool is perfectly designed and is easy to operate. Along with sharing files you can even send text messages to other devices.
Dukto for Windows PC, Windows Phone

For Dukto to work, all the required devices must be connected to the same network either by Wi-Fi or cable. Dukto will automatically scan for devices available in LAN and display it to you.

Now to send a file to a device, just click on the device’s name and then choose ‘Send some Files’, if you want to send a folder or text then choose ‘Send a Folder’ or ‘Send some Text’ respectively. You can even send text message from the clipboard which is a useful feature for sharing links.

Dukto even supports IP connections which let you manually send some files by entering the other device’s IP address. The addresses option lets you view your own IP address. You can directly open the received files from the program itself and you can even open the folder where files are received. Under Settings you can change this folder path, moreover you can choose the accent color for the program.

The user interface of the program is inspired from Windows Phone and thus making the app easy to use. You can navigate between different pages as in Windows Phone and you can access the settings and other options from the bottom menu bar. The program involves zero configuration, which means you are always ready to go. Just run the application and start sending files. You need not have any knowledge about LAN – just make sure the devices are connected to the same network.

The availability of Dukto for most of the platforms make it a very useful tool to have. It is easy to operate and good to look at. It can send large files in just seconds which can take hours on Bluetooth. Bluetooth is now history and Wi-Fi sharing is in.

Click here to download Dukto. For Windows PC it is available in both installer, as well as portable version.

Useful Google Now Voice Commands you should know

2015-04-04T07:10:00.000-07:00

Google has been frequently updating it’s voice assistant application Google Now. Most of us are familiar with Apple’s Siri, but even Google Now is on par with Siri. The latest update supports many voice commands. Just say OK Google or tap on the mic and start saying the commands, and it gives you amazing results. In this article, I will take you through a few useful Google Now Voice Commands which you can use in your daily life.

Google Now Voice Commands

Normally, we text and make calls many times in a day. For this, you need to open the messenger or Hangouts app to send messages. These actions need some steps to be followed. But you can use Google Now to send or make a call with just a small command. Apart from this, you can even use Google Now carry out basic searches – to know about weather conditions, do small mathematics, currency conversions, et. Let us see some of them.

Basic Search

You can use Google Now to carry out general search like “Who is the founder of Microsoft?” or “Stock price of Microsoft” and many more such basic searches.

Send Hangout Message

Google Now also allows you to send normal message from your messenger app and Hangout message from your Hangouts app. You just need to use different voice commands for both. To send Hangout message use the voice command as “Send Hangout message to [person name] [message]”. If you say the command without the message, it asks the text you want to send.

Send normal text message and make a call

To send a normal message, just say “Text [person name] [text message]”. If you do not say the message, it asks you to what message you want to send. To make a call say “Call [contact name]”.

Open any application

You can post status to Facebook, tweet using Twitter and take a picture by just saying a command. “Open Facebook”, “Take Picture” and “Post To Twitter [Tweet]” are some examples.

Information about travel and directions

You can use Google Now Voice Commands to get directions to a place, find distance between two places, find nearby restaurants and more. Some example commands are “Get directions to Santa Monica”, “Map of Andhra Pradesh”, “Show me nearby restaurants” and more.

Solve Math and Unit Conversions

Google Now helps you to solve basic Mathematics lie solving the square root, multiplication and many more. You can even perform unit conversions quickly and easily.

Find Time, Set Reminder and Take Notes

Using Google Now you can know the present time in any location, set alarm and reminders. You can even take quick notes using Google Now Voice Commands.

Weather and Flight Information

Google Now gives you the weather information of particular place and you can stay updated with the flight information with just few easy commands. Say “Do I need an Umbrella tomorrow”, “What’s the weather in New York”, “Flight Status of 557” and more.

Browse the web

Just simple commands like “open [website name]”, “browse to [website name]” and “go to [website name]” opens the respective website in the browser.

Entertainment and Sports

Google Now allows you to launch the YouTube Video song using the command. You can even find the information regarding sports like who won the last match between the specified two teams and other information. Say commands like “Listen to Hotel California by Eagles”, “YouTube how to play caroms”, “Who won the last match between Real Madrid and Barcelona” and more.

Some more Fun Stuff

Try using Google Now Commands like “Capacity of Sydney Cricket Ground”, “say how are you in German”, “Logo of Windows” and so on.

To know what all the commands available are, just tap on the mic and say “OK Google”. This lists all the available commands.

These are some of the most useful Google Now Voice Commands. If you know of any more such, please do share with us through comments.

Encrypt and Decrypt important Files easily with Kryptelite

2015-04-03T10:44:00.002-07:00

Sending important files over the web is a task that is practiced on a daily basis around the world. With the rise in cyber attacks, computer users should always consider encrypting their files before pressing the send button. There are several free software available for data encryption, but today we are going to look at Kryptelite, one of the better encryption software available for download right now. We should point out that Kryptelite is the free version to Kryptel, so it will lack some features.

Krypelite free encryption software for Windows

Unlike the many file encryption software I’ve tested, Kryptelite is very easy to use and is designed for the home user. Users can encrypt and decrypt with just a few clicks of the mouse, yes, it is that easy to use. Furthermore, the software allows for the shredding of an unlimited amount of files just by right-clicking in Windows.

For those who do not wish to right-click, it is possible to drag and drop files to the Kryptelite icon on the desktop to have them shredded.

Many users would be glad to know that ZIP and BZIP2 compression is supported here.

While Kryptelite gives up support for command line capability, multi-pass shredding, legacy ciphers and other features found only in the premium versions, it does not give up industry-standard AES 256-bit encryption.

We like the fact that Kryptelite forces the user to enter a password twice, along with recognizing content on network shares and USB drives. We also have the option to choose different icons for files and folders, but that’s not something we wanted to play around with.

The tool may lack 64-bit processing; the ability to utilize multiple processor cores for faster performance among other things, but it is great nonetheless. Home users do not tend to encrypt files in the gigabytes, so the need for multicore processing and 64-bit support is moot.

One interesting thing about this encryption software is the amount of Windows versions it supports. We were surprised to find out it goes all the way back to Windows 2000 because not many regularly update software in this day and age still support versions of Microsoft’s operating system before Windows XP.

Kryptelite can be downloaded here. The file size it close to 9MB, and yes, it works flawlessly in Windows 10 too.

Create and Format bootable USB flash drives with Rufus

2015-04-03T10:35:00.001-07:00

Rufus stands for the Reliable USB Formatting Utility with Source. It is a tiny and lightweight utility for Windows PC, that helps to easily format, as well as create USB drives, such as USB keys, memory-sticks, and USB pen-drives etc., which are bootable and user-friendly. It has advanced and standard options to suit all the skill levels.

Create bootable media easily

This tool has a user friendly interface which looks like the built-in format panel of Windows. We can choose a partition scheme, device, cluster size, target system type, new volume label and file system types – like NTFS, FAT32, exFATand UDF..

There are a few basic formatting options available, which help us check the device to see if there are any bad blocks. It also helps in the selection of algorithms (from type 1 to type 4), we can create an extendable label, quick format mode and icon files. A bootable disk is created using the ISO image. Rufus tool records all the activities to a different panel, and it is saved into a log file.

This multifaceted tool is useful when:

USB installation media need to be created from bootable ISOs (Linux, Windows, and UEFI)
A person wants to work on a computer in which an OS is not installed
For the purpose of flashing a BIOS or any other DOS, firmware is required
A person wishes to run a low-level utility.

New features in Rufus 2.1.649:

32 bit support range for UEFI: NTFS boot
Addition of Advanced mode stand-alone UEFI: NTFS with boot installation
Disable support for hidden GRUB version ISOs
Repair and correct Windows UEFI installation related issues while using GPT/NTFS.
generating a repair of 32 bit installation flash drives in UEFI Windows 10.

Rufus for Windows free download

Rufus is arguably the best solution for creating and formatting a bootable USB drive. Download your copy of Rufus from the official website here.

Google launches com.google - Experience Google in reverse

2015-04-02T03:34:00.002-07:00

Google has launched com.google, a service that shows Google in reverse. The launch came around April Fools’ day. It is not clear however that if the new service is just for fun or is related to April Fool Day. The com.google site even redirects you to your local Google website. For example, Google India is being displayed as “elgooG aidnI“. Of course, the letters too are inverted in the logo.

com.google

When you type anything in the com.google page, it also shows auto suggestions. These auto suggestions too are being shown in reverse – inverted and mirrored. Even the letters typed in the Google search bar are inverted thereby creating confusion as to what you are typing. The text you type in the text search bar goes from right to left just like the Middle East languages – even though you are typing in it using the English language.

The results too are shown inverted. The text description comes above in inverted characters – reading right to left as opposed to the standard reading left to right. Then comes the URLs leading to the search result pages which too are in inverted form.

Among all top-level domains, we know that .google is not one of them. Google is using some sort of masking or any other technique to keep the website alive. The reason for creating such a page is just to provide fun and to challenge the users to read what is imprinted inverted. The technique of inverted reading has been proposed by many scholars to improve the speed of reading English or any other language but that does not seem to be an objective here.

Google has been up for pranks for past many years. There are pages at Google or rather at google.com that are not known to many and are fun to use. Check out some hidden fun Google pages at this link. Another fun Google page is Gravity where things like text boxes and search buttons come tumbling down as if acting under the power of gravity.

Best 4G LTE Enabled Android Smartphones below Rs 10000

2015-04-02T01:37:00.000-07:00

2015 will be the year when India might see 4G LTE roll out across multiple locations. Indian mobile market is slowing getting into the 4G LTE with networking rolling out in few cities. Taking this into consideration, lot of mobile OEMs are not focusing on 4G LTE supported handsets as India supports TD LTE.

In the last couple of months, we have seen new 4G supported phones coming to India in the mid range and also the budget category. The Redmi Note and Yu Yureka initially set the benchmark in the sub 10k price point and now we have other great devices in the budget category with 4G support.

So here is a list of 4G LTE supported phone below Rs 10000 in India. We will be updating the list when new devices launch in India.

1. Honor 4X

The Huawei Honor 4X comes with 5.5-Inch HD IPS display. It is powered by 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 410 MSM8916 Quad Core Processor and runs Android 4.4 KitKat on top of EMUI 3.0. On the camera end it features, 13MP Rear Camera With LED Flash and 5MP front-facing Camera. It comes with 2GB RAM and 8GB Internal Storage which is expandable upto 32 GB using microSD. The connectivity features include Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot, Bluetooth v4.0. The device supports dual micro SIM and packs 3000mAh Battery. The Huawei Honor 4X is available in Black, White, Gold and is priced at Rs 10499.

Buy Honor 4X

2. Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G:

The device comes with a 5.5 inch HP display with IPS technology and is powered by a 1.6 Ghz Snapdragon 400 processor. The device has 2GB of RAM and also comes with 8GB internal storage which is expandable to 64GB via microSD card. The phone also comes with a 13MP rear camera with LED flash and 1080p recording. The phone also features a 5MP camera for video calls and Selfie. It runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with MIUI which is a custom UI from the company. The phone is powered by a 3200mAh battery. The device is priced Rs 9999 in India.

Buy Redmi Note 4G

3. Yu Yureka

The device sports 5.5-inch HD display and is powered by Snapdragon 615 Octa Core processor and runs Android 4.4.2 Kitkat. On the camera end it comes with 13MP rear camera and 5MP front-facing camera. It also features 2 GB RAM and 16 GB of internal storage with expansion slot and also packs 2500mAh battery. The device is priced Rs 8999 and we feel this is a great pricing from the company considering the specs.

4. Lenovo A7000

The Lenovo A7000 is more mid range phone and comes with 5.5-inch HD (1280 x 720) IPS display and is powered by MediaTek MT6752m 1.5GHz True8Core processor with 2GB RAM and 8GB internal storage and is expandable via microSD card. On the camera front, there is 8MP auto-focus rear camera w/ LED flash and 5MP fixed-focus front camera. There is Android 5.0 and 2900mAh battery. It also has dual SIM card support along with 4G LTE. The Lenovo A7000 is also the world’s first Android smartphone to feature Dolby Atmos technology for an amazing headphone experience. Expected price of the device is around Rs 10000 (launch happening on April 7th).

5. Lenovo A6000

Lenovo announced this new A6000 at the CES 2015, which is a budget phone and comes with 4G LTE support and launching in India pretty soon to compete Xiaomi Redmi Note 4G and Yu YUREKA. Lenovo A6000 comes with 5 inch HD IPS Display (1280 X 20P) and is powered by 1.2 GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor with Adreno 306 GPU. The phone has 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage which is expandable via micro SD card. On the imaging front the device sports a 8MP rear camera and 2MP front camera. It supports 4G LTE in India. Lenovo A6000 runs on Android 4.4 (KitKat) with Vibe UI. It also features dual SIM card support. There is 2300mAh battery powering the device and it is priced at Rs. 6,999.

Buy Lenovo A6000

6. Xiaomi Redmi 2

The new Redmi 2 comes with 4.7 inch (1280 X 720P) IPS HD display and is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 Quad Core processor with 64-bit support and Adreno 305 GPU. The phone comes with 1GB RAM and 8GB internal storage which is similar to Redmi 1S. There is dual SIM card support and runs MIUI v6 on top of Android 4.4 KitKat. The internal storage can be expanded via micro SD card upto 32GB. On the imaging front the phone has 8MP rear camera with LED Flash, BSI sensor and 1080p video recording support and a 2MP front-facing camera, 720P HD video recording which is again similar to the Redmi 1S. The camera also is improved with new filters and also features. The phone also has 2200mAh battery. Redmi 2 is priced Rs 6999 and will be exclusive to Flipkart similar to other Xiaomi devices.

Buy Redmi 2

WhatsApp calling feature coming to Windows Phone

2015-04-02T01:25:00.001-07:00

If you are using WhatsApp on your Windows Phones, then get ready to enjoy the experience of making phone calls on a go via your favorite instant messaging space. The WhatsApp calling feature is expected to come soon to Windows Phones.

Earlier this year at MWC2015, the WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum revealed the plans of the company to add the voice services to its feature list. After rolling out this new functionality on the Android platform, the developers of WhatsApp are all set to showcase it to their Windows Phone users in the near future.

WhatsApp Calling feature for Windows Phone

The new voice calling feature will soon arrive on the Windows Phone platform, probably in the upcoming weeks. The email shown below from the WhatsApp team shows that the company is inviting the Italian developers to locate the menu items related to the new feature for Windows Phone. The text confirms that the feature will be soon headed to the WhatsApp Windows Phone version.

This new feature for VoIP calls will not only enables users to make voice calls over the Internet, but also allow them to access the history of incoming as well as outgoing calls. In order to enjoy this new feature, you might have to update your app to the stable version (without any bugs).

Following his announcement, Koum and his team has already rolled out the voice calling services for the Androiddevices and are testing the same for the iOS platform. The latest news even confirms the arrival of the service on Windows Phone devices soon to be followed by the BlackBerry.

WhatsApp is the popular instant messaging client and with the arrival of the voice-calling feature to Windows Phone devices it might impose tough challenge to the already existing services such as Skype and Viber.

At the moment, there are no confirmed details regarding the public release of the voice calling functionality on the WhatsApp for Windows Phone.

Recover accidentally deleted Files with Disk Drill for Windows

2015-04-02T00:58:00.002-07:00

The popular Mac data recovery software, Disk Drill, is now available for Windows PC. The most important aspect of this app is that it is completely free and comes with a host of features to keep users happy. Disk Drill is perfect for recovering lost data, fixing a damaged partition, hard drive reformatting among many more.

Disk Drill for Windows PC

Disk Drill is a feature-rich software that should be easy for anyone to use, even the biggest newbie in the room. Using this tool you can backup a volume or partition from a failing drive and save it as DMG image to a new drive. Disk Drill for Windows can also help in the case of Partition loss, Accidental deletion, Failed bootups and Memory card corruption. This data recovery software can also help you with Hard drive reformatting and Recycle bin cleanup. Let us have a look at some of its features.

Recovering Data

After extensively using Disk Drill, we’ve come to the conclusion that this software is capable of recovering data from any storage, or should we say the ones we have tested. Whether it be USB flash drives, external drives, an MP3 player or memory cards, Disk Drill will get the job done without a fuss.

Ease Of Use

What really caught us off-guard about Disk Drill is how easy it is to use. The interface is friendly and not cluttered when compared to similar programs. Getting something done usually takes just a few clicks of the mouse, so complication is instantly thrown out the door.

Protection From Data Loss

The primary focus of Disk Drill is to recover lost data, but it can also protect against future data loss. The software comes with a feature called Recovery Vault, and basically what this does is to keep track of every file deleted since activation, so should something happen to the drive, recovering these files shouldn’t be too hard.

File Systems Support

One of the things we love about Disk Drill, is the amount of file systems it supports right off the bat. These systems includes the likes of FAT, exFAT or NTFS file system, is HFS+ Mac drive Linux EXT2/3/4 and more.

Overall Thought

Disk Drill is powerful and easy to use. The learning curve is far from being complex despite the amount of features available right now. We’ve tested it on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and even the latest version of Windows 10 Technical Preview. Folks who are still rocking Windows XP shouldn’t come across an ounce of problems.

Folks who want a powerful file recovery software should jump on the Disk Drill bandwagon right away because we expect the developers to venture down a similar route to the Mac version. In the coming months, look out for a Basic and Pro version of Disk Drill for Windows. Some of the cool features available in the free version right now will likely be removed in order to draw users to the Pro version of the software.

Download Disk Drill for Windows, by clicking on the green Download tab on its home page.

Manage Trusted Root Certificates in Windows 8

2015-04-02T00:14:00.000-07:00

In one of our earlier posts, we have seen what Root Certificates are. There may be times, when some companies or users may feel the need to manage and configure Trusted Root Certificates, so as to prevent other users in the domain from configuring their own set. In this post, we will see how to manage Trusted Root Certificates & add certificates to Trusted Root Certification Authorities store in Windows 8.1.

Manage Trusted Root Certificates in Windows

To add certificates to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store for a local computer, from the WinX Menu in Windows 8.1, open Run box, type mmc and hit Enter to open the Microsoft Management Control.

Press the File menu link and select Add/Remove Snap-in. Now under Available snap-ins, click Certificates,and then click Add.

Click OK. In the next dialog box, select Computer account and then on Next.
Now select Local computer and click on Finish.
Now, back in MMC, in the console tree, double-click on Certificates and then right-click on Trusted Root Certification Authorities Store. Under All tasks, select Import.
The Certificate Import Wizard will open.
Follow the instructions in the wizard to complete the process.

Now let us see how to configure and manage trusted root certificates for a local computer. Open MMC and press the File menu link and select Add/Remove Snap-in. Now under Available snap-ins, click Group Policy Object Editor,and then click Add. Select the computer whose local GPO you want to edit, and click Finish / OK.
Now, back in the MMC console tree, navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings. Next Public Key Policies. Double-click Certificate Path Validation Settings, and then select the Stores tab.

Here, select the Define these policy settings, Allow user trusted root CAs to be used to validate certificates and Allow users to trust peer trust certificates check boxes.

Finally under Root Certificate stores, select the root CAs that the client computers can trust and click OK.

To see how you can manage trusted root certificates for a domain and how to add certificates to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store for a domain, visit Technet.