Technology News

Tired of iPhone Battery Drain? Learn To Save Battery Life

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 08:06:00 +0000

How to Fix iPhone Battery Drain problem?

Before updating my iPhone5S to iOS8, I never faced Battery drain problem so significantly. Before making below mentioned changes, every morning when I woke up, my iPhone was dead, and I had to recharge it. None the less, when I’m out, I had to carry an extra battery-pack or recharge my phone using my car USB charger. So, if you are also one of those iPhone users who is tired of iPhone5 battery draining problem, follow all the below mentioned tricks and you will not complain about battery issues again.

1. Fix your brightness setting.

One of the biggest culprits of iPhone battery drain is your screen brightness. Make use of your phone’s ambient light sensor and put it on Auto-Brightness. It will automatically adjust your screen’s brightness levels based on light around it. You can also adjust this yourself using the slider to adjust brightness.

2. Disable spotlight search.

Spotlight Search can be handy when you need to find something on your phone, but it can also drain battery by constantly updating its search index. Save battery and turn Spotlight Search off by unchecking all data types it can search for under Settings.

3. Don’t wait for auto-lock.
Get in the habit of locking your phone yourself after every use. Any minute that you leave the phone’s screen on adds to battery drain. Checked the time? Lock it yourself and don’t wait for auto-lock. You can also shorten the time to auto-lock by adjusting it under Settings.

4. Limit notifications.

Every time your iPhone receives notifications, it wakes up your phone and whichever app the notification was for responds, thereby using up battery. You can limit notifications to only the most important you need by going to the Privacy section under Settings. Do Not Disturb is also a great way to turn off the least important notifications quickly.

5. Turn off connectivity settings when not in use.

Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G/4G or LTE all use up battery whenever they’re turned on, even while you’re not using them. Unless you really, absolutely need to be constantly connected, disable these settings to conserve battery. Though bluetooth consume very little battery, but again if you are not using it, you can quickly disable it and enable it when require.

6. Disable location services.

Location services are useful, especially for the Find My iPhone app, but leaving it turned on for all apps can drain battery life. Instead of leaving it turned on for all apps, you can select which app should use location services under the Privacy section in Settings. Keep a note that you don’t like to disable location services specially when you are travelling, as if you misplace your iPhone, you can use find my iPhone service to locate your phone.

7. Turn off Parallax and dynamic backgrounds.
iOS 7 recently introduced Parallax and dynamic backgrounds, which are pretty but use up battery life. The advanced motion and 3D effects are cool looking but do not add much functionality to your phone. Instead, disable Parallax by looking under Accessibility in the General section of Settings. Switch back to standard wallpapers. They may not be as fun, but they’ll help you improve your iPhone’s battery life.

8. Don’t push email, fetch less often.
Push email means that your mail app will listen for incoming mail and “push” it out to your phone as soon as it arrives. This can be quite the battery drain, so if you’re not really waiting for an important email to arrive it may be better to fetch your email every hour or so instead. You can also just disable that altogether and just manually fetch your mail.

9. Stop apps from auto-updating.
iOS 7 now automatically updates apps for you as soon as new versions are released. Again, this can drain your battery. Instead, choose when to update your apps by going to the Updates settings in iTunes and App Store under settings.

10. Buy an extended battery pack
If you’d rather lose battery life than turn off services that are essential to you, maybe it’s time to invest in an external battery instead. There are a lot of extended life batteries from different brands, just pick the one that suits you best. Mophie juice pack is what I recommend and buy the one with more Mah. I will make a list of best battery pack soon.
If you are constantly getting issue with battery draining issue, Download this new app call Normal from app store, as it will show you which apps are using maximum battery on your iPhone. Interestingly it also shows if any of your cydia apps is consuming lots of battery.
You might say that turning off all of these things is like disabling your iPhone’s “smartphone” capability, but the trick is fine-tuning all the services and apps you need so that you use battery life on just the essentials.

How To Manually Update iPad To Any iOS Firmware

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 12:36:00 +0000

Guide to Update iPad Firmware Manually

In manual iPad update, we download the latest firmware version of iOS or desired firmware of iOS on your computer manually, and use iTunes update feature to manually update iPad. In this guide I will be sharing how I updated my iPad 2 to latest iOs 7.0.4 version, and you can follow the same process to update or downgrade to any firmware version (Provided it allows that and is compatible). The only difference with other iOS version would be, you will require to manually download the .ipsw file of firmware you want to install on your Apple iPad.
Here are the direct download link for iOs 7.0.4 for iPad 2.

iPad 2 (Wi-Fi) (iPad2,1) version 7.0.4 (Build 11B554a), Download

iPad 2 (GSM) (iPad2,2) version 7.0.4 (Build 11B554a), Download

iPad 2 (CDMA) (iPad2,3) version 7.0.4 (Build 11B554a), Download

iPad2,4 (iPad2,4) version 7.0.4 (Build 11B554a), Download

Download the firmware depending upon the iPad model you are using.
So I assume you have already downloaded the .ipsw file, and now follow the steps mentioned below. I’m performing this task on my Mac OS, and for the Windows process will be the same, with difference of Key stroke.

How to manually Install iOS7 on iPad:

Don’t forget to take complete backup of your iPad before you follow these steps, as you can always restore your iPad back if something goes wrong.

Connect your iPad to your computer and open iTunes.
On your iTunes you will see the update button to update the iPad to latest firmware.
If you are on Mac, hold ‘option’ button on your Keyboard and click on check for updates, and manually browse the download iOS firmware file, and use it to update your iPad.
If you are on Windows, You need to hold ‘Shift’ Key instead of option.

Now browse the firmware file and select it. You will get a message like “iTunes will update your iPad to iOS 7.0.x and will verify the update with Apple.” Click on update and it will start installing the selected .ipsw file.
It will take couple of minutes to update iPad to latest iOS7 firmware, so go and grab your coffee by the time iTunes update your iPad.

Note: In my case (updating iPad2 on iOS6 to iOS 7.0.4) it gave me an Error code 6, and I had to repeat the process, but next time I selected “Restore iPad” + option key to manually select the firmware. I also had iPhone5 cable connected to other port, and according to Apple help file, we should remove all other connected cables. Next time I got another error “Error 3014” and again I repeated the same process of restoring. I had to repeat the process 10+ times to make it work, and finally my iPad was restored and updated to latest iOS 7.0.4 firmware.
You might need to set up your iPad as a new device, and later on you can use restore backup feature of iTunes to restore all apps and iPad settings back to your updated iPad.

How To Use GameGem To Hack SimCity & Other iOS Game

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 12:18:00 +0000

How to download and use GameGem Cydia app:

GameGem is available in Bigboss Repo, so you can simply search for “GameGem” and install it on your Jailbroken iOS device. I have tested it with latest version of iOS8.X and it works perfectly fine. Alternatively you can open this link on your jailbroken iOS device and install GameGem Cydia app.
Using Gamegem:
Using GameGem you can manipulate the number of any game. For example Simoleons or Simcash in SimCity. I haven’t tried it with any other app, but it should work with most of the iOS games. Now let me show you how it works with an example. In this tutorial I’m taking Simcity as an example and you can try the same trick with any other game of your choice.

Open the game you want to manipulate (Hack)
Now Let the app run in background and open the GameGem. Here is the home screen of GameGem:

Click on List option at top right and select the app you want to hack (See screenshot):

Now here is the important part, Open the app you want to hack and notice the number of Gems, Money or what ever you want to manipulate. For example, in my case I wanted to hack Simcity Simoleons. So Right now the number of Simoleons I have is 38:

Go back to Gamegem after noting down the number (Let the game run in the background) and in the input search value enter the number. In my case I have entered “38”, and hit the search button. It will show results like this:

Now go to the Simcity app and buy or sell anything to change the number. I sold few things and you can see the new number in screenshot is “69”

Now go back to Gamegem and search again for new number “69” and it will show you results but in very few numbers “2-30”

Click on second menu next to search results as shown in above image. On the next screen select all entry and click on Modify, now enter any number such as “999999” and you will have that much money/points in the game.

This is it and it would work with almost all the iOS game. Here is a video tutorial showing how to use Gamegem.

Best Cydia Tweaks For 2019 – iOS 8.1.2 Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:56:00 +0000

My collection of Best Cydia Tweaks:

Many of these mentioned tweaks can be added with existing default repo and for many you need to add a new Cydia source. You should check out this Cydia sources which you can add on your Jailbroken iOS device and read this guide to learn how to add new Cydia source. So, lets start with the list:
iCleaner Pro:

One of the most common issue which I face with my 16GB iPhone is the storage issue. Often I get this message that my storage is full and this is where iCleanerPro comes into the picture. Think of iCleaner pro as your iOS cleaner and optimiser. It removes all unused, temporary files and save a lot of space. If you are using it on an iPhone after using it for months, it can clean and save up to 1GB of space. (That’s what it saved on my iPhone).
Source: exile90software.com/cydia

vShare:

vShare is one of the most popular Cydia tweak which will let you download any app from it’s store. Think of this as modern and refined version of Installous (If you remember installous). This is one of the best tweak that you would love to install after jailbreaking your iOS. To install vShare, you need to download Appsync for your iOS version and vShare. You can get both of them from below source.
Source: http://repo.appvv.com

SaveGram:

This is a free tweak available in Bigbossrepo (Default repo) which every instagram user will love. This is a small tweak and all it does is, it let you save any instagram photo. For now the only way to save instagram photo on your iPhone is by taking a screenshot, but with Savegram you can save Instagram photos to your photo-library.
Repo: Bigboss

Bytafont 2:

This is my favourite tweak as it let me customise the fonts on my iPhone. It has a wide selection of fonts and you can see them and install it. Do remember, when you select a font, it will redirect you to cydia and you will be downloading font from there. None the less, you will jazz up your iPhone with new fonts. Something which I highly recommend for your iPhone. This is a free tweak and available in ModMyi repo. Once installed, you can access Bytafont from app screen and select the font based on your iOS version. Once you have downloaded the desire font, click on basic and select the font. This will reboot your device and your new font will be installed.

Cydelete:
Cydelete is like an essential Cydia tweak which I always install after jailbreaking my iOS device. This small tweak let you delete any installed Cydia tweak directly from the springboard. Like the way you delete any normal app downloaded from app store, with Cydelete you can do the same with Cydia apps.
Repo: BigBoss and price – free

WhatsApp+:

Are you tired of double tick mark on WhatsApp? or want to share unlimited files in WhatsApp? WhatsApp+ tweak is right for you and the best part is it’s free. This is an ultimate iOS adding for Whatsapp app, as you can also lock your whatsapp with passcode or touchId. So no one can snoop around your WhatsApp behind your back. This is a free Cydia Tweak which you can download from BigBossRepo. Once installed you can access whatsapp+ settings by opening whatsapp app and going to settings. (See above screenshot)
Repo: Bigboss

Zeppelin:

This is a customization tweak for your iPhone. It will let you hide or change the carrier logo. Once installed, you can go to settings > Zeppelin and make changes in the settings. It’s free and you can download from BigBoss repo.

Vibcall:
This is a small Cydia tweak but very handy. What Vibcall does is, it vibrates your phone when your outgoing call it connected. Simple yet powerful tweak. This is free tweak and you can install with all default repo.
At this time these are the best Cydia tweaks which I have installed on my iPhone running on iOS 8.1.2. There are many more free and paid Cydia tweaks which you can install, and I will keep updating this list as I discover and try new tweaks.

Also see: Ultimate list of Cydia Sources for 2015

Feel free to suggest me your favourite Cydia tweaks in the comment section below. Don’t forget to share this list with your iPhone friends on Facebook and Google plus.

Top 10 Must Have Cydia Tweaks

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:49:00 +0000

List of Useful Cydia Tweaks for Jailbroken iPhone/iPad

When you jailbreak an iPhone or iPad, you get few default cydia repos but there are many other awesome repos, that you can consider adding. Below, I have mentioned list of repos that you can add and if you are new to adding repo, here is a step by step guide to add cydia sources. So, lets get started with our list of top free Cydia tweaks, which you should install right away. Make sure, you check the version compatibility in description of all the tweaks. Specially, if you are using iPhone 3G or any older firmware on your iOS device, do confirm the version compatibility of these below mentioned tweaks.

Grooveshark

Grooveshark is a free utility that is popular for it’s easy to use interface. Just visit Grooveshark.Com on your computer and search and play your favorite track. But what if you could do it on your

Jailbroken iDevice, sadly Grooveshark hasn’t mentioned about any iPhone app. But this application is available in Cydia if you are Jailbroken. Just search it in the BigBoss repo and you will find it. Install it and make a new Grooveshark account or sign in if you have already, and start listening to your favorite tracks without even downloading them.

WinterBoard

Winterboard as we all know is one of the most popular theme managing tweak available in Cydia. It’s a thousand time better than Summerboard and Winterboard. If you search for themes inside cydia you can find thousands of themes that are available and are compatible with WinterBoard. To install winterboard just search for it inside Cydia and click install. You can also do so by finding a theme inside Cydia and installing it, if it is a Winterboard compatible theme then it will also download and install the Winterboard app with the theme itself. Once you have installed Winterboard, you will be welcomed with a Â very easy to use interface with all your themes installed. To apply any one of them, just click on it and repsring. Enjoy the new looks of your iDevice.

AdBlocker

Tired of ads! Already using AdBlocker on your computer, but what about your iDevice. Do you love to see ads when you visit any site on your iPad or iPhone. Just search for AdBlock inside cydia and install it. Once you have installed it on your iDevice, you will no longer see any ads and you can browse a neat and clean website. This tweak will cost you $2.19 but you can also find it for free on any other repo. But installing a pirated version, will make your Safari browser to crash. So I would like to advice you to buy the full version since it is totally worth it.

Cyntact (Paid)

Have you ever wondered how convenient it would be if you could see the photos of contacts in your contact list. Cyntact is another great cydia tweak that allows you to have pictures placed before the contact name in your Contact list. I tested this application myself and had no issues and moreover I had one doubt that it would slow down the scrolling inside the contact list, but instead it worked perfectly smooth. This app would cost you a $1 and installing it is totally up to you, if you feel that you can find contact easily with pictures displayed on the left then install it right now!

IntelliScreenX

Think how it would look if you could have your notifications on your lock screen itself. IntelliScreenX is an amazing must have cydia tweak that can enable you to have all your Notifications right at your lock screen. Earlier you might have to first unlock your iDevice and then drag the notification center to see your latest notifications, but this tweak will make all your Notifications visible on your lock screen in a little transparent looking way. It looks amazing sitting on the lock screen. You can download it for free inside of Cydia but once it is installed you will have to purchase a license key, which is totally worth it.Right now I am on the trial period which is going to end soon. Hoping to buy a new license for this application.

CyDelete

What will happen if you have lots of cydia tweaks that uses some space on your beautiful home screen. And you got bored of it and thinking to uninstall Cydia tweaks, what would you do. Let me tell you – First open cydia > Find the tweak that you want to uninstall and then uninstall it which will take a considerable amount of time. And after that also you will either have to repsring your device if it is an appearance tweak. Seems to be a lot time-consuming. So “CyDelete” is an application that will allow you to delete all those cydia tweaks that are on your Home Screen directly from there, like you would do for any other app store app. You can find this tweak under the BigBoss repo.

Activator

A tweak which allows you to have custom activation gestures and commands for almost every function inside of your iDevice. You can do almost all the task easily by just going inside the application and assigning the touch gesture to a function. Close all applications running in the background by triple pressing the home button, turn wi-fi on or off by just sliding over the status bar and much more!….

AirBlue Sharing

Bluetooth and file sharing is the most disappointing thing for me since I can’t send files to any other android phone or any phone available in the market. I could only send files to any other iDevice like an iPad or an iPhone. But this tweak which is called “AirBlue Sharing” enables us to do all sorts of tasks that any other Android phone could do. Just search for this tweak inside Cydia and install it, just activate it by double tapping on the Status Bar and go to your Music app or Camera roll and click on the small blue arrow to send it through Bluetooth. This will work with any Bluetooth device, be it any PC,Laptop or an android Phone. And the biggest thing is that, it’s totally free.

Five Icon Dock

A very simple sounding but a pretty useful tweak which enables you to have 5 icons in your dock. Once Google Chrome was released for iOS, i loved it more than I did safari but I didn’t want to remove Safari from my Dock in place of Google Chrome. So I jumped right into Cydia and installed this tweak and got chrome also to fit into the Dock.

SBSettings

Father and mother of all the Cydia tweaks given above, totally free, worth downloading. This is the best tweak to be used to perform any kind of action on your iPhone, iPad or iPod. You can use this to reboot, respring, turn WiFi,3g, Bluetooth off and much more. SBSettings is the first app you should install from Cydia. You can do all these tasks right from your notification center like any other Android Phone.

List of Cydia sources to add more Tweaks

Though these are just few of the must have Cydia tweaks and if you need more, you should add more Cydia repo on your jailbroken device. One easy way to add Cydia Tweaks is by adding some of the recommended sources in homepage of Cydia. Here are some of the Cydia sources, which you can add right away:

http://Cydia.iphonecake.com
http://apt.thebigboss.org/repofiles/cydia/
http://cydia.hackulo.us
http://cydia.myrepospace.com/iPhoneTechie/
http://cydia.iclarified.com/
http://apt.modmyi.com
http://cydia.winterboarder.com
http://www.iaccess.com/apt/

I highly recommend you to Install installous tweak after jailbreaking your iOS device, as this app will let you download all the premium apps for free. If you are thinking, jailbreaking is illegal, read popular technology myths and misconceptions.

If you have never used Cydia, here is a video which explains how to use Cydia: http://youtu.be/PbrQocQrYLY These were the Top 10 Cydia Tweaks which I feel are must downloading once. If you have any other suggestions then kindly post them below.

How To Enable WhatsApp Web For iPhone With Cydia Tweak

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 07:59:00 +0000

How to use WhatsappWebhelper Cydia Tweak?

You need to have your iOS device jailbroken to use this tweak. If you haven’t jailbroken your device yet, you should read this guide. Once your device is jailbroken, go to Cydia & search for WhatsAppWebhelper & install it.

First time users can refer to following guides:

What are Cydia & basics of Cydia
How to use Cydia – Starter guide

Once you have the tweak installed on your device, open Whatsapp and go to settings. There you will see an option for Whatsapp web.

Click on it, and you will see a screen like what is shown below.

Now go to Web.whatsapp.com your Chrome, Firefox or Opera browser. (Whatsapp web doesn’t support Safari browser yet). Scan the barcode, and you will be able to start using your Whatsapp on your desktop browser. This is how Whatsapp web interface looks like:

You can click on file icon at the top to send a file from your desktop to any Whatsapp user. You can also click the picture using your laptop camera & send it to anyone.
Whatsapp file size sending limit is 16MB, so if you are sending a large file, make sure to compress or optimize it accordingly.

If you get, an error saying makes sure your phone has an active connection to Whatsapp web, ensure that your phone is connected to internet. You might like to ensure that Background app refresh is enabled on your iPhone to provide seamless connectivity between Whatsappweb & your app.
If you are a Whatsapp group admin, you would love using web.whatsapp.com. Go ahead & use this Cydia Tweak to enable Whatsapp web on your iPhone. If you are stuck or have any question, feel free to ask me via comments. Don’t forget to share this amazing Cydia hack with other friends on your social networking sites.

How to Hide Your Posts from New Facebook Search

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:26:00 +0000

Facebook always try to be on the first position when it comes to increase user experience. In this race, sometime it releases such an awkward feature or update that eventually damage user’s experience. Such a feature has been launched yesterday. This is a Facebook search related update that has brought an uncomfortable change.
Facebook search is pretty good that has loads of options like auto-complete, category selection and many more. This advanced search feature helps users to find the exact thing what they are looking for. For instance, you want to find some Facebook grounds related to Health. You can just search for health and select Groups so that Facebook can show only groups those are having Health in the title.

Just like this above-mentioned example, this is also possible to search for your friends’ posts. However, there is another search, which is called Universal search. Generally, users could select whether their profile should appear in universal search or not. However, the new search update brings such a feature that will let your Facebook timeline public. All of your posts those are shared with Public, will be visible to the world. Search bots can now index those posts and you have already given the permission.
This is quite useful, who shares useful stuffs like how-to guides, tech news etc. on Facebook timeline. However, those who share private stuffs on Facebook, can have problems with this. This seems quite awkward since all of your personal status updates and photos will be public right away.
This is the actual problem.
However, the solution lies in the Facebook settings those have been overlooked for the years now. You do not have to install any third party software or any browser extension.

Hide Your Posts from New Facebook Search

You just need to make your status updates for Friends. But, if you try to edit each posts you have shared over the past few years it will consume a lot of time. It may take a whole day to change the Privacy settings of all posts.
Rather than that time wasting task, you can do another thing, which has an advantage as well as a disadvantage. The advantage is you can change the privacy settings of all posts at once. The disadvantage is all of the posts will be shared for Friends. That means, if you have shared something for Public, it will be shared for Friends only.
Anyway, to change the privacy settings, log in to your Facebook account and go to Settings. Then switch to Privacy tab. Following that, click on Limit Past Posts link and Limit Old Posts respectively.

How To Turn Your Resume Into An Attractive Infographic

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:21:00 +0000

As the corporate companies are growing day by day, it is giving employment to many people. Professional growth of a person depends on his skill-set and how he showcases them. Platforms like LinkedIn help a person to show his experience and expertise very easily to the world. Even if you want to get a new job or plan to change to another company, getting noticed by the recruiters is very necessary. That is why HR interview plays a crucial part while selecting a candidate.

India is a country which produces huge number of engineers every year. Because of this huge competition, if you want a job, it is very important to get noticed by the recruiter of the company. One of the very important things which brings the attention of the recruiter is your resume – a document showcasing your educational background, work history and your skills. It must be simple yet contain necessary points that help recruiter to asses you. Many times job seekers fail to write a good resume. Either they make it lengthy by adding unnecessary paragraphs and sections, or they miss the important ones. It is very important to have an attractive resume before you go to an interview. Is there any way to turn your resume into information graphics representation?

If you have this question in your mind, then you’ve came to the right place. The answer is yes. There is a web service called ResumUp to fulfill this task. It helps you to create a visual resume that helps you to asses yourself.
How to use this?
Even though there are CV visualizes available on the market, ResumUp works easily and has nice templates.You can login into the website to start using this service. This service provides you different templates to choose from. Either you can choose an infographic representation or office templates are also available which will be divided into necessary sections. By filling those sections, you can have your own resume.

You can login using your facebook or LinkedIn or manually using your email Id. It can grab details automatically from your social profiles or you can enter it manually. After entering your details you can get your resume. You can add your educational details, your skill sets, achievements, awards in a nice visual graphical format and make your resume look great.

Final Word
This is a nice web service to turn your resume in a visual way. You can use it depending on your needs. If not completely, you can add elements of it in your resume to make it better. You can choose a template that suits best for you.

Fix: Installed apps are missing from All apps on Windows 10

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:17:00 +0000

Through Windows 10, Microsoft has re-launched the Start Menu, which is much more useful and good looking now. The overall look of Windows 10 is really awesome and the Start Menu makes it even more beautiful. This new Start menu is more useful than previous one those were in Windows XP or Windows 7. This is because it can carry more features and apps than earlier.

For instance, you can get live tiles, file explorer link, Settings, most used apps, power buttons and a link to disclose all installed apps. The last mentioned feature is pretty common among Windows 7 users as Windows captures recently installed apps in the Start menu so that users can find and use them quickly.
However, in Windows 10, some people have claimed that some of their installed apps are missing from All apps on Windows 10 Start Menu. Previously, this problem was being claimed by only Windows 10 Pro users. But, now, almost all the variants’ users are claiming the same issue on various forum. That means, if you are getting a similar problem, you should not panic since it has a workaround.
Actually, there is no solution to get the missing apps back since there is no option at all. Windows 10 captures them automatically. But, there is a trick that can let you know why are you getting such problem on Windows 10. The official Office forum has published an article with a source of this particular problem.

Fix: Installed apps are missing from All apps on Windows 10

The Start menu of Windows 10 cannot carry more than 512 apps. That means, if you have more than 512 apps in All apps list, you cannot pin more app in All apps list until or unless you make some free space.
The most awkward thing is Windows 10 Start menu counts each and every app. That means, if you have install Office package, it will not count it as one. It will count all the apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. So, if you think you have more than 512 apps on Start menu, you can need another trick. But, before doing so, let’s find out the number of apps you have in All apps list.
Open Windows PowerShell and enter the following command,

Get-StartApps | measure

It will show you the number of installed apps. Actually, it counts all the apps those are currently on your Start menu.
Now, you can only pin the app to Taskbar if you need that quickly. To pin any app to Taskbar, just use Taskbar search box to find that out, right click on that and select Pin to Taskbar.
This is the only solution of this problem. Hope you will find it useful.

How to Create Custom Launcher and Widget in Android

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:15:00 +0000

Android users always get some additional facilities than other platforms since it is a very easy to use platform and thousands of developers are working to make it even better. However, if you are using Android, you might have seen that this is possible to add widgets on home screen and lock screen. Widgets usually help users to do something faster and it makes the appearance better. For example, you want to check new email quickly. At such moment, if you have added Gmail or any other mail widget on home screen or lock screen, you can check your mail without going through the menu drawer or navigating through various options.

But, Android doesn’t allow users to customize preset widgets. Obviously, it provides almost all the options to use it according to users’ wish, yet, there is not any major feature that can edit your widget totally. This is where KWGT Kustom Widget Maker comes in.

Create Custom Launcher and Widget in Android

KWGT Kustom Widget Maker is a free Android application that assists you to create custom widget so that you give your launcher a new look. This is possible to get more customization options in KWGT. KWGT is available for Android 4.4. The most interesting thing is it doesn’t require rooted Android device to use it further.
The interface is full of features but all the options are well categorized. There is no mess at all. Anyway, to create custom widget, at first install the app. As mentioned before, it is available for Android 4.4. Although, this is available for free but some of the features are priced at $2.99. Anyway, at first, download the free edition of Kustom Widget Maker and install it. Following that, you will get a screen something like the subsequent picture,

It asks you to add at least one widget so that it can start working. To add widget on your home screen, just tap and hold on the empty space of your home screen and go to Widgets settings. Then choose either KWGT 1×1 or KWGT 2×2.

Now, you will get a popup like this.

Just hit the CREATE button to get further options. After tapping on the CREATE button, the following text will come out.

Now, tap on the black box to add widget on your home screen through KWGT. Here you can find some pre-installed widgets those are available for free. But, if you need more widget and option, you can simply head over to the pro edition of KWGT Kustom Widget Maker.

Now, select one widget to reveal all the other options regarding to that.

Here you can do the following thins,

Use custom text in widget
Use custom color
Use custom shape
Add PNG/JPG/WebP image as background
Create layer to build widget
Native music utilities
Download different things like Maps, weather report and many others

He most beautiful thing is it supports tasker, which is one fo the best automation app for Android.
Anyway, these are available for free. The paid edition has some other features like

HD widgets
Buzz widgets
Zooper widgets

And more. When you will go to create your own widget, the pro edition will provide even more features so that you can customize it properly.
After doing all the changes, do not forget to save the widget. Otherwise, you cannot find it on your home screen.
Final Word
This is probably the best option to create your own widget. Another great thing is it doesn’t require root. Therefore, you can simply download and try it out. Hope you will like this.

How to Launch Android Apps from Lock Screen

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:11:00 +0000

Android is one of the most popular platforms for mobile and tablet, which is being used by millions of people. Android is popular because these devices are very affordable and there are varieties of devices running Android. You can pick anyone. Currently, Android 6.0 is running, which is quite better in terms of features and overall performance. Although, Android Marshmallow comes with plenty of new features, yet, there is still something missing.

For instance, there is no option to launch Android apps from lock screen. Obviously, this is possible to add some widgets but you cannot add app icon or so on lock screen so that you can open them quickly. Sometime, we need to open an app very quickly. Obviously, it doesn’t take a long time to open that from menu. But, still this will be great if you can launch them from your lock screen.
To solve this problem, here is a solution. Here is an app that will let you add app icons on lock screen and open them from the same. This is called Launchify, which will let you add your favorite app(s) on lock screen. Not only lock screen, but also this is possible to show an app bar containing your selected apps.
Launchify is available for Android 4.0.3 and later version. This is tiny yet but handy application. Although, this is free to download but some features have a restriction, which needs to be lifted by $2. But, if you just want to add four or five apps in the app bar, there is no need to purchase the premium stuffs.

Launch Android apps from lock screen

To launch Android apps from lock screen, you need to install Launchify and add apps to the app menu bar. To do so, at first, download Launchify from Google Play Store. As mentioned before, just make sure that you have Android 4.0.3 or later version. After downloading this app, you will get a screen something like the following picture.

Here you can set up everything according to your requirements. You can add any installed app in the respective menu bar. You can get a demo of the menu bar on the top of the aforementioned screen.
By default, some regular apps like browser, downloads etc. will be given. Now, if you want to add your own apps, just tap on Custom apps.
Now, you would be able to include any app you want. There will be a list. Just make a tick in the respective checkbox. After adding all the apps you want, you can take a look at the app menu bar by swiping down from the top. Or, you can just go to lock screen to check them out. It should be looking like this,

Now, if you have swipe lock, you can just tap on the app icon to open that. Otherwise, if you have PIN, Password or Pattern lock, you can simply tap on the icon and enter your PIN or password or pattern to open the app.
Final Word
Instead of going through the app menu, this is far better to use Launchify since this is free and you do not need a rooted Android device. On the other hand, this is really very useful and tiny too.

How to install WordPress using command line

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:07:00 +0000

Installing WordPress is a very simple process if you have a nice GUI available for file uploads and database configuration. This post is about installing WordPress using the command line. People with access to VPS hosting or root SSH access may not necessarily have access to the GUI based installation options. Let’s us see the steps for installing and configuring the WordPress installation. We follow these steps for our WordPress installations

1. Download the WordPress source to the desired folder for example /var/www/html or similar one in your LAMP installation. Use the wget command for the download

# wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

2. Create a MySQL user in the MySQL installation for the purpose of using in the WordPress installation

# mysqladmin -u root -p create username

3. Give permissions to the MySQL user account just created. You will have to login to the MySQL server in order to do this. The below command will allow the user “username” with password Pa55w@ard to run the WordPress.

# mysql –u root – p > It will prompt you for the password of the MySQL root user

mysql > GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES, LOCK TABLES ON databasename.* TO ‘username’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘Pa55w@ard’;
mysql > exit

4. Unzip /untar the WordPress files

# tar –xzvf latest.tar.gz
# unzip latest.zip > If you have downloaded the .zip file

5. This would create a expand the zip file into the current directory. The WordPress source is located under the folder “wordpress”. It would be required to rename the foldername to your taste. If you are planning the installation as a subdirectory to your main directory, rename the “wordpress” to things like blog e.g. http://www.example.com/blog

# mv wordpress blog > this will rename the folder wordpress to blog

6. Access your installation http://www.example.com/blog and provide the information for configuration including the database configuration details

How to save bandwidth while on 3G?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 11:19:00 +0000

Do you have an unlimited bandwidth on your phone? Then this post is not for you. for others, lets explore the possibilities of reducing the bandwidth overage problems.
Often the 3G bandwidth or 4G bandwidth you have subscribed would be just enough for browsing mobile friendly websites and emails. It may not be suitable for video or high bandwidth applications. Here are some tips for you, if you are worried about the mobile data caps.

Operating System Updates

The operating system, be it iOS or Android, let those updates happen only over WiFi instead of 3G.

Mobile Apps

Download and update of Mobile Apps takes a huge amount of data transfer when it comes to 3G bandwidth. To save 3G bandwidth, you might want to perform this activity while you are in a WiFi network.

Opera Mini

Opera Mini browser can help you reduce the bandwidth usage as the browser compresses the webpages before they are sent to your mobile. Additionally, you can also use the mobile websites instead of the normal desktop compatible websites.

Video Calls

Video calling services like Skype, Google Plus etc are for WiFi. It is estimated that video calls take 6 times bandwidth than voice calls.

Photo Upload

Many services such as Google Plus comes with automatic photo upload feature where the application is by default set to upload photos while connected to internet, irrespective of 3G or WiFi. Change the default settings of these applications so that the uploads will happen only when connected to a WiFi network

YouTube and Video sites

I have watched YouTube videos on 3G and resulted in bandwidth overage. Many of us are keep doing it. Now if you are worried about data caps, you should stop watching videos using 3G.
It is advisable to use some bandwidth monitoring apps on your mobile which will keep a track of your 3G data usage. This would help you get some indications of your usage and where you stand in a billing cycle. If you are about to meet your limit, then this last tip could give some help.

Automatic Email check to Manual checks

Change your email checking from push to manual. This is bit of an irritation, but can help you from overage charges.
The key change is not in your phone, but within you. Your behaviour towards the use of apps and data can save some cash for you.

How to change WordPress username?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 17 Nov 2019 11:14:00 +0000

WordPress is a preferred blogging as well as web platform for millions of people / organizations across the world. WordPress is celebrating it’s 10th anniversary this month. With the recent botnet attacks on WordPress websites, this article would help you in changing the “admin” username.
In the initial days of WordPress, it did not allow users to change the default “admin” username during the installation. However, from version 3.0 of WordPress you could choose a custom username instead of the default “admin”. However, many of us used to choose the bad old “admin” username as the default username.
One of the first thing a hacker try when they want to access a WordPress site is to use the username “admin”. So lets change it. Now, the challenge is that WordPress would not allow you to change the username, so we will have to use a work around to achieve this.

Here is the step by step process for changing the WordPress admin username
1. Login to your WordPress site as Administrator user
2. Create a new user account using the WordPress dashboard

3. Create the new user account adding relevant information

You cannot create another user with the same email address. If you want to use the same email address, then repeat this process once again after deleting the current WordPress user account.
Also ensure that you have selected the administrator role for the new user created.
4. Logout from the current session
5. Login to your WordPress site using the newly created administrator account
6. Go to the “All Users” in the “Users” menu. Here you will find both administrator accounts.

7. Delete the “admin” user account. It will give you the below message

Click on the “Confirm Deletion” button.
This will delete your default administrator account. It will transfer all posts to your newly created user account thus you will have the control on all those posts you created earlier.
Do not forget to use a strong password for your newly created administrator account. Use some of the best password managers for storing the passwords, if you deal with a lot of passwords.

The Best Add-ons for Google Docs and Sheets

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 15:30:00 +0000

Google today introduced add-ons for Google Docs & Sheets and they certainly make the Google Office productivity suite more capable and more useful. If you haven’t tried them yet, open any Google document or spreadsheet in your Google Drive and look for the new add-ons menu.

For starters, add-ons in Google Docs are like extensions for Chrome. Just like extensions add new features to the Chrome browser, add-ons extend the functionality of Google Docs and Google Sheets. To give you an example, here’s the screenshot of a Twitter add-on I wrote for Google Docs and Google Sheets that you can use to find and curate tweets right inside your documents.

Twitter Curator is an add-on for Google Docs and Sheets

Anyone can write an add-on for Google Docs. All you need to have is some basic programming skills for writing HTML, CSS for styling the add-on while the server side code is written in Google Apps Script which is similar to JavaScript but runs on the Google Cloud.

Google Scripts vs Google Add-on

Google Add-ons are also written in the Google Apps Script language but while regular Google Scripts can work on any document in your Google Drive, add-ons only work against the document or sheet that’s currently open in your browser.
Also, while Google Scripts support triggers and can run in the background (like this Website Monitor), add-ons can only run while a document or sheet is open and active.
The other big difference is that you can view the source code of regular Google Scripts while in the case of add-ons, the code is hidden from the end user. This helps developers protect their code but a downside is that the user has no clue about what’s happening behind the scenes.
We have seen issues with Chrome extensions and add-ons for Google Docs can be a target as well. For instance, an add-on can possibly email a copy of the current document or sheet to another email address? Or maybe it can share a folder in Google Drive with someone else. All add-ons currently listed in the Chrome store have been tested and reviewed by Google but if they open the gates for all, I would be a little hesitant to install add-ons created by unknown developers.
One more thing. Google Add-ons are only available for the new version of Google Sheets while Google Scripts can work on both old and new Sheets.

The Best Add-ons For Google Docs & Sheets

The Chrome store has about 50 Google add-ons at the time of launch and here are some of favorite ones that you should have in your Google Docs.

Mail Merge for Gmail – Send personalized emails to multiple email recipients with Mail Merge for Gmail and Google Apps.
Save Gmail as PDF – Easily save your Gmail messages and attachments in Google Drive.
Twitter Archiver – Save tweets for any search term or hashtag in a Google Sheet.
Twitter Curator – Search, filter and add tweets in a Google Documents. It is like Storify for Google Docs.
Bulk Gmail Forward – Easily forward one or more email threads from Gmail to any other address.
HelloFax – You can now send a fax to any number worldwide directly from inside Google documents. The free version lets you fax up to 5 pages.
UberConference – You can have an audio conference with up to 10 people while working on a Google Document. There’s an option to record the call too.
PanDoc – You can send the current document to the client from within Google Docs to request their legally-binding signature.
Avery – Create address labels inside Google Docs for printing.
MindMeister – Create a hierarchical bulleted list inthe the Google document and MindMeister will converted that list into a visual mind map.
EasyBib – Cite books, journal articles and websites and add them to your Google Documents in MLA, APA and Chicago style.
Gliffy & Lucidchart – Create flow charts, diagrams, site mockups, org charts and other technical drawings inside your Google Documents.
Mapping Sheets – Create a spreadsheet with a list of places and the sheets add-on will plot them on a Google Map.
TextHelp – This is like the yellow highlighter for your Google Documents. Select and highlight passages and save the annotations in a separate document.

Translate Documents Instantly with Google Translator Toolkit

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:58:00 +0000

The standard Google Translation service is pretty good for translating documents that exist on the web but if you ever need to translate Word files that reside on your local hard drive,
the translator toolkit will come in handy.

It’s an online service where you can upload Word Documents or text files and translate them from one language to another instantly.
The document formatting is more or less preserved and you can download the translated files to your desktop in their original format like Word, OpenOffice or HTML. Unlike regular Google Translation which is read-only, here you also have the option to edit the translated version of the document in the browser itself.

The only condition is that the size of these individual documents, that you intend to upload for translation, should not exceed 1 MB.

How to Fake your Location in Google Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:55:00 +0000

Some websites may request access to your location so that they can serve more relevant information. For instance, if you are looking for a gas station, a maps website may use your current geographic location to display stations that are near your place without you having to type your co-ordinates.

Google Chrome will only share your location if you click Allow.

How Browsers Determine your Location

Earlier, websites would use the IP address to determine your approximate location but with the HTML5 Geolocation API, web browsers can more accurately detect your location using data from GPS, Wi-Fi networks, cell towers, Bluetooth and the computer’s IP address. If you agree to share your location with the browser, it will send these details to Google Location Services for estimating your location which is then shared with the requesting website.
To give you an example, open the Where am I app in your browser, allow it to use your location information and the app should be able to display your latitude and longitude coordinates (it is more accurate on mobile browsers as those devices have built-in GPS).

How to Fake your Geolocation Coordinates

When you happen to visit a location-aware website, the browser will always ask for a confirmation before sharing your location. If you aren’t keen to share your geographic coordinates, you can always deny that request or, if you are using Google Chrome, you can even send a fake location to the website.
Here’s how. While in Google Chrome, press Ctrl+Shift+I on Windows, or Cmd+Opt+I on Mac, to open the Chrome Developer Tools. Now press the Esc (escape) key to open the Console window. Switch to the Emulation tab and choose the Sensors option in the left sidebar.
Here check the setting that says “Emulate Geolocation coordinates” and specify the exact latitude and longitude coordinates* that you want to share with that website. You can use the Postal Address finder to know the latitude and location of a place.
Now refresh the current web page and it will take your fake location. Make sure that the developer tools panel is visible always else Chrome will not override your geolocation.
Related tip: Geotag your Tweets with any Location
The option to fake your geolocation is not available in the DevTools of Mozilla Firefox but you can use the Geolocator addon to send any preferred location to the HTML5 Location API.

How to Find the Sender’s Location in Gmail

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:52:00 +0000

When John sends an email message to Elizabeth, the IP address of the sender (John’s computer) is included in the header of the outgoing email message. The receiver (Elizabeth) can then perform a simple geo-lookup against that IP address to find the approximate geographic location of the message sender.
Both Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail include IP addresses in outgoing message headers but if John is sending an email address using Gmail, or Gmail for Google Apps, his IP address won’t be included in the message.

IP addresses can be considered sensitive information. As such, Gmail may hide sender IP address information from outgoing mail headers in some circumstances.

If the IP address of John is not available, because he is sending email using Gmail, how can Elizabeth determine John’s geographic location? There two options:
Option A: Gmail may include the IP Address

Gmail doesn’t include the IP address of the sender when the sender is using Gmail’s web interface to send email. However if he or she is using a desktop client (like Microsoft Outlook) or a mobile device to send that email, the IP address is often included in the outgoing message.
Open the message in Gmail, click on More – > Show Original and search for the line “Received: from “ – it may have the IP address of the sender that you can map to a physical location with the help of Wolfram Alpha.
Option B: Find the Sender’s Time Zone
When the IP address is not available, you can determine the sender’s very-approximate location from the time-zone of the originating computer. Go your Gmail Labs page and enable the “Sender Time Zone” feature.
Now open any message in Gmail and click on the down arrow that says “Show details”. The message will display the the current time in the sender’s time zone as shown in the following screenshot.

Next you can use this timezone map to determine countries where the current time is the same as the time displayed in the Gmail message. Obviously this not the most foolproof method as two different countries can be in the same time zone but when the IP address is not available in Gmail, this is the closest you can get.

On a related note, the time zone of your outgoing Gmail messages is determined from your computer’s time zone. If you would like your Gmail messages to show a different time zone, just go to your computer’s data and time settings and change the time zone.

What Can You Do With Your Old Computer To Make it Useful Again

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:45:00 +0000

A lot of us own old computers lying neglected in some corner of the basement – they are still in perfect working condition but we decided to discard them just because they are not so fast as their new cousins or that their processor and hard-drive is not good enough to run the latest software.
Well, it’s may be a good time now to wipe that dust layer off those old computers and put them to some good use – a new breed of web services makes it possible for you to do just about anything on a computer as long as it is connected to the internet and can run a web browser (like Internet Explorer or Firefox).

You don’t have to install any software on your computer as it’s all delivered on the Internet through the web browser. And these services are absolutely free though supported by advertising in some cases – there are no license restrictions which are normally associated with desktop software.
Let’s look at some of our normal computing requirements and how they can be easily solved using web based software without any hardware upgrades or investments:
Office Apps – A word processor, spreadsheet and presentation application is a must-have for any business. Infact I have seen some people writing emails inside Microsoft Word because it’s such a familiar environment and using the text formatting tools in Word or Excel is like second nature to them.
Taking a cue from Microsoft Office, Google and Zoho have developed an online version of Office productivity suite that look and behave the same way as MS Office with one difference – they are free and run inside most web browsers.
Microsoft, though a late entrant, will also be launching a web based version of Microsoft Office Works pretty soon that will compete directly with the offering of Google and Zoho.
IM Chat – After email, chat is the next most popular activity on the Internet. If your computers are not fast enough to run popular IM client software like Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger or AOL Instant Messenger, meebo.com offers a web clone that lets you connect with your IM buddies inside the browser.
And there’s another advantage with web based instant messengers – since your employees / family members / customers are chatting inside the web browser, the risks associated with IM worms are close to nil.
File Storage and Media Players – The other day I was surfing at a nearby Reliance WebWorld outlet as the office network had suffered an outage. Though all the computers at the outlet were connected to a common network, there was no way to access files from one computer to another except for putting them in a public network folder.
And if I logged off or the computer crashed for some reason, all the files saved on the desktop would be gone forever.
It’s a common problem among internet cafÃ© users in India. They have to travel with USB drives and blank CDs else they risk losing their work because the cyber cafÃ© owners are less likely to provide them personal file storage.
Enter Jooce.com – a blessing for people who either don’t have computers or hop from one place to another but still need access to their data.
Uploading files or folders to Jooce is as simple as sending file attachments with email. And once your files are on Jooce, you can access them from any desktop that is connected to the web.
If your uploaded files have media content (like images, songs or videos), you can enjoy them right inside the web browser through Jooce without downloading the files locally.
Jooce is currently in a private. Other popular web services that also offer anytime access to your files include Box.net and Twango.com, which was recently acquired by mobile phone maker Nokia.
What’s next – This is probably just the beginning but expect to see more wonderful apps in near future as companies, that already sell packaged software, start to realize the potential and market of online applications. Even Adobe is working on a web version of Photoshop image editor.
Not just an average home user, Web based computing is extremely beneficial if you run a small business, a school or even an internet cafÃ© with multiple computers but cannot afford multiple software licenses or expensive hardware upgrades. Get a high speed broadband connection and educate your users about the web clones.Before you donate that old PC to a charity or sell it on eBay

How do you Make Money on the Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:42:00 +0000

You may have a well-paying job but it wouldn’t hurt if you can earn a few extra dollars every month utilizing the knowledge and skills that you already have. There are no shortcuts but if you ready to put in the effort and time, here are some “legitimate” ways to help you make money on the Internet.

25 Ways to Make Money on the Internet

Start a website or a blog and earn revenue through advertising networks like Google AdSense and BuySellAds. You can even sell your own ads directly through Google DFP.
Launch a curated email newsletter using MailChimp and find sponsors or use a subscription model where people pay a fee to receive your newsletter. HackerNewletter, Now I Know and Launch.co are good examples.
Create your own YouTube channel and become a YouTube partner to monetize your videos. You may use Oneload to distribute the same video to multiple video sites.
Make something creative – like handbags, jewelry, paintings, craft items – and sell them on Etsy, ArtFire or eBay.
Build your own online store with Shopify or SquareSpace and sell both physical goods and digital downloads. Sell everything from furniture to clothes to food.
Create t-shirt designs and put them on Threadless, Zazzle and CafePress.
Write a book and publish it on the Kindle store, Google Play and iBooks. You can also sell your ebook to other retailers through services like Smashwoods and BookBaby.
Become an instructor at Udemy and SkillShare and get paid for teaching your favorite subjects – from guitar to literature to yoga to foreign languages – to a worldwide audience.
Learn how to code and you can then hunt for software development projects at Guru, eLance or Rent-a-Coder (now Freelancer.com).
Become a virtual office assistant and offer administrative or technical assistance to clients remotely from your home office. Head over to eLance, TaskRabbit and oDesk for finding work.
Offer one-on-one help to anyone worldwide over live video using Google Helpouts. You can do live cooking classes, teach maths or even offer fitness and nutrition tips.
Write scripts, browser extensions, plugins or mobile apps for iOS and Android and sell the source code of your software on CodeCanyon, Chupa or BinPress.
People are outsourcing petty computer jobs – like data entry work, transcribing text from business cards or performing web research – and you find these jobs at Mechanical Turk, an Amazon service.
Creative professionals can scan marketplaces like CrowdSpring, 99Designs and DesignCrowd for projects involving logo design, web design, brochures and other marketing material.
Do you have a good voice? Sign-up as an audio narrator at Umano or become a voice over artist at VoiceBunny and Voice123.
Record your own music and sell it on music stores like Amazon MP3, iTunes, Pandora or Spotify through DistroKid, Tunecore, loudr.fm and CDBaby. You can also sell your audio files directly on marketplaces like AudioJungle, Pond5 and Bandcamp.
Become an affiliate for Amazon and various online stores and earn a commission on sales. You can use programs like Vigilink, ShareASale, CJ or LinkShare to know about the various vendors that offer affiliate programs.
Educators and teachers can help students with homework or offer on-demand teaching class over the Internet. Apply to become an online tutor at Tutor.com, InstaEdu and TutorVista.
Got an empty room in your apartment? You can list the property on Airbnb, host people and make some money. The other alternative is Couchsurfing but the service forbids from charging guests.
Sell photographs that you have taken on Creative Market, PhotoDune, iStockPhoto or ImgEmbed. The latter lets you easily license photos you have uploaded on Facebook, Flickr or Instagram for online use.
Sell the stuff you no longer use – like old books, children’s toys, gadgets, DVDs, furniture, etc. – on sites like eBay, Craigslist or, if you are in India, OLX.
Apply to become a website tester at UserTesting and get paid to review and test websites from the usability perspective.
If friend’s look at you for tech support, there’s no reason why you can’t offer similar services on the Internet. Get Skype (for calling) and Chrome Remote Desktop (for screen sharing) and you are all set to offer remote tech help from anywhere.
Create an account at Fiverr and PeoplePerHour and offer a wide range of services from translation to graphic design to writing to SEO.
You can make money by flipping websites. Flippa, GoDaddy Auctions and Sedo are popular marketplaces for buying and selling registered domains while LeanDomainSearch is a good tool for finding available domain names.

How Does WordPress Make Money?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:37:00 +0000

How can a software company like Automattic make money when they are giving away WordPress blogging software for free? WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg shared how WordPress makes money:

1. Web Hosting – WordPress offers web hosting services to big brands like WSJ’s All Things D, CNN, TechCrunch, Time.com and more. The pricing for WordPress VIP Hosting starts at $15,000 per month.
2. Google AdSense– Free blogs hosted on WordPress.com may sometimes carry Google AdSense ads and the ad revenue goes to WordPress. The Google ads will only appear if all the following three conditions are met:

The visitor is not using Firefox browser.
He has logged out of his WordPress account, if he has one.
The referring source is not a WordPress powered blog. So if you land on abc.wordpress.com from xyz.wordpress.com, you won’t see any Google Ads.

Even with all these conditions, the revenue generated from serving Google AdSense ads on WordPress.com hosted blog may still be significant as they do around a billion page views per month.
3. WordPress themes – The WordPress themes directory offers premium themes that cost anywhere between $50 and $100. These GPL compatible themes are developed by third-party WordPress developers and Automattic gets a commission per sale.
4. Premium Accounts – While anyone can host a blog on WordPress.com for free, they charge you a fixed fee if you want to buy additional storage space for your multimedia files or if you wish to use custom web domain instead of the default wordpress.com sub-domain. These are premium features.
There are unconfirmed reports that WordPress may soon allow users to add AdSense in their free blogs for a subscription fee.
5. Web Host Referrals – WordPress.org suggests of list of third-party web hosting companies where you may self-host your WordPress blog(s) for a fee. Now all these are referral links so Automattic gets a commission per sale.
In fact, this hosting referral system may be extremely profitable for Automattic because if you search for “WordPress Hosting” on Google (a very competitive keyword phrase), the first sponsored link on the Google results page is paid by WordPress itself and it says – “Top 5 WordPress Web Hosts – Chosen by the developers of the WordPress blogging software”.
6. WordPress Support – If you need help with WordPress (or WordPress MU) but the free support forums aren’t solving the purpose, consider subscribing to the Support Network of Automattic. The WordPress development team will help you solve problems related to your WordPress system and the response time can be as low as 6 hours. This service is primarily for Enterprise users who are willing to shell out a $2.5-5k per year for support.
7. Poll Daddy – I am not sure if Matt discussed this but Automattic also provides a paid version of Poll Daddy where you can have unlimited number of questions per survey and there’s no Poll Daddy branding in your polls or surveys.
8. Guided Transfers – If you wish to move your blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org, Automattic offers a service called Guided Transfers to help you with the transfer. They charge a one-time $119 fee for the transfer.
9. VaultPress – Should you wish to automatically backup your WordPress blog to the cloud, the VaultPress service from Automattic can help. With packages starting at $15 per month, they will backup your WordPress blog in real-time and will also notify you of potential security issues.
10. VideoPress – The VideoPress plugin for WordPress lets you host videos and audio files on your own website. There are no limits on bandwidth or duration of videos, the videos are served without ads and it supports HD playback as well. Starts at $60 per year.
11. Automattic Kismet – You don’t often see spam in your blog posts because it all gets filtered by Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short), the excellent spam protection plug-in available for WordPress.

Now Akismet spam catching technology is free for non-commercial personal blogs but if you maintain a corporate blog or run a network of blogs, you are required to buy a commercial license of Akismet that starts at around $50 per month. Professional bloggers, or anyone who makes more than $500 per month in advertising revenue from a WordPress blog, is also required to pay $5 per month for the Akismet license.

The Best Online Tools To Know Everything About a Website

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:33:00 +0000

How do I contact the owner of a website? Where is a particular website hosted? What other websites are hosted on that same server ? Is the site using WordPress or the Drupal platform? What ad networks are they using to monetize a site? Is the site accessible from China?

The best tools to know everything about any website. Picture credit: Flickr

Here are some of the most useful online tools that will help you know each and every detail of any website. Let’s get started.

just-ping.com — Use Just Ping to determine if a particular website or blog is accessible from other countries. Unlike other online ping services that have service in a couple of locations, Just Ping has 30 monitoring stations across the world including Turkey, Egypt and China. If the ping results say 100% Packet Loss, most likely the site is inaccessible from that region.
who.is — If you like to know the contact address, email and phone number of the website owner, this free whois lookup service will help. This is a universal lookup service meaning it can simultaneously query the whois database of all popular domain registrars.
whoishostingthis.com — Enter the URL of any website and this online service will show you the name of the company where that website is hosted. This may come handl if you need the contact information of the web hosting provider for writing a DMCA Notice or if you are looking to switch web hosts.
popuri.us — You can use popuri to estimate the relative popularity of a website on social sites like Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. It also display the Google Pagerank of a website and the Web of Trust matrix.
chillingeffects.org — When there’s a copyright related complaint against a website, a copy of that letter is archived in the Chilling Effects database. Anyone can query this public database to know about all the copyright infringement complaints against a particular website.
myip.ms — MyIP.ms offers a comprehensive report of any website or I.P. Address. You get to know about the hosting provider, the physical location of a website, the IP Address change history of a website and the DNS information. Netcraft also offers similar reports.
ewhois.com — Ewhois, short for enhanced whois lookup, will help you determine other websites of someone. It looks the whois details, the AdSense publisher ID and the Google Analytics code of websites to figure out other web domain that may belong to the same owner. See example.
builtwith.com — Use BuiltWith to know the technology stack of any website. It helps you figure out the mail service provider of a domain, the advertising partners, the tracking widgets that are installed on a website and whether the site is using any CDN like Amazon S3 or Google Cloud. See example.
semrush.com — If you wish to analyze your competitor’s website, this is tool to go with. SEMrush will help you figure what organic keywords are people using to find a website, what is the site’s traffic and which are the competing websites. See example.
whatsmydns.net — When you buy a new domain or switch from one host to another, the DNS records for the domain change and it may take a while to propagate these changes worldwide. WhatsMyDNS check your DNS records from various locations and it can check your domain’s A, CNAME and MX records.
modern.ie — This online app will help test your website’s compatibility with various web browsers and detects coding errors that might cause problems. The site is integrated with BrowserStack so you can quickly know how your site looks on different devices and browsers.
developers.google.com — Find the Page Speed score of any website on both desktop and mobile devices. The higher this number, the better. The Google tool also offers suggestion on how the score can be improved.
ctrlq.org/sandbox — – The AdSense sandbox solves two problems – it shows the various advertisers that are targeting a website and it will also help you figure out if a particular web domain is banned in the AdSense network or not.
httparchive.org — The HTTP Archive is a repository of all performance related metrics for a website. It keeps a record of the size of pages, their average load time and the number of failed requests (missing resources) over time.See example.

The Best Performing Banner Sizes for AdSense

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:30:00 +0000

The Google AdSense program offers banner ads in multiple sizes and format but if you are not too sure which of these banner size will perform best on your website, this report should help.

The graph below shows relative click rates (CTR) for all the standard banner ad sizes (relative to the classic “full banner”) and, as is obvious from the chart, the ad performance or click through rates are much better for larger ad units.

Best Performing Banner Ad Sizes

If you are using a medium 300×250 rectangle format on your site, it may be a good idea to do some split testing (for say a week) and then probably replace that unit with a large 336×280 rectangle. Similarly, try squeezing in a wide skyscraper in place of that 120×600 Skyscraper that you may be having on your site.
And while it is easy to include a 728×90 Leaderboard in almost every site design, make sure that it is not the first unit in your HTML source as it is not always the best performing unit.
Another interesting point here is that the 125×125 square button format, which is now quite popular among the blogger community, seems to attract lower clicks than even the 468×60 banner of the “geocities era” so your advertisers may not be feeling very happy about this.
The AdSense support site also says that the most effective banner sizes are the 336×280 Large Rectangle, the 300×250 Medium Rectangle, and the 160×600 Wide Skyscraper. “Wider ad formats tend to outperform their taller counterparts, due to their reader-friendly format. The wider ad format also lessens the likelihood of readers leaving the ad unit altogether.”

The above chart was shared in an online webinar by the AdSense optimization team and you can download the full report from DoubleClick.com. Worth reading.

The Highest Paying Keywords in Online Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:26:00 +0000

Do you know what kind of money advertisers are willing to spend on Google AdWords to reach out to potential customers? Well you may be a bit surprised to learn that CPC rates, or the amount that an advertiser pays to Google if a search user clicks on an ad once, can as high as $55 in certain categories.

The Most Expensive Keywords in Online Advertising

WordStream, an online marketing company, analyzed the most expensive keyword categories for online advertising and found that keywords related to Insurance, Loans, Mortgage, Attorneys and Credit were the most expensive with advertising costs ranging between $55-$45 per click.
In the tech domain, the high-paying keywords are around web hosting, conference call services, CRM / help-desk software and data recovery software.
The advertising rates for such niches are so high for two reasons – there’s plenty of competition among advertisers so they have to bid higher to outbid the other and second, the return after winning a customer is extremely high.

List of High Paying Adsense Keywords & Search Categories

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:24:00 +0000

In case you wish to know about the popular categories and search keywords that show Adsense ads of maximum CPC, here’s a list arranged in categories.

e-Commerce: VoIP, Broadband, Domain Names, Web Hosting, Web Design

Lifestyle: Fitness, Dating, Singles, Education, Degrees

Travel: Airline, Car Rental, Hotels, Cruises, Vacations

Real Estate: Mortgages, Refinancing, Home Equity Loans, For Sale by Owner. Credit Score

Financial Planning: Loans, Credit Cards, Debt Consolidation, Stocks, Payday Loans

You can see the latest image and text ads in Google inventory for the above keywords using the Adsense Sandbox.

What’s missing from the above list of top paying keywords are the health care and legal help categories that are known to pay in excess of $20 per click – they include search terms like mesothelioma, asbestos, accident lawyers, attorney, etc which fetch the highest Adsense CPC rate but only for real sites.

It is almost impossible to monetize these keywords on a MFA website. To find the average CPC of any keyword or search phrase, use the keyword suggestion tools listed here.