Teaching How to use PC, Tablet, Mobile and Internet

Find apps for your phone while you browse [Chrome Extension]

Manav Mishra — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 15:29:05 +0000

Computers, internet, and now smartphones and tablets have become the part of almost everybody’s life. There are several types of mobile OS in the market these days and so is the list of mobile phone apps, which keeps on increasing with every passing day. No doubt, people use different methods to search for a specific app for their phones, some simply go to the app store link and hunt for the app they need, others prefer searching directly using the search engines. Here is another way of searching and finding the apps, this way is quite stylish however it is actually a variant of the second method, i.e. searching for the app in the search engine.

This post talks about a browser Extension for Google Chrome, this extension once installed keeps showing you the apps relevant to your query in any search engine (Bing, Google, etc.). Simply install iFind in your Chrome and enjoy the seamless search for any app, once installed, whenever you are searching for something in your favorite search engine, iFind will show you the iPhone, Android and iPod apps relevant to the keyword and these apps will be displayed in a panel on the right side of the Search Engine Result Page. Have a look at the snapshot below.

In the same way you can get the list of apps while you search in Google and Yahoo as well. However if you are searching in Google in that case you need to be signed in to get the results from iFind, and for some reason it didn’t work for me while searching in Yahoo.

iFind doesn’t only show you the relevant apps, in fact you can visit to the app page in the market or app store just by clicking on the app icon in right panel, also you can see a short intro to the app just by hovering your mouse pointer on the app icon.

Also, you can customize iFind for two things, firstly you can choose that for which search engines will iFind show the app list in right panel, this can be decided under the ‘Websites’ tab, and secondly you can decide on the operating system or device for which the apps will be displayed, like for Android, for iPad or iPod, or all of them, this can be customized under the ‘Search Results’ tab.

The settings for iFind shown above can be accessed directly by clicking on the magnifying glass icon adjacent to the settings icon in Chrome.

So, go ahead and try this Extension, and do share your views about it with us, also see if it works for you in case of Yahoo as well, and share with us in comments.

Install iFind in Chrome

Find apps for your phone while you browse [Chrome Extension] by Manav Mishra originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/02/08. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Movie Apps to Organize Movies and Search them quickly

Ashish Mohta — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:40:39 +0000

An average computer user has tones of movies on his laptop or over a network drive which results in one simple issue for a Movie Enthusiastic, How do you search for a Movie where a certain person is an actor or how do you find if the movie has a good rating or How do you which category the movie falls into ?

So the real question is how to stay organized with those gigabytes of Movies you have ? So today we thought of introducing you a couple of movie software which can help you find, stay organized with all these.

How do these Software work ?

They read files from your folder and pull all meta data which help them comparing with online databases like IMDB and then bring in all details in presentable way to you. There can be mismatches because of wrong info in the file itself but you can fix it.

So before you start using any of these applications, I will suggest you to do a bit of background work by bringing all your movies in one location or keep them into dedicated folders though it’s not mandatory but it’s for your help but if you cannot, don’t worry all these can pull data from any number of folders.

Movie Monkey :

The most advanced of all the software here because it has a lot of automation and zero configuration but the best part of using this is you can set what you have already watched and what is still left, very useful if you have just got some movies from your friend and copied it to your Movies Folder.

There are few more things I really liked about it.

Displays all the movies in Album format with cover image which takes lot less view space
Automatically categorizes them making and lastly the inbuilt filters ( Sort by Year, Title, Rating etc ) is a big time boon for heavy movie fans.
Lets you launch the movie in your default player right from there.
Edit Movie details in case its wrong.

This installs in your computer like any other software and does not comes with export option so you cannot restore in case you format which in my view is a drawback for users who have huge movie collection. Download from here

Movie Explorer :

This application is simplest of all. Once you configure in option the path where your movies are stored, it automatically pulls in data from IMDB and fills in all details about the movie right from Actor to Director etc. Then when you want to search all you need is type in the name of the movie or actor or director etc and it does a live filtering for you.

If you are looking for more control on how your movies are organized, this app is just for you. Here you create categories etc manually and for each group you can have different set of folders. So if you are bit organized here and have categorized your movie already in some way, this app is just for you.

This application is portable and creates set of file to store all your movie details, So I will suggest you to create a folder and keep it in that so all the files if needs to be moved will be easy.

This software is in beta now so you might find some bug but this the fastest of all three and is really simple though I would expect it to let users launch the movie at least to make it even smoother. Download from here

PS : I am looking for more apps which are free and works nicely. So if you have any recommendations, add in comments

Movie Apps to Organize Movies and Search them quickly by Ashish Mohta originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/02/07. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Free Valentine’s Day themes for Windows 7

Manav Mishra — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 02:30:02 +0000

Microsoft keeps giving us free themes for every occasion, now as the festival of Love on February, Valentine’s Day is about to arrive and they have launched free windows 7 themes for this occasion to express your love even more beautifully. Find the download link at the end.

Roses Theme for Windows 7 :

This should have come as the first theme but its never late, Roses are the king of flowers and now you can have them on your computer along with 10 beautiful high resolution wallpaper.

Lovebirds :

This theme has 5 beautiful wallpapers featuring featuring shadowbox-style lovebirds. If you aren’t aware Lovebirds are a social and very affectionate small parrot which symbolizes strong pair bonding with only one partner for a long periods and always sit together.

Another free theme for Windows 7 for the occasion of Valentine’s Day is Lacy Heart. This theme has 4 decorated lacy heart wallpapers.

Apart from these you can also download the Animal Affection theme which does not have pink roses but does bring close affection which lives around us. The wallpapers in this theme express love having Goldfish kiss, horses nuzzle, hummingbirds tenderly touch beaks, cats nap in an intertwined heap, and leopards groom each other .

These themes look awesome for the Valentine’s Day. You can

Also you can check out the Wallpapers for Valentine’s Day.

Free Valentine’s Day themes for Windows 7 by Manav Mishra originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/02/04. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Fix Audio Device ( HDMI ) unavailable after restart : Hotfix

Ashish Mohta — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:21:56 +0000

It seems for some set of users the audio device used to become unavailable after restart even though it was working fine when plugged in. This resulted in no sound when an audio device was connected to HDMI section of a computer running Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Good news is that there is a hot fix available which you need to manually download and apply to your system from here. Like I said this was happening only with certain users hence it was more limited to a particular set of hardware which had timing issue during audio initialization. You may have to restart your Windows after the installation is complete.

Till now the only workaround was to restart the audio service to detect the device again or use the audio troubleshooting section. To download the fix you will have to manually raise a request by following this link which is also available right under the title of the said page. However this hotfix is available only for x86 based system so if you have a 64 bit, you might have to wait for sometime to get this.

Now before you go and download this hot-fix, make sure you had this kind of symptoms and issues because any incorrect installation done can cause damage to your system which means you will waste a lot of time installing your current system again.

So make sure you do have a restore or backup point ready to revert back and you had used the Audio troubleshooting once to see if the error is not a minor one. This will help you simple problems like Audio Muted or not set as default device which is a common issue when you switch Audio Output in a computer.

Fix Audio Device ( HDMI ) unavailable after restart : Hotfix by Ashish Mohta originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/02/03. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Smart Copy : Copy Pause & Preview Conflicts before copying Deep directory structure

Ashish Mohta — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:37:27 +0000

Copy Tools are lot over the internet but if you are looking for some simple free tool with powerful features, Smart Copy has couple of them. Though we still support Robocopy for being one of the power tool when it comes to massive copying but the options just dont work for regular guys.

What is Smart Copy ?

Its essentially a portable backup tool which is built for copying and taking backup of folders of massive size which have lot of sub-directories ( Imagine something like Windows System Folder ). When it comes to windows copying its just not that smart and possibly not optimal also. Taking a backup could be over your local drive or network drive, as the author says it can handle such situations.

Important Features of Smart Copy :

Copy Pause :

Something we might we might see something better in next version of Windows but this useful software can do it for you. This is useful specially if you are leaving for a while unattended or your network booted up and you just don’t want to start over copying to your network drive. (Your awesome music collection which has albums, songs, album cover and so on. )

With this you can resume and pause anytime and it will take care of keeping the files getting moved like it never had a problem.

Preview Conflicts :

Now if you decided to leave it un attended only to comeback and see that the copy process is stuck at a point where it needs your permission to say yes or now, all you feel is like cursing the damn process but you wont have this problem here.

This application gives you a preview of all conflicts and lets you decide what has to be done, so when you go out to grab a coffee and come back your mind is in piece.

Filters :

Something without which any Copy Software is just lame. This application lets you apply filter in real time and shows you what will get copied and what not. So now if you a loads of document of type PDF, DOC EXCEL and so on, this will let you quickly get a clean result and managed directories.

How to use Smart Copy ?

Remember the basic idea is to take backup and keep your data in sync. So you start with selecting a source, then target, use filters to specify types of file you want to skip and then hit Synchronize.

Now just before you do that, its a good idea to save this whole thing i.e. the settings part using the Save Selection to a text file so next time you want to run the same thing, you can use the restore selection from text file.

Apart from this there are two more options in this tool which will help you a lot. First is the Find Orphans which is to find any file which is available in your backup location and missing in source and second is Merge Directories which lets you mix two folders.

Download

This tool is free to use and can be downloaded from here. You can also read more about it on the official page. Thanks Nirmal for sharing this.

Smart Copy : Copy Pause & Preview Conflicts before copying Deep directory structure by Ashish Mohta originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/02/02. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Make Movie from your Facebook Timeline and Updates

Ashish Mohta — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:15:33 +0000

Ever since Facebook Launched its Timeline Feature I was very excited to try , one of the reason maybe was the Nice and Sleek Marketing Promo Video which Facebook Showed to let us know what Timeline was all about , Facebook Timeline was pretty good at what it did , told stories of your life via a Vertical Timeline , it told whom you were friends with on which month , when you went into a relationship , your achievements and what not ! Most importantly even when I didn’t know how to use the Facebook Timeline feature I was much wooed by the Movie they showed me in the Promo.

If you haven’t seen it already then do watch it at the Facebook Timeline Intro Page , but have you ever wondered if you could make a similar movie without knowing much of the Fancy Video Editing Stuff ? The Obvious Answer (If you read the Title of this post) is Yes , now you can

Facebook in association with Definition 6 (A Unified Marketing Agency) has come up with a Beautiful app the Timeline Movie Maker , an App which will let you convert your Facebook Timeline enabled Profile into a Nostalgic Movie.

The Procedure is really very simple , you just head on to ( www.timelinemoviemaker.com ) then Click on “Make Your Movie” then the App (Timeline Movie Maker) will ask you for your App Permissions for Facebook , it does that in order to draw Photos and some other info from your Facebook profile in order to make the movie (It doesn’t draw private content which you have customized permission for , only draws stuff you shared with Public and Friends) . After that It will show a Progress bar and after a moment they will auto play the Movie.

Feeling Nostalgic ? No ? The App does provide you will a little bit of Customization like they give you five soundtracks to choose from and you can click on photos you don’t want in the movie to be shown , just click on them to remove it , similarly you can change your check-ins , videos and so on and they will fill it up with some random photo , after all this you have to click on “Remake Your Movie” Button to render the movie again , I expected a bit of randomness to the movie generation every time I clicked on “Remake Your Movie” but it will just let you make changes to the stuff the app already choose for you.

So far as of now the Movie is only sharable on Facebook (Though only with friends / custom / via Message / on anyone’s wall) it can’t be set to Public. And Why Do I keep using the Word “Render” ? Well technically the movie isn’t saved anywhere when you make it , but is rendered in real time every time someone with to see it with your customized settings (Maybe one of the reasons why it isn’t downloadable / embeddable till now) , actually what happens is the app overlays your images and status onto a blank template of the movie.

Also another thing I find lacking is in the contents the App chooses for us , I know the app isn’t a genius to predict what matters to us most , and what’s of great value to us , off course a Family Picture of mine is a moment I will cherish and is more valuable than a Comic Strip I Shared when I LOL’d , but App can’t work with that also to mention the app do skip many years of memories for us in the meanwhile so don’t keep your hopes too high if the output looks stupid to you at first , have your patience and customize it until you are satisfied.

All in all it’s a good attempt and not made to be judged with super seriousness , even if little but it does makes your nostalgic , at least it did to me , so just go to www.timelinemoviemaker.com then do a few clicks then sit back and enjoy

This Guest Post Was Written By Kuntal Gupta , A Photographer from Kolkata , You can see most of his work on his Facebook Fan Page and on Flickr , You can also follow him on Twitter @cybercool10 .

Make Movie from your Facebook Timeline and Updates by Ashish Mohta originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/02/01. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Video : Automate It makes your Android Smarter, Creates Condtion based Actions

Ashish Mohta — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:24:57 +0000

Lets make Android even more smarter, Lets Automate it to do things you had always wished Android on your phone should have done for you. For example if you want to turn of your GPS connection when batter is below 30% or you wanted to start sync when connected to a network profile or call somebody right after a person called you.

Yes this all can done and it works flawlessly with Automate it App for Android which you can compare it with Task Scheduler for Windows allowing you to fire an even based on conditions or triggers.

What You can do with Automateit : Examples

That said it has loads of things it can do which for obvious reasons cannot be demoed, not all of them but may be a one or two which will help you feel it.

Location Based Trigger :

So lets you reach home or office and you want to turn on your WiFi so you can save bandwidth on your 3G or Edge Plan. You can set your location using google map and then set your wifi to turn on as soon as you are around that area.

Also you can turn it off when you leave your office but you have to think from a different angle. For this you can choose a location which is bit off your office location i.e. the regular route you pick to go home and turn your wifi off using the same trick.

Alerts on Specific SMS :

Lets say you get loads of SMS and you want SMS for a particular text which has important term mentioed which can be your bank name or SMS from a particular SMS, then you can set the app to read a text automatically for you which could be like “SMS from BANK” or “SMS from XYZ person”

Video

Watch on YouTube

Download

Download Automate it from Android Market

List of Triggers and Actions

Triggers : SMS, Bluetooth, Call based, Screen, WIFI, USB, Location, Airplane Mode, Application Based, on Boot, Manual
Action : Notification, Call, Volume, Sound etc.

Advantages of Free / Pro Version

The App Comes into two version free and paid version which has its own advantages and targeted for pro users. For example if you want o run a task based on certain conditions together i.e. What if you want to Call a person when you got called from either person A or Person B. With free version you will have to create two. In the Pro Version you can create

Composite Triggers, Composite Action,
How long a rule will be active i.e. for a certain period of time
Sensor Trigger which makes you make use of hardware feature like in case of too much brightness outside you want to drop your phones brightness or turn off the accelerometer.
Calendar Based triggers, Cell ID Trigger and so on.

Video : Automate It makes your Android Smarter, Creates Condtion based Actions by Ashish Mohta originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/01/30. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Video : Two Way Sync Android SD Card with Dropbox

Manav Mishra — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:47:30 +0000

We all are well aware of the Dropbox, and if you are a Dropbox user, I am sure you are already using the Desktop Client and probably the Dropbox app for your respective Smartphone as well. Using the Desktop Client for Dropbox makes it damn convenient for the user to share the files using the Dropbox service.

The Problem –

However using a Android app isn’t that convenient, and the reason is – the mobile phone app for Dropbox isn’t a full featured client, the files or the folders don’t get downloaded to the phone automatically, you access them online, and if you wish to, only then you download the file. Same is the case with uploading; you need to manually start the uploading process in order to get a particular file in the specified folder. Summarily, the Android Dropbox app doesn’t allow automatic uploading or downloading, or we can say that the auto sync feature is missing from the Dropbox Android app, unlike the Dropbox desktop client, where you drop the file and forget it; it will be synced to every instance of the folder across different machines/devices.

The reason behind the Problem –

Probably this missing functionality in the mobile apps is for two reasons –

Save the limited space on your Smartphone which generally is in range of 2-8Gbs.
And to save on the data usage.

Solution –

Keeping the limitations and the reasons behind the limitations, it is clear that the mobile phone apps probably can’t be designed to behave exactly like the desktop client for Dropbox, however if an arrangement can be made, where we can keep just one Dropbox folder in true two way sync with a folder on the SD card of the mobile phone, this can be a great help, isn’t it. Let’s see how this can help. Suppose you have multiple folders within your Dropbox, now if you create a new folder such that it can be used as a bin, i.e. a new folder which is actually in two way auto sync with a folder on your SD card, this can help, as whatever you put in that folder on SD card will appear in this Dropbox folder, and later you can move the files to the respective Dropbox folder, or any other folder on your hard disk. Sounds great, isn’t it? This can be achieved with the help of this Android app known as Dropsync.

Video Demo

Watch on YouTube

Working of Dropsync -

Now, let us have a look at the working of this app. Download the app to your Android device. Launch Dropsync from your list of applications, it will ask you to link it with your Dropbox account, provide the email (which works as username) and password, and move ahead.

In case you already have Dropbox App installed on your computer, it will detect and use the same account unless otherwise you want to sync some other account of yours. This means you can have two dropbox account getting synced over the same android phone.

Once you are done with the linking process, Dropsync will take you to a screen which asks you to select a folder on your SD card, also if you want you can create new dedicated folder for Dropsync. Shown in the snapshot below, 1 shows the screen which asks to select a folder on SD card whereas 2 shows the selected folder ‘Dropsync-Test’, which I created especially to test the Dropsync.

As soon as you tap on the ‘Select’ button, Dropsync will access your Dropbox and will show you the folders in your Dropbox, here you will have to select the Dropbox folder which you want to sync with the one selected on your SD card (for me it’s ‘Dropsync-Test’).

As soon as you select the Dropbox folder it will show you a summary kind of stuff [screen 2], a screen which will show you the folders which will be synced, and later the you will be shown a screen which will show you the status [screen 3].

This was all about the app, the actual use of the app, and the setup process. Now, Dropsync also allows you to customize the working as per your needs, just launch the Dropsync anytime and tap the menu button to access the settings page, have a look at the snapshot below.

Above snapshot clearly indicates that the working can be fully customized, you can decide when to sync, also you can save on your Data usage by setting up a sync take place only when Wi-Fi is available, also you can impose a restriction, like if you battery is remaining below certain level the sync process may not occur.

Discussed here is the free version of Dropsync, and this allows syncing just one set of folders, whereas if you want more than one set of folders to be synced, you can go for the pro version of Dropsync. Overall this is an awesome app, if you are a avid Dropbox user and own an Android device, go ahead and get this app now.

Try out Dropsync and share your views about it with us. Download Dropsync

Video : Two Way Sync Android SD Card with Dropbox by Manav Mishra originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/01/30. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Record a message to be posted on your Facebook profile after your death

Manav Mishra — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:40:43 +0000

Facebook is becoming more and more popular every day, developers all across the globe keep on developing several Facebook apps. You might have seen several Facebook apps but this one which I came across recently is little different. Let us have a look at what this app is all about. This app actually is related to a bitter truth we all keep running away from, and that is ‘Death’. This app allows you to say it all that you ever wanted to tell to your loved ones, spouse, siblings, your lover, or whole of the world. This app allows you to say it all after your death, sounds interesting, isn’t it?

This Facebook app named as ‘If I Die’ is an attempt by the developers to speak your heart and mind after your Death, i.e. this app allows you to say something when you actually aren’t there to speak it on your own. Here are the steps which are to be followed for using ‘If I Die’ –

Go to the official homepage of ‘If I Die’ and allow the app (by clicking the ‘The App’ tab) to access your Facebook profile, this will take you to the app page as shown below.

Here you can decide what type of message do you want to leave, i.e. a Video Message or a Text Message, choose one and move ahead.

If you click on adding a text message, you get a simple editor appear in front of you, which allows you to make a choice on your favorite font and size, etc. In case you opt for a video message, you again get two options, you can either upload a video or you can record a message right away using your webcam.

Once done with this, you can select the trustees. Let us see how ‘If I Die’ defines Trustees -

Trustees: A selection of your closest Facebook friends whom you choose and trust. Trustees are the only ones who can report your passing.
Once 3 of your verified trustees report, your message will be posted on your wall
Pending Trustee: A Facebook friend who was invited to be your trustee, but haven’t approved yet he is willing to take the honour.
Verified Trustee: A facebook friend who accepted your invitation to be a trustee. Remember – only verified trustees can report your passing.

Simple enough, isn’t it? You need to be very careful while choosing the Trustees, I am saying so for the reason because, suppose the your Trustees are pranksters and one fine day they decide to announce you as Dead, as a resultant something which you didn’t want to tell the world before you actually depart, might come in front of people while you are alive, and this can land you in some very unwanted scenarios, so beware!!

More about ‘If I Die’ –

You can leave only one message, the feature to post more than one message might arrive soon.
At any given moment you may delete the old message and record a new one.
The message which will be posted on your Facebook after your death can be seen by anyone who has the access to your status updates.
You can record up to 5 minutes of video.

So, if you too think, there is something you would like to share with your Facebook friends after your death, go ahead and use ‘If I Die’ and feel relaxed, at least someone is there who is ready to be your voice after you.

Visit If I Die homepage

Record a message to be posted on your Facebook profile after your death by Manav Mishra originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/01/25. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shutdown Windows without installing updates ( Hibernate it )

Ashish Mohta — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:02:59 +0000

Many a times it happens that when you go to shutdown your computer at the end of the day, it asks you to install updates without giving any option to skip it. Though its a good thing to do that but then if you are in a hurry you cannot wait for the update to complete for next 20 minutes and its even more annoying when you have a weak battery so you cannot jusy unplug and put it in your bag pack to let it to.

So now the question is how you going to skip the update and still shutdown your computer. Below are some methods you would love to use :

Hibernate :

This is the simplest and most easiest option you can choose for and it has its own advantages. First its is one click solution your computer shuts down, all your current state is saved and updates are skipped. I do it most of the time and reboot my computer and shutdown it properly only when I reach home.

To make sure you have hibernation enabled, look into your power settings.

Use the Lock Screen :

Second tip comes from WithinWindows, who points to a very obvious option which most of use might never see. There is a shutdown option when you are on lock screen but it only shows up when you are logged off. So once you save all your work, log off and look for the dropdown in the power down button which has option to shutdown along with Shutdown after installing updates.

Force from Command line

If you are an Admin on your computer, do this to skip updates :

Type CMD on your start menu, CMD will appear and right-click to run with Admin privilege.
Next type in shutdown -s -t 000 where 000 is the time after which shutdown takes place, you can also use shutdown -s -f -t 000 to close all apps if they are open but I will not recommend it.

This both will result in instant shutdown without asking you anything on the update.

Shutdown Windows without installing updates ( Hibernate it ) by Ashish Mohta originally appeared on Technospot.Net on 2012/01/24. Please see our terms for use of feeds.