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Utilities

Weave News Reader

Weave News Reader gathers breaking news from around the world and brings them right where you are. It isn’t just about news. You can also follow blogs and sites with the app.

Price: Free

Social Networking & Communication

Since purchasing the Vizio Co-Star, I have been slowly but surely working my way through the re-encoding of almost all of our movies, most of which had been ripped to ISO files in order to retain all of the menus and extras. Unfortunately, Google TV will not allow me to keep those options, but this is not the end of the world — I do not really need them, it was just a nice touch.

My latest experiment is using TEncoder, which is a powerful tool for converting video and audio files from one format to another. The app holds a lot promise, but may not work for every need — more on that later.

Download the App

TEncoder is a free and open source solution that is available over on Sourceforge. For those who wish to get a bit geekier with this, you can find the code over at Codeplex.

“TEncoder is a multithreaded video converter that uses MEncoder, MPlayer and FFMpeg. It can convert almost every video type to each other. Subtitles with same name as video can be hard-coded into video. Up to 8 simultaneous encoders can be run. You can select between multiple audio and subtitle tracks. Extracting video or audio content is possible. Edit subtitle and audio delays and part of video that will be encoded. Effects like deinterlacing can be applied to videos”.

Features

• Supports almost all video formats
• Multithreading enables you to use all cores of your CPU
• Subtitles can be hard-coded into video
• Output video codecs are: Mpeg1, Mpeg2, Xvid, Mpeg4, H264, FLV, WMV, VP8
• Output audio codecs are: MP3, WAV, AAC, OGG Vorbis, AC3, Mp2
• Choose between FFMpeg and Mencoder as encoder
• Select between different audio and subtitle tracks for each file
• Skin support
• Do two passes to improve quality
• Pass custom commands to encoders
• Preview files before encoding

The Interface

You may think the interface is somewhat complex when looking at first glance, but no worries. You can master it fairly easily with just a bit of looking around.

The Left Column

The left column contains several options, including:

• Add Files and Folders
• Move Selected Up
• Move Selected Down
• Remove Selected Files from the List
• Clear the List
• Search
• Settings

All are self explanatory, but Settings bears a closer look. when clicked, this pops up a number of options in a small window. Users can changes languages, set subtitles, choose encoding settings and even choose from a number of skins to alter the look of the TEncoder app with various designs.

Of course converting multiple files will also mean your PC won’t have the processor power to do much else, but if that’s a problem you can tell TEncoder to grab less cores for itself

The Right Column

This side of the screen contains all of the video and audio options. It may look a bit confusing at first, but it is pretty simple to understand.

Video options include a choice of codecs, bitrate, size, aspect ratio, container and encoder. You can also enable subtitles and you will find the rather important “Encode” button at the very bottom.

Codecs:

• Xvid
• Mpeg 1
• Mpeg 2
• Mpeg 4
• H264
• FLV
• WMV
• VP8
• Huffyvu
• ProRes
• DirectCopy

• AVI
• Mpeg
• MP4
• MOV
• MKV
• FLV
• WMV
• WEBM
• 3GP

Main Screen

The main screen (the middle part) displays track and subtitle information, profiles and output path — where the program saves your newly converted file.

Get Started

Click the “Add” button to add individual files or an entire folder of files. Then select a profile to define the appropriate settings for your device (there are more 800 to choose from).

Once you have chosen your files (you can do multiple ones at once) then you are off and running.  Click the your choices for codec and container. Next choose the output location — where your file will be placed when TEncoder is done. By default this is C:\”NAME”\Documents\TEncoder\. Now click “Encode”, and wait as your files are converted.

The Bad

As I had mentioned earlier, I ripped all of our video discs to ISO files — a complete image of the disc that can be loaded using something like Daemon Tools or Virtual CloneDrive. Sadly, TEncoder doe not allow me to mount those virtual DVD’s, making it useless for my little project.

The screen is somewhat confusing looking at first glance, thanks to its many options, but those options are also a plus.

The Good

With exception of ISO files, the TEncoder program can convert just about any format to any other file type, including popular forms such as MP4, AVI and MKV, all of which are compatible with most digital video players (Windows Media Player will not play MKV — use VLC). The software is extremely powerful, can handle multiple files at once and works quickly.

The Verdict

While this app will not work for my current conversion project, that is more me and not TEncoder. The app is powerful and simple, once you master the main screen options, which is easier than it first appears. You can not go wrong with the free app for almost all video and audio conversion needs.

I found out about this issue when my laptop automatically went to sleep after getting overheated. Since then, I started looking for a handy utility that can help me manage my laptop’s temperature and find out if its overheating. If you dont manage the temperature of your laptop, you may end up with a dead hard drive from which you cannot recover any data at all. It can even cause a greater damage to your processor as well which may not be the most cheapest thing to repair.

To make things easier, I started looking for apps that can help me manage my laptop’s temperature and ended up using BatteryCare.

What is BatteryCare?

BatteryCare is a very nifty little utility that can help users manage their laptop’s battery and most importantly, monitor its temperature. Higher temperature may cause your system to malfunction and may damage your hardware. The program has some useful built-in settings that can also help users manage their laptop’s battery efficiently.

Installing BatteryCare

Installing BatteryCare is pretty simple and straightforward. Like many free softwares, BatteryCare does recommend you to install third party add-ons and toolbars or in simple words, bloatware. So make sure you read the on screen instructions carefully and uncheck any unnecessary program installation.

I installed BatteryCare on two laptops at home and it showed me a different recommendation on both, so just uncheck any option that requires you to install any additional software. Other than that, there is no virus or Trojan in the bundle. I ran a scan using Microsoft Security Essentials as well as VirusTotal and it showed no signs of infection (this is for those who are extra cautious about installing different software).

Using BatteryCare

Once installed, the application will place a small icon in your Windows taskbar. One of the most important things you should see here is the battery percentage and temperature. On the main screen of BatteryCare, it will show you complete information about your battery i-e battery status, remaining time, current battery percentage and battery discharge information. A full discharge means the number of times you have fully used your laptop’s battery. It’s always a good idea to use your laptop’s full battery at least 3-4 times a month or more if possible. The most important feature is that it displays the temperature of your CPU as well as your hard drive on the main screen. To be on the safe side, make sure that the temperature does not cross 50 degrees.

Clicking on Detailed Information tab will show you in depth details of your laptop’s battery such as the company name, total capacity, current capacity, charge/discharge rate and much more.

Let’s take a look at some configuration options of BatteryCare. It offers users with useful optimization options in order to improve your laptop’s battery. From the General tab, make sure that it runs on Windows startup. On the same tab, it will show you some optimization options such as disabling aero effect and themes when your laptop is not connected to a power source as well as other windows services which consume high amount of energy when you are running your laptop on battery. You can also select which method should be used to calculate the remaining battery time.

You can also setup battery notifications as well. If you want, you can enable low/critical battery notifications for your laptop as well.

One useful feature is that you can automatically let BatteryCare select the power plan for your computer based on the current energy source. It will help users automatically manage their battery efficiently. You can also select which power plan should be used when there is no connected power source and vice versa.

Sometimes, it may not display the temperatures of your laptop. The reason behind this is that BatteryCare needs privileges to read CPU temperature. In Windows, UAC may block access to BatteryCare to read the information so you can either disable UAC (which I never recommend) or use can use the software’s bypass tool that will add the software to the exceptions list. Just go to Advanced tab and check the “Run at startup in Administrator Mode”. If it still does not show you the temperature, it may be because your hardware is not compatible with the application.

Conclusion

BatteryCare is a very handy utility when it comes to optimizing your laptop’s battery and hardware temperature. As far as the installation of bloatware is concerned, just make sure you read the on screen installation instructions carefully. All free software recommends users to install other applications and toolbars but that doesn’t mean that the software is not good.

It may not show you 100 percent accurate results but it still gives you a pretty good idea about the temperatures and laptop’s battery information.

Which application do you use to monitor your laptop’s battery and temperature? Feel free to share your views in the comments below.

In case of web applications, they may be better when it comes to creating GIF animations but they may not provide you with as many features as a desktop tool and may not be as simple as you think. Today, we came across a very handy desktop utility, GIFCam that allows users to create animated GIFs from their desktop. It’s more of a screen recording app that records your actions and save them as GIF images.

What is GifCam?

GifCam is a very handy portable utility that allows users to create animated GIF images without installing anything on your computer. You can manually adjust the size of the screen to fit your desktop and start recording. Everything that comes in the frame is recorded and saved in an image format. It might be a better alternative than saving the screencasts as video files as they are larger in size and may not work on every device. The best of all, users can easily share them with anyone they want via email or any other social network.

Features and Usage

Using GifCam is simple and straightforward. To get started, all you have to do is download the portable package from their website and run it. This is the best thing I like about this app, you don’t have to install anything on your computer. Just open the file and it will open GifCam main screen. You can adjust the size of the frame by dragging the window from the corner, same as you do with any other windows app.

After adjusting the frame, just click on Rec and it will start recording anything on your desktop that comes into the frame. You can simply record anything ranging from your desktop to games to YouTube videos or simply anything for that matter. This can be really helpful if you are helping anyone solve some computer related problem or even if you are just showing them how to perform a specific task on their computer.

One feature I like about GifCam is that if the software finds out that the previous frame is same as the new recorded frame, it will automatically add delay instead of adding new frames which increases the size of the GIF. If you want, you can even record a single frame as well. Clicking on the Frame button multiple times will increase the delay time (in milliseconds).

The tool also allows users to view the created GIF image and edit frames before saving the final product. From within the app, you can easily adjust the delay time, add/remove different frames and more. Just right click on any frame and it will show you all the options that can be used to edit the image.

The tool also offers a wide range of saving options to its users as well. By default, the save mode is set to Quantize but you can easily change the saving options to 256 colors, 20 colors, grayscale or monochrome in order to manage the size of the created GIF image. Now, just save the file and you are done.

Here is a sample of something I created using GifCam. The delay time in the image below is set to 0.2 seconds but you can change it easily from the edit screen.

Wrap Up

In the past, I have used many online utilities and even Photoshop, to create GIF images but it cannot get any simpler than this. It’s all up to your creativity on what you can create using this tool. If you want, you can take a look at some of the samples the developer has created using this tool and you will be amazed.

Best of all, the tool does not require you to install any third party add-on or tool to make it work, it’s portable. I am one of those people who never installs anything on my computer until and unless I find the tool really useful. In conclusion, I must say that it’s a very useful portable application that can come in handy in many different situations such as creating images or even guides to help other users.

Did you try GifCam? Feel free to share your thoughts about it in the comments below.

Trillian was the first multi platform chat client I encountered some eight years ago. It always had a free version and it has evolved a lot over all these years. Much has changed they way the app looks now and is way cooler than it used to be. Join me after the break to check out the newest avatar of Trillian.

Getting Started

As I noted earlier, Trillian is a free app. However, there always has been a pro version. From a flat fee, the developers have opted for a subscription model that costs $20 per year. Pay $60 in one go and avail a lifetime license though.

I noticed a funny check box in the installation wizard of Trillian. There was an option to actually not create an uninstall link in the Add or remove programs. It was checked off by default, which is a good thing, but, why have such an option in the first place?

Setting Up Chat Accounts

Trillian always had a lot going for it. The app has great support for many different chat networks, including Facebook, Skype, Google, MSN, AIM, ICQ, XMPP, Yahoo!, and more. And, you can integrate all of them from a single screen. I connected my Live account and Facebook accounts in a few seconds.

Connecting with the World

Though widely known as a multi channel chat client, Trillian is much more than that. It helps you read mail, catch up with your feed and to communicate with your peers. The beauty is that the app manages to do all this in a neatly designed interface.

Mails, Contacts and IM Groups

The USP of Trillian in my opinion is that you won’t feel overwhelmed. Irrespective of the number of accounts you add to the app, you’ll be able to keep track of all communications without feeling choked up. Every account and communication channel type has its own little section in the app. The unread count is updated in real time helping you sift through them as and when they arrive at your virtual doorstep.

A tabbed chat interface makes jumping between multiple chats quick and painless. For those with multiple devices, Trillian’s continuous chat feature is bound to be a godsend. So, if you start a chat on your desktop, you can pick it up where you left in your ipad instantly. Neat, isn’t it!

Social Integration

Trillian is a powerful social client for the desktop. Reading my Facebook feed and updates was pleasure and felt like I was using an official native client. Besides being able to chat with my friends in real time, commenting on updates and checking out friend requests were cool additions.

Facebook Integration

The notification bubbles weren’t very intrusive, but, if you are like me, turn them off instantly. The email integration is pretty basic and you can always stay on top of the unread count of your inbox. An inbuilt mail client would have resulted in bloat and kudos to the developers for keeping the app nimble.

Customization and Localization

What good is a chat client that doesn’t all us to go crazy? You can go nuts with the cool set of emoticons in stock. Also, you can skin your client to the mood with a handful of colorful themes in a couple of clicks. I gotta admit that every bit of the app is elegantly and tastefully designed.

Accessing Preferences

You can customize the app to the hilt from a centralized preferences dashboard. While at it, you might also want to make Trillian speak your local language. User-created language packs and strong UTF-8 support help ensure a great experience in your native language.

Final Thoughts

Trillian is one of the pioneers of multi platform chat. There is absolutely no doubt that the app has gotten better over the years. The advent of social networks have made chat communication a thing past. But, real time chat is a very productive mode of communication and Trillian just ensures that you make the most of your connections.

After installation though, for a minute, just a minute, the revamped interface looked a lot like Digsby. But, unlike Digsby which fell out of favor for spreading crapware, Trillian has always been a safe client. It’s safe, secure and free. I got a warm, fuzzy feeling using Trillian after all these years. You should definitely give this legendary IM client a try, if you haven’t already!

This guide aims to introduce you to the basic ideas and knowledge that are needed to start overclocking your processor.

Why Would You Want to Overclock Your PC?

Generally people either want to get more power out of an old system, or they do it to see how fast they can get a newer system to run to make their machine more powerful.

Personally, I started looking into overclocking a few years ago when I couldn’t afford a new computer and my processor was the limiting factor. It was back in the days when the Core2Duo Dual Core processors had been superseded by the quad cores and I needed more power!

I had an E4500 processor that was running at 2.2GHz out of the box and I managed to up it to a stable running speed of just under 3GHz (2.926GHz). That’s a 33% increase on the stock running speed for nothing more than some of my time and fair bit of reading.

Obligatory Warning

This can harm your computer. Not in a “Oh, I lost a file” kind of way, but in a “Oh, I fried my processor, motherboard and RAM” kind of way! This is obviously the worst case scenario, and without wishing to tempt fate, I’ve never damaged any of my components by overclocking them. Consider yourself warned, and it goes without saying that neither I, nor Envato, take any responsibility for any ill effects or damage caused by any action taken as a result of reading this article.

Further to this, some systems are not set up to be overclocked. Generally proprietary systems such as those by Dell, HP and other manufactures will have the necessary parts of the BIOS locked so that you cannot manually override it. This is for safety, stability of the system and so that they don’t get calls to customer services blaming the company when the user fried their processor!

What You Need to Know

There are some terms that are synonymous with processors and related hardware that you should be aware of to follow this guide.

• Base Clock/ Front Side Bus (FSB). This is the main setting that is usually changed to increase CPU speed. The base clock will be written in MHz, eg 166MHz.
• The CPU multiplier is another setting that is core to the calculation of CPU speed. The base clock is multiplied by the multiplier (as the name would suggest!) to reach the overall speed of the processor. For example, take a base clock of 166MHz and multiply it by the multiplier of 18 and you get the CPU speed, in this case 3GHz (it is more precisely 2.988GHz, but is usually rounded) It should also be noted that the multiplier is usually locked, that is to say you cannot increase it. More expensive CPUs in the Intel range sometimes have unlocked multipliers that allow you to increase as well as decrease it, these are the Extreme Edition and Engineering Sample CPUs.
• RAM divider. This is the same deal as the CPU multiplier, but for the RAM, so you take the base clock of 166 and multiply it by 10 and you get 1666 Ram speed, for example.
• Ram timings, or latency. Ram has different parts of its performance rated with separate timings, lower numbers are better, and higher numbers are worse. It is usually a set of four numbers separated by commas. Explaining this further is not necessary at this point, but be aware that it may be necessary to loosen the timings (make them larger) if the speed of the ram is increased.
• Voltages. Each of the components in your system has separate voltage that can be altered, the most commonly altered are vcore (CPU voltage), vdimm (RAM voltage), and vMCH (Northbridge/memory controller) As the speed increases as you overlclock the cpu, the amount of voltage that it requires will increase. This is usually done manually. Some BIOS manufacturers have included a way to set the voltages to increase automatically. Whether to do this or not is your own choice. Sometimes it works, sometimes only manual configuration will do.

What You Need to Have

Suggested Hardware

The hardware, for the most part is whatever you have already. the only thing to bear in mind is that overclocking stresses the system more than usual, so some parts will need to be up to scratch. if you have a cheap Power Supply (PSU) you might find that the voltages fluctuate within their given range and as you increase them this can cause instability. You will also find the power supply unstable if it is at the top of it’s power rating. Unbranded power supplies are usually a bit hit and miss, so use with caution. Personally I’m a fan of the Corsair range. They are well priced, pretty quiet, very reliable and deliver consistent voltages.

The coolers that come with the Intel chips are fine for everyday use, and normal thermal conditions. However, as overclocking increases the speed and voltages for the processor, it also increases the heat that is produced as a by product. This can be negated by installing an aftermarket CPU cooler. I won’t start suggesting coolers here, everybody’s requirements differ, some would rather a quieter cooler, and others one that cools better but at the cost of noise. So I suggest you read the reviews and work out which one suits you best.

Suggested Software

CPU-Z is the best way to find out everything about your cpu and system before you get started and is also often used in screenshot form as a proof of CPU speed.

For temperature monitoring you can use Core Temp, or Real Temp.

For stress testing there are a number of tools that you can use, I’ve had a lot of mileage out of Prime95, be aware that it comes in 32 and 64-bit versions depending on your system.

Getting to Know the BIOS

You can access the BIOS at boot (as the computer turns on), by hitting a designated key, it will usually tell you which. Del is common, as is F1.

Navigation in the BIOS is achieved with the keyboard, the mouse will not work. The cursor keys navigate you around, Enter takes you into a menu option, and Esc takes you back up a level. When you are done, be sure to save your changes. There will be a menu option to save and exit. If you do not want to save the changes that you makde then choose the exit without saving option

The BIOS is a place that you will be spending a lot of time if you intend to overclock your system, so take some time to move around all of the menus and find out what each item does. Ideally pull up a laptop and research each setting so you know exactly what it does. If this isn’t possible then write down the settings, or take a photo on your phone, reboot the system and go and research them. Each BIOS is a little different in the terms used and the location/ grouping of settings, so time spent here will give you the confidence to jump in and know exactly what the changes that you are making will affect.

Before you dive into the BIOS to overclock the chip, there are a set of options that should be set in a certain way to make sure that the rest of the system is as stable as possible when you start overclocking.

• PCIe/ PCI, or on older systems AGP may also be mentioned. These should be set to locked.
• Turn off any energy saving methods such as Intel Speedstep as this interferes with what we are trying to achieve.
• It can be beneficial to set the RAM speed to lower than usual by changing he divider. This allows you to concentrate on the stability of the other components that you are tinkering with without worrying about the RAM being a cause of instability.
• Do some further research on your components and set up. This step can’t be stated too many times. every single set up is different so you need to find out as much as you can about your components

Performing the Overclock

To start the overclocking process you need to increase the FSB. Having found where to do this, you increase it by a small amount (usually 5-10MHZ), save changes, see if you can start the system and run a quick stress test as mentioned above for 5-10 minutes. This shows you that the system is stable and you can continue.

When it gets to the point that you are either failing the stress test or are unable to boot the system then it’s time to think about the voltages.

If you have set your voltages to automatic (not recommended but it can be easier to start with) then you may or may not be able to overclock further by switching to manual. Otherwise, you need to drop the FSB a little to the last stable setting and commence further tests for up to 24 hours to prove that the system is stable.

If you have set the voltages to manual then you can now start to increase the voltages for the CPU and the NorthBridge in very small increments, You should now be able to increase your FSB. From this point it is a case of juggling the increases in FSB and voltage to see how far the system will go.

You might find that you get errors about hard drive corruption, or graphics errors. This is usually a good sign that you should increase the voltage on the Southbridge.

Do remember that this is an iterative process, you will likely have to keep making small adjustments repeatedly until you reach a stable point.The most important part is researching, gaining knowledge of your specific system and then testing before you continue to stability testing.

Stability Testing

Generally when you overclock you will find two levels that your chip can achieve. The top level is the highest that you can successfully boot with, and then slightly lower is what is usually called an everyday overclock. This is the highest that your components can stably run at 24/7. The former is more a test of the chip and just to see how high you can get it for bragging rights. The latter is obviously more useful as you can use it daily and gain significant benefits from having more power.

The stability testing is usually done with a system that performs calculations to stress the processor, such as calculating prime numbers. The idea is that the CPU is running at 100% for a long period of time, this allows you to see if it fails and freezes or crashes, which is common, or if it overheats with prolonged use. If either of these things happen then you are best off reducing the overclock to take account of this.

Conclusion

Hopefully I have pointed you in the right direction here and you use the article as a basis to continue to read up on the subject. If you do follow up on this then put your results into the comments below, I’d be interested to see how you did and what the results were. If you have any other tips or pointers why not add those into the comments as well, I’m sure that some people reading this have more different experiences to me and I’m always interested to hear them!

My name is Brian Wangila and I live in beautiful Nairobi, Kenya. By day, I’m the Lead Developer at Skyline Design – a local web development agency trying to make the web beautiful, one website at a time. By night, I’m a student pursuing my Computer Science degree online at the University of South Africa while writing articles for Appstorm and reviewing new funky gadgets.

The Hardware

I’m pretty liberal when it comes to operating systems and brand loyalty so I usually pick  whatever works for me. That said I have a custom built Windows PC that I use mainly for web design, gaming and other heavy tasks. I also use it as a home media server. It runs on Windows 8 with an i7 2600K processor, 16GB RAM, a GTX 680 graphics card and 7TB storage space.

For my daily office duties, I have a kitted 13 inch 2012 MacBook Pro. This one is my daily machine that I lug around for office work, web development and writing on the go. I love it for the light weight and battery life.

I also have a Nokia Lumia 920 and an Amazon Kindle tablet running Android Jellybean.

The Apps

Writing

Let’s kick this off with the most important apps in my workflow, the ones that I use to get my writing done. My primary criteria here was that I needed an app that I could dive into, anytime, anywhere and start writing with minimal setup.

Images and Screenshots

As they say,  a picture is worth a thousand words. This is even more important for blog posts. A screenshot will explain the functionality of an app more than words ever could. A great product shot can make you change your mind about a gadget. For most of my articles, I rarely need to take product shots, but when I do, my Nokia Lumia 920 has got that covered.

Music

Personally, I find it hard to write or work in a totally quiet environment…and that is where music fits into my workflow. It provides a well-proportioned mix of inspiration, entertainment and ambient noise.

Grooveshark

In case you haven’t heard of it (highly unlikely), Grooveshark an online service that easily lets you stream your music. I have compiled a playlist of songs I like for inspiration when am writing or working.

Other times, I just click on a genre, mostly Classical or Jazz, and let it surprise me.

In Conclusion…

There are a bunch of other apps that I use to make my life easier, such as Evernote for organizing my ideas, Launchy for quickly launching windows apps and AvaFind for easily searching for files on my PC.

All in all, I hope you picked up one or two useful apps you could use.

FastKeys is a simple program lets you control certain keys to command your computer to do just about anything!

Getting Started

Fastkeys can be downloaded directly from the company’s main website here: http://fastkeys.vze.com/

The program is only compatible with Windows and claims to be “Great for Windows 8” so I used a Windows 8 for this review.

Installation of Fastkeys is fast and efficient, just like what the program promises to offer. The setup file is a few 1,279 KB and the program itself is only 3.6 MB. Proceed with the download after accepting the license agreement. The program offers no ads, which allows you to breeze through the setup process as there is not bundleware.

Launching the Program

Immediately after launching the program, you were offered to purchase, register or continue with the program. The company’s website clearly states that there is no benefit in purchasing the $9.99 software other than supporting the company. I would recommend fully trying out the program and making sure that you appreciate the work before selecting this option. Registration also provides no benefit, so I would recommend simply pressing “Continue”.

After it’s finished “Loading Fastkeys” (loading time differs based on computer) the program hides itself in the taskbar and has minimal CPU usage: 1,008 Kb of memory.

*Note, I’ve had FastKeys crash on me while loading. Just reload the program and it’ll open up fine the second time.

Once started, FastKeys provides you the opportunity to learn more about the program through their website. I highly recommend looking through it as most of its features are not clearly visible on initial use.

The program allows you to quickly navigate to websites or other destinations on your computer by simply moving your mouse to the top of your screen on any page. Regardless if you’re on your desktop, have a web browser opened, or typing an essay on Word, you always have FastKeys available at the top of your screen. E.g. Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, YouTube, etc. & My Computer, My Documents, Microsoft Office, Notepad, MS Calculator, etc.

The feature will also allow you to quickly and conveniently lock, hibernate or power off your system.

These options can also be edited by going to the “Settings” option shown in the picture.

Move the mouse to the right-side of the screen and scroll with your scroll wheel. It will adjust the volume up and down. Although this is a handy feature, it does not seem to work using the same scrolling feature on a laptop.

Create keyboard shortcuts by accessing the “Settings” feature mentioned earlier. This feature allows you to set a variety of shortcuts you’ve always dreamed your PC could have using your keyboard. The types of shortcuts you can set range from running or opening a program to writing your own script. I’ve noticed myself often highlight text and use the “Alt + G” feature to do a quick Google search.

Expand your texts to make your emails and or messages more formal. If you prefer to type in short-form but want to make sure that your messages are changed into a more formal manner, FastKeys allows you to do just that. In the default set provided, just by typing “fyi”, your text will be automatically be converted to “for your information”. The best part of this feature is that you do not need to press “enter” or “send” after typing this for the text expander to activate.

This feature also provides users the opportunity to not only expand texts but also command your computer. The default example shows that if you type in “cc”, your computer will automatically open MS Calculator and delete the “cc” text you just typed. I definitely found this useful whenever I wanted to open up Microsoft Word and could simply type “MSword” into my Facebook chat.

Review

Although the program provides a wide-variety of features that make your life easier, there are definitely some problems with the program that have bothered me while using it.

First of all, the feature that allows you to quickly access and navigate to Internet or Microsoft destinations can be quite bothersome. As mentioned earlier, the feature allows you to move your cursor to the top of the screen and see the navigation options; however, this is very annoying when browsing through tabs.

While attempting to switch between tabs, the quick navigation feature appears and blocks the cursor’s path from click a tab. The purpose of the program is to disappear in the background and only become visible when you need it, but FastKeys seems to come into notice even when you aren’t using it. If the quick navigation feature is switched to the left side of the screen, it would become more preferable.

Secondly, I don’t ever need to quickly access shortcuts provided in the quick navigation. Most web browsers already provide shortcuts to “Most Visited Websites” on start-up, making it unnecessary. As for the quick navigation for My Computers or My Documents, etc., I can simply do a quick search after pressing the Windows key on my computer to find any program – just as fast as the quick navigation tool on this program. I use Windows 8, but the same can be done with Windows Vista or 7 by typing into the “search” feature on the startbar.

Finally, after using Windows for so long, I’ve already found my own shortcuts and navigation utilities that I prefer using. I’ve had this program downloaded for a long time but rarely use it despite setting my own shortcuts. My own methods of starting up programs are much more convenient and preferred than the new shortcuts provided.

Overall, the program does what it offers, but I do not plan on using it because it was not as convenient and efficient as I first expected. The features it provides are not as I had hoped and often became very annoying (especially when switching tabs).  Finally, the program’s features are easily forgotten and not as handy as I had first imagined. I would only recommend this program to new Windows users and not to current users.

Since my browsing is usually a combination of Firefox-ing and Chrome-ing, with Firefox taking up nearly 90% of the browsing time, I have some extensions/plugins to enhance my browsing experience and meet my needs. Today, allow me to take you through the 7 Firefox extensions that have made life easy for me.

Conclusion

These Firefox plugins have saved me several times in the past and I am guessing that they would continue doing so in the future. I hope you enjoyed reading about my absolutely essential plugins. If you have been using any of these, do let me know what you think about them. If you have a suggestion or a better replacement for any of those mentioned above, please let me know, I am always open for experimenting. Thanks for reading!

Evolve is not game distribution software. It’s not set out to be a commercial program. It isn’t spammed with advertisements. It’s meant to work alongside other software. Unlike Steam, Origin, Battle.net, Uplay, or most other programs out there, you can use it to centralise your entire gaming experience. Although often confused with them, it isn’t a replacement for any of the programs listed above.

Created by Adam, Dreijer and Mamu, a small team of three, the service is updated regularly and powered by its community. The client has a host of features that let you communicate and play with friends easier than ever, as well as perform a variety of other tasks you may be interested in.

You should know that when you start using Evolve, you don’t have to start gaming from the beginning. If you’ve used XFire or Steam before, you are in medias res, or in the middle, as you can import your account’s list of games and playtimes.

This post will try to show what all of the major features of Evolve are, and how they can benefit you.

Installation

Installing the client is straight-forward although a little frustrating. You download it and run the installer, which does someof the rest for you. The stub installer is small, but will download roughly 85MB in total once it’s done. It usually takes a fairly long time to install itself and you’ll need to restart Windows during the installation (although it will continue itself after the restart, to save you time).

Even after you’ve finished this, you’ll need to install four optional extras from within the client’s preferences: Game Overlay, Party System, Voice (VoIP), Media (image/video capturing). Installing these four additional features can also make the installation process noticeably lengthier.

However once it’s all installed and configured to your liking, you’re left with an extremely powerful tool that you can use to defeat the competition.

Interface

Evolve sports a clean dark UI with a lighter silvery finish. With a recently added firefox-style universal button, you can get from any major part of the program to another within a couple of clicks. The client is extremely easy to use, with every piece going exactly where you’d expect it to be, and all functioning perfectly.

You can also get to the interface ingame by hitting your Windows key (by default), it won’t bring you back to the desktop, but instead will be replaced with an easy to use interface to use the Evolve Browser, chat with friends, and do other vital things through the client.

Parties

Evolve also offers a partying system that lets you join friends ingame with the click of a button, have a private group chat, find people to play with, and more. It features a built-in VPN, so you don’t even have to host a server or go through the hassle of port forwarding if you want your friends to join you.

One downside that Evolve’s VPN is that it’s Windows only due to the client only being for Windows, while other similar programs such as Hamachi and Tunngle also work on UNIX systems. This means that any friend you want to play with you will also need to have Evolve installed.

Stats & Tracking

While you have the client running, it will track how long you play any game on the system that are supported in its game library, so you can easily and effectively see how long you play each game for, and compare that to other Evolve users. Evolve offers many more features that give you stats on what you’re playing that can be found on both their website and through the client.

Ontop of this, you have the option to import your Steam Achievements and other statistics to your Evolve profile to show them off to your friends there. You can do the same with your XFire profile, and some other services, meaning you don’t have to start from scratch if you’re just starting to use Evolve.

Chat

The chat feature in evolve lets you add your AIM, FaceBook, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, Raptr, Steam, XFire, XMPP, and Yahoo accounts, with Skype and others planned in the future, so you can talk to your contacts on those, as well as chatting with other Evolve members, without even having to leave your game!

Chatting is extremely easy, the community in the main public group chat is kind and talkative, and you can join in with a few clicks. You can talk in private with another individual, or even make a group chat comprised of Evolve members. You can see who’s online, if they’re playing anything, and many more things – all of which make for a great chatting experience.

Recording & Screenshots

Evolve also has built in screen recording and screenshot saving. It will save any screenshots made through it to a directory, instantly acting better than the PrintScreen button alone. You can also share them with your Evolve friends with a few easy clicks.

The same of this goes for recording, videos are saved and can be shared within clicks, unless of course you want to edit them. Video capture isn’t the highest quality, a barely noticeable amount is lost in order to keep file sizes small and performance high. In comparison with the most popular game recording tool, Fraps, in terms of quality and options, there will still be a while until Evolve catches up, but due to Evolve being free it is certainly a better choice for casual gamers.

There is also a way to easily stream directly to a Twitch.tv channel straight from the client, if you have a following or so desire.

The Little Things

Not to be forgotten are the little things that the group of three have done for the website and client. They have a quirky sense of humour and it hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Throughout the site you’ll find slogans and phrases that’ll make you smile to yourself at the very least.

As the community is currently small, it feels very cosy and it’s easy to get to know people, and interact with the team too, something you can’t do easily with larger communities.

One thing to note, is that the overlay acts as a hook, so it doesn’t work well with some anti-hack tools such as PunkBuster or HackShield as they see it as a possible hacking tool, resulting in you being potentially kicked from some games (although not banned).

Conclusion

Evolve is a seriously powerful application that competes with several pieces of software gamers are often found using, but all in one place.

Do you use Evolve? If you want to meet and play with other AppStorm readers, you can share your username in the comments below, or join the official AppStorm group.