Whether you are writing an essay or collecting data, KeyRocket effectively increases your productivity level. KeyRocket is a software tool that provides its user with a plethora of keyboard shortcuts. It eliminates the need for an extensive search through the task bar to find a simple function. It only takes a minute to be able to enjoy KeyRocket and its many great features.

Installation

Getting KeyRocket on your computer is easy and fast; KeyRocket is available for a free download at their website.

Installation was quick and easy — it only took a few moments!

Interface

When you first start up KeyRocket, its interface may seem intimidating. There are various preset shortcuts that you can try out right away. However, as you get more and more familiar with the program, making changes to certain shortcuts will be a breeze.

Key Features

KeyRocket gets right into things. Upon using a function such as bolding or italicizing, this program intuitively displays the function’s keyboard shortcut for the user to learn. It also offers the choice to create a custom shortcut for the function, which will be discussed later.

Intuitively shows you what the keyboard shortcut is for certain functions

KeyRocket increases your efficiency by providing you with only the necessary shortcuts. KeyRocket’s auto-detection feature saves time by automatically bringing up your frequently used functions. Some of the basic functions that can be put into a keyboard shortcut are shown below:

KeyRocket’s custom shortcut creation is unarguably the most useful aspect in the program. There are often functions that you need to use frequently; however, these functions may not already have shortcuts. KeyRocket’s custom shortcut creation allows you to make up your own shortcut. You may input any combination of keys and set it to perform a certain function.

Create your own custom shortcuts

However, the custom shortcut creation may only be used on a select few applications. These include: Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Compatibility

KeyRocket runs on Microsoft Windows and is compatible with many programs that a typical office worker would use. KeyRocket works with the entire Microsoft Office Collection (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) as well Windows Visual Studio. It runs in English, French, German,Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

KeyRocket can be set to run upon Windows start up. It is also set to work in the background, thus using minimal memory and other system resources. Multiple programs can be used simultaneously along with KeyRocket; KeyRocket does not attach itself to a single application. That means you can enjoy KeyRocket’s keyboard shortcuts in Word, Excel, and Visual Studio all at the same time.

Works simultaneously with multiple programs

Usefulness

The functions offered by KeyRocket are generally built-in to the application (e.g. Underlining in Word with Ctrl + U) and its keyboard shortcuts are usually shown in the task bar. Still, KeyRocket is useful for creating faster and more accessible shortcuts for those who repetitively use them.

Pricing

KeyRocket is packaged at $29 CAD per user (discounts available for enterprises for multiple purchases). The package includes an extra 40 shortcuts that are not originally included in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visual Studio, a personal statistics dashboard, continuous updates for a year, and premium support through telephone and email.

Personal Statistics Dashboard

KeyRocket offers a 14-day free trial to use before purchasing the full program.

Conclusion

KeyRocket is a somewhat useful program that saves its user time from searching for various functions in certain applications. I recommend this program for the average office worker because they often use applications such as Word and Excel. I would not recommend KeyRocket for household use because its’ features are not worth $29. However, it is best to use the free trial to see if KeyRocket is suited for you.

When it comes music, there plenty of apps that do an amazing job organizing the digital music library. Winamp, iTunes and our very Windows Media player are some worth mentioning. I heard good things about MediaMonkey and thought it would be fun to try this media manager out. Read about my tryst with this media manager after the break.

Getting Started

The installation process is pretty much standard and doesn’t sneak in any toolbars or crapware. There is an option to skin MediaMonkey to the maximum extent with its custom theme bypassing the Windows default. I enabled that option, but didn’t quite see any major facelift when compared to the regular Windows theme.

The help wizard at first launch offered comprehensive media management options. However, it appeared way too complex for a novice. Right from scanning the devices for building a library to managing devices, there is a problem of plenty here.

User Interface

User Interface

A three column layout doesn’t not exactly score in the eye candy department, but the app is very usable nonetheless. The player controls are at the bottom of the app.

Player Type Selection

When you aren’t using the app for anything other than playing music, you should try using the mini player and micro player modes. There is a dedicated player toggle button to the top right corner.

Tabbed Interface

Taking a leaf out of the modern day browsers, MediaMonkey comes with tabs. You can open multiple tabs and carry out various tasks without interrupting what’s happening in the other tabs. Definitely a cool feature that warrants a pat in the back.

Managing a Library

It doesn’t matter if you have 10 files for tens of thousands of files. Whether Rock, Classical, Audiobooks, or Podcasts; Movies, Home videos, or TV shows; whether they’re located on your hard drive, CDs, or a network MediaMonkey will organize the jeepers out of you collection for sure. Pristine organization based on Genre, Artist, Year, Rating, etc., ensures that you never have to waste your time trying to find the files you own.

Efficient Organization

For a collector, the ability to gather the missing information about the files in the collection is very important. MediaMonkey Automatically identifies movies and tracks that are missing information, and pulls information like missing tags and album art from sites like Amazon. And yes, you can manually add and edit tags to your heart’s content as well!

Syncing and Sharing

MediaMonkey’s syncing features worked as advertised. I was able to sync files to my iPhone without any fuss at all. I could not check out the sharing capabilities of the app though. Apparently, it’s capable of sharing media files with TVs, BD Players, and other DLNA devices. All you need to do is select which collections you want to share, and the selected content will immediately be available to your DLNA devices.

Addons

MediaMonkey customization abilities are worth a mention. Using a combination of skins, visualizations, plug-ins and other addons you can make this app your very own. I was thrilled to see the addons feature. While there aren’t many, the handful of available ones are thoughtful additions to the app. After a quick download, MediaMonkey’s core functionality can be extended in a manner you see fit.

Those aren’t the only goodies. MediaMonkey integrates with other applications such as sound editors, metadata lookup addons etc. to help you do more than just maintain an archive. If you are an audiophile, you have the tool that’s capable enough to create customized views and to create custom Auto-DJ rules.

I am big fan of the play count of songs in WMP and iTunes. But, MediaMonkey takes it up a notch by letting you pull custom reports with details of your library in many popular formats. Not sure how many of us will need to export a custom report, but it does sound geeky cool!

Final Thoughts

One little quirk of MediaMonkey that annoyed me to no end was that it auto launches as soon as a portable device is connected. For some that would have been a helpful feature, but since I didn’t voluntarily agree for launching MediaMonkey every single time I try to charge my iPhone I find it irritating. The icons and user interface in general could use some facelift though.

MediaMonkey is a free app. There is a pro version that costs $49.95. But, I found the free version to be extremely feature rich and an absolute delight to use. All said and done, MediaMonkey is indeed one of the powerful movie and music organizers for serious collectors of digital content.

My commute is an hour and a half each way and I get most of my writing done on the train, so as to not miss out on time with the family. I have recently bought a Samsung Series 9 laptop which is an awesome bit of kit and allows me to work on the train without having to carry a heavy laptop around. Due to using a laptop a lot of the time, and being a developer at work, I love keyboard shortcuts over mouse use as I find it faster, especially when I’m on the laptop.

I have also just got a Samsung Galaxy S4 (it’s brilliant) and I use the Wi-Fi hotspot to allow me to access the internet on my laptop when I’m on the train. I did the same from my Galaxy S2 before that and it such a useful tool. Aside from that I’m a huge fan of Android itself, a frequent visitor to XDA Developers and I’m often flashing new ROMs on my phone. Also, if I don’t have my laptop with me I’ll use my phone or tablet for writing so I’ve included a couple of Android apps that I use a lot.

My home machine is set up for gaming, it runs everything I ask it to, but isn’t the newest tech, it’s an overclocked Q6700 Quad Core, , 8GB RAM a Crucial SSD (if you still don’t have one you are missing out!) and an Nvidia GTX 460 GS and I run two monitors. When I’m not writing code for myself, or writing articles, or spending time with the family then I’m playing online games with a couple of very good friends.

I started writing for my own site just as something to do, and then started reading AppStorm avidly a while later. Whilst reading the site I saw an article asking for writers, applied and was accepted. The rest is history! Below is a list of apps I couldn’t write without, and a few extras that I really like as well, I hope you enjoy reading it.

WorkFlowy

I’ve long been an exponent of WorkFlowy because I find it so flexible, easy and fun to use. The way you can jump in and out of lists and focus on what it is that I want to look at next is really useful. I use it to form outlines of my articles, first creating main points, then sub points, then sub points to that if needed, and then export it to WordPres to publish.

WorkFlowy is versatile enough to fulfill most of your needs

Microsoft Word

If I’m not using Workflowy I’ll use Microsoft Word instead. A lot of people frown upon that, and I’ve never understood why, it’s a really powerful document creator that has been developed for many years, and it shows. I’m sure there are other ones that do a great job too, but I’ve been using Word for years and it’s never let me down.

ArsClip

ArsClip is a neat little clipboard manager that saves your clipboard history. You can bring it up with a hotkey combination and then use another hotkey for each item in the list, or use the mouse to choose one. I find it really useful for coding in my day to day job as well as writing.

AutoHotkey

This little scripting tool is far more than just a toy, it’s a powerful platform that lets you program any hotkeys you want, auto complete text and automate processes and that’s just the start, the forum at AutoHotkey is full information, and other forum goers are willing to help you out if you get stuck writing a script. I use AutoHotkey to quickly access programs that I use a lot. A couple of examples: CTRL + ALT + D opens up my dropbox folder, CTRL + ALT + E types out my most used email address, CTRL + ALT + M opens up Notepad++, WINDOWS + / opens up Chrome to Google.co.uk. There are loads more, and you can do anything you want with it really. Well worth a look if that kind of automation, customisation and text completion floats your boat.

Dropbox

I’m sure I don’t need to explain what Dropbox is to anyone, but I use it so much that I had to add it in. I use it to keep everything in sync between my laptop, desktop and phone (more on the phone later) and it is the easiest and most reliable tool for this that I have found. It means that the work I do on my laptop is synced to my desktop pretty much instantly. Using a couple of different apps it’s also pretty easy to access my Dropbox from my phone for edits or creation of new docs.

Apps for Image Manipulation

I use a few tools for images; depending on what I need the image for. Greenshot is a great tool for screenshots, the set up and automation features are great. The snipping tool built into Windows is pretty useful for quick grabs for reference as you only get the actual bit you want, and it loads up really quickly. It’s less good if you need a consistent or specific size of screenshot as you can’t alter the size of the snip once it’s been taken once it’s been taken.

Paint.NET is my image editor of choice, it’s easy to use, powerful and has all of the features that I require. For more info see my review here. and for batch image editing such as resizing a load of screenshots to the same size I use Photoscape as the batch editing is great.

Invoice Machine

The Invoice Machine UI is clean and simple

Google Chrome

My favourite browser is Chrome, by a long shot, I’m well invested in the Google ecosystem with my Android phone (I’ve been using Andoid for 3.5 years and still love it) and use of Chrome, and the integration and synchronisation that can be achieved is easy and pretty cool to use. I find it fast, reliable and customisable. I love the Chrome Web store and the extensions/ apps that you can get, it really lets you personalise your browser to do exactly what you need it to.

For those of you who haven’t tried making yourself a new theme with My Chrome Theme yet, I suggest you give it a go. If you have an image to hand you can build a theme in about 30 seconds and share it with friends should you so wish.

Read Later Fast

I have found this to be the best tool for reading later with offline support. As I mentioned earlier my commute is quite long, about one third of this is underground where there is no way to access the internet. That means that I have to have a reliable way to read articles that I have saved, this is the best I have used. Others are great if you have an internet connection, but fail pretty hard if you don’t, the big names included in my experience.

Android Apps

As I said I use Android a lot, and if I don’t have my laptop with me and I want to get some work done I use my Galaxy S4, or S2 before that. It’s obviously not as good as my laptop in terms of power or function, but for getting writing done it’s not that bad at all. Here are a few apps that are essential in allowing me to do this.

SwiftKey Keyboard

There are two main drawbacks to using a mobile device for productivity, the screen size and the keyboard. Swiftkey all but eliminates the latter. The predictive text is brilliant, and the word correction as you type is insanely good. I type fast on a phone and rely on the autocorrect to fix any typos I make, and this one does just that. I used Swype before that, which is also a brilliant keyboard, but since moving to SwiftKey I’ve not been tempted back. SwiftKey also now allows you to ‘flow’ your words as well, a la Swype, although I tend not to use it. If you do want to Swype not tap your words then Swype is better.

OfficeSuite Pro 7

Office Suite Pro 7 is the best tool I’ve found for editing documents on a phone

FolderSync

FolderSYnc allows you to synchronise whichever folders/ files you like from your cloud service of choice, everything from Dropbox to FTP is covered. You set up a remote folder to be synced with a local folder, this can be your whole Dropbox, or just one folder that you want synced. From this you can choose to upload the changes manually, to have them upload automatically on a schedule to to ahve them instantly sync changes to the remote location. It’s a really versatile app, and great for having your files with you when you don’t have a signal to download them there and then. Highly recommended.

Other Apps

Here are a few more apps that I use a lot but don’t consider essential for my workflow:

Free Commander

A great dual pane Windows alternative. It has one key feature that seals the deal for me; the ability to show folder size next to folders. It is a feature that Windows Explorer doesn’t support, and I understand why, due to the size of hard drives it can take a some seconds to scan and calculate the size of each folder, but it is a useful feature nevertheless. Give it a go.

Foxit Reader

Foxit Reader; faster, lighter and better featured than Adobe Reader

Google Drive

I use my GDrive primarily for collaboration with others; the real time collaboration that is built into GDocs is really very good indeed. I also tend to use it for spreadsheets instead of Excel, purely because I can access and edit them from any browser, any time.

That’s it for my apps, I hope that I’ve shown you an app or two that you don’t use, didn’t know about, or want to try out. I’m interested to hear which apps you couldn’t live without so let me know in the comments section below.

Thanks for reading.

Chris.

Orthodox File Managers

The ideas behind Norton Commander have been formalized into the concept of the Orthodox File Manager. These file managers have two panes and a command area. The command area is either an actual command line in the case of text-only programs, or buttons and menubars in the case of graphical equivalents. The two panes show different parts of the file system. This is convenient because one often wants to move or copy files between different parts of the filesystem, and Orthodox File Managers provide quick commands for doing this to selected files.

In this roundup, the first two programs are old-school text-only programs. Command line junkies should not be neglected. The other two are graphical.

Midnight Commander

This program is part of the GNU project and is thus, naturally, licensed under the GNU General Public License. The current version is 4.8.7 and can be downloaded from its project page at the GNU Foundation.

This is the most basic of the programs in this review. It is a text-only program that displays in the Windows command console. Resizing the console does not resize the program display. When I installed it, Midnight Commander did not even show the contents of directories. The website has not been updated since 2007. In short, this was a very weak showing from the GNU Project.

Open source advocates tout their development model as superior to that of closed source software. Failures like this need to be called out. If Midnight Commander is no longer a priority for the Free Software Foundation, then whoever own the project should publicly say so. Releasing non-functional software is bad for one’s reputation.

Far Manager

Far Manager is currently in its third version. It was originally written by Eugene Roshal, but is now maintained by the Far Group. Like Midnight Commander, it too, is text-only. Unlike the developers of Midnight Commander, the developers of Far Manager did something about the inadequacy of the Windows command console. They wrote a companion to Far, called ConEmu, a terminal emulator that is worth a review in its own right.

What sets Far Manager apart from most other Orthodox File Managers is the plugin support. Far Manager includes plugins for FTP, file archiving, and text editor support. Despite its text-only nature, the user interface can be customized to be pleasing to the eye and the plugin architecture has been expanded to include the .NET architecture. Among other things, this means that there is a plugin that can display pictures in the console window by using DirectX.

Far Manager is offered as freeware under a revised BSD license.

FreeCommander

Unlike the previous two programs, FreeCommander is a graphical program. Its current version is 2009.02b and is written by Marek Jasinski. It is freeware program under a proprietary license.

FreeCommander includes such features as FTP support, built-in compression (including 7Zip and RAR), multiple-file renaming, as well as such niceties as one-button access to the Control Panel, the Start Menu, and screenshots. One annoyance is that one must download help files separately and install them manually. I fail to see the benefit to this.

Total Commander

Total Commander, by Christian Ghisler of Ghisler Software GmbH, is currently at version 8.01. Like, FreeCommander, it is a graphical program. Unlike the other programs in this roundup it is shareware. It has a trial period of one month, after which it must be registered for $44.00 (depending on the exchange rate with the Swiss franc).

Although it is a graphical program rather than a text-only program, the interface of Total Commander resembles Far Manager and Midnight Commander more than that of an ordinary CUA-based application. The bottom of the window shows what commands are bound to the function keys. The menubar doesn’t match standard Windows conventions, either; for instance, there is no Edit menu. Fortunately, the online help is good and does not bring up a web page from the Internet when invoked.

Conclusion

After trying out these alternatives, I still prefer Directory Opus, but if I had to choose, I would go with FreeCommander. Like its name, it’s free, and it has a good selection of features. I give Far Manager an honorable mention because of the plugin architecture and extensibility.

Although I wouldn’t want to see Microsoft kill another category of software by embrace & extend, I wonder why Redmond hasn’t folded features of Orthodox File Managers into Windows Explorer. There’s a market for it. This software has been a cottage industry for more than twenty years. Until Microsoft changes its mind, we can enjoy the competition among the little players in this market niche.

This all brings us to BetterDesktop Tool. This app is not for bringing back the long-lost Start Button and Menu, but it certainly brings plenty of functionality along.

Get the App

Head over to the BetterDesktop Tool web site and you will find two choices — there are standard and pro versions, with the Standard option being free. Both versions are contained within the download package. Commercial users must purchase a license and can try BetterDesktopTool Professional Edition free for 30 days. The app is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.

During the installation process you will be prompted to choose between “Private Usage” and “Commercial Usage (30 Day Trial)”. The app requires only 1.5 MB of free disk space. There are no toolbars or other software included in the app and installation is extremely fast.

The Interface

Only three tabs garner the top of the screen — “Windows and Desktop Overview”, “Virtual-Desktop” and “General”. All have a rather geeky look to them, but they are less scary once you understand what each can do. The app is capable of a lot, but we will hit the highlights here to get you introduced to all of the functionality that BetterDesktop Tool brings along.

Windows and Desktop Overview

This is the first of those geeky looking screens I mentioned, but do not let appearances put you off. It is not as scary as it may at first look. First there are several dropdown menus that allow you to set options, which as Ctrl-Tab or Alt-Tab, for a range of choices, and these can be to not only keystrokes, but also mouse clicks and “hot corners”.

Options

• Show all windows
• Show foreground app windows
• Show desktop
• Show non-minmized windows
• Show desktop

Mouse options include the usual – left, middle and right buttons. Hot corners are areas of the screen – top and bottom right and top and  bottom left.

Other options on this tab include “Arrange windows in a regular grid”, “Move all windows to primary screen” and “Show top-level windows only”.

There are also two buttons at the bottom right of the screen — Exclude Window and Reset Excluded Windows. The first will propt you with instructions. “To exclude a window start window-overview (show all windows) and right-click the window you want to exclude. Select the corresponding menu item and the window will be excluded”. The latter button does the opposite.

Visual Desktop

By default, Virtual Desktop is enabled as is “Move windows between virtual-desktops by dragging them to the screen edges for a time”. Howeveryou can disable these and also choose from a number of options.

The “Show virtual desktop” option has similar dropdown menus for keyboard, mouse and hot corners. You can choose what occurs when another application on a virtual desktop gets activated — move it, switch it or make the app global.

“Direct switching” also has options for keyboard shortcuts, as well as moving and switching. Finally, there is an option forthe amount and arrangement of windows that appear on your screen. By default, this is set four – two wide and two high. However, both of these can be changed by clicking the up and down arrows to the right of each number.

General

The “General” tab has six options, the first three of which are enabled by default.

Options

• Start Program with Windows
• Check for updates on start
• Disable all shortcuts when a fullscreen application is running (e.g. games)
• Disable animation for window, desktop and virtual-desktop overview
• Ask to restore applications from hidden virtual desktops before shutdown/logoff (blocks shutdown)
• Enable multitouch-gesture support for designated touchpads

Below this, there are two button at thebottom of the screen — “Check for update” and “About and License”. Both options do exactly as the names describe.

Features

• Arranges all windows in a non overlapping layout. Allows selection of an arbitrary window to bring it to the foreground.
• Can be applied to minimized, non-minimized and foreground application windows.
• Supports Multi-Monitor setups.
• Moves all windows away from your desktop to give you access to Desktop-Shortcuts and Sidebar-Gadgets.
• Supports Multi-Monitor setups.
• Configuration of Mouse and Keyboard shortcuts for all functions.
• Configuration of Hot-Corners for all functions.

The Verdict

As I said back at the beginning, there are countless applications for customizing Windows. BetterDesktop Tool is perhaps one the better ones, as it allows the user to set all sorts of shortcuts using the the keyboard and mouse and even screen corners. The app is also free and comes with no malware or toolbars that attempt to install themselves in the setup process.

The company also points out that support for window selection by keyboard shortcuts will also follow soon in the next version. The company regularly updates its app, so you can expect to get regular new features and bug fixes.

Metro: Last Light has been looking good in teasers and commercials, but does it actually perform? Well, after playing it thoroughly and patiently, the way this FPS is meant to be played, I can say that it almost hits the spot. Let’s find out how!

What Clicks

The beauty of Metro: Last Light lies in the fact that the game resurrects the original’s atmosphere and grit with panache. Moscow hasn’t changed. The Moscow constructed in Metro 2033 is still the mysterious, scary, haunting place that dictated the success of the first installment in this series. With Metro: Last Light, post-apocalyptic Moscow of 2034 reemerges with all the elements intact, making Last Light another winner of sorts.

Moscow will never be the same..

THAT looks shiny!

What Doesn’t

While Last Light scores in the crucial areas, it does fail in some aspects too. I particularly felt that it started out great as a story but lost all depth along the way. The last couple of hours were exceptionally bland and the game had deteriorated from a careful, well thought out plot to a plain, otherworldly façade. I definitely felt that the plot could be up-scaled in the middle of the game, but that never happened.

I could sneak up on you, you know I could. I didn’t. Blam!

Well, hello there

Summary

Metro: Last Light does leave some stones unturned in its efforts to deliver an impressive sequel to Metro 2033. I would not say that the game is a total disappointment. In fact, it is impressive and deserves a 7. However, especially when I consider the fact that the same AI issues marred a perfect experience in its predecessor, I am bound to say that a better job could be done with the game.

And thus, I give a final rating of 7 to Metro Last Light. I hope you enjoyed reading the review, and if you have anything to add, please feel free to comment below. Do let us know how epic your experience with the game was. Until next time, happy gaming!

If you would like to read my full review of Ginger click here: Ginger: An Invaluable Tool For Writers.

Recently I came in contact with one of main members of the Ginger team, Dudu Noy. He was kind enough to speak to me about everything from the beginning of Ginger, all the way to what the future holds. Read on to find out more!

Thanks for taking the time to speak to us today. First of all could you introduce yourself and your role in Ginger?

Hi! Thanks for inviting me. My name is Dudu Noy, and I’m the VP of Product and Marketing at Ginger Software where I lead the Marketing, Product and Creative teams. I’m in charge of taking Ginger’s innovative Natural Language Understanding (NLU) algorithmic capabilities and leveraging them into successful mass consumer products. Ginger’s mission is to break down language barriers by enabling English as Second Language (ESL) users to express themselves as native English speakers. Prior to joining the team at Ginger, I held various product and marketing positions at consumer product companies such as Taboola and Metacafe.

Who makes up the team of Ginger and where are you based?

Ginger is led by CEO & Founder Yael Karov and is comprised of about 50 employees from various disciplines. Yael is one of the only female CEOs in the Israeli startup scene. She brings to Ginger a vast knowledge of natural language processing and machine learning, and has assembled a talented team of NLU experts that keep generating innovative patent pending capabilities. In addition, Ginger is comprised of a diverse group of marketing, product, and development professionals. Our offices are located in sunny Tel Aviv, Israel, and overlook the Mediterranean. We’re proud to be part of “Startup nation.”

Where did the original idea for Ginger come from? Did you see a gap in the market?

There is something ironic about Israelis providing a tool for perfecting English, as we are ESL users ourselves. However, this is the primary reason why such a startup came out of Israel. Israelis work in a global market and are strongly aware of the necessity of communicating effectively in English. Yael, who is not a native English speaker, used to search Google for common phrasings in English. She would then analyze the results herself to determine the best way of writing for her context. Thus, the idea of Ginger was born.

While an over-simplification, this idea is how Ginger works for users. It crawls over a vast corpus of written texts in English and calculates the probability and likelihood of English text occurrences. This statistical knowledge, combined with semantic and syntactic models, enables Ginger to provide English corrections that are unmatched by any other software. The corrections include spelling, grammar, and misused words, and are integrated seamlessly into the user’s natural writing environments (Word, Outlook, browsers, mobile platforms, etc.).

Ginger’s Homepage.

From original idea to finished product, how long did that process take? Were there any major problems along the way?

Ginger was founded in 2008. The early years were spent establishing the core Natural Language Understanding platform, which in and of itself included a few challenges. For example, a main challenge consisted of developing an algorithm that could crawl the web and analyze a vast corpus of words while not compromising on result response time. Ginger’s latest free product was launched in early 2012 and we constantly strive to improve the user experience and product functionality on a daily basis. One challenge we faced was how to bring Ginger’s value directly to the user’s natural writing environment, which prompted us to develop interfaces for all the major writing platforms (MS Office, Chrome, Safari, etc.).

Another challenge Ginger tackled was how to help the user not only fix his writing, but also to improve his English by learning from his mistakes. Therefore, we developed a personal tutor, which offers Ginger’s users the opportunity to practice on their own mistakes. An ongoing challenge we face in the marketing arena is to let users know about and experience Ginger’s unique value proposition. Once users are familiar with Ginger, they are converted to loyal users. I’m proud to say that since launching our free product in early 2012, Ginger has been installed by over 2 million users.

Were there any important decisions which were made during the development of this app?

On the business side of things, Ginger made the important decision in early 2012 of being a freemium product. This means that we provide our proofreading capabilities for free while offering our personal tutor as a premium. I am delighted by this decision, which enables us to fulfill our vision by providing free distribution to millions of users around the globe. Another important decision was to develop Ginger for all major browser extensions (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer) in addition to our Microsoft Office offerings. This enables our users to correct their English anywhere within their browser (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and more importantly allows us to support Mac users.

Ginger fixing a (deliberate) mistake.

Ginger is fantastic for people like me who write a lot because of its absolute simplicity. Was it the aim from the start to create a simple yet effective app?

Yes, the overall goal of Ginger’s products is to provide a one-click user experience despite the complicated computations running in the background. This required coordinated efforts by the teams working on both the UX and the algorithm.

Are there any applications you use on a daily basis to make your workflow easier?

Since data is very important to us and in order to keep improving our products, we use Google Analytics and BI systems to learn about the needs of our users. In addition, we use social media websites, such as our blog, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to connect with our users. In the office, we use Kanban to organize our office workflow and make communication between departments easier.

What does the future hold for Ginger?

As more and more people write on their mobile devices, Ginger is focusing special attention to the mobile world. We have recently launched a superior Android application that integrates everywhere a user types on their device. We are also working on a new and exciting capability that will offer users the ability to enrich their writing. Stay tuned for its launch in the coming month!

Wrap-Up

Here at Windows.Appstorm we extend a great deal of thanks to Dudu Noy and the team working on Ginger. This app is superior at its concept and helps people all over the world. We can’t wait to see what the future holds for Ginger!

What’s your opinion on interview articles? Let us know below!

Getting GitHub for Windows

GitHub offers the Windows client for free and you can get it by clicking on the download link at the top right corner of the project page. The current release, as of this writing, is 1.0.41. The interface owes a lot to the flat color schemes inspired by Windows 8. This may throw off those who use it on Windows XP, Vista, or 7.

Although the developers state that you can use the Windows client without using GitHub, nevertheless it has been optimized for GitHub, so I will focus on that use case in this review.

The Client

The leftmost pane of the program subdivides your repositories between those that you only have in your GitHub account and those that are in your GitHub account as well as locally mirrored. Clicking on your user account will show you the former (i.e., all of your GitHub repositories).

Clicking on the “local” icon will display those repositories for which you also have a working directory (i.e., local clones).

There are two ways to view the state of the working copy of your local repository. You can right click on a repository and choose “open,” or you can click on the little blue arrow to the right of the repository name. If your repository has uncommitted changes, then the client will look something like this:

Enter the commit message, click on the commit button, and, if there no problems with the commit, the program will show a success screen that looks like this:

Don’t forget to sync your local repository with the origin by clicking on the highlighted blue circle arrows at the top center of the window. A blue bar will indicate the progress of the sync and, assuming that there are no problems syncing, the window will show the recent activity of your working copy.

Adding Repositories

One very visible way that GitHub has been accomodating the Windows platform is the addition of a “Clone in Windows” button to project pages on GitHub. This button is above the branch indicator on the home page of each project. Clicking on that button will clone that repository to your GitHub directory in the Documents folder of your local personal computer. The Windows client will detect the new repository and show it in the main window.

By default, repositories are cloned using secure HTTP (i.e., HTTPS) so you can be sure that the files haven’t been tampered with. Furthermore, you need to have a GitHub account in order to clone GitHub repositories to begin with, which means generating SSH keys and other login credentials. The GitHub for Windows client caches these credentials so that you don’t have to re-enter them every time you have to make a commit.

Aside from going to the GitHub website, the GitHub client itself supports adding repositories by means of drag & drop.

Branching

Branching is an important feature of Git. In Git, branches are moveable pointers that point to a particular commit. This encourages a workflow where branches are frequently made and merged. This is a big difference from many earlier version control systems, where creating a new branch was a big deal.

To deal with branches, click on the branch icon between the sync icon and settings icon at the top center of the program window. It will be called “master” because that’s the default branch in any repository. You will see a box pop up showing the name of the current branch and a command line to either filter the names of other branches or create a new branch.

The “manage” button above the command line opens a window that allows you to merge branches. Drag the branches that you want to merge to the open slots at the bottom of the window. Then, click on the “merge” button.

Remote Repositories

Even though the GitHub client for Windows is optimized for use with ones GitHub account, the developers claim that it can be used with other remote Git repositories. It cannot, however, be used with more than one remote repository at the same time. For small projects, this should not be a concern. It’s more of a concern for large projects.

For example, a hundred developers making commits to the same repository on the same day can get out of hand. One possible workflow that distributed version control systems make possible is to divide the mass of developers into teams. Each team has its own remote repository. The team leads then push cleaned up features and bug fixes to the project lead, whose job it is to maintain the principal project repository. Each team would access the contributions of other teams by having their team lead make a pull request from the repository of the project lead. The rank-level developers would then pull from their team repository to their working repository and, finally, their own working copy. Optionally, they could do a pull from the respective repository directly.

Since the above workflow requires multiple remote repositories, then GitHub for Windows can’t help. Again, this should only be an issue for very large projects and the majority of open source projects aren’t large enough to warrant such an organization.

Limitations

Although GitHub for Windows is easy to use, it is not a full-featured Git client. The developers admit that the command line is indispensable for certain use cases. For instance, to get around the limit of only one remote repository, described in the previous section, one must use the command line. In fact, aside from the user interface, GitHub for Windows really doesn’t offer much that the Git command line doesn’t already have. I get the sense that the GitHub developers aren’t eating their own dogfood when it comes to GitHub for Windows.

Those who want to leave the command line behind and gain features in the bargain should look at third-party tools like SmartGit/Hg, which I reviewed last month. Pay particular attention to its diff tool and its facility for helping to edit .gitignore files. Admittedly, GitHub for Windows has a nicer user interface.

Conclusion

The price can’t be beaten, the user interface is as beautiful as it is functional and GitHub integration is trivial. That last point is the most significant thing about GitHub for Windows. It shows that not everyone wants Windows users to be second-class citizens in the open source world, and the fine folks at GitHub are among those working to make cooperation possible.

My latest find is called MP3Jam. It is a simple but surprisingly capable free tool for locating and downloading anything from individual songs to entire albums.

Get the App

This is just the kind of app which I would expect to try and set up several browser toolbars during the installation process. However no, there were not any. Had the program gone ahead and installed something anyway, without asking? No, everything was checked out.

The legality of this app may be a bit questionable, given the simple fact of what it is capable of doing. With that in mind, the maker posts a disclaimer at the bottom of the web site.

“Free MP3jam uses open music repositories of YouTube. All contents are copyrighted and owned by their respective owners. MP3jam does not encourage or condone the illegal duplication or distribution of copyrighted content. Music downloads must be for time-shifting or device-shifting purposes and for personal, private, non-commercial uses only”.

Setup is fairly straight forward and, as I said, there is no software that attempts to come along for the ride. Language choices include English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German and Portuguese.

The app does ask if you wish to install HotSpot Shield, which is a legitimate VPN program, and you mush choose a Yes or No. You can not simply click Next and move on. Another program, ARO, also throws up this prompt during installation of MP3Jam.

The Main Screen

It does not get much simpler than this. There are two tabs located at the top of the page — Search & Downloads and History. Below are several options for genres of music —  Classical, Electronic, Hip Hop, Indie, Jazz, Metal, Pop, R&B and Rock. Clicking any of these displays a list of popular music within that category.

Click on your genre of choice and scroll down through the music that is featured. Alternatively, you will spot a large search bar just beneath the tabs. Click in the box and type in an artist, album or song title, while the program displays popular matching choices as you type, very much as Google search does. Hit the enter button to return in-depth results, including album art, release dates and track lengths.

Results appear quickly and each album will display the first several tracks, with an option to click “more tracks” beneath the bottom one to see everything.

Play controls appear across the bottom of the screen — Play/Pause Forwards and Reverse, along with volume control.

Get your Music

Under each album you will find an option to download the entire thing. If your wish to either listen to or download an individual tracks then both of these options can be discovered to the left of each song title.

You can also share the track or album with social networks Facebook and Twitter.

If you choose to download then once you hit the button, you will be taken to a screen that displays the progress. It reminds me somewhat of the Windows Media Player display as a CD is being ripped. The downloads are very quick.

Once the download is complete an “Open Folder” option appears in the place of “Download Album”. Click to visit your new music which, by default, goes to the “My Music” folder under Users – Name in Windows.

The download includes the cover art. It also contains most ID3 tags — this may vary based on the album or track. In this case, I was missing track numbers, but all other information was present.

History

The History tab is simple — it just displays your download history. There are no other options on this page. You can still choose to play tracks from here though.

Settings

Settings can be accessed by clicking the gear (or cog if you prefer) icon at the top right of the page. The settings page is simple — only a few options appear within it.

You can choose where content is pulled from, though there are only two choices — YouTube and vk.com. The latter is a social network, self-described as “VK is the largest European social network with more than a 100 million active users”.

From this page you can also choose where your files are saved to and also tell the program to prompt you, each time you download, to choose a location. You can also change the language settings, view the version number and make a donation to the developer.

In the End

As I stated earlier, I am not completely comformatable with the legality of this app. After all, you are downloading free music, meaning it is almost certainly not within the parameters of what the recording industry would consider fair use.

On the other hand, the app  works incredibally well. Search and download is extremely fast. Setup and settings are very simple. It found almost every bit of music I threw at it and displayed all with detailed information and album art. It is also free, and there is something to be said for that as well.

In conclusion, you must make your own decision regarding how you feel about using such a service. Personally, while I certainly liked it, I shall stick to buying my music from Amazon MP3.

When I’m in London the only choice for me is Tube Map. With its extensive detail and navigational features it makes the whole experience far easier. Read on to find out more!

Overview

If you’ve ever been to London there is a strong chance you’ve experienced a trip on the Tube. By transporting thousands of people around the busy city its an invaluable network. For newcomers to the service you would often pick up a Tube map and then plan your route. However, I feel the time has come that commuters should ditch the flimsy paper copy and start navigating on their mobile devices.

The main page for navigating around the application.

Navigating Around The Application

After downloading and opening the application you’ll be faced with a complete Tube Map. From this screen you can find stations, lines and locations which you’re aiming for. The map is fully interactive too, so clicking on a certain place will take you to more information. There will also be a link to Bing Maps at the bottom of the page which gives you the chance to see where the station is in relation to London.

The first button at the bottom is “Lines.” Here you’ll be able to see the status of the thirteen different lines. This is indicated by telling you whether there is closures or good service. You also choose whether you would like to view the status of the lines now, for later or for the coming weekend. Giving you the opportunity to plan your route around the closures.

Being able to quickly check the status of each line is great.

Going back the main page your second option is called “Route,” and as the name suggests, this is the part of the app which plans your route for you. This process is really simple, only requiring you to select a start station, destination station and journey options — the two options are “fastest” and “fewest changes.” After inputting your information you can tap calculate.

Making your route.

Almost instantly the app will then provide you with a suggested route. The route I put in was Acton Town to All Saints, selecting the fastest route. I’m instantly informed that the estimated journey time is 49 minutes, it passes through 18 stations and over three different lines. Below that I’m given a full run through of where I need to change lines.

After selecting your route you will be shown a suggested route.

It was this route calculator which really made Tube map invaluable to me. With its quick service I never need to worry about how to navigate around the Tube again.

The third option on your main page is called “Find,” and lets you find a specific station. After selecting a station the map will highlight the one I clicked, making it easier to locate. The final option on the main page allows you to see the departure boards from a certain station and line.

Integration With Your Oyster Card

When riding on the Tube you’ll soon notice nearly everyone using blue cards to pay for their rides, an Oyster Card. For those that don’t know, this is a card which makes traveling around London far easier. One thing I really liked about this app is that you can link your Oyster card to the application.

Linking up your Oyster Card is really easy.

After linking your card you can then view an instant balance to find out how much you have remaining. This integration is fantastic and it even allows you to pin your Oyster balance to your start screen with a live tile — making the process of checking your balance far simpler.

Tube Map Pro

Tube Map is available for Windows Phone 7, 7.5 and 8, however, there is also a Windows 8 specific version called Tube Map Pro. This costs £0.79 and removes the advertisements from the application. And to be honest, the advertisements do get really annoying. They take up quite a big section at the top of the screen and you definitely notice them.

However, I would only recommend the Pro version for regular Tube travelers. For the people who travel less often the free version will be sufficient. It possesses all the same abilities and you probably won’t notice the adverts as much.

Why I Use Tube Map

Probably the most important reason I chose Tube Map over other similar apps is because the app still works when you have no internet connection. The first time I visited London I used a different application and as soon as I descended on the station my connection depleted completely. Leaving me with a useless app and no idea where to go.

However, that problem isn’t a problem with Tube Map and you can still form routes or view the map without any connection to the internet. This, along with other great features made this the only viable choice for me.

Wrap-Up

As I’ve stated above, Tube Map is the only app I would ever use to help me navigate around London’s underground. With its readily accessible map, station information, route tracker and offline mode the app successfully ticks all of my boxes.

Tube Map is continually being updated too, I can’t wait to see what else is done to improve this fantastic application!

Thanks for reading! How do you get around the Tube network? Still using an old-fashioned map or have you started using a mobile app? Let us know below.