Whether it's on a small or a large scale, project management can provide some of the biggest challenges in the workplace. Responding to this need, vendors have thrown out a plethora of tools and software suites dedicated to this side of business, but which one should you choose?

Helping you make the decision is Edward Jones of IT and Management training firm Firebrand, who's rounded up a super-seven of the best project management tools currently on the market. In no particular order, here's a run-down of the services you should consider as a project manager:

Gantter (Free)

This cloud-based collaboration and scheduling tool fully integrates with Google Drive. Gantter is designed to help you create, share and edit your schedule and interact with colleagues in real time. There's also a colour coding function to highlight task importance, an ever-expanding offering of 11 languages and a simple web API, which allows you to create both public and private plugins to boost functionality.

Mavenlink (Free and Paid)

Mavenlink currently occupies top position in the Google Apps Marketplace for 'Project Management' tools, boasting a five star rating from over 600 reviews. MavenLink is a multifaceted service, offering highlights such as file sharing, task scheduling, a centralised dashboard and project history. Like most tools worth their salt these days, Mavenlink also offers Google Drive integration. The standard tool is free, however you can choose to opt into Mavenlink Pro, which has a flat rate of $25 (£16) per user on the monthly package, or $19 (£12.20) per user on a yearly plan. The pro features include budgeting, expense and invoice tracking, as well as time tracking for those looking for greater money and time management of their projects.

Collabtive (Free and Paid)

This web-based tool is targeted at freelancers and SMEs. Core functionality includes run-of-the-mill features such as file management, time tracking and the ability to create projects with milestones, task lists and individual task assignments. The tool requires some technical knowledge to install, but once up and running it offers a user-friendly experience with a range of integration and reporting features. The software is free to install, but technophobes and time-savers can pay a one-off fee for the privilege of installation and update at €39 (£33), with options for hosting on a monthly fee ranging from €9-€39 (£7.70 - £33).

BaseCamp (Paid)

Basecamp, launched in 2004, is one of the older tools in the Project Management world but it is by no means dated. Like most services, it offers the usual core requirements: file sharing, to-do lists, calendars, discussions and individual profiles. Projects are set up as individual long copy pages, so everything you need is in a single location, with the ability to flow freely from one project to the next. The only thing that comes free with Basecamp is the two-month long trial, after which prices range from $20 (£12.90) to $150 (£97) per month, depending on the number of projects you wish to manage. Alternatively, you can pay $3,000 (£1,930) to gain unlimited access for a year.

Asana (Free and Paid)

Asana is the creation of former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Facebook employee Justin Rosenstein, used for task management and collaboration between teams. The platform allows you to create workspaces so you can split your projects between departments. You can then create individual projects and tasks within these workspaces, after which you can assign tags, individuals and due dates. Asana is built for speed and offers a variety of hot keys to shift between projects and facilitate action, as well as some nifty synchronisation features. Pricing ranges from $50 (£32) per month for 15 members through to $800 (£515) per month for 100 members.

Flow (Paid)

Often described as the most visually appealing of project management tools, Flow is designed for planing and executing projects with teammates. Like an increasing number of tools, it's available across the web, desktop and mobile through a series of apps. The service is available on a paid basis only and comes in at $9.99 (£6.40) a month or $99 (£64) for the year, with a range of savings depending on the size of your team. The tool allows you to create, delegate and share tasks and has a powerful and intuitive search function inbuilt. Flow is all about collaboration rather than individual management, and offers a range of activity feeds, live comments and real-time updates, so you can collaborate with your team remotely. The Flow Concierge service, through which you can assign "simple" tasks to a personal assistant, is another handy function.

Google Docs/Google Drive (Free)

Google Docs (with installable Google Drive) is one of the best team based project management tools out there, and best of all it's free. Anyone with a Gmail account can get instant access to the service, through which you can share documents, presentations, emails, as well as other file extensions. Drive works in real-time, so you can view changes as they happen. It also integrates with many of the aforementioned tools, which is a huge advantage if you're utilising multiple platforms.

Use following steps to use whatsapp on your PC or Laptop

1. Go to Bluestacks.com
2. Click on "Download App Player" button.
3. Intstall the app on your system
4. Once installed you will see "Start BlueStack" shortcut on your desktop
5. Sign in with your google account. This will help your access the app store.
6. You will find a magnifing glass at top left corner in the window that opens up next and it will open goolge playstore.
-If you are accessing this first time then you might have to accept terms and conditions first.
-From there you can search "whatsapp".
7. Once you find the "whatsapp" , you can download and install it from "Install" button and after installing you will get a shortcut to "whatapp".

8. Now , next is to verify your mobile number, but because "Blustacks" is on your desktop, first verification attemp will be failed.
9. You will have to attemp voice call attmpt again and when you will get code by voice message on your mobile , enter that code into  that prompt.
10 Now you are all set to use "whatsapp" from your computer.

Enjoy. :-)

here are few people who haven’t heard of Google. But here are some interesting facts about Google, the most popular search engine, that you may not know yet.

1. Go to Google homepage and type the words “I want to commit suicide”. Above all the search results, Google provides the Suicide Helpline number of your country.



2. A young girl wrote to Google to give her father a day off as it was his birthday. This is what Google sent back in reply. Now, that is something. (Source -Facebook)



3. Go to Google Maps. Click on the satellite view and zoom out as much as possible. You can see an amazing view of earth with real time shadows. You can see real time clouds if you zoom in twice. Pretty amazing, right?





4. Google has a pet T-rex, named Stan, which lives at their California headquarters. Founders bought it to remind the employees to not let Google go extinct.



5. Search “atari breakout” in Google Images and you can play the game. Try it now.



6. Google has been acquiring, on average, more than one company per week since 2010. Source-List of mergers and acquisitions by Google



7. Go to Google Mars. You can see a map of Mars. Cool !



8. Type any number in the search bar and Google will spell it out for you.



9. Google’s home page has 28 validation errors and five warnings. Check it out here: Google Validation



10. Should a U.S. Google employee pass away while under the employ of the 14-year old search giant, their surviving spouse or domestic partner will receive a check for 50% of their salary every year for the next decade. Source- http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanc…



11. Google HQ rents goats from California Grazing to mow their lawns and fields. The employees think that it’s a lot cuter to watch goats do the mowing than lawn mowers. Mowing with Goats



12. Google is a wedding planner. Yes, you heard it right. Plan your special day with Google Wedding.



13. Google Sky Maps allows you to view stars, constellations, galaxies and planets. Check out www.google.com/sky.



Love this article?

Google has a mobile client application called “Chrome Remote Desktop app for Android” (whew!) which allows for remote access to your Mac or PC from your Android device, whether smartphone or tablet. The new app is an extension of Google’s previously launched Chrome Remote Desktop screen sharing service, which allows you to share your desktop’s screen with other Chrome web browser or Chromebook users.

As with its big-screen counterpart, to use the Android application you first have to install a helper application on your desktop or laptop computer. That app is here in the Chrome Web Store and works on Windows (XP and above), Mac (OS X 10.6 and above) and Linux computers. The helper app installs as an extension to Google Chrome’s web browser, or the Chrome-based OS that powers Google’s “Chromebook” computers.

Once installed, however, you’ll be able to open up the app and connect to any of your computers with just a tap, manage them, and navigate through their files and folders from afar – like a modern version of GoToMyPC, for example.

We’ve known an Android client was in the works for some time, as there was even a functional version of the Android client available back in January, though it required that you compile the app from source in order to use it. An iOS version is also in the works, but its development is said to be further behind.

The move comes at a time when competitor Amazon is targeting enterprise users with its own version of remote access software, Amazon Workspaces. Officially launched to the public in March, this service similarly lets company employees access their work computers from any device, including Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, Android or Kindle Fire HDX tablets. Of course, in Amazon’s case, the goal is to make its tablets appear more business-friendly.

Google’s Remote Desktop, on the other hand, has a more consumer-focused vibe, which even had the company once touting the service as a way to be the family hero by “adjusting printer settings on your mom’s computer to finding a lost file on your dad’s laptop,” for example.

The official Chrome Remote Desktop Android app is available here on Google Play.

Microblogging is a new trend in the internet era. It is the latest evolution of web  2.0 technology. One of the popular microblogging services is Twitter. It was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorse. It become one of the most popular social media and become a rival of Facebook. Twitter has 140 million active users as of 2012 that generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day.

Many people are trying to create microblogging services like Twitter, Tumblr, or Plurk. You can use some microblogging software to make a Twitter clone or another microblogging website. In this post we roundups the 12 open-source microblogging software that can be used to build a Twitter clone or other your microblogging website.

Here is a list of 12 Open Source Microblogging Software

1. Statusnet

One of most popular microblogging CMS that built with PHP/MySQL. With this CMS you can built a unique community for open or closed group. Ask questions, share interesting information, read posts, and collaborate with your coworkers in real-time. It is mobile friendly so you can connect to your network using statusnet  iPhone or Android mobile applications. More Feature..

2. JaikuEngine

JaikuEngine is a social microblogging platform that runs on AppEngine. It was built with Python and available tor the mobile client source

3. Jisko

Jisko is a light weight open source microblogging software that builth with PHP and MYSQL. It allows you to stay in contact with the people you want.

4. PageCookery

PageCookery is the single-user version of the open-source microblogging software. It is based on PHP and MySQL architecture that more safety, efficiency, and stability to making microblogging website.

5. Sharetronix

Sharetronix is one of my favorite open-source microblogging software built with PHP/MYSQL. Sharetronix enables people to exchange ideas and multimedia in real-time. Each Sharetronix user has a custom profile with detailed personal information, plus their network activity, groups, personal tags, and more. More Feature..

6. P2 Microblogging WordPress Theme

7. Echowaves microblogging software

EchoWaves  is a Ruby on Rails open source microblogging software script. EchoWaves is a collaboration tool and a social network. EchoWaves is as powerful as Facebook, as simple to use as Twitter and as real-time as Meebo.

8. Gelato Tumblelog CMS

Gelato is a tumblelog CMS built on AJAX, PHP and MySQL. it can be used to make tublr clone. You install Gelato CMS on your own web hosting and start tumbling. Gelato also supports themes and plugin.

9. MiniTwitter

With Minitwitter you can have a private twitter for all the members of your business. Sometimes you wont show all the things you are doing to twitter.

10. Sweetter

Sweetter is an opensource Twitter-like service that built with python. You can write whatever you want, if the crowd doesn’t like your posts, you can lose karma points.

11. TypePad Motion Microblogging software

TypePad Motion is awasome microblogging software that built with Python. It enables publishers to create communities that deepen loyalty with phyton

12. Storytlr

Storytlr is an open source lifestreaming and microblogging software. You can easily post anything you find interesting, import your web 2.0 stuff and share your life online.

13. Facekut

Facekut provides both Twitter and Facebook clones just for USD 10. Visit their official website here

Have you ever faced problem contacting owner of a website? Were you ever wondering where is a particular website hosted? or which are other sites hosted on that same server ? What cms is being used for a website, WordPress or the Drupal platform? What ad networks are they using to monetize a site? Is the site accessible from China or some restricted countries?



The best tools to know everything about any website.

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

• just-ping.com — Use Just Ping to determine if a particular website or blog is accessible from other countries. Unlike other online ping services that have service in a couple of locations, Just Ping has 30 monitoring stations across the world including Turkey, Egypt and China. If the ping results say 100% Packet Loss, most likely the site is inaccessible from that region.


• who.is — If you like to know the contact address, email and phone number of the website owner, this free whois lookup service will help. This is a universal lookup service meaning it can simultaneously query the whois database of all popular domain registrars.


• whoishostingthis.com — Enter the URL of any website and this online service will show you the name of the company where that website is hosted. This may come handl if you need the contact information of the web hosting provider for writing a DMCA Notice or if you are looking to switch web hosts.


• popuri.us — You can use popuri to estimate the relative popularity of a website on social sites like Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. It also display the Google Pagerank of a website and the Web of Trust matrix.


• chillingeffects.org — When there’s a copyright related complaint against a website, a copy of that letter is archived in the Chilling Effects database. Anyone can query this public database to know about all the copyright infringement complaints against a particular website.


• myip.ms — MyIP.ms offers a comprehensive report of any website or I.P. Address. You get to know about the hosting provider, the physical location of a website, the IP Address change history of a website and the DNS information. Netcraft also offers similar reports.


• ewhois.com — Ewhois, short for enhanced whois lookup, will help you determine other websites of someone. It looks the whois details, the AdSense publisher ID and the Google Analytics code of websites to figure out other web domain that may belong to the same owner.  .


• builtwith.com — Use BuiltWith to know the technology stack of any website. It helps you figure out the mail service provider of a domain, the advertising partners, the tracking widgets that are installed on a website and whether the site is using any CDN like Amazon S3 or Google Cloud.  .


• semrush.com — If you wish to analyze your competitor’s website, this is tool to go with. SEMrush will help you figure what organic keywords are people using to find a website, what is the site’s traffic and which are the competing websites.  .


• whatsmydns.net — When you buy a new domain or switch from one host to another, the DNS records for the domain change and it may take a while to propagate these changes worldwide. WhatsMyDNS check your DNS records from various locations and it can check your domain’s A, CNAME and MX records.


• modern.ie — This online app will help test your website’s compatibility with various web browsers and detects coding errors that might cause problems. The site is integrated with BrowserStack so you can quickly know how your site looks on different devices and browsers.


• developers.google.com — Find the Page Speed score of any website on both desktop and mobile devices. The higher this number, the better. The Google tool also offers suggestion on how the score can be improved.


• ctrlq.org/sandbox — – The AdSense sandbox solves two problems – it shows the various advertisers that are targeting a website and it will also help you figure out if a particular web domain is banned in the AdSense network or not.


• httparchive.org — The HTTP Archive is a repository of all performance related metrics for a website. It keeps a record of the size of pages, their average load time and the number of failed requests (missing resources) over time.

Shopping online is becoming increasingly popular with consumers of all ages. With fast shipping and websites selling virtually everything, online shopping is an attractive alternative to the hassle of visiting multiple stores.

However, eCommerce safety is a huge issue, and many shoppers are unaware of how to ensure that their online transactions are safe, secure and private. Fortunately, there are a number of simple signs to look out for and changes you can implement to make purchasing items on the Web considerably safer.

The most common methods used by hackers to steal consumer information are phishing sites and emails. Hackers may set up websites that look similar to other branded sites and send emails to potential customers of those companies urging them to shop through special links. By gaining consumer trust through having a similar appearance to the original company’s website, hackers make consumers feel more comfortable about entering their details into such sites, including credit card information.

Avoiding phishing emails and websites is simple. Any time a shopper receives an email from a company asking them to shop or navigate to a website, they should carefully check the domain the email is being sent from or the URLs of the links they land on. All email addresses and URLs should contain the company’s official domain.

Having updated antivirus and firewall software is also necessary. Also, one must ensure that he or she is using the latest version of the web browser of their choice. Most modern web browsers have inbuilt mechanisms to detect spoofed websites.

A common trick to watch out for is a minor misspelling in the domain name that may be hard to pick up without careful attention. Additionally, some hackers may place the company’s name before the @ symbol in the email address, rather than after, which is where it should be.

All pages, including login pages, asking for consumer details, such as billing/shipping addresses and payment information, should have URLs that begin with “https://” rather than the more commonly used “http://.” The “s” denotes a secured connection and provides encrypted communication between a shopper’s computer and the receiving company’s servers.

Preferably, the site will also have a verifiable certification showing that the site can be trusted and that the installed security suites are up to date. Many sites display a security certification image link or privacy seal, making it easy to verify their status.

People who decide to shop on websites they’ve never heard of should ensure that these sites are legitimate. This can be done by searching for online reviews and confirming that the site is listed as a secure site with a trusted online security company.

One must be extra cautious while shopping on shared computers and always remember to not save login information in the web browser. Logging out and clearing cookies once you are done is also recommended.

Shopping with certain methods of payment and opting for tracked shipments can also provide enhanced protection. Payment services, such as Paypal, allow buyers to dispute charges and other issues they may have with sellers. Many credit cards offer similar protection, and since they aren’t linked directly to a bank account, hackers can’t drain a shopper’s finances. Finally, trackable shipping allows shoppers to find out exactly where their packages are, providing added confidence in the legitimacy of any seller's services. All tracking information should originate from the shipping service and be trackable within 24 hours of receiving the tracking number.

Have you ever deleted a file that you did not wish to and wanted to recover it but did not find it in the recycle bin? You probably deleted it permanently with Shift+Delete or emptied the Recycle Bin. Now what? Don't worry, you may still have a chance to get it back. This article lists some free software that can recover deleted files from your hard drive or any other storage device instantly.

But how do the software mentioned below undelete deleted files?

When files are deleted, Windows does not delete them from your hard disk. It marks the storage space as empty for new data to be written and deletes the index entry that tells the location of those files. Unless, new files are written on that space, the deleted files are still recoverable. That's what allows these software to recover deleted files. They just modify the data attached by Windows to deleted files to say these are 'regular' files.

There are many free software that allow users to do this. Some of them are given below:-

1) Pandora Recovery

Pandora Recovery is a free software that offers a wizard based interface for recovering files. It allows you to browse a drive's individual folders to look for deleted files. It also allows you search for a deleted file based on its name, file size, creation date and last access time. Its deep scan allows you to recover files that other software might have missed. Although deep scan does not return a file's original name and location, it still is effective to recover data from drives with corrupted file tables and drives that were recently formatted. It can even recover data from CD's and DVD's.

2) TOKIWA DataRecovery

At just over 200KB, TOKIWA DataRecovery is the smallest file recovery program in the market. It supports undeletion from FAT 12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems. It also supports recovering NTFS compressed and EFS encrypted files. This software supports Windows and is portable as well. It also has a file shredder that allows you to wipe out files in a manner that they cannot be recovered again.

3) Recuva

Another great freeware, Recuva offers a wizard based interface to unerase files. Recuva offers scanning deleted files based on their type (music, pictures, videos etc.). It also allows deep scanning in case a file you deleted is unrecoverable via normal search. Like TOKIWA DataRecovery, Recuva also offers securely deleting files. Recuva also has a portable version that you can keep in your flash drive.

All of these recovery software support recovery from memory sticks, digital camera cards and MP3 players. They support undeleting all types of pictures, software, movies and documents from both FAT and NTFS formatted drives . They work on Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP.

Some important tips to increase the chances of getting your deleted files back:-

1) When a file is deleted accidentally on a storage device, make sure that you don't do anything on it as doing that would increase the chances of new data being written over your deleted files; which would make file recovery impossible.

2) If you have deleted files on your main computer (the one you are using right now), do not browse the internet, download new software or shut it down. Keep it running and go to another computer, download one of the software mentioned above that is portable and save it on a flash drive. Then plugin the flash drive in your current system and perform file recovery. Regardless of whether you accidentally delete files a lot or not, make sure to always have that software in your flash drive in case you accidentally delete important files.

3) If one software fails to recover your deleted file, it does not mean that another one wouldn't recover it too.

Suppose you wish to watch a movie or share a slide-show of pictures with your family on your PC but have a screen that leaves much to be desired. In such a situation, you can connect your computer to a television screen to allow your entire family to enjoy comfortably.


There are many ways in which you can connect your laptop/ computer to a television. However, the overall video quality will be different for different methods. You can choose which one to use based on the quality or the availability of hardware. The first step is to know what type of ports and connections your TV and computer have. If you already know the type of ports and connections available on your hardware, you can directly jump to Step 2. If not, then the different types of ports are explained in detail below:-

1) RCA/Composite: The oldest and the lowest quality connection available. They are the Yellow, Red and White connections most of us are familiar with. Yellow is used for composite video, white for left analog audio and red for right analog audio.

2) S-Video: S-Video or Super Video offers slightly better quality than Composite connections. As it is one of the oldest type of connections available, most televisions and computers have it. There are two types of S-Video ports, one containing 4 pins and the other containing 7 pins. This type of connection is used only for video. So you will need to connect an audio cable from your computer's headphone jack to the red and white audio inputs on your TV if you want audio to work.

3) VGA(Video Graphics Array): Most computers and televisions have a VGA port. It offers much better quality than S-Video and should be preferred if you have a HDTV. Older CRT TVs however, will not have a VGA port and will require a PC to Television converter. Just like S-Video, VGA also does not support audio and will require an additional audio cable.

4) DVI: Digital Video Interface offers much better quality than VGA connections. Most laptop computers and HD TVs will have these connections. Just as the name suggest, this type of connection can be used only with digital TVs. Also like the previous two, DVI connections also require the use of an audio cable for audio to work.

5) HDMI: The highest quality connections available. Most HD TVs will have this connection, however, chances are that your computer would not. If your computer happens to have a HDMI connection port, this should be preferably used. If your computer doesn't, you can use an HDMI to DVI adapter to convert HDMI to DVI.

Step 2: Once a common type of port between the two devices is recognized, you will need the right connector cable to physically connect them. The different types of connector cables are pictured above. If you do not find two matching types of connection ports, you will need an adapter to make the connections type match.

Step 3: After connecting the two devices, on your TV, select the external input with which your TV is connected to the computer. It may be HDMI1 or AV1 depending on how you have made the connection. This is much similar to how you select input from your DVD player.

If you have followed the steps correctly, your TV should now be displaying your computer's screen.

Important: If your computer is not recognizing the external display, you must connect the TV before starting your computer. If the picture appears distorted, you will need to change the screen resolution of your TV by altering the display settings from your computer. Most older TVs will support only one display resolution while newer TVs will support plenty of them.

Most of us find ourselves in situations where a website we wish to visit is blocked by a software or by our ISP (Internet Service Provider). So the question arises, how can we access blocked websites? The answer to this is simple: Proxy websites. Before going into details, let us know a bit about these proxy websites. 

Proxy Websites

A proxy website acts as an intermediate source between the user and server the site being contacted is hosted on. Users send requests to proxy websites which conveys them to the site's server. The reply received by the proxy website is then forwarded to the user's computer. This gives an impression to ISP's and blocking software that the user is visiting the proxy website but in reality, s/he is visiting the site which was blocked. Thus, proxy servers also provide extra security to users by hiding their online activities from their ISP's.

 

Commonly Blocked Web Sites

The sites which are most commonly blocked at workplaces, schools and offices include websites like Facebook, Orkut, Blogger (blogspot), Google News, Typepad, eBay, MySpace, YouTube, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, Bebo, Google Talk, Gmail, Photobucket, AOL AIM, Flickr, Twitter etc. In some countries, social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit are also blocked. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China have even blocked access to mainstream media websites like The New York times. A proxy website can be used to easily access these blocked websites. As proxy websites hide a user's location, they can also be used to access popular websites which are restricted to particular countries and block users from other countries from visiting them.

Types of Proxies

There are two types of proxies. First, there are web proxies which have an interactive interface; and second, the proxy servers which work on the basis of IP Addresses and port numbers. Proxies can also be segregated on the basis of anonymity into Anonymous, Transparent and High Anonymous depending upon the amount of privacy they provide.

How to Find Proxy Websites and Proxy Servers

A simple Google search containing the word "proxy websites" is likely to return a lot of useful results. However, most of them are likely to be lists containing proxy servers which you can setup using their IP Address and Port Number. So, in order to find interactive proxy websites, you will have to search for something like "Facebook Proxy Server" or "Orkut Proxy Server". A search like this is most likely to return interactive proxy websites with which you can access your blocked website by simply entering the URL in URL field. If you want additional security and anonymity, you can opt for a paid proxy server.

If you do not want to search, here are few popular free proxy websites you can use:-

1. http://www.hidemyass.com


2. http://www.spysurfing.com/


3. http://proxify.us/p/

 

 

How to Setup Proxy Servers using their IP Address

If you wish to visit your blocked website using a web proxy, you do not need any setup. However, if you wish to use a proxy server that can only be accessed by using its IP address and port number, you must configure your browser to use it. Follow the instructions given below to setup this type of proxy in your browser:-

Google Chrome and Internet Explorer Users

Google Chrome uses the same network settings as Internet Explorer. So, in order to configure Google Chrome to use a proxy server, you have to configure Internet Explorer. You can configure a proxy server in Internet Explorer by following the instructions given below:-

1. Start Internet Explorer.


2. Click on Tools, Internet Options.


3. Click on Connections Tab, select your Network Connection and click on Settings.


4. Check on Use a Proxy Server for this Connection.


5. In the Address field, add the IP Address of your Proxy server. In the Port field, enter the Port Number.


6. Click on OK and OK again.

 

Mozilla Firefox Users

Mozilla Firefox users can configure their browser to use a proxy by following the instructions given below:-

1. Start Mozilla Firefox.


2. Click on Tools, Options.


3. Click on Advanced Tab.


4. Click on Network tab.


5. Click on Settings.


6. Encircle Manual Proxy Configuration.


7. Enter the IP Address and Port Number at the appropriate place. In most cases, it will be a HTTP server.  

After you have successfully configured your browser to use the proxy server, you will be able to access blocked websites whenever you browse the internet with your browser.

There’s a pretty interesting thread on Hacker News where people have shared links to their favorite technical talks. The thread includes dozens of links pointing to YouTube, Vimeo and other video websites.

It’s a treasure trove and I want to click on every single video that’s mentioned on that page but the problem is that I will then end up having at least two dozen new tabs in the browser. And this isn’t just about Hacker News, you can open any popular thread on sites like Quora or Reddit and you’ll be overwhelmed with links pointing to interesting stuff.

How do you deal with such a large collection of raw links? I have written an app called Video Slides that some may find handy here. The app will scan the text for video URLs and put them all in a single sideshow without cluttering your browser.

 

ou copy the text of the entire thread and paste it into Video Slides. The app will then extract all the Youtube and Vimeo URLs from your text and will create a slideshow putting one video per slide. You can use the arrow keys to navigate through the slides.

You may paste text from comment threads, HTML source of a web page or even email messages and there’s no need to use any special formats. You can even use the short youtu.be URLs. The app currently extracts Vimeo and YouTube URLs only but going forward, we should be able to use any web service that supports oEmbed.

Internally, Video Slides uses the Embed.ly API to extract the embed code for the video URLs while the presentations are generated through the awesome reveal.js library. Give it a try and your feedback will help shape up the next version.

 


Hiring a photographer is getting old fashioned now because of the emergence of stock photo agencies. If you are working with a photographer then you have access to only a limited number of images while if you are going with a stock photo agency, where many photographers come together to share their work, you get access to literally thousands of images.

Our recommendation is that you go for Depositphotos.

Depositphotos was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Florida, USA. Their customers belong to varied parts of the world spreading to 192 countries. Depositphotos provides support in 14 different languages and allows people to buy and sell stock photos, vector images and videos.

As of writing of this article it had more than 13 million files, more than 900 thousand satisfied customers and a rating of 4.7 stars based upon the feedback of nearly 400 thousand people!
All the files stored on Depositphotos are “stock files” and “royalty free.”

By stock files I mean the photography and videos that are meant for the purpose of commercial or editorial usage such as advertisements, brochures, articles, and product packaging. Such files are most commonly used by graphic designers and artists.

By royalty free I mean that once you buy a file, you can use it lifelong for any purpose you choose as long as you abide by the terms and conditions imposed on you by the seller. You will have to pay only once and there will be no hidden monthly or annual fees.

Talking of payments there are two methods to buy files. One is to choose a subscription plan out of the four plans available and the other one is to purchase credits and use the pay-as-you-go offer. Click this link for details on the subscription plans and prices.

The main difference between the subscription plans and pay-as-you-go credits is that the former allows you to download only a limited amount of images per day and your subscription ends after your prescribed months are over while the latter allows you to download any number of images at any time for a period of one year.
Depending upon your chosen plan the price of an image can go as low as 0.36$.

See the screenshot below for details on plans and pricing.

Go and check out the website, they offer a free signup, and let me know what do you think in the comments below.

Most of us do not have access to photoshop or don't know how to use it for photo editing. I have made their life easy by this tutorial showing how to edit your photographs online.

I was a big fan of Picnik image editor until Google merged it with Google+ and the standalone editor was shut down. Since then I have switched to PicMonkey which is an equally awesome online photo editing tool though some of the image effects and photo touching tools are only available to premium customers.



An impressive web-based image editing tool

Today I chanced upon another interesting web-based image editor that’s fast, the UI is beautiful with several useful features. It’s called Picozu.

While Picnik and PicMonkey are purely photo editing apps meaning you can use them to edit your existing images, Picozu lets you both edit and create new images from scratch. Picozu is written in pure HTML5 and CSS3 and requires no Flash or other plugins.

To get started, you can upload load images from your computer or you can directly import photos from your other cloud-based accounts like SkyDrive, Google Drive, Facebook or Dropbox. Alternatively, you may fire your webcam and capture images direclty inside Picozu.

The app offers a layer-based editing workflow seen in editing software like Photoshop or GIMP. There are dozens of filters and image-effects to give your photos a distinct look. Or you can use the regular tools and brushes to manually touch your photos.

Their Firefox add-on takes screen captures and imports them into Picozu for editing. There are also built-in tools for creating photo collages and posters.

If your current Internet speed is very slow and you are living in an area where broadband connections are still not available, here are some ideas to help you download web pages faster on your computer. You may use the same tips to  improve your web browsing experience on a sluggish USB modem.

Surf the Web Faster on Slow Internet

1. Turn off web images, the Adobe Flash plug-in, Java Applets and JavaScript from your browser settings as these files are often the bulkiest elements of any web page.

2. Increase the size of your browser cache. If the static parts of a site (like background graphics, CSS, etc) are stored in the local cache, your browser can safely skip downloading these files when you re-visit the site in future thus improving speed.

3. Sometimes the slow DNS server of your ISP can be a bottleneck so switch to OpenDNS as it can resolve website URLs into IP addresses more quickly. If you aren’t too happy about OpenDNS redirecting your Google queries, follow this simple hack.

4. Finch can serve a light-weight version of any website in real-time that is free of all bells and whistles. For instance, the New York Times homepage with all external resources can weigh more than a MB but Finch trims down the size by 90% so the site loads more quickly on a slow web connection.

5. Flinch (mentioned at #4) is good for reading regular websites but if you just need to check the latest articles published on your favorite blogs, use BareSite. This service will automatically detect the associated feed of a website and render content quickly inside a minimalist interface.

6. The Google Transcoder service at google.com/gwt/n can split large web pages into smaller chunks that will download more quickly on your computer (or mobile phone).

7. Monitor your Internet speed to determine hours when you get the maximum download speed from the ISP. Maybe you can then change your surfing schedule a bit and browse more during these "off peak" hours.

8. You can use a text browser like Lynx or Elinks for even faster browsing. It downloads only the HTML version of web pages thus reducing the overall bandwidth required to render websites.

9. When searching for web pages on Google, you can click the "Cache" link to view the text version of a web page stored in the Google Cache. Alternatively, install this GM script as it adds a "cached text only" link near every "Cached" link on Google Search pages.

10. Move your web activities offline as far as possible. You can send & receive emails, write blogs and even read feeds in an offline environment. Also see: Save Web Pages for offline reading.

11.  You can interact with websites like Flickr, Google Docs, Slideshare, etc. using simple email messages. Uploading a new document to Google Docs via email would require less bandwidth than doing it in the browser because you are avoiding a trip to the Google Docs website.

12. Applying the same logic, you may also consider using tools like Web In Mail or Email The Web as they help you browse websites via email. Just put the URL of a page (e.g., cnn.com) in the subject field of your email message and these services will send you the actual page in the reply.

13. Bookmarklets are like shortcuts to your favorite web services. You neither have to open the Gmail Inbox for composing a new email message nor do you have to visit Google Translate for translating a paragraph of text. Add relevant bookmarklets to your browser bar and reduce the number of steps required to accomplish a task.

14. Use the netstat command to determine processes, other than web browsers, that may be secretly connecting to Internet in the background. Some of these processes could be consuming precious bandwidth but you can block them using the Firewall.

15. Use URL Snooper to determine non-essential host names that a website is trying to connect while downloading a web page. You may block them in future via the hosts file or use Adblock Plus to filter out advertising banners on web pages.

16. If you don’t want to spoil your web surfing experience by stripping images and other graphic elements from  a web page, get Opera Turbo. It will first fetch the requested web page on to its own server and then send it to your machine in a compressed format. Opera Turbo won’t change the layout of a web site but can lower the image resolution so that they load faster on slow Internet.

17. Change the user agent of your desktop browser to that of a mobile phone like Apple’s iPhone or Windows Mobile. This will help you browse certain web sites like Google News, WSJ, etc. much faster because they’ll serve you a light-weight and less cluttered mobile version of their sites thinking you’re on a mobile phone.

You have a feeling that someone else used your computer (or at least made an attempt to login) while you were out for a quick coffee break. Maybe that colleague with whom you share the cubicle knows your password or he made a few guesses before finally giving up.

How do you get notified when such an attempt is made to intrude into your computer?


Email alert with a webcam picture of the intruder.

A new website (made in Turkey) called MouseLock.co may have a simple solution here. They will send you an email alert as well as a picture of the intruder as soon as someone tries to use your computer.

Here’s how Mouse Lock works.

You sign-in with your Google Account (they’ll send the alert to your Gmail address) and then select a secret pin on the screen. Next, put your mouse cursor in a designated area on the Mouse Lock website and leave the machine.

Now when someone moves the mouse, they will also have to enter the original pin. If they fail to do that in the first few seconds, Mouse Lock will send you an email and, if the computer has a webcam, it will use that to also snap a picture of the intruder.

Mouse Lock won’t prevent the intrusion but will at least notify you the minute it happens. And best of all, this a web app and thus requires no installation.

Internally, the site uses jQuery (mouseLeaveEvent) to detect mouse movements while the webcam photographs are captured using the getUserMedia() API currently supported in Chrome and Firefox. The alerts, possibly due to a bug, are triggered even when any of the keys are pressed and that makes it a little less useful since there’s no way to lock the computer after setting up the monitor.