Learn how you can auto post birthday wishes on your Facebook friend’s wall automatically using this tips.You can also create a custom birthday message for a friend and also make sure that your friend doesn’t come to know that you had pre-arranged it.
Having a large bunch of friend in your friends list it is almost impossible to remember each and every friend birthday and often we miss to wish our best friends on birthdays.
Moreover you can also choose to get weekly or monthly updates of your Friend’s coming birthdays.It is very simple and helps in managing whole year in just one sitting,just choose the message you want to send and to whom you want to send and the post will be automatically posted to your friends’ wall.
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How it works:
Open the birthdayFB and connect it to your Facebook account by clicking on “Connect With Facebook” link.
Click on ” Permission to access your data” to allow acess your data.
Now you can see the list of friend’s upcoming birthdays.
Then select ‘write messages’ to manage all the birthday wishes. Either you can select from the messages or you can also customize it by writing your own message.
Next go to ‘preference’ option from where you can edit your posting time and manage your email update.
That’s it, birthdayfb will automatically post your wishes to your friends wall. Just note that this wont work on profiles which does not allow friends to post on their walls.
As far as Android based OEMs go, HTC is a few steps behind the very successful Samsung. HTC is known for churning out solid phone products but has still struggled with revenues and profits. HTC has now released a new Android based phone called Droid DNA which should be considered a competitor to Galaxy Note 2 by Samsung.
The Good
The phones has pretty much everything one expects out of a smartphone. It will run on Android 4.1 (Jellybean). The phone itself has a display screen of 5 inches, with support for multi-touch. It has a decent 8 MP, 3264 X 2448 pixel camera.
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The phone is supported on 2G, 3G and 4G and Wifi networks.
More importantly the phone is powered by 1.5GHz quad-core processor with 2GB RAM.
The Bad
The internal memory on this phone is 16GB. That seems to be a little on the low side. The issue is compounded by no option for external storage as there is no microSD slot.
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The Ugly
I use a HTC V One phone. It is a lower end phone running Android 4.0 (ICS) on it, when compared to Droid DNA. But one major complaint I have against it is how OEMs straddle the Android OS with their own UI.
All said and done, the phone looks like a solid device with solid features and very few disappointments. HTC as a company is actually struggling financially and a good phone device being available only a few days before “Black Friday” sales in the US markets could be just about perfect timing.
Would you go with HTC Droid or wait for Galaxy S4 which is expected early 2013? Do drop in your comments.
The number of gadgets we connect to the internet are growing. Now with tablets and almost everyone having their own laptop and smartphones a typical family can even have five or six devices connecting to your Wifi router. Sometimes there are more devices to be connected, than a router can handle and the best option in such situations is to turn your laptop into a Wifi hotspot. mHotspot is a free and simple application that allows users to create Wifi hotspots out of their PCs.
How mHotspot works:
Install the software on your computer which you want to turn into a Wifi hotspot.
The software allows users to customize a name for the hotspot. This will showup as a Wifi network of other devices that your need to connect. This means it works with most mobile phones and tablets regardless of platforms.
You can monitor all the devices that connect through your PC and more importantly limit the number of devices that can connect.
It also supports WPA2 password security.
You can also allow sharing of Wifi without internet connection to enable playing multiplayer games on LAN.
Though Hurricane Sandy has stopped Google from pushing the Android event on 29th October, it couldn’t stop them from releasing shiny new stuff which they’ve been working on. This includes Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and of course Android 4.2.
I’ve got Android 4.2 (which bears the same name, i.e. Jellybean) installed on my Galaxy Nexus and have been pretty impressed with the improvements.
It’s not a big update, that makes sense as it’s not named Key Lime Pie, which may be the next version of Android bearing big changes, probably.
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Here are a few initial impressions of mine on how this update actually improves Android 4.1.
Battery Life
There’s a reason why I’m talking about battery life right in the beginning. That’s because, 4.1 actually ruined the battery life of my Galaxy Nexus. I’m safe to say, it was OK while running Ice cream Sandwich, but 4.1 was no fun in this aspect. The phone could barely go through one full day on a full charge. It could run for 5 hours on continuous web browsing on Wi-Fi.
As you might have guessed, 4.2 is a considerable improvement in battery consumption. I’m pretty sure, most of the people can get away a day with one full charge. Speaking in numbers, my Nexus could run for 7+ hours on Wi-Fi.
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Quick settings
If you’ve ever used a TouchWiz phone, you must have seen those small Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Brightness etc. toggles in notifications bar. Now, though I liked the idea, the implementation wasn’t good at all. Google introduced (or borrowed, if you prefer that) this feature in 4.2 and I love the way it’s put.
Unlike controls in TouchWiz, Quick settings in 4.2 won’t come in your way. You tap the icon in top right corner, and it’ll show the control with a nice UI transition. If you want to get to Quick settings really fast, you can drag the notifications bar with two fingers. It’s that easy.
Lockscreen Widgets
Like many people have complained, until 4.1, lockscreen on Android was a waste of space. You could launch Google Now or Camera from the lock screen. In 4.2, there’s this new thing called Lockscreen widgets.
That apparently means that, you can add widgets right into your lock screen. Currently, you don’t have a lot of widgets to choose from, apart from GMail, Messages etc. widgets. Another change is that, if you swipe to right from lockscreen, you head over to the Camera app.
This will probably disappoint a few users who liked the previous minimal lockscreen.
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Gesture typing
I use Swype as my default keyboard in Android, and have always preferred to SwiftKey just for this gesture typing (I know, SwiftKey Flow is about to release). Now that gesture typing has come to Android’s default keyboard, I have no reason to ditch this and hunt for alternatives.
In fact, the default keyboard is actually better than Swype. Firstly, it’s fast. Use it for a while and you’ll know. Secondly, it looks much better with Holo UI. Also, as the dictionary data is tied to your Google Account, there’s no need to create an extra account (like you do for Swype/SwiftKey).
Improved Camera
The Camera UI has been changed greatly in 4.2 and that’s for good. To get to the settings, tap and hold anywhere on Camera app and glide with your fingers to the respective controls. Again, this is something you got to try to understand.
Apart from UI, there’s Photosphere, that’s for grabbing a 360-degree Panorama. I love how well it works, and if you’re trying it on a Nexus 4 (which has really good Camera), it’ll be pretty awesome. You start by pointing the camera at the blue dot and continue rotating it all the way up to 360 degrees.
There are a few quirks, though
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Google is always known for releasing beta/unfinished products, but as time passes, they get a lot better. Now, 4.2 is not a beta release, though I don’t find it very stable.
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Firstly, Bluetooth is flaky in 4.2, it was crashing way too often when I tried it to pair it with a few devices. Next, if you have friends whose birth days fall in December, sadly you can’t set their date right in People app. That’s because the app completely misses December! This is not all, there are a lot more bugs being reported by Nexus users, and I expect 4.2.1 to be here soon.
So that wraps it. These are the main improvements in 4.2 Jellybean. There are many other small features like improved Google Now (which you can get even on 4.1), Daydream – which is like a screensaver for your Android. If you’re trying 4.2 on a tablet, you’ll see multi-user support which is cool if you share your tablet among your family.
Apple always celebrated their products with a sense of sentimentality and emotion. On the other hand Google celebrated Android as a powerful number cruncher devoid of sentimentality. With Android 4.2 it is safe to say the rise of the robots is underway.
Have you got your hands on Android 4.2? Looking forward to read your comments.
Even before websites had RSS feeds on them, people followed their websites by bookmarking pages on their browser. Even today, I have several webpages bookmarked on my browser.
Anyone with several bookmarks on a browser might be familiar with the issue of some bookmarks becoming defunct (bad links) or even being saved multiple times. Bookmark Sentry is an extension, that allows users to scan Chrome bookmarks for bad links and duplicate links.
Install the extension and it carries out a scan of Chrome’s bookmark directory.
It will show up 404 links, duplicate content and empty folders. With a single click all the errors can be cleaned up.
Users can also set the time for the extension to scan the bookmarks. I ideally set the scan to be done after 1 month as we do not bookmark too many webpages everyday.
None of the top Mobile OSes have good app stores. If you’re an iOS user, you’re stuck with iTunes, one of the most bloated software ever (even on a Mac). Also, the recent card-like layout in App Store which shows only one app at a time can be really irritating.
Android is no exception for this problem. There is a need for better way to find apps – that’s exactly what Playboard wants to solve.
The main difference between Playboard and Google Play is that, the latter ranks apps based on algorithm which is the automated way, that’s why you see a lot of spam apps getting into apps charts.
Playboard on the other hand, depends on its community. If you want to contribute to its database, you can register for it and start making ‘boards’ which contain apps of a specific type. Kind of like Pinterest boards.
There are a lot of boards to follow, from well-designed apps to paid games gone free.
If you’re a blogger, you can even embed boards as widgets in your site. That can be useful especially if you maintain an Android dedicated site.
I find the overall experience to be better than AppBrain and other Google Play alternatives. You can access it either via the Android app or through web app.
When Google Realtime was launched, it would show a lot of results from Twitter. It showed Twitter’s awesome dominance on almost all events which were important to be followed in realtime. Then things between Google and Twitter went sour and Google had no longer access to all data from Twitter.
I use Chrome and HashPlug extension works seamlessly to give some related tweets in an unobtrusive manner with my Google search results.
Below is a screenshot of me searching for “Diwali Festival” on Google. Notice the realtime tweets streaming in the right hand side.
If you are signed into your Twitter account on your browser, then you can even retweet, favourite or reply to a particular Tweet from the feed directly.
If Google is showing a related page with its knowledge graph for a particular search term on the right hand side, it gets automatically readjusted below the twitter stream.
Usually this sort of Twitter stream would be very useful while using Google for information about an unfolding event like a sporting event or a breaking news story.
Thanks to @Fenoplix for the tip. Do try out HashPlug and drop in your comments.
I do not use own a Mac but some of our authors do (namely Vibin and Rahul). I am very happy with Windows but if there was one Mac software I really wanted on my Windows, it was the image editor Skitch. Skitch is great to take screenshots, add arrow pointers, text in different colors. Overall I found it was a great app for taking screenshots and as a blogger, I end up taking an incredible amount of scree shots.
A couple of days ago, I upgraded to Windows 8 and started looking around for some image editors which were free. To my surprise I found Skitch app for Windows 8.
Staying consistent with offering a free app on other platforms, Skitch also can be downloaded as a desktop version for older Windows version. It is supported on Windows XP/Vista and Windows 7.
Skitch Features
Skitch offers the option of taking screenshots and editing image files.
It is a Evernote product and hence we can directly store screenshots on Evernote accounts.
The functions are simplistic like using pointers, adding text to images, blurring out some part of the image and other basic functions like cropping, resizing and highlighting.
I would recommend Skitch highly for taking and sharing screenshots mainly as it is available free on many platforms. It is supported on Mac, iPhone, Android and now Windows.
Yesterday I upgraded my laptop to Windows 8 Pro. It was a painless installation. Windows 8 offers users to option to retain their previous settings from Windows 7 or do a clean install.
I like using Chrome and use Google and related services a lot. Windows 8 is a Microsoft product and so its not surprising that I see Bing and IE icons / tiles at the start screen.
Thankfully Google has introduced a quick simple way for users to download and install Google Search and Chrome on their start screen.
How it works:
Once you are on the start screen visit the Get Your Google Back page with Internet Explorer.
The first install is Google. It installs a cool Google app on the platform. It can be used for voice search and also if you choose to sign-in with your Google account, can help you access all your important Google services like Google+, Reader, Gmail, Map and more.
The best feature of it was looking up my search history which can be explored.
The next link at the site is to download Chrome from the Windows 8 Store.
The first thing I did after downloading Chrome was to make it my default.
Finally now I have my Google shortcuts on my Windows 8 Start Screen. Try it out if you are a heavy Google and Chrome user and have recently upgraded to Windows 8.
These apps works only on Windows 8 platform and not on the Windows RT versions.
I am sure most people reading this post have a profile on some sort of social media websites. LinkedIn is very popular with professionals but how about leveraging other social profiles like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ in your job hunt.
I recently came across a interesting website called Switch Idea. The website mainly acts as a platform for professionals and freelancers to get jobs. Job seekers are notified via their social networks.
How Switch Idea works
For job seekers just fill in some details about yourself and associate your social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ with Switch Idea.
Users can also add their Resume onto the sites. All this information is available on a publicly shared VCard (Virtual business card).
You can register as a employer too and create new job posts. Users are notified via their social media accounts.
Employers can then award the job to the ones who have responded.
As the website is pretty new I am not sure how good this is for professional placements but I think it might be good idea to get a profile on it anyways. Also this seems like a great platform for freelancers and employers who are looking for freelancers.
Try out Switch Idea and let me know what you think about it in your comments.
