Most screensharing apps are complex, pricey and are targetted for professional video editors. If you ever want to quickly snap a video to share your screen with any one, you wouldn’t use something like Camtasia.
Quickcast, as the name suggests, lets you record and share screencasts in a jiffy!
The process is really simple, you select the part of screen to get recorded (or select whole screen), toggle Microphone and Camera on/off and start recording.
You can record for a maximum of 3 minutes and as recording is done, the video is automatically uploaded to its site and link is copied to clipboard.
There are some neat additions like, if your video’s length is than 10 seconds and the screencast area is less than 300x300px, Quickcast will output a GIF instead of a normal MP4 video file.
You can give title, description (in Markdown!) and tag the video.
Quickcast is free and open source. It’s Mac-only right now, but because it’s open source, I’m sure some one will port it to Windows and Linux too.
This weekend we are kicking off a new feature called “Reading List”. Our staff often come across a lot of great articles online which we share across various our own social media profiles. I thought why not share links to these articles with our readers on a weekly basis. These are not small snippets of news but are long analytic posts which need to be read at leisure, hence sharing these on a Sunday.
And then Steve said “Let there be an iPhone“ – on Steve Jobs death anniversary, this New York Times article gives us a behind the scenes look at Steve Jobs’ involvement with the iPhone leading upto it’s announcement. This is done through the experiences of a senior Apple engineer..
How Google Taught Itself Good Design – While Google has improved the design UI of its services across web and mobile apps is not really news. But this article takes a long detailed look at how Google went from a company that ignored design to a company that now puts design as a priority.
IBM’s SAGE 1956 – At the height of the cold war between the US and the then USSR, the primary obsession for the US government was to scan the skies for Soviet bombers. This article takes us on a history tour of how the IBM SAGE came into existence.
Awesome Virtual Reality of GTA V (Timelapse Video) – This is not really a article but is a timelapse video. It is beautiful but the unique part of it is that the world it captures is entirely virtual. This timelapse video uses scenery from the best selling video game GTA V. It surely shows us how far virtual reality games have come.
Would you like this recommended list to be a regular feature? Do drop in your comments.
Naweed Chougle contributed to this post. If you want to suggest articles in next week’s reading list, send you recoomendations to aditya.kane@rtcamp.com
My relatives very rarely send me emails except when they want to share photos of the family. Not everyone is comfortable with photos being uploaded and shared on Facebook or Google+. But I prefer to save my attachments on Google Drive (or Dropbox). A single click solution is available as a Chrome extension but I liked MetisMe, which automatically saves attachments from certain address to your chosen cloud service.
MetisMe – automatic rules to send attachments to a cloud service
As you can see in the image above, installing the MetisMe Chrome extension allows me it to sort my attachments. Most importantly I can make quick rules to send attachments from certain email ids to either Dropbox, Evernote or Google Drive.
The service is still not open for public and there is still more work needed on the service. For instance, I found that it was showing me attachments from emails within my spam folder or previously deleted emails in the option called “Attachments Stack”.
If you want pre-launch access to MetisMe, you can use this link.
Try out MetisMe and drop in your comments and views.
If you’ve been using Mac since a long time, you must have encountered ‘.DS_Store’ files sometime. These are hidden files which get created in Finder automatically, and you can find them in almost every folder on your Mac!
A ‘.DS_Store’ file contains preferences related to the folder and contains information like position of icons, view settings and etc. meta data. All this sounds fine, but if you’re a developer, you’ll surely hate this as these files get into your project folder.
Here’s how you can get rid of these hidden files.
There’s a tool called Asepsis, which does this. Asepsis creates a wrapper around Apple’s framework DesktopServicesPriv which is responsible for creation of .DS_Store files. This wrapper will redirect all the .DS_Store files into a single folder. The exact path of this folder is /usr/local/.dscage.
Asepsis is available as a .mpkg file, so you’ve to install it manually. You’ve to restart your Mac to complete installation and Asepsis will start to run in background. So the next time a .DS_Store file gets created, it goes into the .dscage folder (which is where all .DS_Store files reside).
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But Asepsis itself won’t migrate the existing .DS_Store files. For that, you have to fire up terminal and run its command line utility.
Running asepsisctl migratein will migrate all the .DS_Store files from your home directory to .dscage folder. But that’s not all! If you have websites in your /Applications, like me, you have to run asepsisctl --root /Applications migratein. This is because I have my WordPress site under MAMP which is in /Applications/ (and I obviously don’t want .DS_Store files in my site folder).
After you’ve done all this, you can check if .DS_Store files exist in a folder, by running – find . -iname .ds_store.
One important thing to note is, Asepsis won’t work on Mavericks and you might even run into booting issues if you try to install it.
While meeting people it if often difficult to exchange phone numbers, photos or files over smartphones all that easily. It also can be a troublesome to an extent to quickly transfer a photo you took on your computer. What I do is upload the file to my Google Drive account which then becomes available on my laptop.
An app called Bump does a great job simplifying transfer of a file or contact details from one phone to another or from a phone to a desktop.
How Bump works:
Transfer files between devices with bump app
Bump works on iPhones and Android. If two people have the bump app installed then all they need to quickly connect their phones is open the app and bump their phones lightly into each other.
This triggers the phones to connect with each other. The phones ask permission to connect with the other phone and files can easily be sent to and fro.
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The app on the phone can also be used to transfer files from a phone to your laptop. Just open bu.mp and bump your phone on the spacebar. This triggers a connection between your computer and phone. The transfer actually happens through the website.
We can even send files from our computer to the phone in the same way, except the file needs to be selected and uploaded to the website before transferring it over to the phone.
Video:
Why I am hopeful of Bump’s future!
There might be more apps that offer similar services but I have high hopes from Bump. The reason being they were good enough to get acquired by Google. Since Google is trying to get it’s services interact across platforms, Bump being a hit on Android and iPhone bodes well for its future.
If you have been to a few job interviews there are some specific questions that you might have come across more than once. Personally for me one of the most asked questions were “Where do your see yourself in 5 years?” and “Why do you want to work with our company?”.
While many cover what the ideal answer should be for such questions, there is actually a logic behind asking such questions at an interview. The logic or the hidden reasons are really not to see if you know the answer to a question but to get a candidate reveal more about themselves.
Sample Questionnaire has this nice infographic on 19 common questions asked at job interviews and what the hidden logic behind these questions are:
If you are attending job interviews then it might be a good idea to go over the logic behind these questions to answer more appropriately at your next interview.
“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting,” said Steve Jobs. “The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.”
When Apple’s founder and visionary made this statement, the company was going through a turbulent time during the late 1990’s. Today, their situation isn’t as bad, in spite of lagging behind the Android revolution and going through some serious trouble.
But technology experts are not happy with the purely incremental improvements we witnessed in the recent launch of iPhone 5c and iPhone 5S.
Apple’s stocks tanked 5.4% just a day after the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5S were announced. Pre-orders were closed, unlike earlier releases. This was enough to get the naysayers into action. Some might have wondered if Apple’s record breaking days were behind it.
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And it sold 9 million iPhones!
Apple plays the marketing game cleverly well. The company announced a ‘record-breaking’ first weekend sale of 9 million units, without providing individual figures for each of the handsets’ sales. Additionally, the launch was worldwide. Apple’s stocks then jumped 6%.
The critics, the naysayers and the experts are left scratching their heads again.
Apple’s secret sauce
Why then, do people continue to line up to get their hands on the ‘iconic’ smartphones?
An Apple fan camping outside a store in London. Image credit: Dailymail.co.uk
The first reason is hard to miss: Steve Jobs’ charisma has remained alive. Apple fans think they own the Rolls Royce of smartphones.
That is not surprising, because Apple is backed by a glittering history of innovations: the 1998 iMac, 2001 iPod, 2007 iPhone and 2010 iPad.
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The second reason is Apple’s strategy of locking in users to stay in their ecosystem. For instance, users accustomed to Facetime might sorely miss that app on Android phones.
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Detractors think Apple is all about skin deep beauty and clever marketing spin. But supporters of Apple’s tight control of its ecosystem are impressed by the company’s cohesiveness, even if it means lagging behind equivalent Android phones by almost a year at times.
Will the craze last?
Steve Jobs’ magic…continuing to live on!
My short answer is “Yes”.Commentators predicted Apple’s doom when the newly launched iPhone 4 in 2010 evoked the infamous “Just don’t hold it that way” remark from Steve Jobs. Next, the iPhone 4S was criticized for being lackluster.
The iPhone 5 that emerged last year began life in the market as a sequel to a sequel. Soon after, big trouble was to hit Apple with the maps fiasco — even the die-hard fans have been upset. Motorists have been trapped in a snake-infested desert, or prompted to cross an airport runway!
In the foreseeable future, Apple believers will continue to hire people to camp outside stores, or scramble for TV interviews to tell the world how it feels to be the first new buyer in the country. But will Apple showcase a new innovative product? The next wave of innovation, by the way, seems to be wearable technology.
Will Apple stand firm in a highly competitive market? Samsung today is aggressively working on new designs like flexible smartphones for the new generation of mobile technology — will Apple follow suit?
If Apple stops innovating, they’ll have to rely on members of their closed ecosystem to pay for newer gadgets. Inevitably, a steady decline could set in. Maybe Apple should heed a warning from some of their old competitors like BlackBerry and Nokia who declined by pursuing only incremental updates to their products while Apple was innovating its way towards becoming a giant.
BlackBerry has simply been having its worst year in its history. It has been totally sidelined as a major mobile phone manufacturer and its latest Z10 and Q10 handsets have more or less flopped. Last week, it decided to get a part of that BlackBerry experience onto Android and iOS platforms. This was done by announcing the BBM app for iPhone and Android. The announcement was done in an official blog post on 18th September. The BBM app for Android was to be made available on 21nd September and the iPhone app was to be released on 22nd September.
So far so good but the comedy of errors was about to start. Before the official Android app for BBM was posted online, an unofficial one got uploaded. The unofficial app was downloaded and over 1.1 million users went live inside 8 hours. That led to issues for BlackBerry which they apparently tried to fix but in the end had to roll back the global launch of the app.
The offending unofficially released BlackBerry app for Android was pulled and users who had downloaded it saw that the service was blocked. The few iPhone users who had downloaded the app could use it but app was pulled from the App Store too.
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So when is BBM for Android and iPhone available?
BlackBerry is a update post had mentioned that they were planning a staggered roll-out on Android and re-releasing the app on Apple App store. This update was made on the 21st September itself. A couple of day went by and BBM app was still nowhere to be seen. That is when BlackBerry’s BBM chief Andrew Bocking updated in another blog post, that not only were they pulling the app but users should not expect the app to show up for another week. Strangely a new release date is still not announced!
The doomed BlackBerry!
BlackBerry could not compete with the likes of Apple and Google in the mobile phone space. The new BBM app for Android and iPhone would have made them competitors to WhatsApp and WeChat and other similar messaging apps. But wait, even here BlackBerry will hardly compete as most users will simply not give its app a second chance (whenever it gets actually released).
If you are still interested in downloading BlackBerry app on your iPhone or Android visit the link below and enter your email address to get updated on when the app goes live!
Flipkart has finally revamped it’s Android mobile app. It was just a mobile version of the Flipkart website put as an app earlier. But this upgraded version has been built from scratch and offers a beautiful user interface. The app comes packed with almost every Flipkart feature.
The user interface is now much improved. The slider menu on the left side makes navigation easy. Easily search products in various departments, search for products using text/voice and even scan barcodes. You can also sort/filter the products based on popularity, price (low to high and high to low), and discounts.
You can also check the products’ images zoomed in, check out the user reviews and ratings.
You can also buy things right within the app. Payment is by Cash on Delivery, Debit/Credits cards, Net Banking and EMIs – just like the payment options on the Flipkart website. Once purchased, you can track the status of your orders right within the app. This is a big improvement.
There is something interesting that Flipkart brought in this updated Android app. You can check the details of the recently viewed products even when the network is not available.
Also, Flipkart gives you an option to share your purchases with your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social networking site friends.
Here’s a fun and practical Android app for all you college goers who want to keep track of your class attendance – that is, letting you safely bunk classes. It’s called Bunk-o-Meter.
Getting started is simple, you just have to enter your Semester’s subjects and the bunk limit for each of those. Next time you bunk a class, you can hit the + button and it’ll record it.
You can set the app to throw a notification every day, reminding you if you’ve bunked any classes.
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The app is nicely done, with neat transitions from screen-to-screen. It also throws some funny comment once in a while, as you can see in the screenshot above. Adding to this, there’s a quick tutorial in the beggining.
In short, Bunk-o-Meter does one thing and does it right.
So if you’re a student and using an Android, go grab it for free.
