There are times when you can’t watch a YouTube video because that video is unavailable to your country. Proxies can help you watch that video at such times. ProxMate is an amazing tool that proxies the web content for you.
When ProxMate started first, it supported only Hulu, YouTube and Grooveshark. But now, there are lots more services that ProxMate supports. Some of the notable ones are Google Play, Turntable.fm, Vevo, MTV and a lot more. You can check the list of all services at ProxMate official website.
ProxMate is available as extension for Google Chrome and as an add-on for Mozilla Firefox. These extensions are pretty simple to install and use. The most important thing is that, they’re free to use! You can easily install this and start accessing those blocked content.
How do proxies actually work? They route you to that particular regional IP address and let you watch the content without any hassle. With ProxMate, you can set up your own proxy server.
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How to Use ProxMate?
Install the ProxMate extension on your Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser. Download links are available at the bottom of this post.
Once installed, the ProxMate extension icon is added to the top right of your Chrome browser. It is enabled by default.
The package modules are also enabled by default. That is, you can now start browsing for those region blocked content straight away.
If you want to disable this extension for a while, just tap the icon. To enable re-tap.
To disable any package module, right click on the icon, go to “Options” and then un-tick any module.
You can now watch the blocked YouTube videos, listen to blocked music and a lot more! You can also make Google Play device purchases. Note that you’ll need U.S. address and credit card. If you don’t have them, you can make use of popular services like Shop and Ship, USUnlocked to help you buy.
Microsoft has quietly rolled out Office 365 for iPhone and iPad. Until yesterday there wasn’t any official application from Microsoft that brought Office to iOS devices. Launched today, the new app on the iTunes Store bears the “version 1” tag.
Named “Office Mobile for Office 365 Subscribers”, the app is available as a Free download. You’ll need a Office 365 subscription account to use this app.One month free trial of Office 365 is available. You can choose to not continue the subscription from the next month if you don’t want to. You can now create, view, edit and even share your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents even on your iPhone and iPad.
This app is also capable of accessing your documents stored in your SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro and SharePoint. You can also download Office documents received as email attachments and edit them.
This app comes with many amazing features. You can use Slide Navigator to easily view your PowerPoint slideshows. Resume Reading is yet another feature that takes you to the last read section of a particular document. Even you if read the document on your PC, you can resume reading at that place on your iPhone or iPad.
The app has been designed especially for the iPhone 5. Never the less, it runs on iPhone 4, 4S, 5, iPad 3rd generation and above, iPad Mini, iPod Touch 5th generation. But it runs with 2x resolution on the iPad devices. It needs iOS 6.1 and above.
Notice to Users
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This Microsoft Office app needs Office 365 subscription to run. And also, you can use this subscription account on 5 iPhones with this app. This 5 installations doesn’t count with the already given 5 installations for Office 365. Totally you have 10 installations (5 iPhone installations and 5 Windows, Mac installations). Office University plan is limited to 2 iPhone installations. Office 365 trial subscription can also activate this Office Mobile app.
Facebook has copied Twitter once again. First time they copied them when they revealed newly designed News Feed and said that they want to make our news feed look like a personalized news paper (which is what Twitter actually is). Then they copied them by launching blue verified check marks for celebrity pages and now they’re copying their rival once again by showing hashtags in the News Feed.
If you enjoy #hashtags on Twitter, Instagram or Google+ then you will be able to enjoy it on Facebook too. Till now hashtags on Facebook used to look like plain, regular text without any link to accompany them. But now they will become clickable with a link. If you enjoyed a status update on any topic and it contains a hashtag, then you can view more updates on the same topic by clicking on that hashtag.
What happens to Privacy?
When it comes to the visibility of your own posts in hashtag feeds, then Facebook says that your private posts will still remain private and they won’t show up to any unintended audiences in hashtag feeds. So your privacy will remain in your control. And based on this feature, company is planning to roll out trending hashtags and some other exciting secondary features too in the upcoming days.
What are your views on Facebook introducing hashtags? Will it add to the spam on Facebook? Do drop in your comments.
Last week Amazon made its foray into India. I being someone who loves to read books was interested in the Kindle tablets and their official entry into India. Today, Amazon.in lists 5 Kindle tablets available.
The two premium tablets are the Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HD 8.9. The Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ is priced at Rs. 21,999. The device has 16GB storage, WiFi connectivity, The Kindle Fire HD is priced at Rs. 15,999. This device is different from the previous one in the sense it has a smaller screen size.
The other versions inclide Kindle Paperwhite 3G at Rs. 13,999, the Kindle Paperwhite at Rs. 10,999 and finally Kindle (basic) at Rs. 5,999.
Apart from the Kindle devices, Amazon India is also rolling out the e-books that can be read on Kindle devices. The Kindle store is pretty good as it also has iPad apps and Android apps to help you read your Kindle books on other platforms. This means if you buy e-books on Kindle you can read them on your iPad or Android tablets too.
There are times when we need to constantly refresh a particular webpage just because that webpage is not loading or we want to see new content in that page. Hitting the Refresh button or the F5 button on the keyboard is the probably tiresome. In such cases, extensions like Auto Refresh Plus can be of some help to us.
Auto Refresh Plus is a nifty Google Chrome extension that can refresh a particular webpage for a pre-defined time interval. Auto Refresh Plus is also useful when you want to keep refreshing the page till that page shows some new content or lose some content. This feature is called Page Monitor.
Auto Refresh Plus is available for download on the Chrome Web Store. The extension is really simple to use. On installing, a small icon gets added to the top right of your Google Chrome browser. You can then set instructions with ease like so :
Open the webpage that needs to be refreshed periodically.
Then click on that icon and select the time interval. You can also set a time interval of your own.
That’s it. It was really simple to configure, right? Once done, that particular web page will continue refreshing automatically. You can now proceed your work with the other tabs. That tab will continue refreshing on it’s own.
Auto Refresh Plus comes with various options. You can enables sounds to notify you when Page Monitor triggers. You can also choose what sound is to be played by inserting the sound URL in the settings section. The settings section also shows options to auto start refreshing and also set a predefined URL to be refreshed.
Apple has finally unveiled its much anticipated next generation of iOS at WWDC. Apparently, due to the rumours that circulated for months, people expected a radical change – nothing surprising in that, it happens at every WWDC event.
But what’s surprising is, this time Apple has actually delivered. iOS 7 is indeed the biggest change to Apple’s mobile operating system.
The biggest change is of course the change in user interface. Talking about design, it’s like they started all over again.
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If you’re a long time iOS user, you’ll be surprised to see that there are no faux wood, leather, stitches and other skeuomorphic elements. The new interface looks minimal, focused on content – it’s great, on a whole.
But it’s buggy, it feels like Apple’s design team has rushed to ship this product. It doesn’t feel perfect. Here’s why.
Not exactly Flat
This is not a bug, this is a misconception from people.
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Flat design. If you know very little about design but want to make up stuff, this is the best way to do it – call everything as flat design.
Flat design has been a trend in graphic and web design for a while now, and there’s nothing wrong about that. What’s stupid though is, complaining everything as flat.
iOS 7 is not exactly flat design. Few reasons:
First up, in Flat design, gradients don’t come into picture at all. The icons in iOS 7 have gradients as background. Some of those gradients look lame, but yeah, they exist.
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iOS 7 shows off a new thing called Parallax effect – it creates a 3D illusion on your iPhone when you tilt it. There’s no way 3D illusions can come into flat design.
Transparency is everywhere in the OS. Pull the Control Center from down and you see the transparent rainbow colours as background. Again, transparency doesn’t come in Flat design. That’s the reason Microsoft removed Aero from Windows 8.
Now let’s see what Apple has got wrong.
Icons
Icons are the worst thing about iOS 7. There’s just no sense of unity among them.
Take a look at Mail icon – there’s a gradient going from dark blue to light blue (cyan). Next see the App store icon, the gradient goes from light blue to dark blue.
Opposite gradients, seriously?
That’s not all, thought. Take a look at the Phone icon. It looks there is a solid colour as background, right? No, it’s a gradient. A very subtle gradient. Then there is the Camera icon which looks like clipart.
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The Stocks icon looks as if the colours are inverted, and the Settings icon doesn’t even look like a gear.
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Apple says they have put a lot of effort and made all these icons on a new grid
system, which is nice, but they looks plain ugly.
Control Center
Control Center in iOS 7 is very exciting. That’s because you can quickly toggle settings without opening the Settings app. But let’s look at the design.
At the first look, it looks beautiful. As you start examining closely, you’ll get a doubt on whether you’re looking at an Android ROM. Because, there are so many settings in this very single window.
There are two types of icons here – the first ones are circular and the second ones are rounded rectangles. There are three sliders here. Three, I repeat. One for brightness. One for volume. And the last one for Music. Seriously, Apple?!
Also, who needs a Camera inside this, when you already have it on lock screen? Also, I have no idea what that second icon in the last row means. A timer may be? I don’t know. The calculator app is pretty useless, too.
Also, while we’re at Control Center, it’s important to notice that the new Notification Center still doesn’t fix the small x’s. Enjoy tapping those minuscule buttons.
Consistency is missing
You’ve just seen the design of Control Center, now take a look at the design of Share feature.
Why are the icons drawn as outlines? Why not draw them as filled ones like Control Center? Also, even the stroke width seems to be lesser. The Camera icon doesn’t convey any meaning, it doesn’t look like a Camera at all.
There’s no consistency in buttons. Take the Photos app for example, here you have Select and Share buttons at top right. Yeah, those are buttons, not pieces of text (Hello, Windows Phone!). Buttons in iOS always used to be distinct – with a unique gradient and shadow. That makes it easily distinguishable. Not anymore.
These buttons co exist with “Install” buttons in App Store which look like the old buttons.
At the end of the day, iOS 7 is still just a beta update. The design community largely being consistent of iPhone users, I’m sure (or at least hope) Apple will take suggestions from them and fix these things in the stable release.
Apple announced new upgrades to their MacBook Air computers at WWDC 2013 keynote. The new MacBook Air will feature all day battery life. The all day battery life basically means it covers upto 9 hours for the 11 inch version and 12 hours battery backup for 13 inch version.
Here are some of the basic specs and pricing for new MacBook Air computers in India.
11 – inch MacBook Air
13 – inch MacBook Air
Display: 11.6 – inch widescreen display screen.Resolution: 1366×768 (native)
Display: 13.3 – inch widescreen display screenResolution: 1440X900 (native)
OS: Mac OS X Mountain Lion
OS: Mac OS X Mountain Lion
Processor: 1.3 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
Processor: 1.3 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
Battery: Up to 9 hours of surfing the web. 8 Hours iTunes film playback.
Battery: Up to 12 hours of surfing the web. 10 hours of iTunes film playback
Price:
Rs. 67,900 for MacBook Air with 128 GB Flash Storage.
Rs. 74,900 for MacBook Air with 256 GB Flash Storage.
Price:
Rs. 74,900 for MacBook Air with 128 GB Flash Storage.
Rs. 88,900 for MacBook Air with 256 GB Flash Storage.
The price of the new MacBook Air are actually a bit lesser than last year’s pricing. That is very surprising considering the US Dollar to Indian Rupee ratio is at an all time high. Though it might also mean that there are simply a lot more MacBooks being sold in India.
Looking at the pricing, it makes very little sense to buy a 11-inch MacBook Air with 256 GB storage as it is the same price as that 13-inch MacBook Air, albeit with half the memory storage size.
Yesterday, June 10th, was a big day for Apple. As everyone expected, Apple released iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 and the event was mind blowing. Adding to that, they released iTunes Radio, new MacBook Airs, Mac Pros and lots more. This is much different than the Apple which used to release a thinner, lighter phone and call it a day.
The most exciting thing for me was OS X 10.9 aka Mavericks, that’s because I spend way lot more time on my Mac. And for starters, Mavericks is a place in California and Apple has now moved away from big cats for naming of OS X.
So, here’s what’s new in the next version of world’s most advanced desktop operating system.
Finder Tabs and Tags
Lets rule out the obvious ones first. Tabs in Finder have been rumoured for a quite a bit of time now. And because Finder is focused so much on drag-and-drop functionality, it perfectly makes sense to have tabs.
Tabs in Finder look very similar to that of Safari. If you have multiple Finder windows open, you can group them into one.
Next up, Tags. This is more of a power users’ feature. Tags offer a simple way to categorise files and let you browse files of a specific tag, in Finder. You can set tags to a file from the file saving window. Also, you can do tag-specific search in Finder. Not sure about Spotlight. Also, tags get synced via iCloud.
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Better Notifications
I love the Notification centre in Mountain Lion and with more app developers supporting, it keeps getting more useful. In Mavericks, Notifications become actionable! (say, a bit like Android).
So, think of it, you can now reply to Messages, FaceTime calls, Mails – without even opening the app. This also opens a great opportunity for developers.
Websites can now send notifications, even when Safari is not open. Again, this is a great news for web developers. There’s also another small addition – if you put your Mac to sleep and come back, it now gets you the list of notifications that you missed. Pretty nice.
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iBooks, Calendar and Maps
Apple has released two unexpected apps for Mavericks: iBooks and Maps. This is a nice update for all of you who buy books from the iTunes store. The app is pretty sleek, too. It has study cards built in, you can highlight and take notes and lot more.
Next up, Maps. It looks beautiful and useless at the same time. It’s beautiful because of features like Flyover, especially when you make the app to go full screen and with a multi touch trackpad – the experience must be awesome. But, Apple is yet to fix the Maps debacle.
The Calendar app too got an update. This is of course because Apple has now moved on to flat design and the stitches in the Calendar app look hideous. The newer Calendar looks clean and also has cool stuff like Facebook integration.
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Performance
This is probably the most exciting part for me, as a faster, smoother OS X is always welcome. It seems like Apple has worked a lot on memory management in this version of OS X.
There’s stuff like Timer Coalescing, Compressed Memory, App Nap and lot more. I personally found App Nap interesting. It basically slows down all the background apps and will let the current app (which you’re using) use more resources. Timer Coalescing is set to increase battery life by a good amount and Compressed Memory should bring on smooth 60 frames per second scrolling.
I don’t know if this affects booting speed, but if it does, that’s a very good thing.
And lots more
Adding to these set of features, there’s better Multi display support, a redesigned Safari and iCloud Keychain support. The latter is pretty huge, as it basically kills one of the most popular password managers for Mac and iOS – 1Password.
Overall, it’s a considerably big update for OS X. There’s no clarity on whether this update is going to be priced at 20$ like Mountain Lion, or totally free.
This just in – Apple has confirmed that the WWDC keynote will be live streamed for all Apple devices including Macs, iPhones/iPods, iPads, and Apple TVs – via Apple’s website.
Apple did the same thing for last year’s WWDC, i.e. live streaming only for Apple devices, but I’m sure you’ll get an alternate stream some where.
But in case you have an Apple device, make sure it runs Safari 4 or later and you’re good to go.
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The event is set to start at 10AM PDT, which turns out to be 10:30 PM IST (in case you’re living in India). You can use this little tool to get a quick idea on when the keynote starts.
Rumors have it that Apple is going to release iOS 7 and OS X 10.9, both of them showcasing flat UI. But no one really knows – which is the reason why there’s a lot of suspense for this year’s WWDC.
So, make sure you tune into this event via the official stream (via website), or an alternate stream, if you don’t have an Apple device lying near you.
A new app named Pipe is now on Facebook that makes file sharing between Facebook friends a lot more easier. This Facebook app comes bundled with many features. The recipient need not be online at the time of sharing the file. There is no need for the recipient to be using the app at the time of sending the file either.
How it works:
First visit the app page for Pipe on Facebook. The working interface of Pipe looks really simple. Once you start using this app, you’ll remember those golden Super Mario childhood days.
You just have to choose the friend to whom you want to send the file and then drag-and-drop the file in the green tube. The file will be sent immediately if that recipient if online at that time.
Once you have uploaded the file, the app will ask you permissions to notify your friend. It’s best to notify your friend about this file, or he/she may not download the file and Pipe will have to remove that file eventually.
If your friend is offline, the file will be stored in a special, safe location called Locker and Pipe will notify him/her the next time he/she is online. Note that files cannot be stored in the Locker forever. They can be stored for a maximum period of 5 days.
