Disable Or Enable USB Storage In A Single Click With Phrozen Safe USB

People who frequently have to share their PCs, may often have faced the nuisance of unauthorized media, such as movies, photos, music etc., being transferred through a thumb drive, without their consent. Kids, in particular, aren’t usually wary about viruses and malware that a USB thumb drive may carry (especially if it’s being plugged into every other computer), and so might not be your non-techie roommate. Moreover, if you have some confidential files on your computer, you would be quite miffed to have them sneakily copied when you’re away. Likewise, people often want to restrict their computers to be used for file transferring and sharing through a USB flash due to various security reasons. Windows 7 doesn’t offer any option to write protect or disable USB storage medium temporarily, or even on permanent basis. Obviously, you can disable the USB ports in the BIOS, but then again, it would also disable your keyboard or mouse, should they support a USB connector. So what would do in such cumbersome situation? Phrozen Safe USB has an answer for you. This tiny little application lets you activate and deactivate USB storage within a single click. Keep reading for more details.

The tool has a mini console window, which, although not sporting many settings, easily lets you specify three different USB modes. The USB status drop down menu holds these modes. By default, it’s set to USB Devices fully operational. This means that any USB drive connected to your PC will be fully functional – you can write, read and delete the content stored in the drive.

The drop down menu also contains USB Devices in read only mode and USB Devices deactivated. When on read only mode, the connected device can be used to read any stored content, but it becomes write protected, so this in fact a handy solution to secure your files from being copied. The last of the trio is USB deactivated. When selected, any USB device connected to the PC won’t be recognized, while still keeping your USB mouse or keyboard, or any other device for that matter, completely operational. It should be noted that the any of three modes will work on devices connected afterwards, so it won’t have any effect on existing USBs.

When closed, the application is minimized to system tray. You can easily change USB modes from within the contextual menu.

During testing I noticed that all of the three USB modes work after quitting the application even from system tray. Phrozen Safe USB supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

How To Enable Windows 8 Store On Windows To Go PC

You may have thought that Windows 8 is all about tablets and desktops, and the integration between these two platforms, and of course, the all new Windows Modern UI. You’re right, actually; Microsoft has build the OS from ground up, but Windows 8 also includes some brilliant features that really enhance overall user experience. If you have been a Linux user, you may know that Linux distributions allow users to burn entire OS to optical disc and removable storage mediums, so that one can easily use the OS without having to install it on the auxiliary storage medium. Such feature has always remained absent from Windows since its inception. Unlike Windows 7, which lets user install XP mode to use Windows XP compatible applications, the Enterprise version of Windows 8 comes packed with Windows To Go feature.

This feature enables you to boot Windows 8 Enterprise from a USB flash drive or an external hard drive, providing a convenient option to temporarily run Windows 8 on a host PC. Even though Windows To Go offers a full-fledged desktop experience, Windows Store remains disabled by default. If you’re running Windows 8 Enterprise edition from a USB device, and want to enable Windows Store to install new apps, here’s how to do it.

The first step you need to do is open Local Group Policy Editor. Just move to the Start Screen (if you aren’t already there) and type ‘gpedit.msc’. The resulting app will instantly show up under Apps list to the left. Click it to open the Local Group Policy Editor.

Local Group Policy Editor holds various settings and options and is a place for tweaking with system security, administrative and maintenance policies. For enabling Store, navigate to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Store location.

The Store policy folder houses a total of three policies. Right-click Allow Store to Install apps on Windows To Go workspaces and select Edit from the context menu.

A new window will pop up. To the left of this window, select Enabled option and click Apply to save your changes.

Once you’ve enabled the said option, close the local group policy editor. Now, use the Win+R hotkey combination to bring up Windows Run console. Type in gpupdate /force and hit Enter to apply the changes made to Windows 8 Store policy settings. After updating the policy, you will be able to use Windows Store and install new applications and updates.

Task Robot Is An Easy Task Automation Tool For Windows 8

Every once in a while, we come across a software that looks quite cheesy, but offers some features that we simply cannot resist giving it a try. Task automation and user assistance tools often lie among those applications (you probably have heard about Siri, right?). If you’re already using Windows 8, then you might want to take a look at Task Robot. The app can be downloaded for free from Windows Store and fully supports Windows 8’s Modern UI. Task Robot lets you set a list of tasks for the Wall-E like robot, so you don’t have to worry about some routine tasks, such as sending emails, looking for an app on Windows Store, perform mathematical calculations and so on. It’s a great multitasking app that leaves you with less the effort and more productivity. Although, it does not look different from what we have already seen in many similar offerings, the app is still fun to fiddle with.
The app shows a black chalkboard in the background, which acts as the central place to tell the application about a number of different task actions. All the tasks appear on this chalkboard. Additionally, you can define multiple tasks at once and execute all of them with a single click. The left sidebar contains five additional buttons including Tutorials, New, Load, Save, and Save as tile on Start Screen. The Save and Load functionality allows you to reuse previously performed tasks. You can always use the Tutorials option to get familiar with the application. To add a new task to the chalkboard, simply click the red button stating Click to choose what the robot should do. Task Robot
This will open the command panel. The command panel houses a multitude of tasks. For instance, it contains actions to manipulate text lines, write and send emails, show HTML source of a specified URL, perform mathematical calculations etc. Although the number of tasks that can be performed are quite limited, the app is being updated on a daily basis with the latest additions.
As stated earlier, all the task actions appear on the chalkboard. However, you need to specify some details in the pre-listed actions. For example, Search for ….. on the Windows Store requires you to input the item name that want the app to look for. Likewise, you need to enter the numbers that you wish to multiply. Once you’re ready, simply click GO!! to perform the actions in one go.
Task Robot works only on Windows 8. Both 32-bit and 64-bit OS editions are supported.

Modern Reader Is An Exquisite Google Reader Client For Windows 8

RSS feeds provide an undisrupted route to keep a tab on your frequently visited websites. Different folks rely on different feeds readers, with Google Reader standing as one of the most popular sources amongst all. There are a bunch of different Google Reader clients available for download, some inheriting a clean interface while others focusing on features and settings. As Windows 8 is already in the offing (check our Windows 8 RTM hands-on), many Modern UI-based Google Readers are also taking a plunge into the Windows Store. Not a while ago, Fawad reviewed Flux for Windows 8, a tile-design Google Reader client for Microsoft’s latest OS. If you’re on a hunt for something even better, Modern Reader is definitely worth giving a try. This elegant Google Reader app for Windows 8 is a treat to the eyes and lets you easily manage and read all your feeds without accessing desktop, or web browser, for that matter. The interface looks exquisite, but is further customizable via few different selectable themes, the developer has thrown in. Let’s explore more past the jump.

Modern Reader can be easily grabbed from Windows Store. To do it, open the search pane (or simply type the app’s name). Windows 8 will instantly look for all matching queries, from wherein you can easily head over to Modern Reader in store section.

The interface of Modern Reader has three main columns. All the subscribed items appear to the left, while the mid section contains the feeds within the selected item. Selected feed can be easily read on the right panel. The scrolling works extremely well, and the text appears sharp and vivid, so fear absolutely no readability nuisance.

Right-clicking anywhere on the UI brings up the option bars to the top and bottom. These bars carry a number of navigation buttons, such as add feed, rename tag, hide nav, Web view, mark unread, start, mark all read, refresh, newest, all. Web view is an experimental feature that lets you display the content of the feed in webpage format within in the app.
As mentioned earlier, the application also includes a few extra themes for users. To change theme, pop up the Charms Bar, and click Settings, followed by Settings again. There are four different themes to select from; Creamsicle, Bubblegum, Classic and Midnight. In addition, you can change Text size or sign out of the application.

In a nutshell, Modern Reader is one of best Google Reader apps on Windows 8. It should be noted that the app is available both as Free and Paid ($1.49) versions. The only downside of free version is that it displays in-app Ads. Other than that, there are no limitations or functional variations. It works on both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 8.

Task Robot Is An Easy Task Automation Tool For Windows 8

Every once in a while, we come across a software that looks quite cheesy, but offers some features that we simply cannot resist giving it a try. Task automation and user assistance tools often lie among those applications (you probably have heard about Siri, right?). If you’re already using Windows 8, then you might want to take a look at Task Robot. The app can be downloaded for free from Windows Store and fully supports Windows 8’s Modern UI. Task Robot lets you set a list of tasks for the Wall-E like robot, so you don’t have to worry about some routine tasks, such as sending emails, looking for an app on Windows Store, perform mathematical calculations and so on. It’s a great multitasking app that leaves you with less the effort and more productivity. Although, it does not look different from what we have already seen in many similar offerings, the app is still fun to fiddle with.

The app shows a black chalkboard in the background, which acts as the central place to tell the application about a number of different task actions. All the tasks appear on this chalkboard. Additionally, you can define multiple tasks at once and execute all of them with a single click. The left sidebar contains five additional buttons including Tutorials, New, Load, Save, and Save as tile on Start Screen. The Save and Load functionality allows you to reuse previously performed tasks. You can always use the Tutorials option to get familiar with the application. To add a new task to the chalkboard, simply click the red button stating Click to choose what the robot should do. Task Robot

This will open the command panel. The command panel houses a multitude of tasks. For instance, it contains actions to manipulate text lines, write and send emails, show HTML source of a specified URL, perform mathematical calculations etc. Although the number of tasks that can be performed are quite limited, the app is being updated on a daily basis with the latest additions.

Task Robot_Tasks

As stated earlier, all the task actions appear on the chalkboard. However, you need to specify some details in the pre-listed actions. For example, Search for ….. on the Windows Store requires you to input the item name that want the app to look for. Likewise, you need to enter the numbers that you wish to multiply. Once you’re ready, simply click GO!! to perform the actions in one go.

Task Robot_Tasks added

Task Robot works only on Windows 8. Both 32-bit and 64-bit OS editions are supported.

Clipboard History Brings Up ‘Clipboard Items Stack’ To Paste Text Anywhere

An application which can stack up clipboard items will help you to quickly paste selected items from clipboard. Windows native clipboard manager lacks this feature of holding text and gets quickly replaced whenever a new text snippet is copied. Clipboard History holds previously copied items so you can easily paste them in required workspace. Comparing with previously featured clipboard manager – Clipboard History (with same name), it comes with a long list of configurations to customize the way you copy and paste text. The application was developed to fulfill basic text copying needs, therefore, it can stack up only 20 text items. It comes with a registered hotkey – Caps Lock, to instantly bring up all the items which are residing in the clipboard manager. You can change the default hotkey and choose the most suitable key for pasting the text. Additionally, it allows you to edit and delete selected items from clipboard history for adding more items in the clipboard items list. You can save the most frequently used text snippets as stickies, so you can use them whenever you want.

After installing the application, you will see it in system tray. It is recommended to change the default preferences. Click Configure from system tray icon menu to bring up main configuration window.



In this window, you can delete sample clipboard items, edit them, or clear the list at once. The small window at right-side contains stickies – permanent clipboard items. A right-click on an item will let you edit, delete and change the order of stickies.  Underneath these two windows, you can enable/disable clipboard monitoring, make character ignore list, and register new hotkey combination.



Before closing down the Preferences window, don’t forget to enter 20 in Items to remember box for holding up to 20 clipboard text items. Now, when you use the defined hotkey combination, a list will pop-up with all the recently moved clipboard items. Just select the items which you want to paste in your workspace.



It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

Free Clipboard Manager: Automatically Save Clipboard Items & Screenshots

One type of applications that we probably use a lot are clipboard utilities. As Windows native clipboard doesn’t reserve more than one item at a time, third party clipboard managers provide you this freedom, and usually hold as many items into the clipboard as you want. Even if you can use third party clipboard apps, there is a large variety, so each clipboard manager has to have something unique that makes it stand out from the rest. One of those unique clipboard programs we stumbled upon, is Free Clipboard Manager. What it does is, it holds clipboard and take & save screenshots in its clipboard item library. In addition, it’s a portable application, which means you use it on the go. The application may come useful in situations where you have to copy text and take a lot of screenshots. Unlike previously covered Clippy, which keeps a log of your screenshots & copied text and requires you to save items manually, Free Clipboard Manager automatically saves the files to your hard drive without having to manually select and save the clipboard items and screenshots. This nifty little tool saves the selected text in a TXT file and images in PNG format, which can be accessed from system tray menu. It allows you to delete all clipboard items and apply restriction on saving text string that is less than 20 characters. More on Free Clipboard Manager up ahead.

There is hardly anything to talk about its UI. In order to send text to application, just select the text from app window and press Ctrl+C. The application will automatically save the text in a TXT file. It supports 2 screenshot taking methods; capture whole screen and capture active window. Use PrintScreen to capture whole screen and Alt+PrintScreen hotkey combination to take screenshot of active window. Both screenshots and text files will be saved in Clipboard directory within Free Clipboard Manager folder.

FCM list

You can change the settings of Free Clipboard Manager by right-clicking on its system tray icon. It lets you delete all clipboard items, browse clipboard directory, apply limit on saving text string less than 20 characters, enable auto start with windows, etc.

FCM Settings

Free Clipboard Manager left quite a positive impression on us. Its light-weight and quite simple to use. The application works on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit OS editions are supported. Testing was only done on Windows 7 Ultimate.

Clipboardic: Save Clipboard Items In Files & Share Text Clippings Across Network

Clipboard managers offer an easy way to keep track of items you move to Windows clipboard during a session, and help you use selected clipboard items in required applications. Since clipboard tools allow saving only a limited number of items in the list, you may want to save the entire clipboard items stack separately to restore the clipboard data anytime you want, but wouldn’t it be better if the clipboard manager could automatically move the saved clipboard items to Windows clipboard to let you easily use the paste the items. Nirsoft’s Clipboardic has been designed keeping this very idea in mind. It’s lightweight, portable clipboard manager that lets you save clipboard items in a file (CLP). You can use clipboard files to move the saved clipboard items to Windows clipboard by simply selecting the file from the application.

The application saves the clipboard items’ files in the same directory, where its executable is residing. Just launch the application to activate the clipboard capturing, and start copying text. You will notice that it saves the text that you copy in a file, and shows the copied items in the main list with information, including Filename, Added on (created date), Type, File Size, Computer Name, and Text.

clipboardic main

Before you start a new session, it’s recommended to move the CLP files to another directory, so that clipboard data can be recovered. To move the selected item to clipboard, just select the item from the list, and it will copy that item to clipboard, letting you paste selected text snippet in required application. On toolbar, you will find option to search the saved clipboard data, refresh the list, save the selected clipboard items in text file, and view properties of selected item. By default, it clears all clipboard data on exit, but you can manually clear the clipboard data from system tray menu. If it doesn’t show tray icon, go to Options menu and select Put Icon on Tray.

clipboardic tray

The right-click context menu presents Save Clipboard Item and Copy Clipboard Item. If you want to save an item in the list in TXT format with complete info (filename, added on, file size), choose Save Clipboard Item option. The Copy Clipboard Item option does the same; it copies item’s information to clipboard. As mentioned earlier, if you want to use a saved clipboard item, just select the item from the list, and then paste the text in any application.

copy save clipboard

Cliboardic makes it easy to share clipboard data over network. Instead of manually sending the clipboard files to others, run the Clipboardic executable file from shared location to share the clipboard across the connected systems. It works on all versions of Windows.

PasteAsFile: Directly Save Clipboard Items To Files

Whenever we research something on the web, we save the related information for later use. What we usually do is copy the text, open an empty notepad file, paste the text there, and save it. If you are trying to store information from different sources, saving all of them in one file will not only confuse you, but also make it hard to organize the information. In order to avoid the confusion, what you can do is save the copied snippet in a different text file and rename each file accordingly, but that can waste a lot of your precious time. Text-based data is not the only thing that one needs to research for while doing a project. Today, we have an application for you called PasteAsFile, which lets you paste any text or image related item from the Windows Clipboard directly into a file. You do not have to create an empty file of any kind before pasting the clipboard content. With PasteAsFile, you no longer need to open the file to paste the required item into it. Just copy the item (text/image) to the Windows clipboard, right-click the file in which you want to insert the copied snippet, and click Paste As File option.

After installation, the application integrates into Windows Explorer context menu, and lets you paste text and images directly into files without having to manually open them. The supported formats for text files include TXT, RTF, DOC, HTML, PHP and a lot of other formats that deal with text, while the supported image file formats are JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIF, TGA and PCX. By default, TXT format is selected for text files, and PNG is selected for saving images. You can enter any other format of your choice in the given field. This eliminates the need to change the format of the file after saving it. The file will be created in the same location that you access the context menu. For instance, if you right-click your desktop and select PasteAsFile, the desktop will be selected as the default directory of that file.

PasteAsFile

Upon click, a dialog box pops up, allowing you to change the file name and its extension. You can also choose another location for the file by clicking the Choose Location file.

Paste As File

PasteAsFile works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Testing was carried out on Windows 7 64-bit edition.

RoboTask: An Effective Task Automation Tool For Windows

By automating system operations, one can save a significant amount of time in order to achieve efficiency and optimum task management. RoboTask is a useful application that equips you with a feature-rich task automation environment loaded with useful hotkeys for essential functions. It can automate a wide range of tasks sequentially whether be it simple execution or manipulation of system variables. It eliminates the need for batch file execution, offering you an easy way to run multiple applications scripts and commands in a required sequence. You can now ensure data integrity by automating backup operations as well as peak system performance by configuring automatic execution of useful tools like the disk defragmenter, data backup etc. Similarly, you can choose to run the tasks when the system is idle. In short, RoboTask monitors both the user needs and the system activity to optimize utilization at each end.

As soon as the installation completes, RoboTask executes instantly and presents a simple user interface. The toolbar gives you access to the essential features of the application such as create, edit, remove, run or stop tasks. You can also view results in accordance with filters and modes (like Enabled or Disabled tasks list) using the respective field and drop down menu. It is automatically loaded with useful demo tasks that are disabled for new users. These are presented in a listed format with emphasis on task name, status and last start columns. Each task is based on triggering events that result in an automated task execution. To activate a task, all you need is to right click on the relevant entry and select Enable from the context menu.

RoboTask Lite - Main

The Task menu allows you to perform basic operations like New, Edit, Delete, Run or Stop a task. Moreover, you can further export or import tasks in the form of task files, aiding in the documentation and record keeping. The alerts window at the bottom pane allows you to keep track of operations and task progress or error messages with respective time stamps.

RoboTask - Menu

To view and edit the intricate details within a task, double click the respective entry and perform the relevant operations using various tabs covering Actions, Triggering Events, and Local variables. In addition, you can add in and associate observations or useful details related to the task in the Comments tab.

Edit Task - Robotask

Furthermore, the program settings allow you to modify the interface as per the requirements. The Plug-ins tab provides functionalities for specialized operations and maintenance. To view details regarding a specific item, click the Information button, accordingly.

RoboTask Lite Settings - Plugins

All in all, RoboTask is a powerful automation utility that is beneficial for both the novice and advanced users. We tested the application on Windows 7, 64-bit edition. It also supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Do It Again: Windows Automation Tool To Repeat Actions

Do It Again is an efficient automation tool which lets user automate a set of actions or tasks to perform them quickly without having to follow the lengthy procedure over and over again. For those who are not familiar with automation tools, think it as a Macro recorder that allows you to record set of actions to perform them later with a single click.

To begin, just create a new task and start performing actions or tasks which you wish to record. Once you’ve finished, hit Scroll Lock key to finish recording, and finally give the task an appropriate name.

do it again

You can create as many tasks as you want, all the tasks are listed in bottom pane. To run a task, just double-click its name. It records each and every keystroke, mouse click, and mouse wheel movement to prevent you from opening same applications, scrolling window, entering same dataset, etc., over and over again.

wmp

The Options menu lists down couple of configurations to set them up in any way possible. You can register hotkeys for specific task, set pause time length, normalize all pauses, and customize other application-specific options.

do it again options

A helpful automation tool to cut down the time required for performing same monotonous actions. It works on Windows 2000, 2003/2008 Server, XP, Vista, and 7; testing was done on Windows 7 x86 system.

Evernote’s Skitch Debuts On Android, Lets You Annotate, Edit & Share Images

Evernote – a popular note taking tool recently acquired Skitch, which itself is a famous name in the world of screen capturing tools. To the utmost delight of Android fans, the official Skitch client has just been rolled out into the Android Market and guess what? It’s absolutely free! However, the app is not actually a screen capturer but rather a photo-taking/annotating tool. With Skitch, you can grab a quick photo, draw over it or on a blank canvas, add marks (highlights), arrows and text, save your ‘masterpieces’ to your device and share them with your online buddies and on Evernote.

Ranging from its gorgeous logo to its usability, Skitch looks a polished article. Using Skitch is as simple as one, two, three. Once installed, the app opens to a home screen with three options. You can capture a fresh image from your camera, load an image from gallery or try out your artistic skills on a blank canvas. Just get an image on Skitch and you’re ready to annotate it as you like.

The drawing interface of Skitch sports couple of bars: a tool bar and an action bar. Tool bar is for all your drawing needs. It presents you with multiple options, the first of which is an option to choose color and line thickness of objects. Tap on the pencil button on this bar and start creating freehand shapes on your images. Long press on this button and select highlighter tool to draw semi-transparent lines. You can draw arrows from the relevant button to point towards specific objects on image. The type button lets you add text to images. Finally, the shape button on the tool bar lets you create various shapes by dragging your finger over your image. Long press on said button to choose a shape (square, ellipse and line). The best thing with Skitch is that it lets you preview any modifications you make from aforementioned tools.

The action bar lets you perform various actions on images/drawings. This is where you can get your home, delete, undo/redo, save and share button. If you have Evernote installed, then you may share your drawings on Evernote by taping on the relevant icon on the action bar.

Skitch brings customizable drawing options that can help you edit your snaps and refine them to perfection. Per-tool settings and Screen-relative tool sizes let you tweak color/brush settings and lock active tool sizes respectively. You may also opt to Stretch Small Images to fit the canvas if required. Enabling the Smart highlighter option causes your highlight strokes to become perfectly straight when swiping horizontally or vertically. Draw-and-tap selection lets you reposition objects by tapping a second finger mid-stroke. Plus, you may adjust highlighter opacity as per convenience from the Settings menu within the app.

To cut it short, Skitch is one feature-packed drawing app for Android that can surely keep you captivated for hours. As of now, Android users can immediately try out this amazing app by downloading it from the Market for free while iOS users can only wait and hope to have one for their devices very soon.

Evernote’s Image Editing & Annotation Tool Skitch Now Available For Windows 8

Skitch is a widely popular application, recently acquired by Evernote, that allows you to annotate, edit and share your images with others. It has been available for Mac, iOS and Android for quite some time and is considered one of the best applications for editing, annotating and uploading to Evernote accounts. Since the Windows 8 final, public release is scheduled for the 26th of October, a lot of apps by some major developers have released for upcoming version of Windows. Recently, we have covered apps for Windows 8, such as Dailymotion and Flux. Skitch has also hopped onto the Windows bandwagon. Currently available on Windows Store, it includes all the major features offered by the other variants of the app including webcam image capture, image editing and annotation.

To download the app to your Windows 8 system, open Windows Store and type “skitch” to search for the app.

Skitch Windows Store

When found, click the Install button available on the left side. The app will be automatically downloaded and installed on your system.

Skitch Download

Open Start Screen, move to the extreme right side, and look for the newly created tile for Skitch. Clicking the app tile will bring up its main interface. It allows you to work in 3 modes: capture new pictures and annotate them using the provided tools, open existing photos and edit them according to your needs, or open a blank canvas and create an image from scratch.

Skitch Main

When you open an existing image, a toolbar at the bottom provides you with all the basic options to annotate your images. There are tools available for drawing a line, making an aero pointer, insert Square, Rectangle, Circle or Straight Line, and adding a text box. You can change the color and size of each item from the right side. Once done, you can easily upload the finished image to your Evernote account. The selection tool on the right side allows you to change the shape, position and direction of each item after you have placed it. After choosing the selection tool, left clicking an item selects it, allowing you to move it anywhere you want, while right clicking deselects the item.

The Start Screen tile of the Skitch app is a live (dynamic) tile. It shows previews of the images that you have worked on, i-e added annotations, inserted custom markers etc. Skitch works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 8.

AirCalc Is An Adjustable, Persistent On-Screen Calculator For Android

The stock calculator app that comes bundled with Android OS is undoubtedly a handy utility to have, especially if you are often required to perform various calculations on your device. However, said tool might just not suffice if you were to perform rather prolonged calculations by reading and feeding in multiple entries from, say, an image, email, document files (DOC, XLS, PDF etc.) or a webpage that is opened on your device, simply because of the hassle involved in frequently switching back and forth between the calculator app, and the document. Enter AirCalc – an alternative calculator for Android that presents you with a persistent overlay so that you can perform your calculations from anywhere in the OS. The “floating” calculator is transparent, moveable, and resizable, and provides you with the same calculation operations found in the stock Android calculator app.

AirCalc-Android-Sample3AirCalc-Android-Sample1

The interface of AirCalc might resemble the looks and functionality of Android’s stock calculator app, but in terms of customizability and convenience, it is far better. Just launch the app, hold down and drag the bottom-right side of the interface to resize it. Tap the minimize button at the top-right side to hide everything but the top bar. Now, open the document, image or website that contains the data that you wish to add to your calculations, and drag the top bar to to reposition the calculator accordingly. Swiping across the numeric pad reveals additional operations, just like in the stock calculator app.

AirCalc-Android-Sample2AirCalc-Android-Sample4

On Android 3.0 Honeycomb (tablets) can, AirCalc allows adjusting the opacity (level of transparency) of the app’s interface, and provides a clipboard feature to copy and paste entries from documents to calculator, and vice versa.

Although the app is designed to work in both landscape and portrait orientation, the option of setting the app to reveal all its calculation operations while in landscape orientation would have made AirCalc even more useful. The absence of said feature, however, does not diminish the usefulness of the app in any way. It saves you from the hassle of constantly switching between the calculator and documents, or writing down each and every entry on paper to feed them into the calculator later.

World Calculator Brings Windows 7 Calculator To XP And Vista

A replica of Windows 7 System calculator, World Calculator offers complete functions of a standard calculator. It can be used to perform basic arithmetic functions, i.e. add, substract, multiply, divide and more.

The portable tool offers a small interface. Since it is developed identical to Windows 7  calculator, Windows XP and Windows Vista users may consider using this application to give it a touch of Windows 7.

As far as functionality goes, you can use this tool for carrying out all your basic calculations. It keeps a record of the input value and displays it above the result. You can also store any calculation by clicking on M+ or M- key. The calculator offers all functions that are found in any standard, non-scientific calculator, such as add, subtract, divide, multiply, root, percentage and reciprocity.

world-calculator

A portable standard calculator, similar to Windows 7 System calculator. It supports, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7

Statistics Calculator: Statistical Graphs, Formulae & More On Android

The recently reviewed Mathway app provids Android users with a very useful means to instantly and conveniently solve a wide array of Mathematical problems on their devices. Although said app also had a dedicated Statistics segment, it was rather feature-constrained to be deemed as a viable tool for users concerned with the subject. Developed by XDA member cgollner, Statistics Calculator is a free, multilingual Android app designed specifically to help you calculate some of the most sought-after statistical values on the go. Using the app, you can easily find the sample size, Arithmetic/Geometric mean, median, mode, variance, coefficient of variation, quartiles, Outliers barrier, and lower/upper whisker of the input values.

The app also displays Bar Chart, Histogram and Box Plot of the provided values, and supports saving and exporting these graphs in PNG/JPEG format in an image resolution of your choice. That’s not all; Statistics Calculator also features a separate segment dedicated to display formulae to all the aforementioned statistical components.

Although not the only Statistics app in the Android Market, Statistics Calculator is easily one of the simplest to use solutions of its kind.

Statistics-Calculator-Android-Home1 Statistics-Calculator-Android-Home

The app’s interface is split into three main tabs, namely Calculate Stats, Graphs and Reference. The Calculate Stats screen is indeed the most important of them all, as it lets you input required values in a text field, and view a detailed list of all the Statistical calculations on the same screen.

Statistics-Calculator-Android-Graphs Statistics-Calculator-Android-Histogram

The Graph tab, as indicated by its name, displays the aforementioned graphs as per user choice. Based on the values and calculations from the Calculate Stats screen, you can use the Graphs screen to switch to the Bar Chart, Histogram and Box Plot of the provided data accordingly. Tapping Menu > Save & Share on this screen lets you select the image format and resolution of the graph(s) that you wish to save and/or share.

Statistics-Calculator-Android-Box-Plot Statistics-Calculator-Android-Export-Graph

Finally, if you need help with recalling the formula of Arithmetic Mean, Median, Quartile et al, you can always hit the Reference tab, and get help instantly.

Statistics-Calculator-Android-Home2 Statistics-Calculator-Android-Reference

Statistics Calculator is available in the Android Market as a free variant as well as an approximately $2 paid flavor. Apart from sporting all aforementioned features, the paid variant of the app also lets you select from multiple input types, including just the values, a combination of multiple values, and/or that of values and frequencies.

MyScript Calculator Is A Handwriting-Based Number Cruncher For Android

Android’s stock calculator app is handy enough to let users easily perform standard mathematical and scientific calculations. That being said, we’ve been frequently bringing you several useful and feature-rich alternatives in the form of CALCNEXT, AirCalc, Statistic Calculator and Handymate etc. Where almost all aforementioned options present you with a button-laden, tap-to-input calculator interface, MyScript Calculator takes an entirely different route to offer you a canvas on which you can draw/write mathematical expressions to get all the required answers. Supporting several basic mathematical operations and functions, the app has the capacity to automatically interpret input (user-drawn) data, complete with both the operator and the operands detection, and perform requested operation on any amount of operands that you provide via drawing. Interesting, isn’t it? What’s even more fascinating about MyScript Calculator is that, unless you wipe the canvas clear, the app lets you continue with further operations, thereby amending the results accordingly. It accepts input via finger as well as stylus, and supports palm rejection, with additional support for left-handed users.

MyScript-Calculator-Android-Test1 MyScript-Calculator-Android-Test2

While the app works almost flawlessly on an Android smartphone, it’s true capabilities can be experienced on larger screen real estate sported by tablets. Perhaps that’s the reason why the app has been designed to run in landscape orientation only. MyScript Calculator currently supports only the following functions:

    Addition
    Subtraction
    Multiplication
    Division
    Square Root
    Pi
    Parentheses
    Exponentiation
    Automatic variable and decimal detection

MyScript-Calculator-Android-Test5 MyScript-Calculator-Android-Test6

Using the app is as simple as doodling on a drawing board, with the only difference being that this particular canvas allows users input mathematical expressions and obtain results of their calculations. You may input the entire equation either at once or in parts. In the latter’s case, you can wait for the app to display calculated results, and then carry on with further operations. As mentioned earlier, unless you wipe the slate afresh, the app will keep appending any newly added operands and/or operators to allow you to carry on with the ongoing calculation streak. Either way, the app analyzes input items/drawings, digitizes them, performs the requested operation(s), and finally, presents you with the required calculations, complete with the expression itself.

MyScript-Calculator-Android-Test4 MyScript-Calculator-Android-Test8

What if you happen to input a wrong value, or if the app itself recognizes the input values inaccurately? Fret not, as you can wipe only the erroneous part off by just scribbling on it – it’s that simple! If only the app allowed logging history of previous calculations, it would have made life all the more easier. Still, it’s a refreshing experience, to say the least, to have a tool like MyScript Calculator at your disposal for all the basic calculations, especially in cases where a conventional touch-based calculator just doesn’t suffice; as in equations that involve multiple parentheses, exponential values and relatively long expressions.

LockLauncher: Add Up To 9 App Shortcuts To iPhone Lock Screen [Cydia]

If you aren’t too big on security, and your iOS device’s lock screen does not have a passcode set up, then it is likely that you will appreciate LockLauncher for jailbroken devices. The lock screen in an iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is designed to avoid accidental launch of apps, but this Cydia tweak goes against the whole concept of locking, and brings one-touch app launch to iDevices, right from the lock screen! With this tweak you can choose any 9 apps that you want to pin to the lock screen, and although the interface of the whole thing could have been a lot better, it does bring a unique and new functionality to the table.

LockLauncher LockLauncher Settings

LockLauncher is available for free in the ModMyi repo of the Cydia store. Once you have installed the tweak to your iDevice, it will be enabled straight away, without having you do so yourself from within Settings. By default, when you go to your lock screen after installation, there will be just 9 blank tiles present there. You have to set up the shortcuts before you can start using the tweak. Doing so is easy; all you have to do is tap the small blue arrow at the left of the screen, and then tap a tile. This will bring up a list of all the apps on your device that can be mapped to the tile. Using LockLauncher you can access both stock and third-party apps, but the whole thing won’t work if you use a passcode lock. Of course the icons will be there, but tapping them will be a real headache. The interface of LockLauncher could have been a whole lot better if the blank tiles didn’t show up on the lock screen. For now, you are forced to choose all 9 shortcuts to pin to the screen, as otherwise there is going to be a blank tile staring at you all the time.

Some people might argue that the tweak defeats the whole purpose of having a lock screen We believe that LockLauncher can become way more useful if instead of tapping an icon, you had to slide across it, drag it across the screen to unlock to the associated app, or if you had to double-tap the Home button to reveal the shortcuts. However, even as it is, the tweak does succeed in adding ease of access to the lock screen, and for that, jailbroken users might want to give it a try.

Unfold: Fold Away Your iPhone’s Lock Screen Instead Of “Slide To Unlock” [Cydia]

If you think every tweak in the Cydia store is there to add some useful new feature to your iOS device, you clearly haven’t seen enough of the jailbreak store. Cydia is all about customization. There are lots and lots of themes and cosmetic tweaks available there, and the latest to join them is Unfold. Just last week, a concept video made the rounds on the internet proposing an alternative to the familiar “Slide To Unlock” employed by iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Unfold brings that concept to life, and using this tweak, you can bid a fond farewell to “Slide To Unlock”. If you are using Unfold, you will still have to swipe across the bottom of your device’s lockscreen, but instead of a moving slider, the whole screen will fold away like a paper, revealing the Home screen, passcode lock or any app that was opened when the device was last locked. Read on to know more about Unfold, and to see the tweak’s beautiful animation in our screenshots.

Unfold iOS Lockscreen Unfold iOS Home Unfold iOS Passcode

Once you have installed Unfold to your jailbroken iOS device, the tweak will take control of the lockscreen automatically after the post-installation respring. There is a menu for Unfold in the Settings app, but it lists nothing more than the developer’s contact details. To see Unfold in action, just lock your iDevice, and try to unlock it from the lockscreen. You have to swipe from left to right at the bottom of the lockscreen (would have been cool if the gesture worked anywhere on the screen), and the lockscreen will start to roll, following your finger’s movement. When the device has been unlocked completely, you will hear the familiar sound that usually accompanies unlocking in iOS.

Unfold won’t disturb your device’s passcode (if you have one set up) and will reveal any app instead of the Home screen if the app was opened at the time of locking. There isn’t any noticeable lag after the tweak’s installation, making it just about a perfect replacement for the stock iOS lockscreen. In case you still aren’t convinced if you should get Unfold or not, you can judge for yourself by giving it a try, as the tweak won’t cost you anything! You can download it from the BigBoss repo of the Cydia store, although you have to remember that Unfold doesn’t work for the iPad (in the works), and on other devices, you have to be on iOS 5 to enjoy the beautiful animation.

Keep Your iPhone’s Lock Screen Wallpaper Visible Even While Charging [Cydia]

iOS blacks out the wallpaper as soon as you put your iPhone or iPad on charging. This is meant to be a feature that lets users distinguish between the charging and normal states at a glance. It might be a bit useful for some users, but most people might argue that the green battery icon is more than enough to alert you that your device is currently being charged. Also, the darkening of the background doesn’t look too good aesthetically, and that is precisely why ChargingBackground has been released in the Cydia store. If you have got this tweak installed on your jailbroken iPhone, iPad or iPod touch, the lockscreen wallpaper will always remain visible, even when you put the device on charging. That does not mean that the big green charging icon will go away, the icon remains unchanged and just the black background behind it is replaced by your current lock screen wallpaper.

iPhone Lockscreen ChargingBackground Cydia ChargingBackground iOS

In our experience, ChargingBackground degrades the quality of the battery animation on your lockscreen to some extent, but that happens only on certain wallpapers and themes that clash with the colors in the battery image. Other than that, using the tweak is a treat. You just have to install it from the Cydia store, and it does everything else automatically. To see if ChargingBackground is working its magic, put your jailbroken iDevice on charging and take a look at the lockscreen. You are sure to notice that the black background behind the battery animation has been replaced by your usual lock screen wallpaper. The battery icon will retain all its previous attributes and colour properties.

If you use the tweak wisely, it will certainly make your iPhone look better, although it is worth mentioning that ChargingBackground might not work on your jailbroken iPhone if you are using a Cydia theme on your device. Also, with certain themes and wallpapers the slider (for screen unlock) might look a bit too odd, or there might be visibility issues regarding the camera grabber (if you are on iOS 5.1 of course). So, if you love your device’s wallpapers enough to keep them visible even while charging, head to the BigBoss repo and grab ChargingBackground for free. The tweak does not have any configuration steps or customizable options, so don’t try looking for a Settings menu for it. ChargingBackground is just a 681kB download, and is not likely to cause any lag on your jailbroken iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

PaperLock Adds Paper-Themed Lock Screen Animations To Your iPhone [Cydia]

Looks like the Unfold Cydia tweak (reviewed here) has started a really good epidemic. First, there was Unlockize (review), a tweak that borrowed the main concept behind Unfold but with more diversity, and now, PaperLock has arrived in the Cydia store. PaperLock is another collection of unlock animations for iPhone and iPod touch devices, and although it lacks the variety on offer in Unlockize, this new addition to Cydia brings a completely new flavor to lockscreen animations. The tweak has three animations (or themes, as it labels them) and all of them are designed to emulate some sort of paper. You can peel away the lockscreen of your device to reveal the Springboard or passcode screen. Read on for details regarding all the animations available in PaperLock.

PaperLock iOS PaperLock Peel To Unlock PaperLock bandAid Theme

When you install PaperLock to your iPhone, it is enabled automatically. There’s a slight problem with this though, as the default unlock anchor is placed to the right of the screen instead of the usual left. If you don’t know that, you might end up trying to get past the lockscreen for quite some time. Fortunately, the situation can be rectified from the tweak’s Settings menu easily. The PaperLock menu has options to let users select themes, and change the position of the unlock anchor. Following themes are available in PaperLock.

    Full Page: This is the tweak’s default animation. It lets you navigate away from the lockscreen of your device by folding it away like a paper. You don’t have to rely on the slider area, too, as the page can be peeled away from any part of the screen.
    Band-aid: Replaces the unlock slider with a band-aid that has to be peeled away.
    Plastic tab: Quite similar to the band-aid theme, but with a really glossy and transparent look.

PaperLock is compatible with passcode lock, but unlike Unfold and Unlockize, there’s a minor glitch in PaperLock if you have a passcode enabled on your iDevice. Instead of coming up with the passcode screen straight away, you will get a glimpse of your Springboard (or any opened app) before you are asked for the passcode. Apart from that, everything works pretty smoothly (including the Camera Grabber) and there’s no perceptible lag in anything. PaperLock will cost you $2.99, but if you liked Unfold and Unlockize, this new tweak won’t disappoint you. You can download PaperLock from the BigBoss repo in the Cydia store, and after its installation, the tweak is completely configurable via the menu it adds to the stock Settings app.

SwitcherLand Adds Landscape App Switcher Tray To iPhone [Cydia]

Landscape mode on iPad looks just about perfect for most apps, and even on iPod touch and iPhone’s smaller screen, people like having the option of viewing pages in landscape mode rather than just portrait. Most iOS apps (both stock and third party) support landscape viewing, but the same does not hold true for system settings. Consider the App Switcher tray as an example. Even in apps having a landscape mode, the tray is always at the bottom of your screen. Won’t it be cool if there was some way of making the App Switcher act in accordance with the current orientation of your iDevice? That’s exactly what SwitcherLand does. The newly released Cydia tweak lets its users view the App Switcher tray horizontally when you are within an app which is in landscape mode.

SwitchLand iOS

After you have installed SwitcherLand, open any app which supports landscape mode (Safari, the stock Notes app or any other landscape supported third party app), and then hold your iDevice horizontally. Now double tap the home button to bring up the App Switcher tray and enjoy the difference. Instead of appearing to the side, the tray will now appear beneath the page, compatible with the landscape mode.

The tweak might be nothing more than a cosmetic enhancer for your iPhone, but it is available for free, and is one of those Cydia tweaks about which you can forget once you have installed them. SwitcherLand is available in the BigBoss repo of the Cydia store, so do give it a try to get a taste of something new on your iDevice.

Google Drive Updated With Document Editing & Media Upload [iOS/Android]

Google made a smart move when it bumped Google Docs to Google Drive, as a file backup service offers much more usability compared to just an online document editor. To complement the revamped service, Google released the official Google Drive apps for Android and iOS. While the Android app has been quite feature-rich from the beginning, the one for iOS lacked in numerous areas, and could’ve certainly used a massive dose of improvements. The most major omission in the iOS app for Google Drive was its inability to let people edit their documents. Apart from that, there were a lot of smaller annoyances, like the absence of animations if you were viewing a presentation on the app. The app also lacked features like upload of photos and videos from your iPhone or iPad, and you couldn’t even create a new document without having to go to your PC. Now, however, all that and more has been addressed by the latest update of Google Drive for Apple’s smartphone platform. Even the Android version of the app has received some significant improvements, which we shall take a look at just past the fold.

Google Drive iOS Upload Google Drive iOS Presentation

Here is a complete list of all the new features introduced in the Google Drive client for iOS and Android.

    Easier File Management: Hitting the ‘+’ button on the app’s main screen, you can now create new documents and folders. The folder option is new to Android as well, and is sure to make everything more manageable for smartphone users of Google Drive. By hitting the arrow next to any file’s name and choosing the Move option, you can add any document to a particular folder.
    Media Upload: Google Drive for iPhone now lets its users add photos and videos to their accounts. The uploads are possible both from the camera roll, or straight from your iDevice’s camera as fresh captures.
    Better Viewing of Presentations: While you still can’t edit presentations stored on your Drive account, the app now lets its users view them in full. Even the transition animations are visible if you are viewing the presentation on your Android or iPhone. Speaker notes can be viewed within the app, too.

Google Drive iOS Edit Doc Google Drive iOS Formatting

    Document Editing: If you have got a lot of Google document files stored in your Drive account, it is now possible to edit them on the go. The editing feature was already available in the Android variant of Google Drive, and now it has made its way to iOS, too. You can select font type and size for documents, while background color, bold, italic and underline buttons are available in the top bar as well.
    Collaborative Editing: Google Drive for iOS lets its users set new permissions for individual files in your account, and also shows the current viewers of any document.

Google Drive is now available in more than 30 languages, and has got some other useful features as well (like letting its users delete files using the app). The app remains free, of course, and the iOS version is optimized for both iPhone and iPad.

SwitcherEffect Adds New Animations To App Launch via iOS App Switcher

One of the perks of owning a jailbroken iPhone or iPad is that you can spice up your device without putting in too much of an effort. The Cydia store offers a lot of useful apps and tweaks, but some of the items available in the jailbreak store are there just to let you make your device more beautiful. SwitcherEffect is one such Cydia tweak that might not rank too high in terms of functionality and usefulness, but is pretty good as an option if you are looking to add some extra spice to the App Switcher tray in your iPhone or iPad. The tweak doesn’t add anything new directly to the tray, but just brings some fresh animations to the apps you launch via the App Switcher. There are just 2 animations offered by SwitcherEffect for now, but that number might increase in the future.

SwitcherEffect Cydia SwitcherEffect Settings SwitcherEffect iOS

SwitcherEffect is available in the Cydia store, and you can download it for free. After the tweak’s installation, it will take effect automatically, but you can change things around a little by heading to the stock Settings app and entering the SwitcherEffect menu. The tweak’s menu has a lot of buttons, but most of them deal with getting help and contacting the developer of SwitcherEffect. The real buttons in the tweak’s menu are there to let you enable or disable SwitcherEffect (it is toggled to ON by default), while the choice between the two available effects is provided in here as well. The two listed options in the Effects menu include Temper and RotateX.

    Temper: The temper animation will darken the whole screen each time you tap an app icon from the Switcher tray. The screen fades into view after a few moments.
    RotateX: This effect is far more interesting compared to the previous one. If you apply RotateX to your iPhone or iPad, the apps launched via App Switcher start acting like a rotating cube, and will spin once before coming to your screen completely.

SwitcherEffect can certainly use some more animations, and other options. For example, it will be really cool if the tweak’s developer adds an option to control the time of animations available in SwitcherEffect. Apart from these points, SwitcherEffect is pretty good for an eye candy tweak, specially since it won’t add any lag to your jailbroken iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The tweak won’t cost you anything, so you can guiltlessly uninstall it if you don’t like it.

WinGram: Modern UI Instagram Client For Windows 8

Sharing images with friends and family is something everyone loves to do. It is a great way to share the excitement of an event with your loved ones in case they were not able to attend themselves. Various desktop tools and web services have different capabilities when it comes to instantly sharing photos with each other. You can use services like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or Instagram to post images in real time, where people can view and comment on them. With such a large number of web services in this category available, every offering needs to have something different from others in order to succeed. Instagram is one such service that allows you to apply filters to the captured images and make them look like professionally edited/retro masterpieces, without much hard work. Today, we have a Windows 8 app for you called WinGram that allows you to manage your Instagram account, view personal and public feeds, comment on pictures, download them to your computer, like the image etc.

WinGram is a paid application, but a trial version is also available. You can try out the application for 7 days and if you like it enough, buy it at a price of $1.49.

To download the application, open the Windows Store and type “Wingram”. Clicking the app in the search results will take you to its own page.

Screenshot (41)

When on its own page, click the Try button at the left side to download the trial version of the app. It will be automatically downloaded and installed on your system.

WinGram

Open Start Screen and scroll to the far right side. There, you will find a newly created tile for WinGram. Click the tile to gain access to the app. The main interface of WinGram has a wooden background and displays the Popular stream of images.

WinGram Main

Click an image to have a larger view of it, read all the comments people have left on it, and check out other information related to the image, such as when was it posted, the number of likes it got, total number of comments and its region.

WinGram Image

Right-click anywhere inside the interface and select Login from the lower right corner to view and manage your own Instagram account. Once logged in, you can perform different functions, such as comment on other images, like them and download them to your computer.

WinGram Account

WinGram works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 8.

Small4MMS: Compress Images Right From The Stock iPhone Photos App

If you take a look at the size of photos in your iPhone’s Camera Roll, you are sure to notice that a lot of file sizes are in MBs. While this might not appear to be too much at first glance, even a 1MB file can appear to be very large if you are using your data connection to share it. Apart from that, iOS almost always has trouble when it comes to sharing relatively large photos via MMS. There is no way of knowing the size of the image being sent beforehand, and if it exceeds your carrier limit, you might end up inadvertently sending multiple MMS. Thanks to the jailbreak community, there is now an easy solution to that problem. Small4MMS is a Cydia tweak that compresses photos in your jailbroken iPhone or iPad, trimming them down to standard MMS size (less than 100 kB in most cases). The tweak saves the compressed photos as new copies of existing ones, so you don’t have to worry about irreversibly altering photos in your iPhone.

Small4MMS Options Small4MMS Notification

Small4SMS works by adding a new button in the options menu of each photo within the stock Photos app. The shrinking button is added at the end of the option list, just below Print. The button shows the image file’s size, and tapping it will shrink the file immediately. If the image is already too small, Small4MMS leaves it unchanged, and is intelligent enough to not compress every photo. In the case of small images, you will get a notification stating that no compression is needed, and you should use the photo as it is. If a picture does have a significant size, Small4MMs will create a copy of it that has quite a diminished size as compared to the original image. In this case, again, you will see a notification informing you of the compression’s success. In our opinion, the quality of images compressed by Small4MMS is not reduced visibly, and you won’t really miss your old, large-sized photo at all, but still, if photo quality is important to you, it is advisable to keep the original image saved in your iPhone.

Despite its name, the usefulness of Small4MMS is not restricted to just MMS. People are sure to find a lot of other uses for the tweak as well, like easy sharing of photos via means other than MMS, and saving storage space in your iDevice. The tweak is available as a free download in the Cydia store, and comes without any configurable options.

Disable Uninstall Option For Windows 8 Modern UI Apps [Tip]

Windows 8 comes packed with a slew of new feature additions and enhanced user interface, but a lot of things have also been excluded from the latest release. With the release of Windows 8 looming on the horizon, we at AddictiveTips are trying to give you a preview of everything it will offer to the users. As most of us already know, the Start Orb has been replaced by the Start Screen, and instead of Desktop, the Start Screen is the main workspace that hosts all the installed applications. Whenever you install an application, instead of a shortcut on the desktop, a tile is created on the Start Screen that allows you to quickly launch it. In Windows 8, you can uninstall an app in multiple ways. The first method involves using Control Panel > Add & Remove Programs applet, but the second one lets you uninstall an app directly from the Start Screen. In this post, we will explain how you how can prevent your PC account holders from uninstalling Windows 8 UI based apps (formerly known as metro apps).

To uninstall an app from the Start Screen, all you need is to right click its title and select Uninstall from the options available at the bottom of the screen.

Start Screen

In order to restrict your PC users from uninstalling Windows 8 UI style apps, log in as Administrator or make sure that you have required administrative rights to change local group policies. First off, go to Start Screen, type gpedit.msc, select Apps from the right sidebar, and then click gpedit.msc in the main window.

Start-Screen5

The Local Group Policy Editor is the Microsoft Management Console snap-in that helps system administrator(s) in applying application and system components related restrictions. In Local Group Policy Editor, go to the following location.

    User Configuration/ Administrative Templates/ Start Menu and Taskbar

In the main window, look for the Policy setting named Prevent users from uninstalling applications from Start and double click it to open the policy settings page.

Local Group Policy Editor

In the properties dialog box, there are options available to set the policy to Not Configured, Enabled and Disabled. Selecting each option allows you to view its impact in the Help section on the lower right side. Select Enabled option and close the Local Group Policy editor.

Prevent users from uninstalling applications from Start_2012-09-06_17-06-21

Now, open Windows Run console using Win+R hotkey combination, type in gpupdate /force and hit Enter to forcibly apply the new policy setting. Once the local group policy is updated, your PC users will not be able to uninstall the Windows 8 UI based apps from the Start Screen. It automatically hides the option to uninstall app from the Start Screen

RJ TextEd: Free Text Editor With Syntax Highlighting & Full Unicode Support

RJ TextEd is a feature-rich text and source editor, supporting Unicode, syntax highlighting, code folding, and more. It not only serves as a text editor but also goes to handling HTML editing, CSS editing support, and comes with a dual pane file commander. It also supports FTP client for uploading files.

The software is highly feature loaded, and while not all of them can be covered under this review, we will touch briefly on the most important/noteworthy ones.

RJ TextEd

Upon launch, you get to choose the type of the new file you want to create. Corresponding options will appear accordingly. It brings spell checking, e-mail support, advanced search with RegEx support. A brief list of key features is provided below.

    Auto completion.
    Code folding.
    Column mode.
    Multi edit and multi select
    Advanced sorting.
    Handles both ASCII and binary files.
    Html wizards.
    Use TopStyle Lite as your CSS editor if installed.
    FTP and SFTP client with synchronization.
    File explorer, text clips, code explorer, project manager…
    Convert between code pages, Unicode formats and text formats.
    Unicode and ANSI code page detection.
    Open/Save UTF-8 encoded files without a signature (BOM).
    Unicode file paths and file names.
    Html validation, format and repair.
    Tools available like syntax editor, color picker, charmap.

With any new file selection, a predefined template of supported commands is automatically propagated. Specially useful if you’re working with HTML standards, CSS or JavaScript.

RJ TextEd2

Configuration options for the various tools are accessible under the tools menu, and can be extensively customized to suit individual needs.

options

The software is distributed as a freeware and has no known dependencies. You may want to check out the entire feature set of RJ TextEd here. It uses 15MB of RAM and is Windows compatible. You can download RJ TextEd either as installer or portable version.

Growly Write: Free Text Editor That Retains Formatting Of Imported Files [Mac]

Text editors, for the most part, have to be feature rich, or at the very least, provide a minimum number of features to make themselves useful. Too many features, and users might have trouble figuring everything out. It can also lead to a huge clutter of controls that you will never use. The default text editor in Mac, TextEdit, supports some very basic features, and many users still opt to find other text editing tools because this default app doesn’t meet their requirements. If, for any reason, you aren’t satisfied with TextEdit, Growly Write is a free Mac app that is a text editing tool with a very reasonable number of features, sans a gorgeous UI. The app’s features cover the basics for editing text, and allow you to open most common formats like RTF, DOC, DOCX etc, without losing the document’s original formatting.

Growly Write saves files to a number of formats, with the default being its own custom format, Growly Write Document (.GBwrite). The interface is simple enough; writing space to the left, with tools appearing on the right in collapsible/expandable menus. The menus are divided into tabs to differentiate which text element they are for. You can use the cog wheel button at the bottom of the right panel to enable more options. Fonts, font color and highlight color can be changed using the respective buttons at the top.

Growly Write

By default, the app will check for spelling errors and will also use the default shortcuts in OS X, but you can disable this from the app’s preferences. From the Edit tab in preferences, you can enable/disable smart quotes, smart copy/paste (retaining or cleaning formatting of copied text), detection of HTML links in the text, dragging & dropping images and text onto a document and more.

Growly Write edit

From the Files tab, you have the option to disable auto save for documents and remember which were open last in the app. The Appearance lets you change the symbol for tabbed space, auto resize a window so that text space is maximized. You can change the color for chapters and headers and the highlight color. The New Document tab lets you manage the margins in a document, enable rulers, change the default font and set the default zoom level for a document.

Growly Write appearance

Like all text editors, Growly Write allows you to insert images, tables and manipulate text orientation in a number of ways. You can enter dividers, notes and bookmarks in a document; however, there is no option for adding shapes. The tools for pictures are limited as well, allowing you to only resize an image, and add a border of any color or thickness. Noteworthy in this app is that it retains the original formatting of a document that you open in it, and adds columns and chapters from the Insert menu.

Display Real-Time Physical And Virtual Memory Usage, Page File Usage, And Hard Disk Space

MemoryWatch is a small open source tool that displays your physical memory usage, virtual memory usage, page file usage, and the disk space of the selected local drive. And warns you when any of them reach critical levels. On launch, it will display the real-time usage sitting above the system tray menu. It can be minimized to system tray, started with windows, and selected to remain always on top. Both the refresh interface (in ms) and warning limit (in percentage) can be selected by the user.

memory watch

Rather than visiting the dreaded Windows Task Manager to check for memory usage – both physical and virtual, it is easier to check the usage in real time from the desktop. Excellent for developers or anyone else who want to develop and test their applications for memory usage. The Page File Usage is also great and helps if you want to check it in real time. The only option to check for total space consumed (and left) is for individual drives. Checking the total storage of the whole hard drive is not possible with this tool. There are no restrictions when setting both Refresh time and Warning Limit.

Personally, I find the “Driver Space Usage” option to be handy because, just yesterday when trying to encode some videos, I was notified that the space on my drive was full. It would have been nice to see how much space was being taken in real-time.

Similarly, users who are tight on RAM will find it useful since they can know which new app is eating up their memory and thus kill certain applications to save up space. The application works on all versions of Windows, we tested on Windows 7 x86 system.

[Giveaway] DaisyDisk: Visualize Disk Space Usage & Memory Hogging Folders [Mac]

On a Mac, you have one solitary disk, no matter what the size is, and you still get only one drive with no partitions whatsoever. This means, all your data will get organized in folders, and although this would hold true even if you had disk partitions, they would at least let you separate work and personal files/folders. With so many folders inside a folder inside another folder, you often save files that hog space, and forget them later on. If you ever get down to freeing up some space on your disk, you’d probably spend a lot of time trying to find what’s eating it up before deleting it. DaisyDisk is a Mac app available for $9.99 in the Mac App Store, that lets you visualize how space is being consumed on your hard disk. All folders are shown in disc-like graphs, and each component can be clicked to view memory usage in a particular folder.

    Note: As noted above, DaiskDisk is a paid Mac OS X app that will make your wallet lighter by $9.99. We are giving away 5 licenses for this app to our readers, details for which can be found at the end of this post.

Once installed, the app will scan your hard disk and all mounted drives, and display total used and free memory. Select a drive, and from the dropdown button next to it, select Scan as Administrator. Alternatively, you can click the Scan Folder button at the bottom left of app, and select a folder you want to scan.

DaisyDisk scan

Depending on the size of the disk/folder, the app will take a while to scan and display the results. The larger the folder, the bigger its portion will be in the graph. If you choose to scan the entire hard disk, only the root folders will be represented, and not the sub-folders. To view space consumption within a folder, click it. Folder names are displayed in the right sidebar.

DaisyDisk memory vew

To return to the previous folder, click the small circle at the center of the graph and you will level up one folder. Alternatively, you can use the navigation at the top to return to a folder. Another way to scan a folder for memory consumption, is to drag & drop it onto the app window.

DaisyDisk add foder

To open a folder from the search results, right-click it, and select Show in Finder from the context menu. The app isn’t meant for deleting files, and only helps you see how disk space is being consumed, making it convenient to compare folder sizes.

FindSpace: View Disk Space Usage On Your Hard Drive In Tree View [Mac]

A while back, we covered two apps, DaisyDisk and Disk Scanner, the former worth $9.99 and the latter free. Both apps scan your hard disk and show you how your hard drive’s space is used in a daisy graph. The graph, while extremely appealing to look at, is one of the non-traditional and lesser known graph types. If you’re a novice using either of these apps, you might not be able to make much sense of the graph itself. FindSpace is a free Mac app that does roughly the same thing DaisyDisk and Disk Scanner do, only it displays results in a simple tree structure, something computer users are more familiar with.

This app is basically a return to basics; neither complex menus or buttons, nor an influx of too much color. When you first launch the app, it will list the folders in your hard drive, both hidden and visible files (provided you have enabled viewing hidden files). Click the Scan Now button and wait as it analyses the space taken up by each folder and sub-folders. The time taken will depend on the size of your drive and the amount of space consumed.

FindSpace

Once the scan is complete, you will once again see a list of all folders. Click on the folder icon next to a folder and it will expand to reveal subfolders. Each folder will be labeled with its name, followed by the number of files and sub-folders within, and the total size of the folder. Clicking on the folder itself will open the folder in Finder and you can continue exploring it from there.

FindSpace tree view

While the interface isn’t something that will bow you away, it works perfectly. There is nothing complex for you to dig through, and disk space used is shown in simple MBs instead of block sizes. The app is best suited for those who prefer a simple descriptive view as opposed to a visualization.

Disk Scope: Scan Mac Hard Disk & System Libraries For Memory Usage [Mac]

Disk space fills up as time passes and while this is to be expected, cleaning it out isn’t easy. It’s hard to track down which folder is consuming the most space. To help determine memory usage on a Mac, there are tools like DaisyDisk and DiskScanner, both of which present a graphical view of space consumption by folder. What both these apps have in common is that they drill memory usage down to the folder, but some users consume more space in the system libraries, i.e., the downloads, documents, Applications, Pictures, Music etc. If you would prefer a simpler breakdown of memory consumption for these folders only, Disk Scope is a free Mac app that does the trick. It scans a hard drive and displays memory consumed both graphically and numerically, additionally letting you clear your Mac’s cache.

Launch the app and if you have more than just one disk connected, select one of them to scan (you cannot scan multiple disks at once). The app will let you scan other drives as well and give you a breakdown of used space in them, but when you scan your Mac’s HDD, the break down of space consumed is different.

Disk Scope

Depending on the size of your hard disk and how much memory you’ve consumed, the scan will complete in a reasonable amount of time. The results show the total consumed space in the hard drive itself, followed by a Clean Up Caches button that will allow you to purge the respective temporary storages. The space consumed for libraries is then listed with a small magnifying glass icon under each folder that opens it in Finder.

Disk Scope scan

Disk Scope is rather low on features but it does its one trick well, and the interface is good. There are several improvements that can be made to the app, like adding the option to scan any folder selectively and cleaning the cache built by certain apps like the Mac App Store. Since the app is free, there isn’t much anyone can complain about in terms of lack of features, but the usability is rather limited. Of the two apps mentioned earlier that provide a more in-depth one of them is free (though it does not have as nice an interface as Disk Scope), and does more than just a simple scan of your libraries,

The app has no preferences to manage and is ad free. A small chip like icon in the top right corner opens the Mac App Store page for another app by the same developer. For minimalistic information about memory consumption, Disk Scope is fairly good.

How To Find Information Of Any Video/Audio File In Complete Details

MediaInfo is a free tool that gives you complete information of multimedia files. All you have to do is select the file and it will display the full details. You can also select a folder and it will read all multimedia files inside that folder, choose the file from the list to get complete details of that file. You can view the information in different methods, such as: text, sheet, tree, HTML, and Basic viewing.

But you might be pondering what information exactly can you get from this tool? The information can be broken into the following categories:

    General: title, author, director, album, track number, date, duration…
    Video: codec, aspect, fps, bitrate…
    Audio: codec, sample rate, channels, language, bitrate…
    Text: language of subtitle
    Chapters: number of chapters, list of chapters

Here is an example of an audio file in ‘Sheet view’ mode.

mediainfo - audio files details

And here is an example of video file in ‘Basic view’ mode.

mediainfo - video file details

It shows the Video/Audio codec used and also links to their website. To get more details on a codec, you can visit their website with a single click. If the video contains subtitles, it will tell you it’s language automatically. The complete list of formats that this tool support are as follows:

    Video: MKV, OGM, AVI, DivX, WMV, QuickTime, Real, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DVD (VOB)…
    (Codecs: DivX, XviD, MSMPEG4, ASP, H.264, AVC…)
    Audio: OGG, MP3, WAV, RA, AC3, DTS, AAC, M4A, AU, AIFF…
    Subtitles: SRT, SSA, ASS, SAMI…

Find Installed Audio Codec Drivers & DirectShow Filters

What happens when you have multiple codec packages installed? It causes a nightmare making it difficult to pinpoint the exact codec that is causing the problem. Many codecs have compatibility problems with other codec packages.

Installed Codec is a portable tool from Nirsoft that makes finding information of installed audio codecs easier. It will display the name, type, status(enabled or disabled), file description, installation date, version, company and product name, file size, destination, driver key, and other important details.

Installed Codecs

Not only can it be used to find the problems but also be used to manage all audio codecs. There is a build-in option to enable/disable a selected codec and open them directly in Windows Registry(for advanced users only).

Installed Codec

You can also generate a detailed report, use the search feature to find for selected culprit codec. For 64-bit OS users, there is an option called x64 mode, which when enabled will check and display all 64-bit filters/drivers.

Install And Configure Windows 7 Codec Pack

If you are using Windows 7, one of the first thing you should do is install a good codec pack. Media Players such as VLC Media Player, MPlayer, etc can play almost any type of video files, but when it comes to Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center, then not all file types are supported. To solve this problem, there is a codec pack for Windows 7 that will allow both Windows Media Player and Media Center to play almost all video formats. Windows 7 Codecs is free package that requires a simple installation and nothing else. It comes with a slew of codec configurations, letting you customize the audio and video settings according to requirements. Moreover, you can choose to set your output device like speaker configuration to get the optimized sound quality. Below are the step-by-step procedures to install Windows 7 Codec package in both Windows 7.

Note: Before you install this codec package in Windows 7, please make sure all other codec packages have been uninstalled.

On the main installation screen, click Next.

windows 7 codecs installation

Make sure you have read the important part of the license agreement that is written in RED. Select I accept the terms in the license agreement and click Next.

windows 7 codecs license

In the next step you can either select Complete or select Custom. If you are a first time user and don’t know anything about codecs, select Complete, otherwise select Custom and click Next.

windows 7 codecs complete or custom installation

Now select the codec package that you want to install manually and the installation directory and click Next.

windows 7 codecs selection complete package

In the last step, click Install and once the installation is complete, click Finish.

Now go All Programs > Win7 Codecs and select Settings Applications. From here you can configure all audio, video and misc settings.

windows 7 codec configure settings

From the audio tab you can choose the speaker configuration and other settings.

windows 7 codec audio

From other AVI video format tab, you can select to choose between Microsoft’s default splitter, Gabest’s splitter, or Haali’s splitter.

windows 7 codecs splitters

There are various other options that can be freely customized. In the below screenshot you will find a HD video running on Windows Media Player.

Shark007 Brings Its Complete Audio/Video Codec Pack To Windows 8

The right set of codecs are an essential element for smooth media playback. Windows 7 includes most of the codecs that are required to play most common audio and video files. Both Windows Media Player and Media Center use native Windows 7 codecs, yet fail to recognize various media files such as MKV, MOV, AVI, H264 etc. The reason is simple; the native codecs pack doesn’t support playback of such files. However, you can opt for third-party applications, such as KMPlayer and VLC, as they don’t usually have any problem playing those files. Nevertheless, folks who are not interested in going further than using native Windows multimedia solutions, can always use our previously covered Windows 7 Codecs, a codec package by Shark007 that allows Window Media Player and Media Center to play the aforementioned formats. Unfortunately, Windows 8 suffers from same situation, and looks like Microsoft turned a deaf ear to this nuisance. To cope with this, you can use Shark007’s Windows 8 Codecs – yup! the same codec package now support Microsoft’s new operating system as well.

    It should be noted that the codec pack tries to download Babylon toolbar into your computer. You can easily avoid this by unchecking its installation during the setup.

Shark007's Free Codecs Setup_2012-09-07_16-55-13

After installation, the application pins its Settings icon at Start Screen. So, in case you’re wondering, you can both execute and uninstall the codec pack from Start Screen. The Settings console looks quite similar to what we had seen earlier, while reviewing its Windows 7 counterpart. It contains various tabs, where each tab houses its own set of options. Tabs include Config, Misc, Audio, AVI, H264, MPEG – DVD and Windows SWAP at the top. The first trio of tabs from the left contain global settings, whilst AVI, H264, MKV and MPEG – DVD, reflect format specific configurations.

Windows 8 Codecs_Config

For instance, Audio tab lets you specify the output channel for the media playback. You can choose among TrueHD/DTS HD-MA (HDMI), AC3/DTS only and turn off bitstreaming (although the available settings are dependent on your machine’s specs).

Audio

A new addition to this codec pack I noticed is Windows SWAP. This option lets you choose between native Microsoft codecs or any third party splitter, such as LAV’s codec, which you have installed yourself. Additionally, you can also toggle a few other parameters.

Windows SWAP

The application supports Windows 8 only, as you can always utilize the previously-covered Windows 7 codec pack for earlier iterations of the operating system. Testing was carried out on Windows 8 RTM, 64-bit.

How To Edit Office 97-2003 Files In Windows Phone 7 Mango

One of the perks of owning a Windows Phone 7 device is the ease and accessibility you experience while using products made by Microsoft such as Windows Live, Internet Explorer and MS Office. With the Mango update just round the corner, and developer versions available for anyone through a simple hack, this ease of access just increased manifold. You can now use SkyDrive much better than before in the IE9, and Office got an upgrade to its 2010 version. However the latter upgrade comes at a little cost. Now it is not possible for Mango users to edit Office files saved in older versions (97-2003). You can view them, but no editing is allowed unless your document is 2007 or later (for avoiding data loss according to MS). This can prove to be quite an inconvenience at times, so here’s a workaround for editing older Office docs in WP7 Mango.

The workaround might seem to be a bit too obvious and completely inefficient, but it works nonetheless.

Instructions:

    Open the IE9 present in your Mango phone and access your SkyDrive just like you would from a PC.
    Navigate to the file in question (i.e. the one in 97-2003 format) and right-click on it.
    From the opened menu, choose to open the file with Office Web App. When prompted, convert to 2010 format.
    Now without doing anything close the Web App and SkyDrive.
    Go to the Office hub and now you can access the troublesome file right from your SkyDrive.

Smart Office 2 Lets You Compose & Edit MS Office Files On iOS, Provides Dropbox Access

Even some of the more expensive iOS apps don’t let users edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel files on their iPhone or iPad. You have got many options if you just want to view Office files on an iDevice, but editing and creating documents is a whole new matter. Smart Office 2 is an app that can really make sure you never have to go to your computer ever again just to make changes to a Word file or presentation. The app comes with pretty comprehensive Dropbox and Google Docs integration. You can access any Office file stored on these two services on your accounts, and the files edited in Smart Office 2 can be exported as PDFs or you can make any change you want to them (even images can be added to documents). The app offers almost all the formatting options you can ever want on your iDevice, and comes with special focus on letting you print your work via AirPrint.

Smart Office 2 iOS Home Smart Office 2 iOS Templates Smart Office 2 iOS Preview

While everything else about the app is perfect, the interface could have been better. On an iPhone, everything about Smart Office 2 looks a little too small. However, once you get past that, you are sure to fall in love with this handy app. To get the most out of Smart Office 2, it is better if you link your Google and Dropbox accounts with it before anything else. This can be done by hitting the Explore icon from the bottom bar of the main page. If you have got some Office files already stored in your iPhone, the app will automatically access them to display in the Documents section.

In order to make a new file, hit the Create button and choose the file type. Alternatively, you can use any of the existing templates in the app and start working on them. The supported formats in Smart Office 2 include all versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel since 1997, images and PDF. If you want, you can easily export a Word file as PDF, simply by going to the File menu and hitting the PDF option.

Smart Office 2 iOS Powerpoint Smart Office 2 iOS Word Smart Office 2 iOS Print

When it comes to editing files in Smart Office 2, you get plenty of options. Images can be added to documents, while the formatting options include text font, size and alignment choices. While working on a presentation, you can choose the background theme of your slides, and the usual image insertion and formatting options are available as well. If you want to get a print of your work saved in Smart Office 2, you don’t need any separate app for that. Through the AirPrint menu of the app, you can adjust all the basic aspects of documents before printing them.

Private Browsing History Recovery Saves Firefox History In Private Mode

Your reasons for browsing in private mode are entirely your own and which sites you visit is a secret that only you know but for those who use private browsing for legitimate reasons (like playing online games at work without being caught) your private browsing history might be very important to you. If you use Firefox, there is a way to save it. Private Browsing History Recovery is a Firefox extension that allows you to save history when you’re browsing in private mode.

Once installed, begin private browsing. The extension does not automatically start saving your browsing history, you have to manually start saving it from the side bar. To access the extension’s side bar either use Ctrl+Shift+U or go to View > Sidebar > PrivateBrowsingRetriever.To start saving history, click the Start button. The Clear button lets you clear the history that’s been stored so far and the Stop button stops the extension from saving history.

PrivateBrowsingHistoryRecovery

There is no export or import feature for your browsing record, nor can you use it to open a page that you’ve previously visited so there is definitely room for improvement. Since you have to enable the extension to save browsing history in private mode each time, you can’t use it to monitor someone else’s online activity while using private mode.

If the extension stops saving pages as you visit them, try closing and reopening the sidebar. Once the sidebar is closed, all saved history is removed. To minimize or hide the side bar without losing your history, click the small arrows separated by a dotted line and the side bar will minimize. To restore it, click the same arrows and dotted line that will continue to appear on the left side inside the window.

Start A Private Browsing Session From Within iPhone Safari

The Chrome app for iOS has a lot of advantages when pitted against Mobile Safari, and one of these plus points is the easy access to incognito mode in Google’s web browser. If you are using Safari on your iPhone, you will have to go to the stock Settings app in your iDevice in order to start a private browsing session. This means going a long way just to press one button, and has made many people turn to Chrome or other iOS web browsers. However, things might not be all doom and gloom for Safari, as the Cydia community seems determined to keep Apple’s stock iOS browser on par with its competitors. Privata is the latest Cydia tweak aimed at Safari, and adds the much-needed private browsing toggle to the app’s own options, allowing you to easily toggle on private browsing without having to leave Safari.

Privata Safari Privata Toggle

Privata is available in the ModMyi repo of the Cydia store, and you can grab it for your jailbroken iPhone for free. After the tweak’s installation, you can control Privata by heading to the stock Settings app. The menu just has one button, to enable or disable the whole tweak, and you might not have to go there as Privata is toggled on by default. The tweak does not add a new button to the main view of Safari, so it does not alter the web browser’s interface in any way. The Toggle Private Browsing button is added to the action menu in Safari (the one marked by the outward-arrow icon). This might not be as quick as having a dedicated button for private browsing on the app’s toolbar, but it is still better than having to go to the Settings app again and again. You will find the private browsing button at the bottom of the action menu list.

Privata is a fresh release, and this is apparent when you take a close look at the tweak. It has a couple of rather big problems. First, the action menu button added to Safari by Privata is a little buggy, and might end up appearing more than once in the list at times. Another bigger bug in the tweak (as admitted by the developer) is that the first URL opened after starting a private browsing session via Privata is saved to history. All the links after that behave as they should in private mode, and this is something you have to keep in mind while using Privata. So, if you are a fan of Safari, and often have to use private browsing, Privata is a tweak that you must have on your iPhone.