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.

FileOptimizer: Compress A Variety Of File Types Without Quality Loss

Whenever it comes to file compression, most people believe the notion that the process would result in loss of quality in some manner. Well, this is not always the case. There is a whole variety of file optimization tools that perform the said function via thoughtfully designed compression engines. For instance, some of them let you reduce the PNG file size whilst keeping the degree of pixel loss to minimum, such as our previously covered PNGGauntlet. And then, there are those that optimally compress a PDF without compromising (much) on its quality. The real nuisance, however, is to find a separate tool for each file type. Wouldn’t it be better if you could resize, well, most of the file extensions using a single software? FileOptimizer does exactly that. It is a lossless file resizing and optimization utility that can reduce file size of a number of popular formats pertaining to images, audio files, PDF, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel, EPUP, Adobe AIR documents and more. The list of supported file extensions is huge, and includes the likes of AIR, APK, APNG, BMP, DOCX, APPX, CBZ, EXE, DLL, EPUB, GIF, GZ, JPEG, MP3, PPTX, ODT, PUB, SCR, SWF, OGG, and I’m just getting started!

The program comes packaged with a slew of different plugins (open source compression engines, to be precise) that make the optimization work. For example, to compress MP3 files, the program uses MP3packer. Likewise, PNG files are compressed via APNG engine, PngOptimizer or OptiPNG, while it uses Ghostscript to compress your PDFs.

The interface, although not aesthetically outstanding, is clean and simple. The usage is straightforward, as well, and enables you to compress files in batch. To compress the items, simply drag a group of files or folders over the application window. FileOptimizer doesn’t let you select any output directory for the optimized files – instead, it overwrites the original ones. So, make sure you first backup the original files to a separate directory or make copies of files that are to be optimized. Once you have added the files into the application, right-click inside the application interface and select Optimize. This in turn will immediately trigger the process, and will also let you know about original and optimized size of the items in queue.

File Optimizer

During testing, most of the files were optimized in a flash – the only exception being PNGs, for which it took longer to finish. Following the compression process, the software lets you know about the percentage of file size decreased. It is an open source program that works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

WebDisk Provides The Easiest Way To Share Files Between iPhone & Desktop

There are more ways of sharing files between computers and iOS devices than anyone would care to know. You can use the official method and stick with iTunes, or if you want something that isn’t likely to wipe your entire music library without warning, there are plenty of third-party apps available for iPhone that let users transfer files without creating a lot of fuss. WebDisk is one such app, and it can be used to share files between iOS devices and your desktop computer over Wi-Fi. So, what’s really special about WebDisk when there are other apps capable of performing the same feat? The biggest advantage WebDisk has over its competitors is its simplicity. In a couple of steps, you can transfer any file from your PC to an iPhone or iPad. In addition to that, WebDisk has a pretty decent file viewer of its own, which supports a lot of file formats and ensures that you don’t have to open most received files in other apps just to view their content.

WebDisk Desktop

Using WebDisk is so simple that there isn’t even a tutorial at the start of the app (a practice that has become the norm for iOS apps). When you launch it for the first time, there is just the app’s settings screen with a few words of instructions. Before doing anything else, just make sure your iDevice and computer are both on the same Wi-Fi network. If you want the file transfer to be secure, it is possible to define a password for the connection. Anyone wishing to access your device or share files with you will have to enter the password you choose. To access WebDisk from your PC or Mac, just open the desktop computer’s web browser and enter the address provided to you by WebDisk on its Settings page. If you configured a password, it will have to be entered in the login field on the web browser before the connection can be established. Once your iPhone and computer are connected, you can start sending files to the iDevice. To do that, hit the Choose File button in the web interface and select the file you want to share. After that, click Upload and the file will appear on your phone regardless of its format.

WebDisk iOS WebDisk iOS Viewer WebDisk iOS Open With

WebDisk is not all about receiving files, and you can send images from your iPhone or iPad to your computer as well. That can be done by hitting the small button located in the top-right corner of the Files section of the app. You can even add a description for each photo, and images can be chosen from the device’s camera roll or shot straight from the camera accessible from within the app. The file viewer in WebDisk supports Office docs, images, audio files, PDFs, CSV files and iWork documents. You can also receive other files on WebDisk, but you will need to open them with iFile or some other third-party app.

WebDisk is available as a free, universal app and we can safely say that there is no other iOS app that offers this level of convenience when it comes to file sharing.