Yearly Archives: 2012

Official Encyclopaedia Britannica App For iPhone & iPad Now Available

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Despite what most students seem to think, Wikipedia is not the only source where you can get the matter for your research. Encyclopedia Britannica is a resource which is pretty similar to Wikipedia, with the only difference being the fact that it existed long before the internet was even conceived. This means that the Encyclopedia Britannica has had more chance to accumulate knowledge, and you might be surprised at the quality and amount of data available on it. However, the world has moved away from paper, and that is why you don’t have to carry bulky volumes of dusty books or even a bundle of CDs to access any good encyclopedia. If you own an iOS device, you can simply use the newly released official Encyclopaedia Britannica app for iPhone and iPad. Not only will you be able to search through the immense database of the encyclopedia using this app, it will also present you with random facts, and tell you about each day’s significance in history. Read More

PopBot Automatically Identifies & Records Songs From Online Radio Stations [Android]

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We all love our personal music collection, but there comes a time when you feel like supplementing this collection with some fresh tracks. That is where all the those music discovery and radio streaming apps and web services come into play. While there are several comprehensive radio streaming apps for Android, there are few that also support recording an entire stream of music being played on a station. That said, there are a couple of issues with employing the latter as a means to listen to the latest music. First of all, such a feature mostly comes tied with a hefty price tag. Secondly, while you might prefer a stream of non-stop music, you'd have to tolerate prolonged DJ banter and annoying advertisements. Not only would this waste your time (as you manually skip through these parts), the resulting files would occupy more space on your device's storage than you would want. Fresh to the Google Play Store, PopBot is a fine-looking, comprehensive and free radio streaming app that claims to be able to separately record each individual song in a radio station's stream. Read More

Quick Paste: Use Custom Hotkeys To Enter Pre-defined Text Or Run Programs/Commands

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Sometimes, even the smallest of tools can prove to be extremely handy. This statement holds true for Quick Paste, a portable application that can save you a lot of time in email, report, draft or essay writing, if you repeatedly find the need to enter a certain block of text. The program lets you add multiple text inputs and assign keyboard shortcuts to each, so you can quickly and easily paste the text in your document, much unlike traditional clipboard managers. The utility is highly useful for people who need to continuously copy and paste multiple lines of text. Additionally, it allows you to run your frequently used commands and programs via custom hotkeys. Being a portable app, it means you can use it on the go, such as in your office, during vacations, road trips etc. It runs in the background and won’t even make you feel if its there. More to follow after the jump. Read More

Create, Access, Delete & Mount Shadow Copies On Any Windows Version With Z-VSSCopy

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For those who are unfamiliar with the terms Shadow Copy or VSS (Volume Snapshot Service), it is a technology included in Microsoft Windows. What it does is it automatically creates backups of your data, with an option to lets you do so manually. Both Windows Vista and Windows 7 can create copies of your files and folders, which allows you to retrieve the previous versions in case they are accidentally deleted, modified or manipulated in one way or the other. In computers running Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating systems, this service is active by default. Microsoft has only included the privilege of accessing shadow copies in Windows Ultimate, Business and Enterprise edition, leaving other editions of the OS to dust. Back in January, I reviewed an application for Windows called Shadow Explorer. It is a tool that allows Windows Home version users to access shadow copies according to time filters, and provides a unified interface to explore and export them. Today, I have a similar application for users of Windows 7 editions who need a third party solution. The application is as called Z-VSSCopy and allows you to perform even simpler administration of shadow copies. Read More

Bookmark Text Within A Webpage For Later Viewing [Chrome]

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Simple Text Bookmark is a smart Chrome extension that lets you annotate, archive and bookmark text from websites. With it, you can select or clip portions of a website and save them as bookmarks for later viewing. When you return to the resource at a later time, the notes and highlights are right where you left them, so you can quickly reference information according to your need. Using this handy tool, you can read faster and retain information more efficiently. It allows you to clip text from a webpage and add additional text or notes to specific highlights, except for dynamic pages. Once a bookmark has been saved, a (+) is added to the extension's button in the toolbar, which is visible every time you visit the page. Read More

RTBot: Search Engine That Separately Displays Information From Popular Web Sources

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While extensively researching a topic online, we have to go through a number of search engines and services, such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Google search, Images and so on. All of this is both time and resource consuming, not to mention somewhat irritating. RTBot is a real-time information service where you can enter a topic title and instantly get related content from multiple sources, from across the web. RTBot simplifies the way you find information and enriches the way you research, explore, discover and monitor topics of interest. With it, you can get real-time content for all kinds of topics, without having to visit a multitude of services. It integrates content from different online sources, such as the aforementioned, plus popular news websites, blogs and more, under a unified interface. Read More

Stamp ID3 Tag Editor: Manage Your Music Library Better By Editing Song Metadata

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Often, when you're looking for a song that you know is on your computer, the search fails to return anything because you don’t have the complete file name in your head. This usually happens if the music in your collection is not properly tagged. There are a large number of people, myself included, who like to keep the music in their library properly tagged and organized. If you have the Artist Name, Song Name, Album Name, Year of Release, Genre etc properly entered in the properties of a music file, it has two basic advantages. One, you can easily search for the song in your computer using any of the meta tag information, and second, it doesn’t matter which audio player you are using; if the music is properly tagged, the song titles and artist names will appear in the correct fields in every player, making it easier for you to create playlists and/or transfer songs. Today, we have an application called Stamp ID3 Tag Editor that allows you to edit tags and album art of MP3, WAV and OGG files. More on the application after the break. Read More

Photo Timeline Displays Your WP7 Photos On A Map & Calendar

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Apparently, the term “timeline” is a favorite among everyone these days. There used to be just a Twitter timeline previously, until Facebook adopted the idea as well. To be honest, arranging your online life in a chronological order does give things a more ordered and neat look, and maybe that’s why the idea has caught on with considerable success. Photo Timeline is an app for Windows Phone 7 that brings essentially the same concept to a much more basic level. The app arranges all the photos in the camera roll of your WP7 device according to the time they were snapped on. In Photo Timeline, each active day has its own slot, with all its photos stacked against it. The app also has menus to let you view your photos on its calendar, or on a map integrated within the app. Read More

FanBus: Live Chat With Football Fans Across The World On Android

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Ask true sports fanatics (like myself), and they'll tell you that the true essence of enjoying your favorite sport lies in following it as closely and as keenly as possible. When it comes to Soccer, things are no different at all. There are numerous apps available in the Google Play Store that let soccer-maniacs keep an eye on almost each and every facet of their favorite sport, however, when it comes to finding an app that connects you to soccer fans from all across the globe, quality options are few and far between, though the small genre now has another member, one that might very well lead the pack. Meant for soccer purists and ‘pundits’, FanBus is an Android app that serves as a medium to connect fans of virtually any national or club soccer team with each other, allowing them to share their thoughts through live chat. Whether you wish to pass on good wishes to your favorite club, discuss team strategies, or indulge in banters with the fans of a rival team, FanBus is the way to go. Read More

Pepper For WP7: A Social Network For Discovering Music Gigs & Fun Events

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You can listen to a song on TV or PC as many times as you want, but nothing is quite like being in a concert and enjoying your favorite music with hundreds of other fans. As much as people enjoy concerts, it is a fact that it’s never easy to discover all such events in your vicinity. Most of us find out about planned gigs via social media, but won’t it be nice if there were a social network just for music events - one that you could carry around with you? If you are a Windows Phone 7 user, now there is! Meet Pepper, a Mango app which will let you connect with your music-loving friends, and keep you up-to-date with all the latest gigs and recreational events happening in your area. Not only that, Pepper also lets you follow your favorite artists, so that you always know where and when they are performing. Read More

Trend Micro Backup and Restore: 1GB Free Cloud Storage For Contacts, Photos, Music & More [Android]

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With the recent surge of so many quality online data backup/restore Android apps that have arrived in the Google Play Store, and with Google itself working on its very own cloud storage service, Google Drive, it has become evident that the technology world has begun to realize the significance of having valuable computer and mobile content backed up on a secondary storage. The latest to join the likes of Dropbox, Box, Comodo, Bitdefender, CX, YuuWaa and several other big names is Trend Micro, that has just announced its own cloud storage solution for Android users. Like all other aforementioned services, Backup and Restore by Trend Micro provides users with free online storage space (1GB, in this case), an attractive and user-friendly interface, and most importantly, a firm promise to maintain an uncompromised approach towards protecting the private data of users. The app is currently in beta, but already looks to be a valuable tool to have on your Android. Read More

Familiar: Real-Time Photo Sharing & Syncing Across PC, Mac, Android & iOS

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Looking for an instant, easy and safe solution to sync or share photos with your friends and family members' computers or smartphones in real-time? Look no further than Familiar – a free app for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS that connects you to your close ones so that you can easily share photos with each other over the internet. Regardless of the devices or OS that your contacts are using, Familiar lets you share images with each other through slideshows. In essence, it’s a private social network comprising only your most important contacts, and lets you like, comment on and save all the photos that you’ve shared with each other. Apart from real-time syncing of shared photos, the app keeps you apprised of the addition of new photos to your contacts’ albums via push notifications. Read More

PicMonkey: Online Photo Editor With Skin Retouching, Customizable Filters & Blur Effects

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Desktop image editors or online ones aren’t hard to find, but online image editors are usually limited in the number of features they offer. They usually allow you to perform only conventional functions like cloning a part of the image, cropping and resizing it, and adding frames or a few filters. PicMonkey is a web app that does all of this, and more. In addition to the wide range of filters it allows you to add to images, you can also edit the filters and change their intensity. The app has basic editing options, color effects, skin retouching effects, text and shape effects, frames and patterns that can be applied to an image. You can apply more than one effect at the same time as well. The app is in beta just now, and hence, all effects can be used for free. Once the beta is over, access to some effects will be restricted and will require you pay to use them. Read More

123DressMe Helps You Manage Your Wardrobe & Decide What To Wear

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The great thing about having a large wardrobe is that you have a lot of choice when it comes to putting an outfit together. The downside is, with so much to choose from, you forget some of your best items in your closet and/or have difficulty remembering how you put different outfits together. What would be convenient is if you could have a catalog of every piece of clothing, pair of shoes and accessory you own. 123DressMe is a free iPhone app that lets you create this catalog on your iPhone and iPod touch. Using the app, you can photograph each item in your closet, and then create outfits on your phone by grouping them together. Outfits and individual items can be categorized by the time of day, weather and occasion they are most suitable for, as well as by color. The filters applied to an outfit or item can later be used to search for appropriate attire when you want to go out but don’t have time to throw an ensemble together. The app additionally lets you plan events and decide early on what to wear. Read More

Beta-Searchable: Highlight Text On Websites To Search On Google, YouTube & Current Page

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Beta-Searchable is a Chrome extension that provides you with super fast search results for highlighted text on almost any website. It lets you save a lot of time when you have to search the same term on multiple websites. With it, you can get Google search results, Google images, YouTube videos and social results from Topsy. All you have to do is select some text on a website, and a tiny pop-up will appear with Google Search, YouTube, Google Images and other buttons. Additionally, you may also lookup the same term on your current domain. Clicking the tiny arrow at the top of the pop-up lets you switch to social pages that are retrieved from Topsy. Moreover, the extension lets you view most used, recent and related websites. Read More

Hybrid: Ultra-Powerful HD Video Encoder With Basic Editing Tools

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A few days ago, we reviewed x264GUI, an open source application that lets you encode video files to a few of the popular video containers. Another similar application we have come across is Hybrid, a Qt based front end for some of the powerful encoders that can convert video files to X264, XviD, VP8 etc. Additionally, it can also encode audio streams to AC3, OGG, MP3, FLAC and AAC, which are inside the supported video containers, like MKV, MP4, M2TS and WebM. Furthermore, the application can convert Blu-Ray or an AVCHD structure. As the name implies, it is a combination (hybrid) of different encoders and tools, and provides a GUI for using those tools, making It one of the most powerful applications to convert media files. It let users to configure extensive amount of options pertaining to cropping/resizing, filtering, chapter making, X264 etc. The utility is further beautified with its ability to perform encoding operations of batch files, thus saving you from wasting any extra time required to encode each file separately. According to the developer, some of the highlighted features of the tool include tagging/chapter/subtitle support for MP4, MKV and Blu-Ray – acceptable input of AVS and everything that mplayer/ffmpeg can decode – audio/video pass-through for muxing, tagging, chapter editing and much more. Read More

PictBear: Beginner-Friendly Image Editor With Layer Support & Downloadable Brushes

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In the past few months, we have covered some very useful and comprehensive free image editing tools, such as Artweaver Free and PixBuilder. These tools were so good that we took the liberty of comparing them with Adobe Photoshop. Even though they are not as comprehensive as Adobe Photoshop, they have a handsome number of image editing options bundled within to become a contender to Adobe's image manipulation giant. Today, we have another free software, which, in our humble opinion, is worthy enough to join the ranks of Artweaver Free and PixBuilder. With full layer support, an easy to use interface and options allowing users to micro-edit their images down to a pixel, PictBear is definitely worth a try if you are looking for a free software that meets your casual, as well as professional, image editing requirements. The capability of the application does not end here; additional downloadable plugins further increase the usefulness of the application by allowing you to add more filters, brushes, etc. Keep reading to find out more about the features offered by PictBear. Read More

FanMix: Social Media Manager That Auto-Prioritizes Conversations By Keywords

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Keeping up with loads of Facebook messages, tweets and comments from your blog can be a difficult task. If you have multiple social media accounts, it can be fairly easy to lose track of a conversation, which is where FanMix jumps in to provide assistance. This free web app helps you manage conversations on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs, using a single inbox. Signing up for the service takes only a few seconds, after which all you need to do is connect your accounts with FanMix. With it, you can instantly reply to all your social media conversations, mark items as starred, and access all your contacts from various networks. More after the break. Read More

Popup Manager: Switch Between Or Kill Running/Recent Apps From Anywhere In Android

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Multitasking one of the core aspects of modern-day smartphone operating systems, and one of the attributes that distinguishes these gadgets from dumb phones. With multitasking arises the need for efficient application management so that your device isn’t bogged down by the slew of apps that are consistently running in the background. The latest iteration of the Android (Ice Cream Sandwich) has a native task manager that is available all throughout the OS. Even in case of other versions of Android, there are numerous apps available in the Google Play Store that expedite the process of task management in various ways. Adding to the list of such apps is Popup Manager – a simple little tool that, when activated, sits silently in a corner of the screen in the form of a tiny toggle that is visible everywhere within the OS, and can be tapped to launch a task manager that can be used to open and kill recent or running apps. Read More

Yellow Pages: Discover Businesses & Get Turn-By-Turn Voice Navigation [iPhone]

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Even if you are living in a big city since you were born, it is not possible for an ordinary person to know of all the good places around town, and every once in a while, you are bound to be left helpless when you want to find a place to purchase a drill machine, or new wheels for you car. That’s what yellow pages are made for, so that people can find businesses with complete ease. With the advent of smartphones, everything is going digital, and yellow pages are no exception, for iOS users at least. Yellow Pages is an iPhone app that will let its users search for any place in their area. You can find products, restaurants, cinemas, banks and just about any kind of place you can possibly think of. Although Yellow Pages has been around for quite a while, the app’s recent update has made it even more useful by adding turn-by-turn voice directions to any place listed in the app. Details to follow. Read More