Fatima Wahab

Mac Editor
Twitter: @Fatiwahab Follow me on Google+

Follow The Global App.net News Stream Or Your Own On iOS With App.news

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If you’re an app developer, particularly one who specializes in iOS or Mac apps, chances are you've heard of App.net. It’s a social network for developers and up until a few months ago, the only account option it had was a paid one. Free accounts are now available but are invite only, but there's App.net Passport that gives you instant access to the network. If you aren't interested in the using the service as a social network, or you just don’t interact with a lot of people but would still like to keep up with what the developer community is discussing, App.news is a free iOS app that lets you follow the global App.net news stream. If you have an account, you can always sign in and follow your own stream as well. The free version of the app has ads, which can be disabled by upgrading to the premium version. Read More

How To Use The New Natural, Google Now-Like Voice Search In Chrome

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Google Now is growing in popularity; it started out as a feature in Android but can now be used on iOS as well, if you have the Google Search app installed. Even better, if you’re running the latest version of Chrome, i.e. Chrome 27, you can take advantage of the new Google Now-like voice search feature that lets you ask your browser what time it is in a specific country, what the weather is like, and so on, to receive both an audio answer (limited in response  for now) and Google Now-like cards with your search results. Disappointingly, the voice search feature isn't accessible from the Omnibar, and you have to visit Google.com to use it, but other than that, it’s quite good. Here’s how to start using it now. Read More

Fruumo Gives Chrome A Gorgeous New Tab Page With RSS Feeds, Clock & Weather

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By default, Chrome can be set to open the New Tab page, one or more preset pages, or your last open tabs each time you launch the browser. At best, the new tab page will let you revisit the pages you recently closed, in addition to letting you access your Chrome apps. While providing these features isn't counterproductive, some users might want more from the new tab page. As several extensions cleverly demonstrate, the new tab page can provide you with extra information, while keeping its basic features around.  New Tab Page is an extension we reviewed earlier that’s an excellent example of just some of the ways this page can be made more useful. Fruumo is yet another Chrome extension that modifies the new tab page so that you can see what date & time it is, view the weather info for the day, follow RSS feeds, and manage your apps. Read More

Glide Allows Easy Video Messaging With Live Broadcast On Android & iOS

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Messaging over mobile phone, or more precisely smartphones, has evolved beyond the simple texts that we used to send when Nokia was at the top of its game and everyone owned one of those indestructible yet ugly Handsets from the Finnish manufacturer.  Today, messages are mostly sent over the internet, and can be anything from simple texts to images, voice clips, or even small video clips. Glide - Video Walkie Talkie is a messaging app for Android and iOS that lets you send video messages, or broadcast your video live to friends (currently only supports Facebook). It’s something like a cross between Skype and an answering machine. You can chat with one or several friends at once, and also leave messages for those who are offline. To send and receive messages, both the sender and recipient(s) must have the app installed. Read More

How To Set Reminders For Notes In Evernote On OS X, iOS & Web

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It’s hard to find any shortcoming with Evernote, both as a service and with any of its apps. It’s rich in features and since it’s available on so many platforms, you can create and sync notes from just about anywhere. Though hard to spot, one shortcoming that Evernote did have was the lack of reminders for the notes users created and with a recent update to both its desktop and mobile apps, that has been fixed as well. If you use Evernote on a Mac or an iOS device, or its web clipper in your browser, you can now set reminders for your notes. Users can receive emails for the reminders they've set, as well as Notification Center alerts on both OS X and iOS. Sadly, the Windows and Android apps have been left out. Not only are Windows users unable to set reminders, it seems they will not be able to view the ones set from a Mac or an iOS device either. Here's how you can set up Evernote to give you reminders on your device or as emails. Read More

Browse & Post To Social Media From Major Email Services With PowerInbox

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There's no doubting the importance of social media these days, but it can be an extreme distraction for many of us, keeping us from being productive by switching to those Facebook and Twitter tabs all the time. For many of us, the mailbox is where we spend a significant time of the day while at work, and apps like Mailbox and services like Mailstrom are some of our favorite ways for dealing with email when it starts to become too overwhelming. Though wouldn't it be nice if you could also keep an eye on your social media accounts right form your inbox, without having to switch to their tabs? PowerInbox is an extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer that integrates with Gmail, Hotmail/Outlook, and Yahoo! Mail, and lets you add apps for services like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more to it. PowerInbox adds a sidebar to your email inbox and shows you your feeds for each of the services you've added directly there. It also allows you to see icons for emails sent by services it recognizes. Read More

Google Drive For Android Gets Card UI, OCR, Selective Offline Sync & More

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Google Drive is one of the services that didn’t make it to the headlines at Google I/O a few days back, and no noteworthy update to the service was expected either. What we do have now, is an update for the Google Drive Android app, a massive one. There are new features, a new interface, and bug fixes. When you update the app, the first thing you will notice is he interface that is now cleaner and easier to scroll, gives you a grid like view, and follows the card-based UI that users love from Google Now. Feature wise, the app can now connect with your camera to snap documents, and convert them to searchable PDF files using OCR. File editors now allow you to view a file’s properties, fonts & cell highlights can be edited for spreadsheets, and files can be made available offline. Read More

Find Places Recommended By Top Reviewers & Your Circles In The New Google Maps

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Last week was pretty big for Google; in its I/O conference, the company announced a new design for Google+, a music subscription service and the new Google Maps, among other product improvements. We've taken a detailed look at both the new Google+ UI with its card-based UI and Google Play Music All Access. The updated Google Maps interface is invite-only at the moment but if you’re among the lucky ones who have received their invitation, you might be curious about the new search and just how it works. Google’s stated on its blog that every click will give you a new map, and they weren't kidding. Not only is the new search amazing, but it also lets you narrow down places suggested by people in your Google+ circle or by top reviewers. This helps you find places, whether they’re restaurants, hardware stores, or a good place to have your car checked out, that your friends or industry experts recommend. Here’s how it works. Read More

How To Easily Access Or Delete Any TextEdit Document Saved To iCloud

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With Mountain Lion, Apple integrated iCloud more deeply in OS X. Unlike before when it was just your email or contacts syncing, iCloud now lets you sync app data and save documents directly to it. TextEdit, the default text editing app in OS X, asks you whether you want to save a file to your desktop or to iCloud each time you create a new document. The only problem is that Apple forgot to include any sort of real interface for iCloud. Sure, you can search for the iCloud folder but if you can make any sense out of the sub-folders you find in it or identify files there correctly, you deserve a medal! We reviewed an app called Plain Cloud a while back that made it considerably easier to browse files in iCloud without having to open the app it was created in. Those of you who save files created in TextEdit to iCloud might be wondering just how you can delete them. The process is simple enough and described below. Read More

Easily Remove Background From Images Online With Clipping Magic

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Photoshop isn't something you can learn overnight and with Adobe moving its tools to the cloud, just using Photoshop for trivial things will be waste of money. You will most likely be on the lookout for tools that you can use for free, or pay for once, and that work just as well for your needs. Clipping Magic is a small web app that lets you remove backgrounds from any image. It is simple to use but surprisingly intelligent. You upload an image and mark the background as well as the foreground. The app mimics the magnetic selection tool in Photoshop and picks up edges that are hard for you to define. The final output can be downloaded to your computer and if you create an account with Clipping Magic, they will also be stored on the service's own servers in the cloud. Read More

Easily Arrange Mac App & Finder Windows In Multiple Ways Via Hotkeys

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Snapping windows to either side of your screen is one of my favorite features in Windows 7. The feature works equally well on Windows 8 for desktop apps, along with a variant for Modern UI (Metro) apps that uses a quarter of the screen in a narrow column. Sadly, OS X doesn't have anything like this and if you're using an iMac, you might find that a lot of your screen space is going to waste. There are quite a few Mac apps that allow you to snap windows to either side of your screen, but they are mostly paid or buggy. iSnap is one free exception that we reviewed last year that mimics Aero Snap quite well. Arranger is yet another Mac app that lets you arrange windows, but it offers more options than iSnap, along with fully customizable shortcuts that differentiate between app and Finder windows. Read More

Flickr Gets New Web, Android App Design, Cover Photos & 1TB Free Space

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Flickr is a treasure trove of amazing photos. Comprising of stunning collections of original shots as well as stunning digital art created by its users, the service is one of the largest online picture collections you will find, and it has just been redesigned. I for one think it’s about time too; visiting Flickr in the past always made me ask myself why it was still the year 2000 on Flickr, but Yahoo has finally given the service a much needed makeover. The interface is now image-focused and instead of the tiny (and occasionally ineligible) text, you have an infinitely scrolling stream of images from your contacts as well as your own albums. There's a new image viewer as well, and the service now offers you one terabyte of storage space, saving and viewing photos in full resolutions, and a very handy little tool that tells you just how many full resolution images you can fit into a terabyte based on their resolution. Flickr’s new design isn't exactly unique or unconventional; it’s done what most image sharing services did a while back and plastered its background with images. Though regardless, it's still a major improvement.. Read More

Log In To Multiple Skype User Accounts Simultaneously On Mac

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Late last year, we covered a little tip to show you how you can run multiple instances of any app on a Mac. It requires you to run a script and is pretty simple even for someone who has never used the AppleScript Editor. Though there is one caveat with that method - it doesn't work for all apps, as we noted in the aforementioned post. Skype was one such app that we identified would not run multiple instances with the script. The reason has something to do with Skype itself, rather than the script. If you were disappointed by this and have the need to run multiple instances of Skype, Multi Skype Launcher is a free Mac app that will do the trick. It’s currently in beta and requires OS X Lion or higher. The app is basically a launcher for Skype, but allows you to launch a new instance of the popular app each time you click it, be it a hundred times if you need to. Read More

LinksWatched Notifies You When Duplicate Tabs Are Opened In Firefox

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Duplicate tabs i.e. the same URL opened in more than one tab clutter your browser window unnecessarily. Duplicate tabs are mostly opened by accident or forgetfulness, and rarely out of necessity. We tend to open some of our most frequently used sites multiple times because we forget we already have them open in a different tab, or we can’t find them. LinksWatched is a Firefox add-on that helps fix both these problems; it alerts you when you open a duplicate tab by adding a red border inside the window when a duplicate link is opened, and giving you a desktop notification alerting you that you've opened a link that’s already open in another tab, with the option to switch to it. Compared to extensions like Prevent Duplicate Tabs for Chrome that just close the duplicate tab, LinksWatched doesn't dictate what is done with the duplicate tabs, so the control stays with you. Read More

Save eBooks Online Or To Dropbox & Read From Anywhere With QuietThyme

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There’s a large number of eBook readers available for both desktop and mobile platforms, and almost an equal number of apps that allow you to convert eBooks from one format to another. QuietThyme is different; it allows you to edit the Metadata of your eBooks, and search for them by title, author name, or ISBN code. It can connect with your Dropbox account and you can upload your favorite ebooks to the service. It will then provide you a link to your catalog that you can be added to an RSS reader, allowing anyone who’s subscribed to it to know when you've added a new book. Books can be uploaded to either your Dropbox account or to QuietThyme’s own storage. It also integrates with several popular eBook readers across popular mobile and tablet platforms like iOS and Android. Read More

SoundControl Adds Pandora Playback Controls & Notifications To Chrome

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Extensions for controlling YouTube are very common and some of them can be quite powerful. What’s odd is that there aren't nearly as many extensions made for services like Pandora, Grooveshark, or Soundcloud, Pandora possibly being the most left out of the three. If you’re trying to find a convenient way to control Pandora, SoundControl Beta for Pandora might be the perfect solution . It’s a Chrome extension that gives you one button to play, pause, and skip songs. The button must be clicked a certain number of times to execute the function associated with it, and is customizable. SoundControl Beta for Pandora also gives you desktop notifications when a new song plays, and lets you select the volume of the ads and directly switch to the tab you have Pandora open in. The extension remembers the last song you were listening to, along with its last position during playback, so if you close Pandora, the same song that you were last listening to will resume from where you left off, the next time you open it. Read More

Find The Right Fonts For Your Projects & Test Them Online With FontPro

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Web designers have a lot riding on their shoulders whenever they set out to design a new app or service; everything from the layout and the flow of the content to its color scheme has to be carefully considered and crafted. One very important aspect of design is the choice of font that’s used. It might sound somewhat trivial, but fonts come in a huge variety and they certainly aren't a one-size fits all deal. FontPro is an excellent service that helps you choose the right font for any project. It’s free for now, but might not stay that way. The service allows you to search fonts by specifying different parameters such as the weight, slant, and width of the letters. The search can further be classified into serif, sans serif, slab serif, monospaced, script, handwriting, black letter, and decorative. Let's take a more detailed look at it after the jump. Read More

Disable Two-Finger Horizontal Swipe Gesture For Chrome Or Any Other Mac App

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The swipe gestures in OS X are an impressive way to move between desktop spaces, open the Launchpad, or do a number of other impressive things. Though they can also be annoying at times because they work system wide and there are some apps where a two-finger swipe function wouldn't make sense or even cause inconvenience. Unfortunately, the OS offers no way of customizing these gestures. A common beef that some of you might have is the way the two-finger swipe gesture, when accidentally executed in Chrome, will move you to the next or previous page in your browser’s history. Fortunately, there is a little script to disable it. The method works not only for Chrome, but for any other app as well, only requiring a change in the command to refer to the appropriate app. So, let's get it up and running, and get rid of this annoyance from Chrome on OS X. Read More

Google Play Music All Access: What It’s About & How It Works

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Google finally unveiled its much anticipated music subscription service yesterday; while the service was still just a rumor, the general opinion about it was that it would give services like Spotify and Rdio a run for their money. The service is called Google Play Music All Access and as the name suggests, it has been built as a subscription-access component of the existing Google Play Music service, which has itself been revamped interface-wise as well. It’s currently available in the US only, and comes with a one month free trial, after which it'll cost $7.99 per month to those who sign up by June 30, and $9.99 per month after that. Subscribers will be able to listen to the thousands of songs available on Google Play without having to purchase individual tracks. Read More