Fatima Wahab

Mac Editor
Twitter: @Fatiwahab Follow me on Google+

How To Enable, Disable & Use The New Gmail Tabbed Inbox

by on
8
Gmail is rolling out a tabbed inbox for its users and if your initial reaction to this is panic, then you’ll happy to know that the new interface is opt-in, and should Google decide to make the change permanent for everyone, you don’t have to worry because firstly, it’s just awesome once you start using it and secondly, you'll still be able to choose one of the older views if you want. The new tabs act as filters for the messages already in your inbox. Messages can be moved from one tab to the other, and Gmail can be told to treat all future emails from that address the same way. At present, you’re limited to the tabs that are available by default i.e. you can’t create and name your own tabs, but we’re hoping Gmail will allow users to customize that in the future. Read More

Adobe Kuler For iPhone Lets You Create Color Themes From Images Or Your Surroundings

by on
Leave a comment
Some people are tone deaf, others just fail trying to mix, match, contrast, or create color combinations. This might pose a problem for people in everyday life and occasionally, for designers who have hit a wall trying to come up with a good theme. One really easy way to come up with a great color theme is to look at your surroundings for inspiration; anything from a soothing landscape to the floral arrangement on your desk can be instrumental in finding a nice combination of colors to use in your project, and Adobe’s new iOS app Adobe Kuler is is a helpful tool that lets you do just that. The app, which is available for free in the App Store, lets you take pictures and detects the different colors in them to give you a theme. You can either snap an image and extract color themes from it, use an image from your camera roll to do the same, point your camera at anything in the room and have the app pick colors from the input, live, or use the built-in color wheel to create themes from scratch. Adobe Kuler also has a web app that gives you a color wheel for creating themes but doesn't allow you to pick them from an image. Read More

How To Prevent Mac OS X Spotlight From Indexing A File Or Folder

by on
Leave a comment
Hiding files on your Mac is not easy, and Spotlight is the reason why. Without a doubt, OS X has a very smart file indexing feature - a little too smart even, making it really hard to get around it. Hiding or protecting your files in the absence of an efficient encryption tool is a challenge in itself. The problem with encryption tools is that you have to go back & forth between encrypting and decrypting files whenever you need to access or modify them. It’s one area where Windows’ users have it easy. Coming back to Spotlight, the feature is what will most likely help someone find the files you want to hide the most. There is a built-on option to mark files that Spotlight shouldn't index but it isn't as effective as it should be. Here’s a much faster way to get the same results. Read More

Remotely Access Files On Your Mac & Move Them To Dropbox With Spotdox

by on
Leave a comment
With services like Dropbox, you rarely have to worry about not being able to access an important file because of problems in your USB drive, forgetting to bring the drive along, or forgetting to copy files to it. The problem you might have now is forgetting to move an important file to your Dropbox folder in the first place. After all, if the file never synced to your Dropbox account, you most certainly will not be able to access it from elsewhere. For Mac users, there’s a simple solution: Spotdox. It’s a Mac App available for free to the first 10,000 users (no indication of what it will cost after the limit has expired) that allows you to access files on your Mac from any device that has a browser and active internet connection. You can then move any of those files to your Dropbox folder and access them from Dropbox’s web interface or application. Read More

Twitter Mobile Apps Get Easier Image Sharing, Richer Notifications On Android

by on
1
Twitter has just released an update for both its iOS and Android apps and it comes with new features, an improved interface, as well as the removal of a few features that many active Twitter users will miss. The interface change, in Twitter’s own words, gives you wider timelines across the app. This interface change is for the iPhone only, and not the iPad. More functional changes to both iOS and Android app include viewing a thumbnail of the image you’re sharing instead of the cropped-out top half only, along with the ability to preview your tweet before sending it, toggle location information on/off for it, and switch between accounts as you compose a tweet. For users running Android 4.1 or above, the updated app also brings richer notifications, complete with user avatars and markers that tell you if it's a reply, a retweet, a DM etc. Read More

Flask Is A Desktop & Mobile To-Do List Web App That Doesn’t Need An Account

by on
1
If you’ve ever just needed to create a quick tasks list - one that won’t send you annoying email reminders, or desktop notifications, but that you or anyone else could add tasks to, without being bothered by complicated group sharing, or permissions - Flask is the web app to try out. It’s a to-do list app that works perfectly on your desktop and mobile devices. You don’t need to sign up for an account to use it, and can create as many lists as you like. The lists can then be edited by anyone you share them with. To save a list, you have to either bookmark it, or email its link to yourself. Tasks can be marked as done, and also distinguished from each other by assigning them one of the pre-set color labels. Read More

Auto-Eject All Removable Disks When Your Mac Goes To Sleep

by on
Leave a comment
At some point in our lives, we've all pulled a USB drive unceremoniously from our system. By unceremoniously, I mean that the drive was not ejected or unplugged, but yanked out without a warning. Naturally, your system - whether it’s a Mac or a PC - will remind you not to do that, as it can result in data being corrupted, among other things. Apart from habit, USB drives are usually removed like this in one of two scenarios: when you’re in too much of a hurry to make the two clicks needed to eject a drive, or when you think your computer is off, and you remove a drive only to find out later that you were mistaken and the system was merely in sleep mode. Sleep Eject is a small App available for $0.99 in the Mac App Store that ejects all mounted drives when your system goes to sleep. This means if you do need to remove a drive from your system, you need not waste time waking it up first. Read More

How To Apply Slow Motion Effect To Videos In The YouTube Editor

by on
Leave a comment
Hours and hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every day and they all differ in quality. For amateur movie makers who don’t have access to expensive professional video editing software, and the skills to use it, there’s a whole host of simple and easier to use apps that can be used instead, not least of which is YouTube’s own video editor. The editor is easy to use for beginners and it has every basic feature you would need to edit a video as well as some effects, the latest addition to which has been the ‘Slow-motion’ effect. If you often edit videos, you might be aware how rare it is to find this effect as a feature in an app or service. Here’s how you can use it to edit a newly video you've uploaded to YouTube, or to an existing one. Read More

Hands-On With New Features Of Opera Next For Windows & Mac

by on
5
Opera is a seemingly small name among desktop browsers, but it’s a tough competitor on the mobile platform, with users of both smartphones and feature phones using it regularly. Why Opera hasn't been able to compete with browsers like Chrome and Firefox is hard to say, but the team behind it is looking to fix that. The company has just brought Opera Next - its bleeding edge version that's a bit like Chrome's Canary and Firefox's Aurora builds - to Windows and Mac. The brand new Opera Next 15 comes with a new engine working under the hood, plenty of new features, and a brand new interface. Opera 15 is now running on Chromium and the difference that has made becomes apparent the second you launch it. Read More

Shape Magic Adds Search, Screenshot & Hide-Windows Items To Menu Bar

by on
Leave a comment
We review screenshot apps very often; just yesterday we reviewed PopShot that allows you to take screenshots and export them to any app, upload them online, or just save them to a location of your choice. With the growing number of screenshot apps, developers need to find ways to differentiate their own app from the rest, and that’s why you will find evolved screenshot tools that combine two or more other features as well. Shape Magic is an app available in the Mac App Store for $2.99 that adds bundles a screenshot tool with a search bar and a 'hide all apps' button. These features are added as buttons in geometric shapes on the Menu Bar - a square for hiding apps, a diamond or rhombus for accessing the search bar that supports several search engines, and a circle for screenshots. For each feature, there are customization options available too; you can choose to exclude certain apps when the rest are hidden, select which search engines are supported and what order they appear in, and include or exclude the cursor and window shadow in the screenshot. Read More

Reddit Illustrated For Android Offers A Google Now-Like Cards-Based UI

by on
3
Reddit doesn’t have  an official app for the Android platform, which is disappointing especially considering there is one for iOS. Though that makes it an opportunity for developers to create apps that fill this void. If you’re looking for a better way to Reddit on your Android device, you can take you pick from our list of best Reddit Apps for Android. Though if you’re on the hunt for something that’s slightly more appealing in the visual sense, give Reddit Illustrated a try. It’s a free Android app for browsing Reddit built entirely on the Holo guidelines by Google. It’s also somewhat similar, interface-wise, to Google Now; individual posts in any subreddit appear as cards. You can browse popular subreddits, view the front page, add any subreddit of your choice for quick access (sign in not required), download and share photos, and set a downloaded photo as your wallpaper from within the app. NSFW content can be filtered out, you can sign in and upvote/downvote content, and post comments in thread. The only downside at the moment is that the app doesn't support GIFs - a shortcoming the average redditor is quite likely to be disappointed with. Read More

Bring Back Tab Previews In Firefox With All Tabs Restorer

by on
Leave a comment
Rapid release cycles followed by Firefox and Chrome facilitates adding support for new web technologies as they are developed, meaning there isn't an extended waiting period where users are left with a substandard application that doesn't employ the latest technologies. It does have its drawbacks though; sometimes features we love are axed in favor of something new, with only a small chance of them ever coming back. Fortunately with Firefox, there is always an add-on to make up for nearly any feature that has been done away with. Firefox 21 came packed with new features, but it has also, very discretely, killed the tabs preview that was introduced in Firefox 3.6. Longtime Firefox users will remember that Firefox 3 was very popular, and this feature will be missed. All Tabs Restorer is a Firefox add-on that brings the tab preview feature back, to some extent. The add-on gives you a preview of all tabs open across multiple windows, and using the Tab key, you can select and switch to any one of them. You can use either the Ctrl+Shift+Tab keyboard shortcut or the add-ons button to view the tabs. Read More

PopShot Is A Mac Menu Bar Screenshot Tool With Direct Exporting To Any App

by on
Leave a comment
PopShot is a Mac app that lets you set up conditions for a screenshot before you take it. The app lets you choose the file format, select whether the whole screen, a particular area, or a window is to be captured, and choose what the output will be i.e. a file saved to a pre-selected location, the URL of the file uploaded to PopShot, or the image opened in your app of choice. You can also set it to apply a label to the file. PopShot will remember the settings for the previous screenshot that you took, and let you quickly take another one with those same settings using a keyboard shortcut. Read More

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

by on
Leave a comment
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

by on
1
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

by on
3
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

by on
Leave a comment
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

by on
Leave a comment
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

by on
Leave a comment
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