Waqas Ahmed

Windows and Mobile writer at AddictiveTips || A tech geek and an avid gamer || I've also written for other blogs, including GSMnation || Hold an MBA in Marketing || Founder of Tech Attend. You can Subscribe to me on Facebook // Follow me on Twitter // Add me on Google+

Xion Audio Player Offers Powerful Features & A Winamp-Like, PSD-Skinnable UI

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If you remember the early 90s, you can probably recall the craze of large tape recorders people used to carry on their shoulders, and Sony’s Walkman line for more discreet music listening. Then came the PC era and audiophiles turned to finding the best audio player on Windows. Fast forward to 2013, we don’t have to carry any extra gadgets anymore - not even our music collection on computers or smartphones, because it can now be streamed straight from the cloud on our smartphones, thanks to music streaming services like Spotify and Last.fm. Though if you’re an avid music listener who still prefers the old ways of keeping an offline music collection, and are on the lookout for an elegant media player for the purpose, try Xion Audio Player. The compact audio player is designed with many advanced features, and its fully skinnable interface is also something to brag about. Read More

BetterDesktopTool Brings OS X Expose & Spaces-Like Features To Windows

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Formerly known as Expose, Mission Control is one of Mac’s most talked about features. It gives a productivity boost to your everyday computer tasks by giving you a bird’s eye view of open windows, letting you easily locate the one you want to access. This feature has been absent from Windows since ever, and chances are that it may not likely make its way to Microsoft’s OS in the near future either. On the bright side, Windows has many third-party tools that replicate, or to some extent even beat, Expose by letting you use and control multiple virtual desktops on one screen. BetterDesktopTool is one such app that provides this facility in a user-friendly design. The application boasts plenty of features and is fairly easy to use. Read More

Save Screenshots To The Cloud & Access Them From Anywhere With Screen-shot.me

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Although we mostly use Greenshot and Shotty here at the AddictiveTips for our nearly all our screenshots on Windows, there are countless other screenshot apps out there too, coming in a myriad of shapes and sizes. Today, we have an interesting app at your disposal that will not only let you take screenshots, but also sync them directly to the cloud. Screen-shot.me is a Windows app supporting a minimal design and a few handy features. It can take screenshots, presents them to you in its basic editor, and let you upload them to the cloud. This can help you take screenshots on one PC and grab them on another without having to use flash drives for the purpose, in case you are working with multiple computers. Read More

Brow.si For iPhone Is A Cross Between A Web Browser & Feed Reader

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There’s absolutely no shortage of RSS readers or news aggregators on iOS. Hop onto App Store and you will find plenty of such options there, each with their own unique features. Though if you’re looking for an RSS reader that doubles as a snappy web browser, try Brow.si. This fascinating app lets you browse your favorite websites just like you would in any modern mobile browser. In addition, you can subscribe to the ones that you frequently visit and receive push notifications for updated content published on them. Thus, it eliminates the need of using a web browser in conjunction with a separate news reader app for the purpose. Furthermore, any links that you want to open from your subscribed content wouldn't require a separate browser either, also eliminating the need to switch between a browser and your feed reader while going through your feeds. Read More

LinkedIn Contacts For iPhone Unifies Local & Online Address Books & Helps You Stay In Touch

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LinkedIn has released a standalone iOS app for its new LinkedIn Contacts feature that aims to help you handle your professional relationships with ease. The app has been built to let you stay in touch with your pals, family and business associates over the world's largest social network for professionals no matter which channel you use to interact and communicate with the them. It aggregates your contacts from your iPhone Address Book, LinkedIn itself, Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook,  and brings them together all in one place, eliminating the need to use separate services or apps for the purpose. This can come exceptionally handy for those who have  their contacts spread across all these various services and would prefer to access them in one place. There's also third-party app integration with services like Evernote to help you sync notes with different contacts across the aforementioned services. The app boasts a great-looking UI and feels fairly snappy. Let’s take a look. Read More

Create, Edit, Convert PDF Files & Export As EXEs With PDFCool

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We have covered plenty of PDF editors for desktop, web and mobile platforms like PDFzen for Windows, Web, iOS and Mac OS X that allowed editing and sharing PDF files in a collaborative manner. PDF Mod was a another comprehensive option for Linux. In a nutshell, there are many PDF tools out there, all offering their own feature-sets and functionality. Should you be looking for another one to try out, give PDFCool PDF Editor a go. It’s a free PDF viewer and editor for Windows that bundles a variety of PDF-related tools in the package. Read More

Create Your Own Mixes & Variations Of Music Loops With LoopJam

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LoopJam is an open source application targeted at audiophiles for creating music loops in a variety of ways. The application lets you load or generate music loops by rearranging their waveforms from existing music files to create a new variation. Samples of music loops can be easily grabbed from sites like SoundCloud and similar places that provide royalty-free music, and LoopJam also packs in a few sample loop files out of the box to get you acquainted with how the program actually works. It’s fairly intuitive and fun to use once you get past the initial learning curve. Lets take a closer look at it after the break. Read More

Anvi Startup Booster Helps Optimize Boot Time By Disabling Login Items

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Is your PC taking more time to boot up than it really should? You even added more RAM or swapped your CPU, but neither seemed to help? Then you’re probably looking at the wrong places, because it might be the truckload of startup programs causing the issue, and it’s time to step up and get it resolved once and for all. Anvi Startup Booster is a Windows application that can monitor and disable programs that automatically launch during Windows logon. It allows you to quickly toggle startup applications, services and network settings on the fly. Boasting an attractive design, the application calculates your system boot time and presents an intuitive UI to disable non-required startup items to cut down on the system boot time. Read More

ModeFeed Is A Web-Based News Feed Reader That Focuses On Minimalism

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There’s been a lot of debate regarding Google Reader’s bitter demise lately. The 8 years old RSS reader, which most of us have admired for quite long, is coming to an end. While alternatives like Feedly have already taken up the gauntlet to provide a similar experience when Google Reader will no longer be around, having more options never hurts. ModeFeed is yet another Google Reader substitute that you might want to take for a spin. Even though it’s far from looking as good (if not better) as Google’s offering, this intuitive web app is worth giving a shot due to its minimalistic and simple UI that's designed to help you focus on the actual content rather than the UI itself. Lets see how it works. Read More

KCleaner Is A CCleaner Alternative With Scheduling Options

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CCleaner is touted as one of the best (if not the best) system clean up tools around, though that doesn't make it the only good option available in this genre. Previously, we have reviewed some exceptionally great CCleaner alternatives like PriVazer and Clean Temporary Files, both of which left us fairly impressed thanks to their top-notch performance. If you’re looking for even more alternate solutions, KCleaner is another similar Windows application that’s worth giving a try. The app is quite effective when it comes to cleaning junk files, and has the potential to even give CCleaner a run for its money. The application is able to detect and clean temporary files such as cache items related to internet browsers, VSO, adware, windows log files, application installation leftovers, and many more. Read More

GTKRawGallery Is A Powerful Photo Manager & Editor For Photographers

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The advent of DSLR cameras and their ever-decreasing prices have turned many into part-time photographers lately. While photography is an exciting activity, it becomes much more fascinating when properly done using a DSLR. DSLRs as well as many high-end point-and-shoot snappers produce images in RAW format by default, and not many conventional image viewers and gallery manager programs support RAW formats, with all their manufacturer-specific variations. Though with apps like GTKRawGallery, you won’t need to worry about this issue at all. It’s an open-source program designed to handle RAW images with ease. The application is reminiscent of Photivo and RawTherapee that we reviewed quite a while ago, and packs tons of photo editing and management features. Read More

Shotcut Is A Nifty Multi-Platform Video Clip Editor With Custom Filters

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Video editors like Adobe Premiere and Sony Vegas Pro are exceptionally powerful when it comes to professional-grade video production, but these programs don’t come cheap. If you’re looking for a powerful video editing application that won’t cost you an arm and a leg, try Shotcut. It’s an open-source, cross-platform app that provides an expanded workspace with a whole variety of features to let you quickly edit your homemade videos and recordings. In fact, it’s so powerful that you might soon find yourself carving out commercial-grade videos, after going through the initial learning curve, of course. It can encode videos at up to 1080p and packs a ton of options, while keeping the interface simple. Read More

Define Multiple Sound Profiles In Windows For Different Times Of Day

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We’ve covered apps that let you manage networks, and then we've also reviewed some that allow you to manage your daily tasks. But how about an app that could let you manage, or more precisely, automate your speaker’s volume? Speaker Admin is a Windows app that does exactly that, allowing its users to automate their volume level according to the time of the day. You can basically specify time slots during which you want the volume to stay at a certain level. You can also entirely shush it down at night by selecting the mute option. If you’re among those of us who usually leave their speakers at full volume but don’t want to hear complains from their family, roommates or neighbors regarding their distasteful music choice, Speark Admin can come very handy. Further details after the jump. Read More

Comfy Reader Brings Pocket-Like Reading Experience To Windows 8 & RT

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You might be surprised to hear that about 32 million people travel by bus in the US each day. Add this number to those who travel by train, air or other modes of transportation, and you will have a staggeringly large figure. The time while you're travelling can be the best time to browse the news, read a story or finish up on that late night article on your tablet or smartphone. While you may have read about apps like Spool or Pocket that enable saving webpages for offline reading or browsing them on the go, these popular apps haven’t made it to Windows Store yet. But fret not, as today, we have got an awesome alternative that might save the day. Comfy Reader is a Windows 8 and RT app that can instantly save webpages for offline viewing. It only stores the text of the page, stripping away any distracting elements like videos, pictures, advertisement etc. which in turn also saves disk space. Read More

DiffView Shows Changes In Registry & Any Folder During Defined Time

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Just like your car requires several components to be actively working for seamless operation, similarly the Windows operating system in your PC needs to have various services and processes running in the background to keep it running steadily. Some of these processes and services also continuously alter files and registry items here and there. That means the Windows you're using right now might not have the same number or location of files or registry items after installation or uninstallation of a certain program. If you’re wondering what has changed during the past few minutes on your PC after a change such as, let’s say, removing a program in order to diagnose some issue, give DiffView a shot. It lets you know about the recent activities in your computer, and any changes made to files and/or registry items. Read More

Capture HD Time-Lapse Videos On Android With Droid Timelapse

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Time-lapse photography has become enormously popular during recent times, particularly since widespread DSLR adoption and the availability of some point-and-shoot cameras as well as smartphones that boast this feature. Even if the time-lapse option doesn't come as default on your smartphone, there are now plenty of mobile apps available on all major platforms that may turn anyone into a time-lapse photographer. Fresh in Google Play is Droid Timelapse – a new Android app that allows you to easily create time-lapse videos. The application is fairly feature-rich and powerful at what it does, letting you capture videos by specifying the total number of frames to be captured in a single second, resulting in a full fledged time-lapse sequence. Click Read More for our full review. Read More

Photos+ Is A Unified Local, Facebook & Google+ Image Gallery And Editor For Windows 8

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Photos+ is an image aggregator for Windows 8 and RT that lets you bring together your pictures from your social media accounts and local drive, allowing you to view or manage them under one roof. Although the social media support is fairly limited at this time – the app only supports Facebook and Google+ as of now – it does boast an elegant interface which will make photo management a breeze  and leave you impressed with its awesome photo editing and photo management features. The app makes use of the integrated photo editor by Aviary to provide you with a powerful set of editing tools for effectively fine-tuning your favorite images before uploading them to social media. Read More

Hipsterize Photos With Retro Effects, Lighting & Frames Using XnRetro

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Photography imperfections were a common occurrence back in the old days when camera equipment was far from being advanced by today’s standards. Light bleeding, inconsistent flash, blurs etc. were all fairly common. While such quirks seemed quite annoying at that time, vintage photography with precisely those effects has become quite popular among smartphone users these days – Instagram being the first app that comes to the mind in this genre. People love to upload and share such photos on social media sites. If you want to turn your favorite images into vintage masterpieces, try XnRetro. This powerful desktop app gives your snaps a quick retro makeover. The application sports a host of vignette effects and even allows you to put virtual frames around your images. Read More

Postimage Offers Screen Capture With Quick Sharing & Annotation Tools

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Both Windows 7 and Windows 8 ship with a Snipping Tool out of the box to facilitate users in taking screenshots of any on-screen activity. This tool allows you to capture and store images in full screen, windowed, rectangular and free-form modes. Although the native solution suffices for the job, if you’re looking for an alternative tool with more flexibility and options like screenshot annotation, and social media integration, try Postimage. This lightweight tool quietly sits in the system tray and can be brought into action using its context menu or predefined hotkeys. Read More

Win Toolbox Is A Unified Dashboard For Several Handy, Frequently Used Utilities

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Win Toolbox is a multi-purpose Windows utility that acts as a Swiss Army Knife for launching and controlling system utilities as well as user-installed applications from a single place. It contains an umpteen number of features that might leave you fairly impressed. Although the program looks very simple from the UI, it provides useful tools like a screen capturer, color picker, fonts explorer, system shutdown timer and more. It’s fairly feature-rich with a truckload of settings and options, so lets take a closer look at the most salient ones after the jump. Read More