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+

Create Custom Symbols In Windows With Private Character Editor

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The Character Map utility in Microsoft Windows is quite popular and known to many Windows users as a part of the OS since its very early times. It allows you to insert special characters i.e. symbols or fonts that are not available otherwise, into your documents like essays, articles, reports, stories, email etc. Though did you know that you can create your very own special characters using a tool that also comes built right into Windows? Private Character Editor is an integrated Windows app that lets you carve out custom characters from scratch. In this tutorial, we’ll guide you through the step-by-step process of using Private Character Editor to make your own special characters. Read More

MRT Mixer Makes Audio Mixing A Breeze On Windows

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If you enjoy listening to your local radio station at work, home or on the road, you might have noticed the constant genre switching on many channels every now and then. At one moment it’s playing jazz, and the other it starts sending high bass into your ears, and then suddenly, you begin hearing that boring radio ad while eagerly awaiting the next song. This constant shift of tracks is called audio mixing, which is considered an effective way of making radio more enjoyable to an audience with diverse tastes. Apart from radio, you might also find audio mixing across a multitude of other entertainment mediums. Today, we’re going to take a look at MRT Mixer - a desktop app that allows you to easily do your own audio mixing while listening to your favorite tracks. Let’s look at the things that make this app awesome. Read More

9-Lab Removal Tool Is An On-Demand Virus, Rootkit & Registry Scanner

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As malware continually evolving, so are the security firms that are fighting back with equally robust, top-notch security solutions. And thanks to an increased awareness, so is the end users' knowledge and expertise to keep their PC safe from malicious threats. 9-Lab Removal Tool is an advanced anti-malware app for Windows designed to take care of shady software lurking on your computer. The application effectively removes malware including viruses, trojans, rootkits, malicious registry keys, spyware  and other harmful or potentially unwanted items from your machine. The application comprises of a simple UI and boasts an advanced protection engine that can detect and remove malware from every nook and corner of your PC, including hidden locations and services launched at system startup. Read More

PassBox Is A Windows Password Vault With A Metro-Inspired UI

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After more than a year using LastPass, this nifty little password manager has become my first choice for many reasons. I use it in Firefox, Chrome and even my Android device. Thanks to its handy synchronization feature, I can easily access my login info associated with social networks, email providers and other online services no matter which platform I am using. It’s secure and robust, but there’s one thing that might not make it a good choice for everyone. Even though LastPass’s powerful cloud features are worth an applause, not everyone likes to keep their private information on the cloud. So if you’re looking for an offline password manager, try taking PassBox for a spin. This Metro UI-inspired app sits quite nicely with Windows 8 and lets you store your account login information without requiring to sign up for a service for this. Read More

Nemp Is A Themable Music Player & Media Server With Cover Flow & Built-In Tag Editor

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If you start counting the number of audio players available on Windows, you'll probably lose your count sooner than you can imagine. Even here at AddictiveTips, we've covered plenty of media player and music management apps for our readers such as Audacious, Xion Audio Player, and Winyl, just to name a few. If you’re on the hunt for a feature-rich, elegant looking media management application, try Nemp. Abbreviation of Noch ein MP3-Player, it's an open-source app that not only looks quite impressive on the surface, but also carries many advanced features under the hood. Apart from letting you listen to music from your local drive, the application can also act as a web server, enabling users to stream music remotely. In addition, it also allows connecting your Last.Fm account with it to stream music directly from there. Other nifty features include MP3 tag editor, supports for playlists, iTunes-inspired Cover Flow-like feature and more. Read More

qrSend Lets You Scan QR Codes To Transfer Files From Windows, Mac & Linux To Android

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Do you transfer a lot of files from PC to your Android device? What sort of connection you mostly prefer for the purpose? If it’s, Wi-Fi then today we have an impressive app for you that will make file transfers dead simple. qrSend is an Android app with desktop counterparts for Windows, OS X and Linux that lets you transfer files by scanning QR codes. That’s right - no more drag and drop or copy-pasting files around, because all you have to do is scan the QR code that's displayed on your computer and bingo, your desired item will instantly be transferred to your phone or tablet. Click the Read More button for the details. Read More

Unification Brings Cross-Platform Notification Sync To Windows 8 & RT

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The lock screen notifications in Windows 8/RT isn't entirely a new concept, but it’s quite refreshing for Windows OS as it was never seen in any of its prior versions. These push notifications allow third-party apps to display real-time on-screen notifications for events like new email, weather updates, Facebook messages, Twitter mentions and the like. Although, its quite a nifty features that can save one a lot of time, there’s no central location where you can view all your pending notifications related to every app together. Earlier this month, we covered a Windows Phone app named Unification, aimed for somewhat similar purpose i.e. to bring all your notifications under one roof. The app has now arrived on Windows 8 and RT as well. Unification, being a cross-platform app, is designed to to automatically sync your notifications across all Windows based devices, including WP7, WP8, Windows 8 and Windows RT. Read More

How To Continue Using Windows Live Messenger Without Switching To Skype

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Not even a decade ago, Windows Live Messenger – Microsoft's foray into the IM apps – was the most popular online communication medium around, and was heavily used by the youth. Although, it remained renowned for years since its inception, people eventually lost interest in the app, specifically after the introduction of Skype. As Skype and Windows Live Messenger are both owned by Microsoft now, the company decided to shut down the latter, forcing existing Messenger users to update to the former. Though for certain regions, Microsoft is still keeping the service alive and its servers running . Messenger Reviver 2 is a Windows app that can bring Windows Live Messenger back from the dead by patching necessary application files and bypassing the forced upgrade window. Read on for more details. Read More

Identify Songs With SoundHound, Shazam & More From Android Lock Screen

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No mobile platform beats Android when it comes to customization; you can tweak every single bit of the operating system – from replacing the home screen interface or the look of your lock screen to flashing entirely different ROM, it gives users complete flexibility and control over their devices. In the 4.2 Jelly Bean update back in November last year, Google unleashed another great feature by allowing users to customize the lock screen of their Android device with various widgets. This feature further extended Androids customization abilities and apps like DashClock quickly emerged in the Google Play Store to take it to the next level. In case you don't already know about DashClock, it’s an awesome alternative to Android’s stock clock widget, but that's not all; it allows adding several extensions to it for all sorts of other information like weather, Feedly, calendar, Gmail and more. Today, we've got an amazing DashClock extension for you called Sound Search for DashClock  that brings Google’s ‘What’s this song?’ feature to the lock screen, with support for several other popular sound identification services as well. Read More

Export Twitter DMs, Mentions, Tweets & More To A Document With twDocs

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Twitter is undoubtedly the most popular micro-blogging platform on the planet. Back in December 2012, the bird chirping social network introduced an option to users download an archive of all their tweets to their local drive, and it received positive response from users. Although not something really groundbreaking as there were a few services already offering this, it’s a handy feature nonetheless. twDocs is another web app that allows you to download not just your own tweets, but also tweets from people you follow. In addition, it can download your favorite tweets, mentions, direct messages you sent or received, search results and so on. The app can save this content in a number of different formats such as PDF, DOC, HTML, XML, TXT, XLS or CSV. Read More

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