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Breezy Is A Minimal But Beautiful Modern UI Weather App For Windows 8

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Although Windows 8 and RT contain a stock weather app capable of showing a full five day forecast for your selected locations, there are also various third-party options available on Windows Store from a number of developers. We have previously covered a multitudes of Modern UI weather apps, but we've never come across something as simple and elegant as Breezy. Where many other apps try to copy HTC Sense-like features and weather animations, Breezy’s grandeur lies in its minimalism and simplicity, as it showcases the weather conditions with the help of simple looking weather icons. The app is also powered by Dark Sky weather prediction, which enables it to tell hourly and daily forecast conditions in advance, though this feature is available in US territories only. Read More

Get Android-Like Customizable Pattern Lock Security On Windows

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Although most of us hate having to deal with (and often forget) multiple passwords for all our accounts, this decades-old security measure has been protecting our computers, mobile devices, emails, documents, and financial accounts from prying eyes for pretty well. That said, advancements in technology and computing power has also made it easier for hackers to breach your system’s security by cracking passwords via brute force attacks. If you want to guard your computer through other means of security, try the pattern based locking technique provided by Eusing Maze Lock. It’s a security application for Windows that lets you set up a pattern for unlocking your computer’s screen similar to Android's pattern lock, making it more difficult for someone to crack and thus, less vulnerable to breaching attempts. Read More

SnapGadgets Is A Great Desktop Gadgets Alternative For Windows 8 & RT

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Remember those sidebar gadgets Microsoft debuted in Windows Vista and then later reintroduced in Windows 7 as desktop gadgets? Unfortunately, the company had a change of mind and decided to remove them entirely from Windows 8, disappointing a lot of users. Although the Redmond conglomerate hasn't given any clear explanation regarding their removal, it is safe to assume that the desktop gadgets were removed because they weren't going to sit nicely with the Modern UI. Today, we found a handsome Windows 8 / RT Modern UI app that (kind of) brings back those missing gadgets. Labeled SnapGadgets, this light, miniscule Windows Store app comes packed with calendar, calculator, sticky notes and time gadgets that can be viewed alongside your desktop by snapping the app to the right or left of the screen. Read More

Sync Facebook Photo Albums With Your PC The Dropbox Way Using Drop N Sync

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Facebook has become a one stop shop for all kind of social networking, media sharing, and promoting your business/venture without costing a dime, but it’s apparently the internet giant’s photo sharing feature that is used the most. Previously, we've covered various desktop tools and browser extensions/add-ons that let you upload images to your Facebook account, and today, we've got yet another one at your disposal called Drop N Sync. It’s an intuitive desktop application that makes uploading your photos to Facebook a breeze. It lets you synchronize your existing Facebook albums with your PC, which makes the process of downloading and uploading new photos to Facebook completely hassle-free, in a Dropbox-like manner. Lets dig deeper into it and see how it works after the break. Read More

Auto-Refresh Any Website At Regular Intervals To Monitor Changes

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Auto Web Page Refresh Software is a Windows app by Danaav that, as its name implies, automatically refreshes web pages to take the hassle out of keeping track of their updated content. It comes with its own web browser, which refreshes any web page that you navigate to at regular intervals. You can define how often a website should be refreshed in seconds and how many times it should be refreshed before it stops. It’s a very simple utility that you can use to monitor feeds or new content on websites that do not support live updates. Since it comes with its own browser, you will be able to keep your regular web browsing tasks separate from the page you want to monitor and your browser’s performance will not be dragged down. Read More

A Look At The New Features In Avast 8

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Avast is known for creating some of the best security tools in the industry. The company has been producing robust, reliable and efficient antivirus and security applications for the past several years, winning many accolades and certifications from critics and computer security experts. Avast! 8 is the latest incarnation of their long running antivirus suite and we've got to say it does pack a serious punch of features. The security juggernaut has debuted the program in four flavors: Avast Free Antivirus 8 (the one reviewed here), Avast Pro Antivirus 8, Avast Internet Security 8 and the top of the line Avast Premier 8. Let’s see take a closer look at the new features added in Avast 8. Read More

Bonis Audio Player Boasts Highest Quality FLAC, WAV & OGG Playback

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Being a music lover, I’m always on the hunt for new audio players that can deliver crisp sound and do justice to my ears as well as my high-end Sony headset. I've tried a lot of media players in the past, ranging from Winamp to JetAudio, Media Monkey to MusicBee, and a truckload of others until settling down with iTunes (I know it’s not the best audio player, but it's great if you own an iOS device). Today, I stumbled upon a unique, feature-limited yet powerful media player called Bonis Audio Player and couldn't wait to give it a try. Although the developer touts it as equipped with the latest generation audio engine for highest quality sound decoding, I had my doubts until taking it for a test drive myself. Read More

View Details Of All Installed Network Adapters With This Nirsoft Tool

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Nirsoft utilities are great for their simplicity, portability, minimalism and focus on getting one thing done well with each utility rather than bundling a ton of different features in one large app, and its these characteristics that make us keep coming back to review the developer’s latest releases. We have covered a handful of Nirsoft utilities in the past including NirLauncher, DomainHostingView, NetBScanner, and ShortcutsMan that have proven to be incredibly useful for us and our readers. The company’s latest release is NetworkInterfacesView, that allows you to display the list of all network interfaces and adapters that are currently installed on your system. Along with displaying the active interfaces, the program also lets you view previously installed interface found in the registry of your machine. It can recognize connected devices like USB or PCI-based wireless network adapters commonly used in desktops as well. Read More

Get Custom Start Menu, Global Hotkeys & Text Expansion With FastKeys

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You might have tried a lot of replicas of Windows Start Menu on Windows 8 by now. Some look extremely slick such as the Pokki, while others like Classic Shell come packaged with a plethora of customization options. If you want to opt for something entirely different than the tried and tested though, give FastKeys a shot. No, it’s not just another Start Menu rip-off, but an intuitive utility that can work as a powerful replacement of Start Menu, along with an apps and a website launcher, user-defined shortcuts opener and a lot more than that. Read More

List Of Windows Services That Can Be Safely Disabled

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Windows Services are executable programs that run constantly in the background and perform specific functions on their own. Users with administrator privileges can choose a default startup behavior for these services. For instance, they can be set to start at system boot, paused and restarted whenever required, or simply disabled. While some services come with the operating system by default, at times different third party software also add their own services. While leaving the services running in the background allows certain tools and utilities to function better, disabling the ones you don't need can also increase the performance of your system. In what follows, we'll guide you through the process of starting, stopping and disabling Windows Services. Read More

oCam Makes Capturing Screenshots & Screencasts A Snap

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The use of screenshot and screencast tools has seen exponential rise during the past few years, the reason being the availability of high-speed internet in most parts of the world, allowing people to easily and swiftly share screenshots and screencasts over services like YouTube and Imgur. While we've covered a multitude of screen capturing tools in the past, only few that boast screen recording and screenshot capture under one package. oCam is one such application for Windows that's both powerful and easy to use, thanks to its simple design. It lets you overlay a capture box on your desired area of the screen, and records any on screen activity within that box. Let’s see how it works. Read More

Saladin: Open-Source, Dual-Pane File Manager With Focus On Convenience

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File Managers come in all shapes and sizes, and we’ve already covered quite a lot of them for our readers, including Double Commander, Bru File Manager, and Multi Commander, just to name a few. Saladin is another file manager with a dual-pane interface to let you easily manage your files and transfer them between different directories without having to open two Explorer windows. Saladin also has a host of other features such as Windows Shell integration, built-in file viewer, file archiving, FTP etc. Read on for details. Read More

Easily Download & Launch Sysinternals & Nirsoft Utilities With WSCC

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Having too many applications installed on your computer can eventually slow it down. You may already know that different programs and their associated services running in the background consume system resources, adversly effecting the overall performance of your computer. Having individual applications installed might not seem like that big of an issue but having complete software suites such as Puran Utilities - - a collection of various tools to perform different operations such as cleaning junk data, managing files and uninstalling software - installed on your computer can have a bigger impact on system performance. Instead of installing a bunch of utility suites, you can just use WSCC (Windows System Control Center). It is a portable application that lets you install, update, execute and organize tools from different software suites, as well as several built-in Windows tool, all from one interface. Other than the available utilities, it lets you install and automatically update several other tools from within the interface as well. Keep reading to find out more about WSCC. Read More

How To Get The Windows 7 Look & Feel On Your Windows 8 PC

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Change has always been hard for most people to accept; they generally want things to keep running in a set pattern that they are used to, and any deviation from their regular practices can cause them a lot of panic. That is exactly what happened with Windows 8. With such a huge shift from the conventional Windows UI, Microsoft managed to displease a lot of people, including some critics as well as a significant user base. However, as people came out of the initial effects of the shock, a lot of them decided to stick with Windows 7 for now,  some decided to try and adapt to the new system, and the more tech-savvy lot with the knowledge of coding started writing programs to bring the old Windows 7 interface back in Windows 8. As a result, different tools surfaced, promising to bring back the Windows 7 UI to Windows 8 either by installing the missing features, or by disabling the new Windows 8-specific ones. If you are among those looking to transform your Windows 8 to Windows 7 in terms of the interface, here is a list of some of the best tools out there that can help you achieve that. Read More

xCloud Syncs Files Between PC, Mac, Android & iOS Over Cloud & WiFi

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Dropbox was once considered the cutting edge of cloud services, but now it seems every other company in the tech industry is hopping on the cloud computing bandwagon. The latest entrant in this field xCloud. No, it's not another cloud storage solution with unlimited storage, but rather a files synchronization app that lets you sync your files between a desktop PC and an Android or iOS mobile device. Though, what's special about the service is that you can perform syncing over your local Wi-Fi network as well, bypassing the need to upload files to the cloud first. So basically your PC itself works as a cloud storage for you, letting you access the stored content from anywhere you find internet connectivity. In addition, you can send Wake On LAN commands through the mobile device to access the storage remotely if your PC is in sleep mode, provided your motherboard supports this option. It’s dead simple to configure and even simpler to use. Read More

Tibi’s Mathematics Suite Combines Scientific, Graphical, Matrix & Factorization Calculators

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Some love it, most hate it and many have tried their level best to avoid it at school, but Mathematics is everywhere all around us, and there's no escape from it in any field. Every element of the world is either based on or in some way related to numbers and mathematical calculations. Behind every piece of technology including your computer and smartphone, there are millions of calculations going on every second. While these complex, automatic calculations are handled by computers, there are many that are still needed to be done by humans, in order to create those machines. A calculator is one particular device that has helped almost everyone at some point in their lives, allowing them to perform complex calculations in a few seconds. Windows has its own calculator with basic arithmetic and scientific calculations, but it doesn't quite cut it for more complicated ones. Tibi’s Mathematics Suite is a portable open-source application featuring a Scientific calculator, Graphical calculator, Matrix calculator and Factorizator, each with its own feature set to let you to perform complex calculations with ease. Read More

PhotoSun 14 Is A Lightweight Photo Editor With Effects, Facebook Integration & More

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Every once in a while, a new photo editor tosses its hat in the ring to grab users’ attention (and money too, at times), promising something unique or phenomenal. While the choices available in this department are apparently endless, only a few photo editors offer powerful editing options that instantly make them worthy of  a shot. Developed by Micranes Incorporated, PhotoSun 14 is a new Photo Editor for Windows that's jam-packed with features, doesn’t hog your system’s performance, and does exactly what’s it advertised for without adding a plethora of other features you might not likely need. Read More

Internet Explorer 10 Now Available For Windows 7; Here’s What’s New

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When Windows 8 was first revealed, the general feelings of most people towards the new Modern UI were that of apprehension. The new interface was the focal point for most people discussing Windows 8, but it had something else worth noting as well: Internet Explorer 10. At that time, the latest version of Microsoft’s browser was available for Windows 8 only, but Microsoft made it available for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 in form of a release preview in November and today, the stable version of IE 10 has finally been released for Windows 7 SP1 as well as Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Internet Explorer has declined significantly in popularity, but this latest version comes with features that put it back in line against the likes of Chrome and Firefox. The release does not have all of the features are available in the Windows 8 variant of the browser (like Flip forward), but here are some of the salient new features of IE 10 that might make you want to give it another shot on Windows 7. Read More

SlimBoat Is A Fast, Cross-Platform Web Browser With Several Built-In Tools

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Firefox and Chrome have apparently become everyone’s favorite web browsers, thanks to their extensive add-ons/extensions support, excellent UI and countless features. Microsoft has also improved its browser in Internet Explorer 10 that was first shipped with Windows 8 and got released for Windows 7 as a stable build today. Though there are many other web browsers out there as well that are simply overlooked by most of us due our usual hesitation of making a switch to a different one. If you want to try out something different for a change, give SlimBoat a shot. It’s a free web browser for Windows that comes packed with plenty of features out of the box. Read More

Tasks By Telerik Is An Elegant, Feature-Laden Task & Project Manager For Windows 8

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We live in an age where life has become a busy and hectic routine, with a lot on our hands and little time to manage it all manually. That’s why keeping a tab on what’s most important plays a significant role in managing everything successfully. Thanks to various task management utilities available for web, desktop and mobile platforms, technology is helping us tackling this more efficiently. If you’re on the hunt for a Modern UI task manager for Windows 8 or RT, take Tasks By Telerik for a spin. It’s a Windows store app that lets you manage your tasks and projects in a refreshing UI. You can set task notifications, add voice and photo notes, specify a recurrence pattern, filter or sort the tasks according to categories, and a lot more. Read More