Tag Archives: Windows 8

Fotor Brings Its Instragram-Like Photo Filters & Tilt-Shift Effect To Windows 8

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Ever since the release of Windows 8 and RT, apps that were previously available only for iOS or Android are also coming out for devices running Windows. We have covered similar Windows Store apps, such as Shazam that was available, and very popular, on iOS, Android and Windows Phone. The Windows Store still has a very low number of apps as compared to the other platforms, however, apps related to various categories are coming out on daily basis, making the platform better and easier to use. Today, we present to you another app, previously available on iOS and Android, called Fotor. It is a feature-rich image editor for Windows 8 that allows you to apply filters to images, add borders, tilt-shift and other effects. Moreover, the 1-Tap Enhance option lets you quickly improve the quality of an image without having to manually tweak its Brightness, Contrast and Saturation levels. controls. Read More

Disable Windows 8 App Notifications Or Change Their Duration

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Microsoft's decision to release the exact same interface for both the PC and tablet versions of Windows 8 has its pros and cons. On one hand, this means users won't have to learn two different types of operating systems to use different devices, while on the other, it makes certain features seem redundant, depending on the device you are using. While Windows 8 offers default settings to enable or disable some of these features, there are a lot that cannot be toggled without the use of third party tools. One particular feature, Windows Store app notifications, however, is something that can be tweaked according to your liking using native options. You can either change the time that an app notification stays on the screen, or disable Lock Screen and app notifications altogether. In this post, we will explain how you can alter both settings. Read More

Customize Windows 8 Installation & Create Unattended Setup ISO

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Windows 8 is not just about its new and fluid Modern UI; the installation time and the amount of disk space consumed by the OS has also been greatly reduced compared to its predecessor. However, this fast installation does come at the cost of less customization options; in fact, there are hardly any. You cannot choose the components to be installed or leave out the ones not required. If you’ve been looking for a way to customize your Windows 8 installation, WinReducer 8 is what you need. This freeware lets you customize Windows 8 setup from scratch via creating an ISO file from an existing installation disk or ISO. Furthermore, it lets you create an unattended Windows 8 installation ISO, so you won’t have to sit in front of your computer during the whole setup process. Read More

Turn Off App Switcher & Charms Bar Hot Corners In Windows 8

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Hot Corners is one of the major new features in Windows 8. They are basically the four corners of the screen that bring App Switcher, Charms Bar and Start Tile into focus when you move the mouse pointer over their pertaining areas. App Switcher appears when you move the cursor to the top-left; likewise Charms Bar resides on the right edge and appears when the pointer touches the top or bottom-right corners. However, both the top-left and right corners can be quite distracting and annoying under certain circumstances. We have covered a few tools to disable these corners, but if you’re looking for a way to prevent the Charms bar and Switcher from appearing via hot corners without entirely disabling them with a tool, a simple registry hack can do this job. Read More

How To Disable Windows 8 Automatic Maintenance Or Change Its Time

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Microsoft reiterated that Windows 8 has been built upon the solid foundations of its predecessor. Well, there is no denying this fact, because apart from looking stunning, Windows 8 includes several robust features under the hood that make it fast, stable and snappy, just like the previous version. One of the refreshing additions to this feature-set is automatic system maintenance (also called Regular Maintenance), which checks for software updates, system diagnostics and security scanning tasks, on regular basis. This option ensures that maintenance tasks are performed at a specified time, provided you’re not around and the system is idle. In what follows, we will guide you through the process of changing time settings to run the daily maintenance task, whether to allow the schedule maintenance to wake your machine, as well as disable this feature if you don’t need it. Read More

How To Change Forgotten Windows 8 Password

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Windows 8 has been around for quite a while now and ever since its release, there’s been a lot of discussion regarding its new features, UI overhaul and what not. As with any modern multi-user operating system, Windows 8 lets you create user profiles and specify passwords to protect user accounts. This feature let multiple users share the same PC while keeping each user’s settings intact. If you are the only user with full administrator access on your computer and forget your password, you would be locked out of your computer. If that happens, your usual bet is starting over with a fresh Windows partition, or using some complex third-party tools to reset your password. In what follows, we will guide you through the process of resetting your forgotten Windows password without using any third-party tools. Read More

Adobe Reader Modern UI App Comes To Windows 8 Store

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Apart from its visually stunning looks, Windows 8 boasts many excellent features that make it one of the best versions of Windows ever to come out of Redmond’s door, in our opinion. One of the new features of Windows 8 is its native ability to handle PDF documents via the integrated Reader app. However, if you tend to use Adobe Reader for all your PDF needs, you’ll be delighted to learn that its Modern UI app has just been released in Windows Store that does a great job in letting you view all your PDF documents. The app is well-optimized for both Windows 8 and RT, and the experience is stunningly snappy in the latter. The app also supports touch gestures, making navigation a breeze on tablets. Read More

Disable Windows 8 Start Screen Launch Animation To Make It Feel Faster

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As many of you already know, Windows 8 follows Microsoft’s “Modern UI” design language, which emphasizes “content” over “chrome”, with heavy use of typography and empty space. Now, the use of elaborate animations throughout the user interface are one of its biggest, most distinctive features, and these are most prevalent in Windows 8’s Start screen, logon screen and “Modern” apps that can be downloaded from the Windows Store. Read More

Follow Latest Business News With The Economist App For Windows 8

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Today's world is a global village and it is quite common for something happening in one part of the world directly or indirectly effecting the business activity in another region. If you work in a position where you have to make business decisions, staying up-to-date with the important relevent happenings the world over can be of utmost importance. There are many news sources and magazines such as BBC, Reuters, Newsweek, Time etc., that allow you to keep a keen eye on local as well as global events and when it comes to the field of business and economics, The Economist is one of the first sources that come to mind. It has made its name by providing breaking news and insightful expert opinions on topics ranging from politics, economics and business to science and technology. Recently, the official Windows 8 app for The Economist has been released that allows you to browse through select highlights and columns from the latest and past issues of the weekly in a slick, Modern UI interface. You can read article in different font sizes, listen to an audio stream of the text, and bookmark your favorite articles to read them later. If you are a subscriber, you can also access complete issues and even download them to your device for offline reading. Read More

How To Clear Cache In Windows 8 [Guide]

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One of the things that help in speeding up your computer is clearing the cache. Although it isn’t everything it takes to get some speed, it still does wonders in some cases. Especially in Windows 8, where you have two different environments: the desktop and the Modern UI. You have to know how to clear the cache for both of them, and in what follows, we’re going to show you various tips for doing just that. Read More

Change Windows 8 Logon Screen Background Color Separately

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Even though Windows 8 offers a lot more customization options in terms of visuals than the previous versions of Windows, we have still seen many tools such as Custom Tiles Maker, Charms Bar Customizer and Skip Metro Suite that allow us to customize the UI even further. The Lock Screen and Logon Screen are two different interfaces in Windows 8; the former allows you to app view notifications, current time and date, internet connectivity and battery status, while the latter lets you choose an account for logging in to the system. By default, Windows 8 allows you to change the Lock Screen wallpaper (check out our guide here). However, there are no options to tweak the Logon Screen and it's set to be the same as the background of your Start Screen. In this guide, we will show you how to change the color of the Logon Screen independent of the Start Screen background color, using  a Windows Registry hack. Read More

Hands-On With The New Yahoo! Mail App For Windows 8, iOS & Android

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Not long ago, Yahoo! was the most popular email service and search engine on the internet. Almost everyone had a Yahoo! ID and most of us relied on Yahoo! messenger for staying in touch with our friends and family. Though later on, times changed and other services took over the number one spot in the online communication industry. However, it doesn't mean that Yahoo! has completely gone off the scene. Yesterday, Yahoo! released new apps for Windows 8 (and RT), iOS and Android that boast neat, modern user interface elements along with features that make it easy to use Yahoo's email services. You can learn more about features of the new Yahoo! Mail app for all these platforms after the jump. Read More

Change Windows 8 Start Screen Dimensions And Show Taskbar On It

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Don’t listen to the naysayers; Windows 8 is as good as gold, and so is its refreshing Start Screen that many are apparently finding hard to adapt to due to the conventional resistance to change. Although Microsoft has put certain constraints on Start Screen customization, third-party developers have been working hard to overcome them with their own apps and hacks. Previously, we covered a Start Screen personalization tool called Start Screen Modifier that allows Windows 8 users to decrease the size of Start Screen, display it within the desktop, and use hotkeys to instantly switch between the default and custom modes. The developer behind the app has released a major update for Start Screen Modifier, which adds the option to display the Taskbar within the Start Screen, so that you don’t have to switch to desktop mode in order to tinker with something requiring the Taskbar. Read More

File Brick Is A Local, Network & Cloud Files Manager For Windows 8 & RT

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Not too long ago, the storage space available in most PCc used to be quite limited. We had to choose to keep only the more important files, and often delete the huge ones that didn't require frequent access, or burn them to discs. With the massive surge in hard disk capacities and decrease in per-GB price over the past few years, personal computers can now save terabytes of data and thus, the need to delete old files in order to copy or create new ones is no longer a concern for most of us. Moreover, other than local storage, cloud storage services, such as Dropbox, SkyDrive and Google Drive allow you to save, access and retrieve your important documents from the cloud anytime. In order to view and manage all that data, we need a good file manager. We have covered several third party file managers for Windows 7 but when it comes to the new Windows 8 modern UI, there aren’t a lot of options on tha table. File Brick is a file management app for Windows 8 that allows you to explore both locally saved files, and those saved on different cloud services including, SkyDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive and Facebook. More on File Brick after the jump. Read More

How To Properly Shutdown Windows 8 Without Disabling Hybrid Boot

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Earlier versions of Windows would save both kernel and user session when using the Hibernate option, but as mentioned in an earlier post on how to enable Hibernate option for Windows 8, when you shut down Windows 8 from the Charms Bar, the system actually only hibernates the kernel by saving its state to your hard disk. It completely skips the user session, which includes currently running apps and their data. This clever trick, along with support for multiple cores at bootup and strong support for UEFI device, significantly reduces boot time. Your PC only boots up the traditional way when you use the Restart option. Read More

Rowi Is A Simple Yet Elegant Twitter App For Windows 8

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Without a doubt, Twitter has become the undisputed leader in the world of microblogging. Since social integration is one of the key elements of Windows 8 and RT, having a dedicated Twitter app on board makes a lot of sense. We have covered plenty of Twitter apps sporting the new Modern UI including Tweetro and MetroTwit and today, we are sharing with you yet another one called Rowi. The app allows you keep a tab on the latest tweets, mentions, messages and followers on your Twitter account in an amazingly fluid UI. Read More

Official British Airways Inspiration App Now Available For Windows 8

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Most of us can only dream of traveling around the world, especially when we don’t really have the money to fulfill such aspirations. Since Christmas is just around the corner, you might be planning to pay that long delayed visit to your loved ones in another part of the world. Our UK readers would be delighted to learn about the all new The British Airways Inspiration App for Windows 8 and Windows RT. This dazzling addition to the Windows Store library lets you book fares from London to different destinations around the globe. You can discover exotic destinations and cities, plan holidays based on weather condition or month, or simply ogle at behind-the-design videos of the airline itself. Read More

MINE Is A Modern UI Facebook App For Windows 8 With Feed Customization

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Just a couple of days back, we recommended a great third-party Facebook app for Windows 8 and RT to our readers called Facebook Touch. The app looked simple yet very impressive due to its well-optimized touch interface and overall design. Despite that, though, it really lacked the pure Modern UI elements that one would expect from a Windows 8 application, most importantly the tile interface. This is where MINE For Facebook really shines. Not only does its interface look clean and intuitive, but it also boasts the tiled Modern UI that Windows 8 is known for, making it really nice to navigate through. The key feature of MINE is to let you personalize your Facebook feeds in order to keep them well-organized. Furthermore, you can access your timeline, like updates by others, post comments, update your status, add pictures, and check your notifications. Read More

Bring Back Windows 7 Explorer Toolbar In Windows 8 With Ribbon Disabler

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The latest installment of Windows from Microsoft comes with a lot of new features. The user opinion is divided, with some welcoming the new direction Windows is heading towards, while others complaining about deviating this much from what they have been using. To learn about the changes in the OS, check out our detailed review of all the new features introduced in Windows 8. Ever since the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 came out, people started getting an idea of the magnitude of changes they will have to face, such as the replacement of Start Menu with the Start Screen, and Explorer toolbar with the Ribbon UI. Developers are still coming up with tools that let users get back the feel of the previous versions by reintroducing the Windows 7 UI elements that are no longer present in Windows 8. Previously, we have covered several tools that bring back the Start Menu, and today we have a tool called Ribbon Disabler that disables the Ribbon UI and brings back the old Explorer toolbar. Read More

Cinelab Is A Simple Video Editor For Windows 8 And RT

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Almost every major modern computer platform offers some kind of video editing feature. If you have been following us for a while,  you must have come across our coverage of dozens of video editing tools for iOS, Android, Windows and Mac OS X. Today, we are bringing you video editing application for Windows 8 called Cinelab. While not exceptionally feature-laden, the app allows you to edit and merge your video clips into a single seamless file. The output file is processed and converted to MP4 format, and then saved to the directory of your choice. The interface looks clean, simple and easy to use, and is fully optimized for Windows 8 PCs and Windows RT tablets. Read More