Instant Fundas

IObit Malware Fighter 2 Released, Gets The Metro Treatment

2013-05-21T16:45:00.001+05:30

IObit has launched a brand-new version of its anti-malware product, IObit Malware Fighter 2, with a completely revamped interface. The new product has a faster and better detection engine, real-time protection, a way to analyze suspicious files using cloud-based scanning and a new UI design that is more in tune with Windows 8’s Modern interface.

Version 2 of IObit Malware Fighter features the so called “Dual-Core” anti-malware engine that promises faster and deeper scanning and at the same time better detection rates. IObit Malware Fighter 2 also brings real-time protection to the PC, which can coexist happily with other real-time security software that you may have. The real-time scanner includes heuristic detection methods and is capable of scanning every file at the time of access for spyware, adware, trojans, key-loggers, bots, worms, and other types of malware. Like all security products, IObit Malware Fighter 2 depends on malware signature files that needs to be periodically downloaded from the internet when they become available. This is automatic and transparent to the user.

The real-time scanner has separate modules for different function which can be individually switched on or off. There is a Startup guard, Browser guard, Network guard, File guard, Cookie guard, Process guard, USB Disk guard, and Malicious actions guard. What these guards do precisely is difficult to guess as there is no documentation, especially since the last three are disabled by default.

The Action Center is nothing but a tool to promote IObit’s other offerings - Advanced SystemCare and Smart Defrag, the absence of which the program classifies as “problems”. Also keep your eyes open during the installation as the installer tries to force a toolbar and download Advanced SystemCare.

Flickr Kills Pro Accounts, Gives Everybody 1TB of Free Storage

2013-05-21T11:28:00.001+05:30

Last week, Google gave everyone 15 GB of free storage in Google+ photos by combining the disk space of Gmail and Drive with Google+. Today, Flickr one-upped Google by taking the storage space all the way to 1 Terabyte. The biggest change Yahoo brings to the table is there will be no more selling of Pro subscription, and many of the previously imposed restrictions on free accounts were lifted, including the limitation on picture resolution and size. The announcement states:

At Flickr, we believe you should share all your images in full resolution, so life’s moments can be relived in their original quality. No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat. We’re giving your photos room to breathe, and you the space to upload a dizzying number of photos and videos, for free.

Previously, only Flickr Pro account holders could upload pictures in full resolution. Additionally, the maximum size of pictures for free users is now a whopping 200 MB, a long jump from a meager 10 MB in the past. For the sake of comparison, even Pro users are limited to 50 MB per photo. Free users can also upload full HD videos up to 1GB each (Pro users have 500 MB), with playback up to three minutes. Users can also create collections, post to up to 60 group pools and limit the maximum image size available to others.

Henceforth, there will be no new Pro accounts on Flickr. Instead, there will be two paid plans – one is Ad-free for $50 a year, and the other is space “Doublr” at $500 a year, that will give paying users twice the storage space – 2 TB. The cost is substantially less than the competition. Google charges $100 a month for 2 TB disk space, while Microsoft SkyDrive goes only up to 100 GB at $50 a year.

Existing Pro users will have the ability to renew their subscription, for which they will get marginally better features at the expense of losing the 200 MB per photo advantage that free users have. Mostly, they will have unlimited storage and bandwidth.

This is what existing Pro users will get, should they choose to renew their subscription.

Unlimited photo uploads (50MB per photo)
Unlimited video uploads (90 seconds max, 500MB per video)
The ability to show HD Video
Unlimited storage
Unlimited bandwidth
Archiving of high-resolution original images
The ability to replace a photo
Post any of your photos or videos in up to 60 group pools
View count and referrer statistics
Limitation of maximum image size available to others
Ad-free browsing and sharing

Certain Pro users will have the option to switch to a Free account until August 20, 2013. Switching to a free account will bump users to upload limits of 200MB per photo and 1GB per video, but will also cap users at 1TB of space. Other features such as replacing photos and the ability to see details of referrals and statistics will also disappear.

A New Look

Flickr is also getting a new user interface for its website, with pictures and albums getting more prominence than before. The new Flickr looks very similar to 500px.com.

There is a new Activity Feed that combines recent uploads of the user’s friends with activity on their own photos. The new photostream has customizable cover photo and high-res profile picture.

Finally, there's also a new Flickr app for Android device which you can download from the Google Play store.

AOMEI Partition Assistant Now Supports UEFI Boot

2013-05-20T12:30:00.001+05:30

AOMEI Tech Co. has released a new version of AOMEI Partition Assistant, and along with a name change, has added several new features, one of which is support for UEFI boot. The previously called AOMEI Partition Assistant “Home Edition” has been changed to AOMEI Partition Assistant “Standard Edition”. The term “Home” was dropped in favor of “Standard” because the new edition is now completely free to use for both private and commercial purposes, eliminating the need for businesses to buy licenses.

The basic function of the software remains the same, that is, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is an all-in-one hard disk partition software that offers various free partition management features such as create, resize, move, copy, delete, wipe, align, format, merge, and split partitions. Aside from these basic features, the new AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard lets you convert file system from FAT to NTFS, migrate OS from hard disk to SSD and vice versa, make bootable recovery disk, recover lost or deleted partitions, convert MBR to GPT disk and vice versa, and rebuild MBR to repair or add boot code.

AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard also supports the new UEFI boot system found in the latest laptops as an alternative to BIOS, support MBR disk and GPT disk up to 4TB, as well as removable drives such as flash drives and external hard disk. AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard is also Windows 8 compatible.

New features in AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard

Convert between NTFS and FAT32
Fully support UEFI boot
Make Partition Alignment
Convert to MBR Disk
Convert to GPT Disk
Rebuild MBR
Disk Surface Test
Make Bootable Windows CD using Windows AIK
Support Ext2/Ext3 Linux partition
Migrate OS to SSD/HDD Wizard
Partition Recovery Wizard

Eusing Maze Lock: Pattern Lock for Windows 7 and XP

2013-05-18T12:59:00.001+05:30

Pattern locks are popular on touch screen devices such as smartphones because they are easier to enter than typing passwords. When Windows 8 debuted, pattern locks became an alternate but necessary inclusion. Although most people are using Windows 8 on traditional non-touch based systems, touch-based laptops, tablets and monitors are catching up especially after the release of the Surface pro tablets.

Windows 8 is the best solution for touch based laptops or touch monitor, but if you are not very keen on upgrading to Windows 8, there are ways to port several Windows 8 features to Windows 7 and lower. One of them is the pattern lock.

Eusing Maze Lock is a free software for Windows XP, Vista and 7, that lets you unlock your computer by drawing a pattern on the screen. Eusing Maze Lock’s implementation is closer in appearance and functionality to Android’s pattern lock than that the one implemented in Windows 8.

The default pattern lock sports 9 dots in a 3 x 3 grid which can be changed to 4 x 4 or 5 x 5 grid thus increasing the possible number of permutations. At first you need to set your own unlock pattern by connecting the dots. Remember the pattern, because the pattern is your password, and you’ll need it to unlock your computer later. There is an option to save the unlock pattern as an image file, in case you need to refer to it later.

To lock the computer either press the hotkey combination Win+A or click the lock action on the menu that appears when you right-click on the program’s application icon on the system tray. This will display a lock screen that is different from the default Windows lock screen. The lock screen can be customized to display an image of your choice or simply make it transparent. When the lock is engaged, you can disable the keyboard if you want to.

Three small buttons on the lower-right of the lock screen allows you to make the pattern password visible or invisible when you draw on screen, so that anyone looking over your shoulder should have a hard time guessing your pattern. This is akin to showing asterisk on a password field instead of showing the actual characters.

Other options include an ability to automatically lock your computer after a certain period of inactivity, turn off monitor, maximum number of incorrect entries before the computer sounds an alarm, custom messages on screen and a few others.

I can’t vouch for the security of this lock screen. The task manager is disabled, all right, but there could be ways to circumnavigate the lock screen. It is advisable not to depend on Eusing Maze Lock if there are important and confidential materials on your computer. The good thing is, you can still use the original Win+L lock screen in matters of utmost security without disabling or uninstalling Eusing Maze Lock. Treat Eusing Maze Lock as a novelty application.

How to Make Portable Applications The Default File Handler

2013-05-17T10:15:00.001+05:30

The universal appeal for portable applications lie in the fact that they aren’t associated in any way with the host computer. You can run them from a hard drive or a flash drive. You can move portable applications from one drive to another, or between computers and it takes all associated data and settings along with the program. If you don’t like a portable application, you can simply delete it because there are no file or registry leftovers to deal with. Portable applications operate almost in stealth.

One drawback of portable applications is that it is not possible to make them the default file handler for specific types of files, at least, not through the “Default Programs” applet in control panel, because as far as the operating system is concerned, the portable application doesn’t exist. To overcome this problem, we have to use third-party extension managers.

eXpresso is a small program that makes temporary association of filetypes with portable applications. All associations are recorded as relative paths in an ini file, without writing anything to the Registry of the host computer. The filetype association is active as long as eXpresso is running. The portable applications disassociates itself from their respective filetypes as soon as the user closes eXpresso.

eXpresso itself is a portable application.

To make an association, all you have to do make sure eXpresso is running, and then double click on a file. If eXpresso does not yet have an association for that filetype, it will then display a window asking which app you wish to associate it with.

You can associate up to 2 different applications to a single filetype. If you hold down the Shift key when double-clicking on a file, it launches the file in the system default program. The Alt key, on the other hand, launches it in the second alternative program if one is configured in eXpresso.

You can also associate a portable application with a filetype by right-clicking the eXpresso system tray icon and then clicking on the appropriate item from the menu.

eXpresso also provides an option where you can change the path of a portable application from an absolute path to a relative path.

To stop making new file association, or override the current portable association, simply put eXpresso on Pause, or just exit it.

Start Menu Reviver is a Touch Optimized Start Menu Replacement for Windows 7 and 8

2013-05-15T00:06:00.001+05:30

Start Menu Reviver is a new start menu replacement for Windows 7 and Windows 8, that succeeds at merging the design style of “Metro” with the traditional list based menu system in a way that Microsoft failed.

At first appearance, Start Menu Reviver looks more like a Windows Phone launcher than a Windows start menu. But flick the mouse to the right, and the menu expands to reveal the familiar programs list.

In the expanded state, Start Menu Reviver has three distinct columns.

The column on the left most side is thin and contains icons to open a few areas like Network, Recent documents, Search, Task, Run, and Apps. The selection appears to be a bit random for me. There is also an icon for Settings that opens a context menu, similar to the Win+X menu of Windows 8. This menu gives you access to more areas on the system like Control Panel, Personalization, Device Manager, Scheduled tasks and so on, as well as Start Menu Reviver’s own settings dialog box.

The column in the middle is Metroish with large blue tiles linking to various programs. This is the place where you pin your most used programs. The tiles are adjustable – just right click on it and then choose Edit. Now you can edit the title, the target program, tile color and the tile icon. There are more than 200 different metro tiles built into the program. If you can’t find a tile for your favorite one, you can add a custom image. Here are 2800+ metro tiles to choose from.

The column on the right, and the last one, displays a list of installed programs and folders. You can scroll through the list, sort the list alphabetically either in ascending or descending order, and use the back and forward buttons to navigate.

At the bottom of the menu is the search box. The shutdown button is on the bottom-right corner. Right-click on it to access additional shutdown options like hibernate and sleep.

Start Menu Reviver is a different type of start menu. At this moment, I can’t say whether I like it or not, because it’s impossible to give such a verdict without giving myself time to acclimatize with the program. It may appeal to some users who want just a touch of metro to their start menu, others may find it revolting. Try it and see what you make out of it.

[via Freeware Genius]

Winners of Themefuse WordPress Themes Giveaway

2013-05-14T17:46:00.001+05:30

Here are the results of last week’s Themefuse WordPress Themes Giveaway. Based on the random number generator at random.org, we have picked three winners. Each have won a premium Wordpress theme of their choice designed by ThemeFuse. The three winners are:

Gerardo
Adrian P.
Sree

Congratulation to the winners. You will be contacted by a correspondent from Themefuse via email shortly.

How to Add Spell Checker to Any Windows Program

2013-05-14T16:33:00.001+05:30

Spell checkers are standard issue on all word processing programs. Browsers started installing them too since people spend more time typing in forms inside browsers than typing notes in MS Word. Lately, spell checkers have found their way into a variety of applications such as programmer’s notepad and even a spell checking clipboard manager. But why limit yourself to a selected set of programs?

tinySpell is a small program that allows you to easily and quickly check the spelling of words in any application. The program runs in the background, watching what you type and whenever it detects a misspelled word, it alerts you with a pop-up and a flashing icon in the system tray. Clicking the icon, the pop-up or pressing a hotkey, opens a list of suggested replacement words from which you can select a correction. You can set tinySpell to insert the selected word into your document or copy it to the clipboard or both.

tinySpell comes with a 100,000+ word-strong American-English dictionary. Unfortunately, the free version of tinySpell doesn’t allow you to add additional dictionaries, a function offered only in the paid tinySpell+ version. You can, however, add or remove custom words into the dictionary the same way you do in Microsoft Word and in web browsers.

The program checks spelling on any program that accepts keyboard inputs, including programs that have their own spell checker, such as MS Office. In this case, you might want to disable tinySpell for certain programs, which you can easily do by adding the program to a blacklist. Programs that are added to the blacklist won’t be spell checked by tinySpell.

The opposite is also possible. You can keep tinySpell disabled by default and make it active only for certain Windows programs that lack a spell checker.

tinySpell is available both as an installable as well as a portable application. The portable one is identical to the standard version but keeps the settings and all other data in the tinySpell folder. This allows you to carry tinySpell on a portable storage device and use it on any Windows PC without installation.

Now read: Ginger, a Better Spelling and Grammar Checker for MS Office, Firefox, Chrome and IE

Google Combines Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos Storage

2013-05-14T11:13:00.001+05:30

Google today announced that it will merge the storage space offered on several of its services into one that will be shared among them. This means that instead of having 10 GB for Gmail and another 5 GB for Drive and Google+ Photos, you’ll now get 15 GB of unified storage for free to use as you like between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos.

The new combined storage space is likely to benefit many users who have more photos to share than emails in their inbox. 10 GB for email is way too much space for the average user, whereas 5 GB is not enough to store your files on Drive and share pictures on Google+. With new combined storage space, you won’t have to worry about how much you’re storing and where. This also works the other way round. You may be pushing the 10 GB mark on Gmail but have plenty of space left in your Drive. Previously, you would have to buy additional storage or delete old mails to make room for new ones. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want.

Google also removed the 25 GB upgrade plan they had previously and replaced it with 100 GB which starts at $4.99 per month.

Google Apps users will also be getting shared storage of 30 GB shared between Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos.

Just as before, files created in Docs, Sheets and Slides don't count against your storage quota. Photos smaller than 2048px also don’t count towards your storage quota.

Google says the changes to Google Drive storage will be rolled out over the next couple of weeks.

DBCTaskman: Windows 8 Styled Task Manager For Windows 7

2013-05-13T16:57:00.001+05:30

There are many users who aren’t planning to upgrade to Windows 8 from Windows 7, yet there are things in Windows 8 that are positively attractive. For instance, the new Explorer, new file copy dialog boxes and the new task manager. The ribbon explorer has already been created for use in Windows 7. For file copying operations, better alternatives has been available for a long time. Now a Neowin member has created an identical copy of Windows 8’s task manager that can run on Windows 7.

DBCTaskman is a task manager replacement for Windows 7 that allows you to enjoy Windows 8’s vastly improved task manager without sacrificing the familiarity of the rest of the system, that is, Windows 7.

When you fire up DBCTaskman, you see a simplified task manager. Click on the “More details” button at the bottom to the program in its full glory.

The first tab is “Processes”, which unlike the Windows 7’s “Processes” tab shows both running processes and applications, the percentage of CPU time they are using, memory consumption, disk activity and network activity. The most noticeable thing is the heat map which represents different values in different shades of yellow.

DBCTaskman also groups top-level windows under their parent process. This allows you to see which windows are owned by each process so you know what will be closed if you kill it.

The Performance tab is also identical to that on Windows 8’s task manager. It displays the CPU usage, memory usage, disk activity and network activity over time as graphs. Additional details like number of threads, processes, and handles running, and CPU hardware details are also provided.

The Details tab shows details of running processes with more details. The Services tab shows running services.

A context menu appears when you right click on any process, but selecting any of the several options listed currently does nothing. Rather, it causes the process column to disappear. This appears to be a bug.

DBCTaskman is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. Download the one suited to your OS.

6 Vital Reasons You Should Optimize Your Site for Mobile Devices

2013-05-12T12:48:00.001+05:30

Think websites not optimized for mobile viewing are still in the game? More than 80 percent of smartphone users never leave home without their mobile phone and on-the-go shopping and finding the exciting are more popular than ever.

1. Statistics Prove Mobile Optimization Is a Must-Do

Image via Flickr by Bruce Clay Inc.

According to Usabilla, in 2012 the number of mobile users reached six billion and that’s 87 percent of the world’s population. In addition to smartphone use, the stats below make a strong case for website mobile optimization.

94 Percent of users look for local information on smartphones.
Two out of every three people access the Internet at least once a day from mobile phones.
66 Percent of smartphone users searched for a product or service after seeing a mobile advertisement.
Google has long been the King in search engine world and Google has a uses a separate index for mobile content and much of that index is untouched making it wide open for the mobile arena.
93 Percent of all adults in the United States own a mobile phone.
The average mobile user spent 13 hours per week on their cell phone.
Four out of five people use smartphones to make online purchases
People are using mobile phones to find local restaurants—90 percent of the time and of that 90 percent, 64 percent choose a restaurant within one hour of browsing for eateries on cell phones.
74 Percent of consumers in the United States seek out local review sites like Google Places and Yelp and rely on those reviews.
57 Percent of smartphone users will not recommend a business with a bad mobile design.
In 2012, mobile purchases were calculated at approximately $171 billion worldwide.
47 Percent of cell phone users read product reviews on their phones before making a decision to buy.
43 Percent of shoppers have downloaded apps from their favorite stores when available.

These statistics alone are enough to convince retailers to make websites mobile-friendly to increase sales revenues and engage consumers.

2. Developers Are Eager to Create Specialty Apps

An Internet search will reveal more than 260 million app developer websites to choose from. For those seeking out a mobile app, beyond asking how the developer will test the app once complete, they should also ask for a client list and to see examples of prior mobile apps created.

Developers of mobile apps should also be asked what sort of operating system apps will work on and the app should be available on the most popular like iOS, Android, RIM and Windows. A mobile app must also allow for online shopping and payment. Because consumers are 51 percent more likely to purchase from a store with a mobile-friendly app, thinking of cell phone shopping as a trend is not smart nor does it allow for competing with giant retailers.

3. Consumer Interaction Features of Mobile Optimization Are Beneficial

Image via Flickr by edans

It’s not just giant retailers that take advantage of mobile-friendly websites, small business owners are also jumping on board.

Effective mobile friendly websites offer features such as:

Creating wish lists
Saving items to shopping carts
Allow for consumers to create personalized accounts
Keep track of past purchase histories
Suggest products based on past purchases
Optimal customer service features
Consumer and expert product reviews
Product images and videos
FAQ and how-to pages
The ability to work on all smartphone operating systems

With all of these features and more, mobile shopping becomes easier and personal and allows for the on-the-go web experiences consumes desire.

4. Consumers Are Demanding Mobile-Friendly Websites

According to Sprout Insights, 61 percent of consumers will leave a website it it’s not mobile-friendly. These same consumers also offered the features most desired including:

A search bar to for browsing was important to 78 percent of those surveyed.
74 Percent wanted the ability to go to the full non-mobile website.
A fit-the-screen mobile site is a necessary must to 70 percent of consumers.
66 Percent wanted an easy click-here to call feature.
73 Percent wanted mobile sites to save information for future use.
Big and easy to see buttons are wanted by 66 percent.
64 Percent wanted sites to scroll up and down only, not let to right.

Smartphone users also enjoy being able to quickly find store hours, a map with directions, visible telephone numbers and access to product specifications. Making your website mobile-friendly engages the consumer and if the old saying the consumer is always right is true, a mobile website is an essential must.

5. Offer Mobile Sites To Teach and Instruct

There is another world of mobile users that seek out websites to learn how to do something or to perform research. Organizations that can and are benefiting from the ability to offer mobile instruction, DIY tips or self-help include:

Dieting, exercise and healthy meal planning
Doctor’s offices and medical facilities
Colleges and universities
Tutors and mentor aides
Bookstores, magazines and newspapers
Online gaming
Music and radio
How-to DIY for home and auto
Non-profits and foundations
Governments—Federal, state and local

If a business, establishment or organization falls into one of these fields, making website content and interaction mobile-friendly not only helps the consumer but ensures people turn to these sites again and again for support—monetized or not.

6. Mobile Sites to Entertain and Connect

Many app developers are taking advantage of making websites compatible with smartphones to entertain in a number of areas such as puzzle games, board games and video games. Others are optimizing user activity by providing videos, all-in-one social media sharing, idea exchanges, connecting like-minded groups and self-help forums. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all smartphone ready by downloading the appropriate app based on operating system and engaging with others without having to power on a PC or laptop.

Along with entertaining comes the ability to share with others instantly—not wait for a friend or family member to read an email and click on the suggested link. Instant connectivity to entertain and connect via websites that have mobile-friendly apps is just one more consumer demand that businesses are paying attention to and delivering.

When a website is non-viewable, hard to read or crushed on a smartphone screen, consumers will find one that is able to provide a total experience. Business and organizations everywhere must turn to mobile optimization or lose the consumer whose choice is the ever-growing mobile phone environment.

This article was contributed by DJ Miller, a graduate student at the University of Tampa. He is an app developer who spends most his time writing on anything tech related. In his spare time he likes to travel, play soccer, and watch movies. You can follow him on twitter @MillerHeWrote

One Year Ago: Spotflux, Z-VSScopy, Seam Carving GUI And More

2013-05-12T11:32:00.001+05:30

A selection of articles containing the best tips, resources and software reviews published between April 1 and April 30 of last year.

Monitor Uptime/Downtime of 170+ Popular Web APIs

2013-05-10T13:47:00.001+05:30

Zapier, a service that enables users to automate tasks between different online services, something similar to IFTTT, has launched an API Status Board that lets developers who rely on APIs of various web applications to monitor the uptime and downtime of more than 170 web APIs from a single page. The API Status Board shows the current status of all APIs as well as the status history of last seven days. The Status Board can also send alerts to users in the event of service disruption via email, Gtalk, SMS and a few other ways, but that is a paid service. But you can keep yourself abreast of the status of these services via RSS, which is delivered free.

How does it work?

It's simple: we track the HTTP status codes for each request made in the course of normal business. 2xx is a signal that everything is green, 4xx is a signal that something didn't work (usually this is due to user configuration, but sudden, widespread elevations could signify newly shipped bugs) and 5xx is a signal that there is an outage proper.

With all that data on hand, it's simple to compare "successes" to each class of "failures" and look for abnormalities in that pattern. If there are any, they are recorded and displayed for all to see on the status board.

In the heat of the moment there isn't always a ton of data on hand, so we always go back and clarify why exactly there were issues with a short explanation of the causes and we'll even link the service providers outage report when it becomes available.

Because it requires a bit of historic information for an adequate sample (and there is no need to introduce false alarms), the dashboard runs on a delay of about ~5-10 minutes. Bigger, more widespread outages will be reported quicker than minor issues.

Supported web APIs include the following:

Active Campaign, AgileZen, AlphaMail, Ambassador, AngelList, App.net (alpha), Appointlet, Asana, AutoRemote, Base, CRM, Basecamp, Basecamp Classic, Batchbook, Beanstalk, Better Voicemail, Bigcommerce, Box, Buffer, Call Tracking Metrics, Calldrip, CallRail, Campaign Monitor, Campayn, Campfire, Capsule CRM, Catchwind SMS, Cerb, Chargify, Chatter, CheddarGetter, Clevertim, CRM, Close.io, Constant Contact, Datadog, DataSift, Deputy, Desk, Dialogue.net SMS, Displet RETS/IDX, Ducksboard, Dwolla, EmailDirect, Emma, EnvoyRelate, Esponce, Eve Online, Eventbrite, Everytime, Facebook, Findmyshift, Flowdock, FluidSurveys, Formdesk, Formitize, Formstack, Foursquare, Freckle, FreeAgent, Freshbooks, Geckoboard, Genoo, GetResponse, GitHub, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Tasks, GoToWebinar, Hall, Harvest, Help Scout, Highrise, Hipchat, Hoiio, HubSpot, Infusionsoft, InstantCustomer, Jira, JotForm, KanbanTool, KickoffLabs, LeanKit, Leftronic, LessAccounting, Lighthouse, LinkedIn, Liquid Planner, Lockitron, MailChimp, Mailgun, Mailigen, Mandrill, Mavenlink, Message Bus, MobileWorks, Mobyt SMS, MyPhoneRoom, New Relic, Newsinapp, Nimble, Noti, Notify My Android, Notifyr, Push, Nozbe, Nutshell CRM, OnePage CRM, OpsGenie, Osmosis, Papyrs, Paymill, pbSmartConnections, Pingdom, Pipedrive, Pivotal Tracker, Podio, Prefinery, ProdPad, Pushover, Pushwoosh, QuickBase, Quickbooks, Raven Tools, Recurly, RelateIQ, RJMetrics, Ronin, Run my Accounts, Salesforce, Samanage, Sazneo, Semantria, Sendgrid, SendHub, Sendicate, Shopify, Sirportly, SkyDrive, Solve360, Sprintly, StatusCake, StockTwits, Streak, Stride, Stripe, SugarCRM, TalentLMS, TaskRabbit, Teambox, TeamworkPM, TelAPI, Tender Support, Toggl, Totango, Trello, TriggerApp, Twilio, Unbounce, Unleashed Software, UserVoice, Vision Helpdesk, Vouchfor!, WebMerge, Week Plan, Wired Marketing, Wufoo, Xero, Yammer, YouTube, Zendesk, and Zoho CRM.

You may notice some popular web APIs are missing, the most noticeable among them are Dropbox, Bing search, eBay, Flickr, Instagram, Paypal, Tumblr, SoundCloud, Twitter, Vimeo, Wikipedia and maybe many dozen others.

If these services are essential for you, then you will find their API uptime status on another uptime monitoring tool – API Status by Nimsoft. Like API Status Board by Zapier, Nimsoft’s API Status displays near-real-time status of 46 public APIs along with a history of past 7 days.

Although API Status is working, it has not been updated for a long time. This is evident from several obsolete APIs that still show on the board like the Digg API and Google Buzz API, both of which are discontinued. Many APIs are also seen as unavailable when they are very much functioning, indicating that the API has changed but has not been updated on the uptime board.

Timelapse Using Earth’s Satellite Imagery

2013-05-09T22:04:00.001+05:30

Google Earth, in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), NASA and TIME, has unveiled a new project called Timelapse that lets you visualize how different parts of the earth have changed during the past 28 years. Using high resolution satellite imagery of the Earth, Google has created an interactive, time-lapse animation that progress year-by-year, showing exactly how the Earth’s surface has changed in key areas like the Amazon Rain Forest, booming metropolitan areas of Las Vegas and Dubai, and the sad disappearance of water bodies like the Aral Sea.

The images were collected as part of an ongoing joint mission between the USGS and NASA called Landsat. Their satellites have been observing earth from space since the 1970s sending images back to Earth where they were archived at USGS. Google joined in in 2009, to make this historic archive of earth imagery available online.

Using Google Earth Engine technology, they sifted through 2,068,467 images totaling 909 terabytes of data to find the highest-quality images, like those without clouds, for every year since 1984 and for every spot on Earth. They then compiled these into enormous planetary images, 1.78 terapixels each, one for each year.

Then with the help of CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, they converted these annual Earth images into a seamless, browsable HTML5 animation which you can check out at the Timelapse website. You can pause the animation and zoom into the image to get a better look, or move the slider forward or back at your own pace.

[via Google Latlong blog]

XnRetro: Give Vintage Camera Effects to Your Photos

2013-05-09T21:21:00.001+05:30

One of the things that draw people to Instagram is the huge number of filters that are available to the users. These filters, when applied to a photograph, recreates effects or rather defects that were typical of vintage photos like fading, vignetting, and light leaks. Recreating these effects on an image editing software requires skill, something which Daniel Box discovered when he attempted to reproduce them in Adobe Photoshop. Thanks to Daniel, we now have nearly two dozen Instagram effects in the form of Photoshop actions that can be applied straight to any picture, if you have Adobe Photoshop.

XnRetro is another desktop program dedicated to giving your pictures that old, spoiled look. XnRetro doesn’t try to mimic Instagram’s filters. Rather, they have their own set of filters and retro photo frames. In addition to Windows, Mac OSX and the Linux desktop, XnRetro is also available on the mobile platform. Users of iPhone and Android devices can install it from their respective app store.

In XnRetro, you can apply four kind of effects and these are grouped into four different tabs at the bottom of the program window.

The Retro tab consist of filters that adds a retro effect to the pictures. There are 20 different retro filters.
The Light tab has various forms of light leaks that typically plagued early camera models. There are 15 random light effects.
The Vignette tab has various shapes of vignettes. There are 5 vignette shapes inclduing round, square and vertical.
And finally, the Filter tab has many different frames. There are 30 frames available ranging from simple black borders, to polaroid styled frames to garish flowery ones. Almost all the frames have the vintage look.

You proceed from one tab to another choosing and applying a filter of your choice. If you don’t like the look, you can return back to any of the tabs to change the filter later.

On the right of the image preview, you will find various sliders that lets you make adjustment to the image independently of the filter that you have applied. However, when you make adjustments to exposure, saturation, and the balance of the 3 primary colors, and then apply a filter, the effect will be compounded, as these filters are nothing but color and brightness/contrast adjustment of the image. The advantage is that it gives you precise control over your image. If you do not like the way a filter looks, you can enhance or lower the effect of the filter by adjusting these sliders.

The last two sliders, Vignetting and Light opacity controls the amount of vignette and the strength of the light leak filters, respectively. There is also a Noise filter to add grains to the image. The “Square output” tick box at the top controls whether the image will be cropped to a square during framing.

When you are done, you can save your picture and optionally share it on a number of social networks like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Tumblr or upload it to an image hosting website such as Imgur, Imageshack, Yfrog etc.

TreeLine: Organize Notes in Tree Structure

2013-05-09T14:21:00.001+05:30

TreeLine is an unique information organization tool that combines the characteristics of both an outliner and a Personal Information Manager (PIM). It allows you to store just about any information that you normally keep in notes, whether that be bookmarks, text snippets, contacts, to-do list, book catalog or whatever lese you need to keep track of. A tree structure with unlimited nodes and sub-nodes makes it easy to keep the information organized. And each node in the tree is capable of containing several fields to form a mini-database.

TreeLine comes with five templates, pre-populated with sample data to help you get started. You can use these templates to get familiar with various options available in TreeLine and understand what kind of information you can store in them. You can then replace the sample data with your own, rather than starting from a scratch.

Here is a typical to-do list created using TreeLine.

The panel on the left displays the tree view with parent nodes that can be opened and closed to display child nodes. The right pane is tabbed to show three different views of the data. The "Data Output" view shows the formatted text for each node and is read-only. The "Data Editor" view shows a text edit box for each data field within a node. The "Title List" view shows a list of node titles that can be modified using typical text editor methods.

To add new data, use the Node menu to add child nodes. The position of the child nodes will depend on which parent node is selected. Once a new child node is created, enter your data from the “Data Editor” pane. You can drag child nodes within the tree structure to reposition them. You can also use the Up/Down menu items or Insert Before/After to reorganize the tree structure.

It is possible to use HTML font tags in the “Data Editor” to stylize the information that is displayed. For this, you have to change the “Data type” to HTML from the Data menu.

TreeLine is actually a very complex application that looks deceptively simple. It is easier to begin from one of the provided templates than attempting to create your own. There are so many different formatting types, field options, data types, conditional types, and node types, among others, that it will take quite an effort to understand them all, if you plan to create templates from scratch.

TreeLine is available for Windows and Linux platform, and all Treeline files are saved in the format extension TRL. This allows you to share your notes easily when you switch system.

TreeLine Features:

General

Stores almost any type of information, including plain text, HTML, numbers, dates, times, booleans, URLs, etc.
The tree structure helps keep things organized.
Each node can have several fields that form a mini-database.
Several node types, with different sets of fields, can be included in one file.
The node format, including fields, output lines and tree-view icon, can be defined for each node type.

Views

The left-hand view defaults to a tree view but can show a flat list of descendants of the current node.
The left flat view also shows the results of filtering operations.
The right-hand view can show one of three views - for showing output, editing node data and editing node titles.
The right-hand view is normally split to show data from the parent node and its children.
If multiple nodes are selected, the right-hand view shows all of their data.
The output view can be set to show indented output from all descendant nodes.

Navigation

There is a quick incremental search command to find a matching node title.
There is a find command that searches through all node data.
Previous and next selection commands toggle selections to quickly move between parts of the tree.

Formatting

The dialog for data type configuration has several tabs to easily set all type, field and output parameters.
Formatting information can be copied from another TreeLine file.

File Handling

Undo and redo commands are available for all modifying operations.
TreeLine files are XML by default, but there are options for automatically compressing or encrypting the files.
Document templates for new files are preformatted to cover basic needs.
The formatted output can be printed with parent/child lines and headers and footers.

File Import and Export

The data can be exported to HTML.
An XSLT file can be exported to work with the XML TreeLine files.
Tab-delimited tables and tab-indented text files can be imported and exported. Plain text files and Treepad files can be imported.
Mozilla and XBEL format bookmark files can be imported and exported.
Generic XML files can be imported and exported, allowing TreeLine to function as a crude XML editor.
ODF text documents can be imported and exported as outlines.
Batch file conversions can be done from a command line interface.

Linking Objects

Clicking on URL fields in the output view opens the link in an external web browser.
There are internal link fields that select another node based on a reference or a keyword.
An executable link can run an external program or open a file when clicked.

Data Manipulation

There are several sorting options.
The nodes can be filtered.
A node's icon and output format can be changed conditionally based on its data.
Text data can be spell checked (requires an external program)
Data can be automatically arranged using either parent references or categories from data fields.
There is an outline numbering feature.

Customization

There are many options for customizing both general and file-based attributes.
There are editors for keyboard shortcuts and toolbar commands.
The user interface and documentation are available in English, French and German.

Other recommended PIM (Personal Information Manager):

Another Chance to Send Your Name to Mars

2013-05-08T16:39:00.001+05:30

The majority of humanity may not have the opportunity to set their feet on Martian soil, but at least they can send their names. As a part of the MAVEN mission to Mars, NASA is asking the people of earth to submit their names to be included on a DVD, which will fly aboard the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) orbiter around the red planet. NASA is also inviting people to submit haiku poems, the best three of which will also ride on the DVD.

To submit your name head over to the “Going to Mars with MAVEN” submission page and register for a free account. Then you can fill out the form to get your name and poem, if selected, on the DVD. You also get a beautiful certificate of appreciation to document your involvement with the MAVEN mission, which you can print, frame and hang it over your desk.

Anybody who is over the age of 18 is eligible for participation. Messages must be written in English, and poems must be in the haiku form. Haiku is made of three lines; the first and last lines must have exactly five syllables each and the middle line must have exactly seven syllables.

You have until July 1 to make your submission. Public voting for the best haiku will commence from July 15 to July 29.

The “Going to Mars with MAVEN” campaign is being managed by the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (CU/LASP). The mission is due to liftoff this November from the Florida Space Coast. MAVEN is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The spacecraft will investigate how the loss of Mars’ atmosphere to space determined the history of water on the surface.

The first time NASA asked people to submit their names for the Curiosity rover mission, nearly 1.2 million people signed up. Their names were written on pages that were scanned and reproduced at microscopic scale onto two chips the size of a dime. The chips now ride along with Curiosity as it continues to roam the surface of Mars.

NASA also has a tradition of spacecraft carrying personal mementos out of Earth. Since 1997, shuttle missions have carried elementary school students’ signatures as part of an outreach project called Student Signatures in Space. The Cassini spacecraft brought a disk of signatures into orbit around Saturn. The Phoenix Mars Lander took DVD to Mars’ north pole. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took a microchip to the moon. And the exoplanet-hunting Kepler telescope took a DVD full of names and messages to ET into orbit.

In 2010, NASA asked the public to submit their mug shots so they could be flown to the International Space Station in one of the last two remaining space shuttle flights. A year earlier, in 2009, a 70 meter antenna at Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Tidbinbilla sent out a burst of radio waves carrying personal messages from people to Gliese 581d, a planet outside our Solar System which may support life.

[via Universe Today]

Remove Camera Shake Blur with Piccure

2013-05-06T17:09:00.001+05:30

A few months ago I wrote about an open source tool that could sharpen out of focus images almost magically, bringing out details in a photograph that seems hopelessly lost. SmartDeblur deals mostly with motion blurs and incorrect focus. To complement SmartDeblur’s image enhancing abilities, we introduce another tool. This one fixes blurs caused by camera shake.

Piccure is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom, and is available on the Windows and Mac OS X platform. Piccure tries to guess how you moved the camera during exposure, and then after some number-crunching restores the image using a process called deconvolution. Deconvolution is a mathematical algorithm used to reverse optical distortion and recover details from images that suffer from fast motion or jiggles during capturing.

“Piccure works different from most other image correction tools”, explains the website. “It does not try to make the image “visually appealing”, but instead aims at restoring your photo as it would have been captured without any camera shake during exposure.”

To use Piccure, you must have Adobe Photoshop 4 and above. The tool is said to work with Adobe Lightroom too, but I couldn’t find it in my Lightroom installation, possibly because I’m using an older edition of the software.

Anyways, after you’ve completed the installation, fire up Adobe Photoshop and open the image which you want to fix. Then click on Filters > Piccure > Deblur.

Piccure will automatically try to correct the camera shake in the image once it started. This may take a few seconds depending on how large the image is. Once it is done, it will show you a preview of the result in the same window. You can zoom in and check various parts of the image. The default split-view allows you to make comparison between the original and the output.

On the right, you can click on the “Advanced settings” section and fine tune the results. There are three sliders here:

Speed vs. Quality: if you have time to spare, try the “Quality” setting > Camera shake intensity: Try a higher setting if the image still looks blurry or a smaller setting if the image shows weird “ringing artifacts”.
Sharpness: sharper means your image will be more crisp, less sharp can help to suppress noise.
Camera shake intensity: the shake intensity ranges from micro to medium to large. By default, Piccure assumes the shake is medium.

Finally, there is the “Reduce camera shake” button that applies the settings to the entire image.

Piccure is currently available as a free beta software. You can try it for 14 days. There is no official announcement on the pricing yet.

Checkout some of the examples that show what Piccure can achieve. I tried it out on a few images myself, and found the mileage tend to vary.

[via PetaPixel]

CommaFeed: Minimalist Google Reader Replacement

2013-05-06T13:49:00.001+05:30

The date of Google Reader’s closure is on the horizon, but there is still plenty of time left to find a replacement. While a large number of users have already left for greener pastures, I intend to cling to the sinking ship until the very last moment, not because I want to, but because I’m forced to. I’m still waiting for the perfect Google Reader replacement, and one reader app that I see a good amount of potential is CommaFeed.

CommaFeed is an extremely light weight feed reader app that you can consider if you are looking for a minimalist reader without too many frills, but with features that makes you not miss the functionality offered by Google Reader. No fancy magazine styles, thumbnails and Pinterest-like boards. Just you and the feeds.

CommaFeed allows users to sign-in with their existing Google account and automatically import their Google Reader subscription, retaining all feeds and folders.

What I like about CommaFeed

The app is very fast. It loads in an instant with no lag, whatsoever, even with large number of feeds and lots of images. For me, this is an important factor, because a lot of feed reader apps that I have encountered are painfully slow to the point of being totally useless. I’m looking at you, Feedly.
Similarly, search is extremely fast, though it sometimes returns unrelated results.
Makes full use of the screen, left to right, top to bottom. You see no logos, no banners at the top, nothing. Just the feeds. However, this could change in future, if the developers decide to introduce branding or advertisement to generate revenues.
Retains nearly all the shortcuts you are so accustomed to with Google Readers such as j/k to open next or previous item, n/p to scroll the feed list, o to open or close the highlighted item, v to open original link, s to star an item etc.
Ability to add custom CSS styles. This enables you to change the font size, color, background etc.
Social sharing features are available. You can quickly share stories on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus, or email a story to your contacts.
It’s open source and available on GitHub, so you can fork it to create your own feed reader with your own enhancements, or deploy it on your own server.

What I don’t like about CommaFeed

There is only one view mode. All items are displayed collapsed and you have to click on the title (or use the keyboard shortcut “o”) to expand it. While I’m no fan of different fancy layouts, I do miss the expanded view where you can scroll through the feeds and it automatically marks them as read. I hope the developers consider adding this option in future.

There you see, except for the very limited display mode, I’ve got nothing to say against CommaFeed. It’s a very good application, one that I will definitely keep my eyes on.

Giveaway: ThemeFuse Premium WordPress Themes

2013-05-06T12:05:00.001+05:30

Do you have a Wordpress blog that needs a makeover? Here is a chance to win a Premium Wordpress theme from ThemeFuse.

ThemeFuse is sponsoring this giveaway contest where 3 winners will get a chance to pick any premium Wordpress theme designed by ThemeFuse.

To enter the contest, just leave your name and email address in the form below and tell use which theme you would like to have, should you win. Don’t worry, the theme you choose now is not binding, you can change your mind later. Themes ranges from $49 to $99, but of course, you get it for free.

As a token of thanks, do like their Facebook page.

The contest will stop receiving entries after 10 May, 2013.

Easy Way to Add Events to Google Calendar From Gmail

2013-05-04T15:10:00.001+05:30

Google has added a new way to easily create events in Google Calendar directly from a Gmail message. Starting today, dates and times within emails will be lightly underlined. Click them to schedule that conference call or lunch date without ever leaving Gmail.

When you click on one of these underlined dates, a small window will pop open where you’ll be able to preview your schedule for the day and change the title, date or time of the event. Clicking “Add to Calendar” will do exactly that -- add the event to your calendar, and for extra convenience, the calendar event will include a link back to the original email.

This new feature will be rolled out over the next week to everyone with the English (US) language. Google says, they'll be adding other languages soon.

[via Gmail Blog]

Download and Sync Google Fonts to Your Desktop With SkyFonts

2013-05-03T23:48:00.001+05:30

Before there was Google Web Fonts, web designers had to work with a limited set of what is known as “safe web fonts”. Essentially, safe web fonts are fonts that are safe to use in a website. Safe because they are guaranteed to be found on majority of computers, irrespective of their operating system. Safe web fonts ensure that the websites render exactly as it was meant to be on the user’s browser. But web fonts are uncreative, repetitive and mostly boring.

Then a new way of utilizing a variety of fonts using CSS declaration was devised. A number of providers started offering web fonts to developers, some for free and some at paid subscriptions. But it was Google Web Fonts that popularized the concept. What started as an experimental “Google Font Directory” with a humble collection is now a leading provider of web fonts. Google has almost obliterated the competition. Now one of the larger providers, Fonts.com, have recently collaborated with Google to bring Google’s respectable collection of 1100+ fonts to the desktop.

They have released a desktop program for Windows and Mac, called SkyFonts, that allows you to download Google Web Fonts to your computer and keep installed fonts automatically updated. For example, when new characters are added to font, they become automatically available on your machine. With the fonts installed locally, browsing websites that use web fonts will be faster, since your browser won’t have to spend time fetching font data

To download fonts, first install SkyFonts. Then with SkyFonts running on your computer, go to www.fonts.com/web-fonts/google in your browser and click on “Browse Fonts” button. Browse through the selection and when you find a font that catches your fancy, click on the “SkyFonts” button next to it. This will download and install the font to your computer.

All downloaded fonts can be managed from the program’s interface. As long as the program is running in the background, it will keep your font directory in sync with Google Web Fonts. To remove a font from the collection, simply open the font down folder and delete them from your computer.

[via Google Developers via Google Operating System]

Kloudless Saves Email Attachments to the Cloud

2013-05-03T15:13:00.001+05:30

Even though you can send and receive files by attaching them to email messages, email services are not intended to be used as a medium to transfer files. Sending large files through email is a bad idea, which is why email service providers limit the maximum size of files that could be attached to a message. The ceiling on attachment size currently stands at about 25MB for Gmail. Other providers like Yahoo and Outlook enforce similar restriction on size.

The demand for larger attachments will always be there, so to overcome the technology limitations of email, service providers have started offering alternative ways to send file. Google introduced an option to upload attachments directly to Google Drive in December last year. Users could upload files up to 10GB in size to the Drive storage space provided to each Google account holder, and then send a download link to the file to the recipient. Because this is integrated right into the compose window in Gmail, it is no different that sending regular attachments.

Outlook.com has a similar feature using Microsoft’s own SkyDrive service. Yahoo recently partnered with Dropbox to send attachments without file size limits.

Sending large files by email is a practically solved problem, but there is still another need that is not yet fulfilled by neither Google nor Microsoft or Yahoo, and that is: a way to save attachments people receive directly to their cloud storage accounts. Another trouble is, email providers offer only a single cloud storage service to handle attachments, usually their own. What if you want to attach files from your Dropbox account in Gmail? This where third-party services comes in, and Kloudless is the latest one to join. You can read a comparison of existing services.

Kloudless is an extension for Google Chrome that lets you save e-mail attachments to online storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox and Box. It also lets you attach files directly from these services without downloading them to your computer first. Right now, Kloudless works only with Gmail, but support for Microsoft Outlook is on the way.

Setting up Kloudless is simple enough. Once you install the Chrome extension, you must allow the service to access your Gmail account, and then sign into any cloud storage services you use.

Now when you open an email message attachment, you are offered an option to move or copy the file over to any one of your cloud accounts. You can also attach any file from your cloud accounts when composing a new email or replying to a message.

Kloudless also lets you set up rules to automatically copy or transfer certain files. The rules can be based on the sender, recipient, keywords in subject, file type and file size. The basic service allows you to setup only 10 rules.

Kloudless is free for now, but the CEO plans to start paying plans with premium features starting $3 a month.

TableTools2 Makes Plain HTML Tables Interactive With Sort, Filter and Chart Functions

2013-05-02T17:33:00.001+05:30

Tables are a great way to represent data in a format that is easy to understand, compare, and interpret. One of the reasons why people prefer to have data on spreadsheets is because spreadsheets are basically tables. Having data on a spreadsheet is an added bonus because the data can be analyzed with a variety of statistical tools, summarized with mathematics and drawn as charts for visual representation.

We often encounter tables on webpages, but HTML tables are static – they cannot be sorted, rearranged or analyzed. You could copy the table and import it into a spreadsheet program, if you want, but consider how wonderful it would be if you could work on the table right there in your browser. TableTools2 is an add-on for Firefox that makes this possible.

TableTools2 turns every HTML table on all web pages into an interactive spreadsheet, enabling you to sort columns, add drop-down lists to filter columns by specific data values, search, hide columns and rows, drag-and-drop columns and rows with the mouse to rearrange them, compare and combine tables, calculate sum, average, median and even draw charts.

Here is a complete list of things you can do to HTML tables with TableTools2.

Sorting:

Auto-detects and sorts multiple data types (number, currency, IP address, date/time, string, alphanumeric. Even sorts images' alternative text, text inside textbox, textarea, dropdown menu ...).
User can designate data types easily with context menu options.
Supports multiple-column sort, the most requested advanced sorting feature. Icons tells you the sorting order and direction of the columns.

Filtering:

Drop-down list filtering - It's like Excel's "Auto-Filter" feature, except that it's better as TableTools2 supports more data types.

Searching:

It's a combination of Excel's "Find" + "Custom-Filter" feature and definitely more.
For "Find", it allows finding the matching values in the current column or in all columns, or the non-matching values in current column or all columns; it allows regular expressions too for advanced searching.
For "Custom-Filter", range operations are supported ">5 | <3" gives you anything bigger than 5 or smaller than 3; ">=3 & <= 5" gives you numbers between 3 and 5 (including 3 and 5); ">=01/01/1990 & <01/01/2000" gives you all dates in the 90s decade. All sorting data types are supported for range operations.

Copying:

Copy the entire table, the selected rows, the selected columns, or the selected cells, to clipboard in any of these formats: HTML, tab-delimited, or a TableTools2-unique "justified tab-delimited" format which is good for pasting into both emails and Excel.

Charting:

In a few clicks, the HTML table data could be transformed into a bubble, scatter, pie, line, histogram or a unique frequency chart which counts frequency of each unique values in the column for you.

Rearranging:

Press down the 'Ctrl' key while you right-click and drag mouse will allow you to drag and drop columns and rows to rearrange them!

Summarizing:

With one mouse click, TableTools2 will give you the minimum, maximum, total count and unique value count for every table column. For numeric/currency columns, it'll also give you average, median, standard deviation and sum.

Combining:

If you see a multi-page or multi-section table and wants to sort the table as one big combined table, it's just a few mouse clicks using TableTools2.

Comparing:

If you see several tables of identical format for different products, TableTools2 lets you combine them "horizontally" (as versus the "vertical" way of the "Combining" feature above) such that you could easily do side-by-side comparison of the data in the same table, and more importantly, chart a comparison really easily.

Misc. features:

Hide/unhide columns.
Restrict range of data rows (so non-data rows won't participate in sorting, filtering ...).
Context menu allows access to all features.
Keyboard shortcuts available.

DriveConverter: Convert Files in Google Drive Without Downloading Them First

2013-05-01T22:15:00.001+05:30

When you upload a file to Google Drive, you have the option to convert the file to one of the formats supported by Google Docs. Converting a file to a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation allows you to edit, collaborate on, and share it online. A file can be converted to a large number of formats as listed below:

For documents: .doc, .docx, .html, plain text (.txt), .rtf
For spreadsheets: .xls, .xlsx, .ods, .csv, .tsv, .txt, .tab
For presentations: .ppt, .pps, .pptx
For drawings: .wmf
For OCR: .jpg, .gif, .png, .pdf

DriveConverter is a utility that enhances Google Drive's built-in file conversion tool by allowing users to convert uploaded files to an even larger variety of formats.

To use DriveConverter, you have to allow the application to connect to your Google account, so that it can access the contents of your Google Drive. Once the authorization is granted, refresh the Google Drive page and right-click on the file you want to convert and choose Open With. There you should find “Drive Converter” as one of the possible apps to open the file with.

DriveConverter can convert the following file types.

Documents: From docx, doc, txt, rtf to pdf, xml, rtf, doc, docx, html, txt
Spreadsheets: From xlx, xlsx to pdf, csv, txt, html, xlsx
Images: From png, jpg, gif, bitmap, tiff to png, jpg, gif, bitmap, tiff
Audio: From: mp3, mp4, m4a, flac, wav, ogg to mp3, mp4, m4a, flac, wav, ogg

Another way to convert files is to go to www.driveconverter.com and choose the file picker to select files from your Google Drive. A download link is provided after the conversion completes so that you can download the file to your computer. The converted file can also be saved automatically on Google Drive, if you have selected the option.

Unfortunately, as you can see from the list of supported formats, DriveConverter doesn't support the native Google Docs formats, so only files that you have uploaded from your computer is available for conversion. Spreadsheets and documents that you have created through Google Drive’s interface cannot be converted.

[via Chrome Story]