Microsoft gives you the benefit to download a copy of the Windows 8 and store it in a removable disk for backup purposes. All you need is the original key and the order number of your Windows 8 purchase and an internet connection.

Download Windows 8

Head to the Windows Order Summary Page and the fill the form. If you are not sure where you can find the order number, folks at How To Geek suggest that you shall find it your inbox (Search for “Thanks for Ordering Windows 8″ as the subject title if you are in Gmail).

After you submit the form, you will be lead to the page which displays the summary of your order. Check out the option to download a backup disc and find there the link to download the same, you should find that an executable file being downloaded. Mind you this is not the actual copy of Windows 8, once finished you have to run this file and enter the Windows 8 License Key. Make sure you select the right version of Windows you have purchased. Now sit back and wait for all the required setup files being download onto your machine.

Create the Installation Media

Once downloaded, you can check out the page to choose the method of installation. Here, you need to check the “Install by creating media” option. You can either choose to create a Windows 8 Installation Disc or have the windows 8 installation copy on your USB flash drive (Note that it needs at least 3GB of space).

For the DVD option, the Windows installation program will an ISO file of the Windows 8 copy which you then need to burn it on to a blank DVD.

If it’s the USB drive you have chosen, all the files in the USB will be erased and Windows installation program will begin deploying all the Windows 8 setup files onto the USB.

In either ways, a bootable disk drive is created. You can install Windows 8 onto your machine whenever you want. Easy is it not?

For more on how to create bootable installation disks for Windows 7 and Windows XP, check out this post. For Mac users, we will cover in another post on how you can do the same for your copy of OS X Mountain Lion or earlier, very soon.

Sources: How To Geek (Images Courtesy How To Geek)

Make Your Own Windows 8 Installation Disk or bootable USB drive! originally published on Ampercent

SlickWrite is a web tool to proof read any text. It automatically checks for any grammar errors, excessive usage of adverb or passive voice and more. It also provides statistical analysis of the text on various factors such as number of adverbs, words in passive voice, even number of simple, compound and long sentences. Though it is nowhere near to a sound proofreading by an expert, the statistical analysis it provides is handy.

Open up SlickWrite on a web browser and click on edit to paste any text you want to proofread. After you input any text, it can be 28,000 words long, click on “Proofread” to start the process. SlickWrite will process the text and leads you to the critique pane where it present you the same text with few words being highlighted in different colours. Hover over these highlighted words to see bubbles of information regarding the word(s) usage appear next to it. SlickWrite checks for cases where an adverb or passive voice might be used unnecessarily, a redundant phrase or wordy, misplaced conjunction and more. Click on any of these highlighted text to know see a description in the pane on the right. 

Other than Critique pane, you can also check the “Structure” pane, which has similar highlighting on sentences, categorized into simple, complex or compound and long sentences. The “Flow” pane shows the graph of these sentences that appear in the text.

The “Stats” section lets you view all the statistics of the structure of the text you have input. Other than the number of words, characters, sentences, it also shows number of adverbs, pronouns, uncommon words, percentage of passive voice usage, number of types of sentences and more.

You can edit the text anytime by going to the edit page. Make sure you click on “Proofread” to start the process.

Moreover SlickWrite lets you configure the proofreading options in the configure tab. Apart from the normal check on grammar and words, SlickWrite can also check forlanguage, biases, confusing/ambiguous words and various such options. Again you have to click on proofread button for this to take effect.

SlickWrite is a great online tool for proofreading. It does not replace human proofreading, but it does half the job with various customizable options. Apart from the web, SlickWrite also has extensions for Chrome, Firefox, OpenOffice, even a WordPress Plugin. The interface is easy and has useful functions.

Proofread Your Writing, Posts and Articles with the Free Tool – Slick Write originally published on Ampercent

Sleeker, Friendlier Maps

The best mapping solution on the internet has just got the biggest overhaul in 8 years. The new Google Maps, open for preview through this link, is now sleeker, more intuitive and looks great. It has now moved on to the vector-based map tiles that allows faster load of maps of cities and smoother animations. The search box is now redesigned to occupy as minimal space of the map as possible. The directions button is now easy within reach that’s placed right below the search box. You can also save a place of interest easier with the “Save” button below the search box again. Actually all the options are so much within reach that it makes using Google Maps that much wonderful!

Searching now becomes more context aware, type “Museums near Paris” and you will find all the museums, with bigger icons for those that are highly rated. Also when you click on a certain place or building, you will find the roads that best lead to the place more prominent than the rest of the roadways.

With the new Google Maps, you can now compare all the modes of transportation available between point A and B! The routes get re-routed on the fly according to the traffic view, so that bests the many GPS navigational devices out there. You also get the “More times and Options” button under direction with which you can adjust the available transit options to different times and transportation modes that fit according to your schedule.

Google Maps has now integrated the Street View and Google Earth into the standard browser app. The new Photo tour mode lets you see all the photos taken at the particular place. The street mode is accessible within the search box and so is the Google Earth with impressive animations and 3D views.

The new Google Maps has become more social thanks to the data provided by the Google+ accounts. Now you can see all the places on the maps that are recommended by your friends.

The new avatar of Google Maps is available on desktop only, with mobile versions, Android and iOS, coming very soon.

Chat Anywhere With Hangouts

Google has completely redesigned its messaging client, Talk, to now Hangouts. Hangouts is a multi-platform messaging client that is available for desktop as a chrome extension, Android and iOS. It has now placed more emphasis on conversations and redesigned to make a slick user interface across all platforms. Now it’s easier to do messaging, voice and video chat through Hangouts. There is also a whole new set of emoticons dearly needed in Google Talk.

Hangouts is already available on Google Play, App Market and the Chrome Web Store.

Gorgeous Photos and New Interface on Google Plus

Google Plus has also been revamped to incorporate the Google Now-like tiles on the home screen. The 2-3 tile column homescreen now has a sleeker touch to it, with new slide-in menus, posts that flip and improved share box. Google Plus also has a set of automated filters and hashtags that lets you dive deep into the social world.

The Photos app has been completely redesigned to incorporate basic photo editing tools to the uploaded photos. It even contains Auto-Enhance feature that lets you automatically get the best of your uploaded photo. Also, you can upload high resolution photos with increased space of 15GB through Gmail, Drive and Google+ combined.

Conversation Search and Google Now Reminders

Google has now brought the conversation search in mobiles to the desktop version of Chrome. Users can now use voice search and take advantage of the context aware search.

Google Now has new additions in the form of reminders, where one can set a reminder and Google Now will display it as a card that can be swiped to remove the reminder. In addition to the reminders, more cards have been added for public transit commute times, music, TV and movie shows too!

Google Play Music and All Access

Google Play Music has now been blessed with a sleeker interface and easier playlist generation, with swipe gestures to add or remove song to the the queue. This change has brought more consistency across all platforms

Another big addition is the Google Play Music All Access that is similar to other music streaming apps like Pandora, Rdio, but with the great support for Android ecosystem.

Faster Payments through Google Wallet in Mobile and Gmail

Google has also worked on Google Wallet to ensure faster payments and easier setup for online transactions. You can directly choose to pay from your credit cards linked to the Google Wallet account. The best part here is that it’s a single sign-up and does not require the extra info that you normally would have to add for a online purchase. You can also choose to via Gmail too!

Tablet Optimized Apps, Gmail Quick Action, Google Play Books Uploads and more

To add a dizzying number of announcements were the ones that include a tablet optimized apps section in Google Play, the new “Quick Actions” button in Gmail which recognizes emails that require you to take action upon them, user uploads in Pdf and epub files supported in Google Play books and a lot more.

Though devoid of new Nexus devices or other product launches, Google I/O 2013 certainly aims to focus more on improving the existing apps that make it easier and fun to use. Developers are also given plenty of attention with a flurry of announcements in favor of the developer folks. Google seems to be marching ahead in to the future with the head held high.

Sources: Google I/O 2013

Google I/O 2013 – What’s in it for You originally published on Ampercent

Removing multiple friends from your Facebook profile is easier said than done. You have to visit each friend’s profile and hit the “Friends” button and choose “Unfriend” link at the bottom of the menu. This is quite laborious, when you want to remove a lot of friends from your Facebook profile.

Thankfully, there is an easier way to bulk remove Facebook friends from your profile. The catch is that you have to open a page where all your friends are listed, so you can unfriend them in bulk.

Here is how you do it.

1. Login to your Facebook account, hit the “Friends” link in the sidebar and choose “See all friends”

2. This will take you to a page where you will be able to see all your Facebook friends in a single page, see who is following you, see your friend requests and other things.

3. This is the boring step but there is no other way other than hovering over the “Friends” button and select “Unfriend”. You have to do this for all your Facebook friends one by one, whom you want to remove.

I wish there should be a checkbox option next to each friend so that we can select the friends we want to remove and de-select the ones we want to keep. But sadly, there ain’t any option to do just that, that might go against the core philosohpy of why Facebook is built in the first place.

There is another hack, you can cleverly put your friends to restricted list and prevent them from viewing your timeline, news feed and anyhting which you haven’t shared publicly on your Facebook profile. If unfriending sounds too rude and you want your friend to be able to send messages and IM chats with you, putting them into the restricted list is a better option.

Another way is unsubscribing from their updates and turning off the news feed all together. Choose the option that suits you best.

How to Bulk Remove Friends From Your Facebook Profile originally published on Ampercent

I have almost 5 Gmail accounts which I need to check every day. I have my company email address at Gmail, my personal Gmail account, my website’s Gmail account, my Google Adsense account and a couple of other accounts which needs regular attention. Also, I get tons of emails every single day and I am a keen believer of the “Inbox zero” principle. I just can’t focus or work when I have tons of emails lying unattended in an ever expanding inbox.

There are several ways to tackle the deal with multiple Gmail accounts, checking, reading, replying and deleting email from a central location.

You can forward emails from all your Gmail accounts to one central account and use it as your control system. But there is a huge drawback to this – your sister inboxes are never cleared and all those emails lies unattended for a long period of time. When you login to those sister accounts after a long time, you are lost among a sea of emails. It feels crazy to organize everything all over again. I have used the email forwarding technique for sometime now, it works but it doesn’t solve the complete purpose of “managing emails”. It just gives you a way to get all the emails at one place, the complexity of managing multiple Gmail accounts from one place is not addresses.

Next up is using email clients e.g Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Windows Live mail. I am not a big fan of email clients and I think it adds or distractions to your work. You have to run the email client everytime you need to check emails and it feels a risky to download all your emails into an computer and risk everything when its stolen. MIcrosoft’s Outlook.com is another nice alternative but then it just adds another service to your plate, which complicates things in the bigger picture.

If you are in the same boat, I highly recommend giving Google mail multi account checker extension a try. This is by far the best Chrome extension or browser add-on which lets you check multiple Gmail accounts, without having to login to each individual account, logout and then login back to another account. The extension sits in its place and automatically checks for new emails across all your accounts. Moreover, the extension notifies you whenever any of your Gmail accounts gets a new email.

This extension basically turns on multiple account sign in in Google Chrome and allows you to switch to different Gmail inboxes, without having to signin or sign out at all. Once you have installed the Gmail multi checker extension for Chrome, all you need to do is add-up all your accounts one by one. You don’t have to key in your Gmail username and password, the extension uses oAuth Google signin, so your acocunt credentials are never revealed to anyone. When you have added and connected all your Gmail accounts in Chrome, you’re good to go.

With this extension, you can do all of these things without having to login or logout from any of your Gmail accounts

• Check emails, read them and delete them
• Move emails to different labels.
• Compose emails and send email from a specific email account
• Reply to emails.
• Search for old messages, find it and reply to it without opening a separate incognito window or logout from your current Gmail account.

This extension has saved me hours of distraction and helps me keep tabs across all my Gmail inboxes.

What about you? How do you manage multiple Gmail accounts and inboxes from the browser? Share your tip in the comments below.

Check Multiple Gmail Accounts In Chrome With Google Mail Multi Account Checker Extension originally published on Ampercent

It would be a great idea if you can post tweets that self destruct after a given period of time. The idea here is that you can add a hashtag to your tweet and ensure that this tweet will automatically be deleted from your timeline after a given period of time (e.g 2 hours).

efemr is a new kid in the block which does just that. Its a web application which lets you post time-limited messages on Twitter.

efemr lets you post self destructing tweets that get deleted and removed from your Twitter account after a given time interval. All you need to do is visit the efemr website, login with your Twitter account, authorize the app to post tweets on behalf of you and you are all set to roll.

Next, you can post self destruting tweets directly from Twitter web interface, any Twitter client, your phone or from anywhere (efemr doesn’t let you post twetts from its web application yet). All you need to do is enter the time limit of the tweet in the form of a hash tag e.g #5m ( 5 minutes) , #1h (1 hour), #4d (4 days) and so on.

This is a great way to ensure that tweets that are posted on the heat of time are automatically deleted after a time interval specified by you. For example, if you have the habit of tweeting which song you are listening to right now, it might be a good idea to add the hash tag #5m to it, so that the tweet is deleted after 5 minutes. Also, if you are tweeting in an event and don’t want those tweets to be arhcived forever, use efemr and let the tweets evaporate after a day or two.

I must say that efemr keeps a log of all the tweets that are deleted from your Twitter account by efemr, so should you need a way to access deleted tweets, simply login to your efemr account with your Twitter username. 

Tweets That Expire After a Given Time Interval – Post Self Destructing Tweets originally published on Ampercent

I am a big fan of minimalism and I believe in the core philosophy that the more you add something to a system, the worse it gets. I have been using Twitter for 3 years now and sometimes, I wish I could switch back to the old Twitter interface which was free from all the design clutter, jargons and things that destroy the feel of reading only “Tweets”.

Thankfully, I found Twipster, an extension for Google Chrome and Safari which removes unnecessary clutter from your Twiitter timeline and gives you a more simpler and readable Twitter experience. If you are a voracious Twitter user and want an interface where you can see only tweets and nothing else, Twipster is well worth a try.

This is the default Twitter interface.

And this is how it looks like, when I have installed Twipster in Google Chrome.

What Twipster does is that it removes unnecessary elements from Twitter’s web interface and gives you a more clutter free tweeting experience. You get to see only your Twitter timeline and nothing else. Of course, you can see your mentions timeline, direct messages and compose tweets ilke you normally do.Twipster is basically a styler refresh for Twitter’s web interface which hides “Who to follow”, “Trends” and the sidebar using CSS display:none property.

Twipster, however does not blocks or removes tweets that may cause distractions or annoyance. The extension only gives a new cover to Twitter’s web interface, this is ideal if you want to see only the tweets in bigger fonts. 

Twipster Gives A Minimalist Feel To Your Twitter Timeline [ Google Chrome And Safari ] originally published on Ampercent

“I think my Facebook account has been hacked, I can’t login to my account”.

“How do I login to my Facebook account? it won’t let me in no matter how hard I try”

“I am having problems logging into Facebook, I think someone else has gained unauthorized access to my account and has changed the password”

To address these issues, Facebook rolled out login alerts, two factor authentication and a couple of more ways which adds an extra layer of security to your Facebook account. Today, Facebook is launching “Trusted contacts” which lets you recover your Facebook account and gain access to it when it appears to be hacked (or when you find it impossible to login).

 Trusted Contacts On Facebook Will Help You Regain Access to Your Account, in case its hacked

Within your Facebook account settings > Security, you will be able to choose 3 to 5 friends as “Trusted contacts”. Ideally, these are people whom you know very closely in real life and trust a lot. If you cannot login to your Facebook account, you can use the Trusted friends feature to reset your Facebook password and gain back access.

Please note that you need to choose Trusted contacts on Facebook before the damage is already done. To do this, login to your Facebook account, go to “Security Settings” and choose 3-5 friends whom you would want to the “Trusted Contacts” list. (Trusted contacts is not available at the time of writing this article, we will update the steps when it rolls out for everyone).

So when you are in trouble and cannot login to your Facebook account, Facebook will use your trusted contacts as an option to help. All you need to do is call friends whom you have listed as “Trusted contacts” and let them know that you have lost access to your Facebook account, and that they can help you regain access to your Facebook account.

During the Facebook account recovery process, your trusted contacts will get security codes which they need to send it to you via email, phone or text messaging. Once you obtain the security codes from minimum 3 of your trusted contacts, you will be able to login to Facebook without a password. Hence, in situations when your Facebook account is compromised, this “Trusted contacts” feature is going to be very useful.

Trusted contacts frees you from remembering answers to security questions, so you will be able to gain back access to your account, in case you think its been hacked or compromised. You may also visit facebook.com/hacked and report to Facebook that your account has been compromised.

Facebook Trusted Contacts Helps You Recover Your Account When Its Hacked originally published on Ampercent

File sync services allow you to access files or folders that are stored in the specified app folder. So if you have installed Dropbox in your MAC computer, you will be able to access only those files that are stored in the “My Dropbox” folder of your MAC machine. There is no way to access or remotely download files saved on your Mac desktop, finder or any other folder from another computer.

Spotdox is nifty little application which makes remote access of mac files abreeze. Yeah, its Spotdox and not Spotbox!

It works like this.

You download the Spotdox client and install it in your MAC machine. Next, you connect Spotdox with your Dropbox account and configure to open the application at system startup. What Spotdox does it it allows you to remotely search for files in your MAC HD from MAC’s spotlight and when you have found the specific file or folder stored in your MAC computer, it lets you move that file or folder to your Dropbox account.

When you have used Spotdox to move that file to your “My Dropbox” folder, it will be automatically syned across all your devices. Neat!

Another huge advantage of using Sortdox is that you can remotely move files out of your “My Dropbox” folder and free up crucial space. So if your Dropbox account is almost full and you need a way to remotely access your mac computer, free up some space from your My Dropbox folder and then move new things in, Sortbox is the app you just can’t afford to miss. Best of all, Sortbox is absolutely free!

Setting Up Remote Access On Your MAC with Spotdox

1. Firstly, you will need a Dropbox account and have to install the Dropbox client on your MAC computer. 

2. Next, you will need to download Spotdox on your computer and have to connect Sortbox to your Dropbox account.

3. Lastly, you will have to ensure that both Dropbox and Sortbox are configured to run at system startup. Read our guide on how to auto-start applications after OSX boots up.

When you have taken care of all the above three steps, you are all set to roll.

The next time you need to access a file on your mac and you left it at home, simply login to your Sortbox account from a web browser. Oh, you will also have to make sure the mac computer is connected to the internet, otherwise you won’t be able to access the file (that’s all right, it should not take more than a phone call and asking a friend or family member to connect your computer to the internet or a Wi-Fi connection).

For remotely accessing the file, login to your Spotdox account and you should see your entire MAC HD in the browser.

So I have access to the following files and folders from any web browser

• My MAC desktop – this is where all my recent files are
• Downloads folder – this is where I have downloaded the recent files and now I can copy them to my Dropbox folder.
• MAC HD – all the files stored in my MAC HD are there.

To copy a specific file or folder to your Dropbox account, all you need to do is select the file and hit the “Copy to Dropbox” button. Spotdox will copy the file to your Dropbox folder which you can download from your Dropbox account.

This is a spectacularly brilliant app, which frees me from backing up everything on my mac every once in a while. The only catch is that my mac has to be connected to the internet so I can access my mac hd remotely.

Spotdox is entirely free! Go grab it.

Remotely Access Files On Your MAC From Anywhere With Spotdox and Dropbox originally published on Ampercent

The other day I was trying to download and backup all my Facebook photos, videos, tagged photos and albums and found that I have a lot of files to download. These days, I don’t have broadband connection at my home so downloading all Facebook photos and videos in one shot was not the choice. Instead, its a good idea to transfer all Facebook photos to your Google Drive or Dropbox account and let these cloud services save a backup of all your Facebook photos and albums. You can sync all these photos to your computer when you get access to a Wi-Fi connection.

Here is how you can transfer or backup all Facebook photos to Google Drive or Dropbox

1. Go to the Pi.pe website and login with your Facebook account. Next, select Facebook as the source.

2. The website will now list all your Facebook photo albums, tagged photos and videos.

3. Hit “Continue” and select your destination service in the “Destination” tab. You can choose to backup Facebook photos to Google Drive or backup Facebook photos to your Dropbox account or choose to do both. But please note that you can’t do the same in one process ( or pipe, as they call it). Once you have started or initiated a pipe, you can go back and do the same for another cloud storage provider. You might like to read our earlier article - transfer Google Plus photos to your Facebook account.

4. Now you will be asked to grant permission to Pi.pe to be able to copy Facebook photos to your Google Drive or Dropbox account. Grant all the necessary permissions and you are done.

You will now see a confirmatory dialogue, saying that your backup has been scheduled.

Depending upon the size and amount of files you have chosen to backup, it might take some time for the transfer to complete. For the sake of an experiement, I choosed to move a Facebook album to my Google account and it took less than 30 minutes to finish.

Pi.pe is really a brilliant tool which can backup photos and videos from your Facebook pages as well, and not just your Facebook profile. In fact, Pi.pe is one of the easiest ways to transfer files between different cloud file storage accounts. A similar service which we have reviewed earlier is Otixo but I personally find Pi.pe easier to use.

Currently, Pi.pe supports Flickr, Facebook, Google Drive, Picasa, Dropbox, Instagram, Photobucket, MySpace and a couple of other cloud storage providers.

Transfer Facebook Photos To Google Drive Or Dropbox account originally published on Ampercent