Wednesday, 12 September 2012
Sunday, 9 September 2012
How to Extend Your Android Device’s Battery Life
Extend your Battery Life
If your battery keeps running out, here’s how to make your phone or tablet run for days on a single charge..
Android devices may be wonderful portalbe powerhouse that put a huge choice of apps and tools in your pocket, but all that computing can take its toll on their battery life. Checking your eamil, making calls, playing games andbrowsing the internet all use up valuable power, and even just having the phone or tablet on sandby means that the battery is slowly draining.
Fortunately, Android comes with built-in settings that can be toggled to perserve battery life, and which can be customized to particular scenarios. Going for a long walk? Then turn off everything but GPS to track your route via Endomondo. About to go to bed? Turn off sync, so you’re not woken by the inevitable 2a, Groupon email. There are many other settings, too, and here we’ll show you how to make the most of them.
1. Power Control :
Android’s build in power control widget is the first step to more batter life. It’s included with all version of Android, and it enables you to turn settings on or off. To get it, long-press on the home screen, then choose ‘Widgets’ followed by ‘Power Control’. You need a long, clear space on your home screen to install it.
2. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth : To the left of the Power Control strip you’ll see the Wi-Fi icon – turn this off when you’re away from a Wi-Fi hotspot and you’ll save a huge amount of power. We also need to think about Bluetooth, which wirelessly connects to computers, car steros and speakers.Turn it off if you’re not using it.
3. GPS and brightness : GPS is handy when you want to use Google Maps and location services. but it uses a lot of power and should turned off when not in use. Reducing your screen’s brightness stops your display draining the batter, and some phones can set the brightness automatically to suit the ambient lightning.
4. Sync : Sync means that the phone constantly contacts Google’s servers to download new emails, contact, calendar entries and other background information. It uses a lot of power and you can safely tuen it off for a while – anything that isn’t downloaded will appears on your device when it’s turned back on.
5. 2G networks : 2G networks are noticeable slower than 3G, but 3G uses more power. You can switch to a 2G network by choosing ‘Settings’ then ‘Wireless and networks’ followed by ‘Mobile network’. Check the box marked ‘Use only 2G network’ to activate it. You’ll still be able to make calls and send texts.
6. JuiceDefender : JuiceDefender is a handy app that switches off certain settings when they’re not in use. Download it from here and install it, then run it and choose ‘Enabled under Status’. Deactivate the app if you’re downloading a lot of data, because it might stop connectivity when your phone switches to standby.
7. Battery use : To find out exactly what’s eating your batter, choose ‘Settings’, then ‘About phone’ and ‘Battery use’. Here you’ll see a list of the applications and tools that are using the most power. Some of these functions can be selected to forced to stop. Which will save you a little more precious power in the future.
8. Got the power : Next time your device is running low on power, or there’s nowhere available to plug in your charger, you’ll know exactly what you can turn on and off to make the battery last a little longer. The above tips are also handy for other situation, such as when you go away on holiday and want to avoid using too much data.
Saturday, 8 September 2012
Thursday, 6 September 2012
Microsoft’s New Logo Recreated in CSS
<logo>Microsoft</logo>
<style>
logo {
font: bold 60px "Segoe UI";
color: #747273;
line-height: 1.5em;
padding-left: 1.7em;
}
logo:before {
content: '\2006';
position: absolute;
height: 0.095em;
left: 0;
box-shadow: 0.35em 0.35em 0 0.25em #f8510c,
1.05em 0.35em 0 0.25em #7eba00,
0.35em 0.97em 0 0.25em #00a3f4,
1.05em 0.97em 0 0.25em #ffba00;
}
</style>
The new Microsoft Logo uses the Segoe font while the squares represent Microsoft product families.
Microsoft recently unveiled a new corporate logo where four colored squares represent Windows, Office, Xbox and Windows Phone family of products.
The PDF document suggests that designers used Adobe Illustrator CS5 to create the original logo but @mohamedmansour shows us how to recreate the same logo using few lines of HTML and CSS3.
If the live demo doesn’t look right in your screen, the Segoe font is probably missing on your computer though some have suggested replacing Segoe with Open Sans, a Google Font.
Here’s the full code courtesy Mansour.
Nokia unveils Windows 8 Lumia phones
Finnish firm Nokia has finally launched its smart phone
handsets powered by Microsoft's Windows Phone 8
operating system. Microsoft and Nokia unveiled the new
Lumia 820 and 920 smartphones at a special event in New
York.According to the BBC, the new Lumia 920 features
wireless charging and a 'PureView' camera, which the mobile
firm said offered better video and still images than rival
smartphones. It also features several Nokia-only functions
designed to make it stand out from other Windows Phone 8
devices.The firm claimed that 'floating lens technology'
nt of light than other handsets. According to the report, some
users may be disappointed that it features an 8.7-megapixel
sensor, many times below the 41MP resolution sensor on an
earlier PureView device.
Top 10 things you can do on your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) phone
Everyone is going ga-ga over Ice Cream Sandwich. Ever since it was released, third-party Android developers have been hard at work porting leaks into every possible phone and improving the stock firmware with additions of their own. We’ve seen Ice Cream Sandwich in stock form, in it’s purest form without HTC’s Sense UI on top, various aesthetically modified versions, as well as those that have been given performance boosts.
It makes sense that because Ice Cream Sandwich is the hottest thing making rounds in the Android development community that everyone would want a piece of it, but what makes Ice Cream Sandwich so great? To answer your question, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 things you can do on your Ice Cream Sandwich phone. Keep in mind, this is in no particular order.
Face Unlock
The first thing you notice with Ice Cream Sandwich is that it looks different from Gingerbread but you’re probably being too busy checking out the new wallpaper on your lock screen to realize that you can unlock your phone without entering a password.Thanks to Face Unlock, your phone uses its front-facing camera to recognize you. This means that it unlocks only when you pick it up, effectively preventing nosy friends, family and strangers from perusing your phone’s content when you aren’t looking. Simply hold up your phone at eye level and your phone should detect your face.
Face Unlock isn’t perfect, though, and a number of factors may prevent your phone’s front-facing camera to see your face properly. While setting up Face Unlock, you can choose between Pattern unlock and PIN unlock as a backup plan if ever Face Unlock fails to identify your face.
Another possible problem is if someone who looks like you, like a family member with the same set of features, or an evil twin, may actually be able to effectively unlock your phone with his/her face. But, what are the chances of that happening?
Multitasking
Since phones have become more powerful, packing specs that the phones of yesteryears could only dream of, the temptation to do too many things at once on your Android device has been calling to users. The number of things we could do with apps certainly isn’t helping us keep away from temptation.In older versions of Android software, users had to download a task switcher application for their phones, but with Ice Cream Sandwich, that is no longer necessary. Just long-press on the Home button to see which applications are open. Scroll through little screenshots and tap the one that you want to jump into. You can jump back out by tapping the same button.
If that isn’t cool enough, multitasking also means lightening the load on your phone. When you’re looking at the list of open applications, you won’t need to individually jump into an application to close it. Simply swipe the application’s little screenshot off your screen to the right and the application is gone and closed. Ice Cream Sandwich effectively lets you manage your resources without wasting unnecessary time.
Quick Call Response
There are two things that all safety-conscious drivers nowadays should know. The first one is “Don’t drink and drive.” The second one, which is equally important, is “Don’t text and drive.” In fact, if you can help it, don’t pick up your phone. You never know when an accident is just lurking behind the corner.But let’s just say that you can’t resist your phone ringing several times and you really want to tell the person calling that you can’t answer his/her call because you’re driving. You don’t need to wait for a red light to answer the call just to tell him/her that.
Quickly dismiss calls with a text message; that way the person who’s calling knows that he/she needs to wait. Instead of just swiping to dismiss the call, swiping up while someone’s calling you gives you the option to send the caller a text message.
Ice Cream Sandwich comes with a number of dismissal templates, including “I’ll call you later” and “I’ll call you right back.” The phone will then send the message of your choice to the caller. If you’d like to customize your dismissal message, Ice Cream Sandwich lets you do that, too, with the lowermost option, “Custom message.”
And, yeah. This nifty feature works not just for drivers. It also works if you are in the middle of a meeting or in cases when you simply don’t feel like answering calls.
Voice Input
Multitasking seems to be Ice Cream Sandwich’s big thing. Not only do you have easy task switching, but you also save yourself time and your life by being able to send a quick message to callers while you’re driving.Another feature of Ice Cream Sandwich is voice input. If you’re the type of person who comes up with the best ideas while just talking free-flow, Ice Cream Sandwich’s voice input engine is here to take notes. Literally.
Tap the microphone button located at the bottom of the keyboard and start talking. The voice input engine will transcribe your words onto the screen for you. When you’re done talking, look over what the voice input engine’s managed to transcribe of your words. Since not all things are perfect, you can correct typos and misinterpreted words before sending off your message.
Customize and Organize
What would Android be without the ability to customize? Just like in Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich users will find that they can add widgets to their homescreen for easy access to the data that apps can provide and actually resize those widgets, having power over seeing more information or less.If you’ve got a ton of apps but you don’t want to do away with any of them, you can de-clutter your homescreen with homescreen folders. If you’re familiar with how iOS’s own homescreen management works, simply long-tap and drag an application icon over to another icon. Release and you’ll find that a folder has now been created on your homescreen.
By default, the folder is unnamed but you can easily rename it yourself. How you group your applications into a folder is completely up to you. You can group applications into a folder solely for Productivity, or a folder for your Music. The power to customize and organize is in your hands.
That’s not all; Ice Cream Sandwich lets you put speed dial shortcuts of people you might frequently contact into folders or even put people in the favorites tray. Talk about accessibility. Here’s how it’s generally done:
- Open the App Drawer.
- Scroll to the Widgets section and find the widget icon for “Direct Dial.”
- Long-tap on the Direct Dial widget and drop it onto the homescreen.
- When the People app or Contacts list appears, select the contact that you wish to assign to the Direct Dial icon on your homescreen.
- Repeat the process as many times as there are contacts you’d like to assign Direct Dial to. To organize the Direct Dial shortcuts into a folder, simply drop a new Direct Dial shortcut onto an existing on.
Uniform Web Browsing Experience
Not so long ago, people had to wait until they got home to surf the Internet. When the Internet became accessible to phones, it was a little slow, clunky and a lot of pages weren’t optimized for mobile browsing yet.Now that a lot of websites have specific layouts tailored just for people browsing on their mobile devices, users still have the problem of not having the same browsing experience they have on their computers. What about your bookmarks that you spent all night consolidating and organizing? What if you didn’t get to bookmark the sites you needed but you know you had them in your search history?
The good news for Chrome and Firefox users is that both browsers are available for Ice Cream Sandwich. What that means for the people who want to stay organized and who want to have everything within their reach is that bookmarks, search history, and usernames and passwords can be synced up. The mobile browsers even let you view the tabs that you had open on your computer so you can pick up reading that article on your phone where you had left off on the computer.
Control Network Data
Don’t get too distracted with surfing the Internet. Unless you’re hooked up to a Wi-Fi connection, your hours surfing the web may not just be burning your battery but also burning a hole in your wallet.With how we can easily browse the Internet on our phones, it doesn’t take a lot for us to go over our monthly limit. You might find yourself paying a whole lot more than you should next time your bill comes in.
Ice Cream Sandwich helps you monitor your Internet usage. Found under Settings, the Usagepage provides you with data meters that you can adjust. If you have a certain limit per month, simply adjust the meters to reflect it. You can also adjust the warning meter to your desired warning threshold, say half-way to your usage limit, so that Ice Cream Sandwich can notify you when you’re almost at the end of your limit.
Android Beam
Near Field Communication (NFC) sounds a whole lot like something from a science fiction flick, but it’s actually a new development in the world of technology. A few years ago, NFC started figuring in pilot studies, particularly in European countries where people only had to tap their phone against a chip whenever they got on and off a train. Their daily fares were then calculated and the railway sent monthly invoices.
Though that hasn’t quite clicked, NFC has other purposes such as transferring information between two phones. Of course, the phone you have and the phone you’d like to swap information with must be equipped with NFC chips. Simply tap your phones together to activate NFC functionality and swap data like YouTube videos, contact information, and other bits of information.
Dismiss Notifications with a Tap of Your Finger
You might have seen the pull down-style notification tray on iOS but Ice Cream Sandwich isn’t willing to just be a third-rate copycat. In fact, it one ups the iOS’ notification tray by giving users the power to literally flick away notifications you don’t care about.If you don’t feel like addressing your notifications at this moment, simply dismiss the ones that aren’t very important and save the ones that matter for later.
You don’t even need to unlock your phone to be able to access your notification tray either; you can just pull it down from the lockscreen.
Camera and Photo Gallery
If you’ve been hanging around the Android development community, you’ve probably seen people try to port the Ice Cream Sandwich Camera app to other phones that don’t seem to have Ice Cream Sandwich in their future.But, why import just the Camera app, you ask? That’s because the Ice Cream Sandwich Gallery application has been revamped, displaying images in a magazine-like layout with not a lot of ugly space between photos.
Tap on a photo and you’ll be able to edit it with all sorts of filters and after-effects. For a stock camera app, the number of editing options are pretty decent. You have access to options like highlights, Shadows, Auto-fix, Cross-process, Posterize, Lomo, Documentary, Vignette, Film Grain, and Fisheye. Not bad for a shutterbug on the go.
And, while taking screenshots is not exactly a function of the phone’s camera, Ice Cream Sandwich was built with native capability for taking screenshots of your phone without your having to install an screengrabber app. All you need to is hold down the Power and Volume Down buttons simultaneously. Your screenshots will be saved to your phone, and you can view them from within the Gallery app, from where you can share those screenshots with your friends.
Grab a Bite of ICS Today
If that list of features has got your mouth watering, wipe that drool away and stop dawdling. We’ve given you the top 10 things you can do on your Ice Cream Sandwich phone, so why hold back? If your phone’s got an official update for the firmware, update now. If it doesn’t, take a look around the Android development community. Chances are quite high that you’ve got Ice Cream Sandwich for your phone in one way or another, whether it’s a port of the actual stock firmware or a custom ROM based on Ice Cream Sandwich.
Facebook asks users to help fight phishing
Did someone try to deceive you into disclosing your Facebook login information with a phishing email? Facebook wants to know.
The Social Networking website “Facebook” has setup a new email account for people to report scam/phishing emails.
If you receive any suspicious email message – even you aren’t using Facebook, forward it tophish@fb.com.
Identified as scams/phishing, such emails try to get login information and other details by acting to came from a reputed business. Because many people today use the identical passwords at financial companies such as banks and other sites, anyone who obtains account details for Facebook can use it elsewhere.
We will report scams/phishing to other security firms and notify blacklists that Internet firms keep to avoid harmful sites. It will also protect users from publishing such links on Facebook, Facebook said on its security page.
Facebook says scams/phishing usually contain information that’s more unexplained than what’s in legitimateemail messages from Facebook.
Back in April, Facebook joined with antivirus and security firms that offer free 6 months trail downloads.
Google unveils world’s fastest net connection
LONDON: Internet giant Google has unveiled what it says is the world's fastest internet connection through its ultrahigh-speed service, offering lightning-fast access of one gigabit per second.
The service which uses optical fibre to deliver speeds far in excess of traditional web services, offering speeds faster than almost anywhere else on Earth.
The web search leader unveiled its ultra-high speed Google Fiber service in Kansas City, Missouri, and it hopes to roll out the service to other cities later, the Daily Mail reported.
"Access is the next frontier that needs to be opened, we're going to do it profitably. That is our plan," Google chief financial officer Patrick Pichette said. "We are at a crossroad," he added, noting that internet speeds had leveled out for broadband since around 2000. We at Google believe there is no need to wait," he said.
Google Fiber's ultra highspeed connections and television offerings are aimed at surpassing those of current providers, allowing users to search live channels, Netflix, YouTube, recorded shows and tens of thousands of hours of on-demand programming . However, no phone service is available.
Google said it also intends to roll out product packages for businesses, but would not provide details.
Google Fiber includes more than 100 networks and costs $120 a month for a package of TV, 1 gigabit per second Internet speeds and 1 terabyte of cloud storage.
SERIALS FOR AVAST ANTIVIRUS:
S/N:W8301083R9900D1199-U0WWYJ3V
S/N:S3453395R9946A0912-S8JU9FDX
S/N:W3763548R9900D1199-K9R2KVTJ
S/N:W05378648R9900W0544-PCLDH5HR
S/N:S74899179R9900P9449-YF458DTC
S/N:W1252851R9900D1199-T8RY444V
S/N:W4247525R9900D1199-YFPDPHM6
8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast
Double your browser's speed in just five minutes
Firefox has been outperforming IE in every department for years, and version 3 is speedier than ever.
But tweak the right settings and you could make it faster still, more than doubling your speed in some situations, all for about five minutes work and for the cost of precisely nothing at all. Here's what you need to do.
1. Enable pipelining
Browsers are normally very polite, sending a request to a server then waiting for a response before continuing. Pipelining is a more aggressive technique that lets them send multiple requests before any responses are received, often reducing page download times. To enable it, type about:config in the address bar, double-click network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining so their values are set to true, then double-click network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set this to 8.
Keep in mind that some servers don't support pipelining, though, and if you regularly visit a lot of these then the tweak can actually reduce performance. Set network.http.pipelining and network.http.proxy.pipelining to false again if you have any problems.
2. Render quickly
Large, complex web pages can take a while to download. Firefox doesn't want to keep you waiting, so by default will display what it's received so far every 0.12 seconds (the "content notify interval"). While this helps the browser feel snappy, frequent redraws increase the total page load time, so a longer content notify interval will improve performance.
Type about:config and press [Enter], then right-click (Apple users ctrl-click) somewhere in the window and select New > Integer. Type content.notify.interval as your preference name, click OK, enter 500000 (that's five hundred thousand, not fifty thousand) and click OK again.
Right-click again in the window and select New > Boolean. This time create a value called content.notify.ontimer and set it to True to finish the job.
3. Faster loading
If you haven't moved your mouse or touched the keyboard for 0.75 seconds (the content switch threshold) then Firefox enters a low frequency interrupt mode, which means its interface becomes less responsive but your page loads more quickly. Reducing the content switch threshold can improve performance, then, and it only takes a moment.
Type about:config and press [Enter], right-click in the window and select New > Integer. Type content.switch.threshold, click OK, enter 250000 (a quarter of a second) and click OK to finish.
4. No interruptions
You can take the last step even further by telling Firefox to ignore user interface events altogether until the current page has been downloaded. This is a little drastic as Firefox could remain unresponsive for quite some time, but try this and see how it works for you.
Type about:config, press [Enter], right-click in the window and select New > Boolean. Type content.interrupt.parsing, click OK, set the value to False and click OK.
5. Block Flash
Intrusive Flash animations are everywhere, popping up over the content you actually want to read and slowing down your browsing. Fortunately there's a very easy solution. Install the Flashblock extension (flashblock.mozdev.org) and it'll block all Flash applets from loading, so web pages will display much more quickly. And if you discover some Flash content that isn't entirely useless, just click its placeholder to download and view the applet as normal.
6. Increase the cache size
As you browse the web so Firefox stores site images and scripts in a local memory cache, where they can be speedily retrieved if you revisit the same page. If you have plenty of RAM (2 GB of more), leave Firefox running all the time and regularly return to pages then you can improve performance by increasing this cache size. Type about:config and press [Enter], then right-click anywhere in the window and select New > Integer. Type browser.cache.memory.capacity, click OK, enter 65536 and click OK, then restart your browser to get the new, larger cache.
7. Enable TraceMonkey
TraceMonkey is a new Firefox feature that converts slow Javascript into super-speedy x86 code, and so lets it run some functions anything up to 20 times faster than the current version. It's still buggy so isn't available in the regular Firefox download yet, but if you're willing to risk the odd crash or two then there's an easy way to try it out.
Install the latest nightly build (ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/), launch it, type about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Type JIT in the filter box, then double-click javascript.options.jit.chrome and javascript.options.jit.content to change their values to true, and that's it - you're running the fastest Firefox Javascript engine ever.
8. Compress data
If you've a slow internet connection then it may feel like you'll never get Firefox to perform properly, but that's not necessarily true. Install toonel.net (toonel.net) and this clever Java applet will re-route your web traffic through its own server, compressing it at the same time, so there's much less to download. And it can even compress JPEGs by allowing you to reduce their quality. This all helps to cut your data transfer, useful if you're on a limited 1 GB-per-month account, and can at best double your browsing performance.
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