Instant Fundas

When Microsoft removed the start menu from Windows 8, a lot of things got removed as well. One of them is the Recent Documents menu. Personally, I like to keep that thing turned off but many users rely on it to access their current documents with ease. On the Start Screen, which is the start menu equivalent in Windows 8, there is no automatic filling of the most frequently used and most recently used programs and files. In fact, that functionality has been entirely ripped off the Modern UI interface. But don’t worry, some of this functionality is still available on the desktop mode, albeit in a different way.

After more than a year talking about Windows 8, Microsoft has officially released the latest iteration of the operating system last weekend. Windows 8 sports a bold new interface melding together the worlds of tablets and desktop computer with lots of new changes and a big boost in performance. While the interface is the first change users will notice it’s not the only major one. Windows 8 boasts of several new features and capabilities, but we will not discuss them here – enough articles have been written about them already. Here we will look at only those new features that makes or have the potential to make certain third party tools redundant and even obsolete.

Skitch , a popular screenshot and image-editing tool for Mac OS X, Android and iOS has arrived for Windows, both as a desktop application and as a Windows 8 “Metro” app. The desktop application is fully compatible with Windows XP and newer. On Windows 8 you can run Skitch both as a legacy desktop program and - for those who prefer the Windows Phone look - as a native app.

Google has launched, on a limited trial basis, a new service that allows mobile phone users to use Google Search, Gmail and Google+ on their phone with no data charges incurred by their carriers. You can use Free Zone even if you haven’t subscribed to a data plan with your operator. For now, the good stuff is available only in Philippines and only for Globe users.

Earlier this month Microsoft rolled out a massive 170MB update for Windows 8 targeting various areas like performance, power management, media playback and compatibility issues. This is the first time the company has released updates for Windows before the public debut of the operating system, and very much out of schedule.

Mozilla today announced that it has started experimenting with a new social feature inside the Firefox web browser via the Social API announced in July, and the first to join is Facebook. The Social API will integrate social features directly into the Firefox browser. Things like sharing, chatting and keeping tab with new updates will all be possible from the sidebar without having to keep Facebook open in another tab. While Facebook integration using third party add-ons is already possible this is the first time a browser company has tried to integrate social media natively into their browsers. (Well, there is Rockmelt).

Last year, Adobe wowed the audience at the company’s MAX 2011 event when they demonstrated a technology where a blurred photo was focussed and retouched within seconds, a trick the crowd is used to seeing but only in movies and TV series. This was the first public demonstration of a technology that is real, is happening and is actually available right now.

A hand-picked selection of articles published between October 7 and October 20 of previous years. 1 Year Ago Hidden Lock Locks Your Android Device Without a Password Automatically Delete Firefox History Older Than X Days BExplorer Brings Ribbon Explorer to Windows 7

CloudMagic is a unified search engine for your personal data in the cloud. It lets you search across a dozen different services including Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote, and more through one simple search box, preview results and read emails and social media updates without leaving whatever you are doing. CloudMagic is available as browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, and also as a standalone app for Android and iOS devices. Here, I‘ll be reviewing the Chrome extension.

The initial rumours that Microsoft will prevent third party applications from bypassing Metro and installing a start menu to Windows 8 were all unfounded. Currently there are no less than a dozen different ways that you could add a start menu to the operating system of which Classic Shell, ViStart, StartMenu8, Start 8, and Power8 are among some which I can recall from the top of my head. All of these have borrowed the same legacy design from Windows 7 with the exception of StarDock’s Start8 which offers users the option to run the new Windows 8 Start Screen in the form of a menu.

Third-party add-on has always been a headache for web browser developers. They install without permission and cause all sorts of problems for users from memory leaks to increased vulnerability. In recent months, both Mozilla and Google have taken a strong stance against unauthorized add-on installation. Google now completely blocks installation of Chrome extensions that did not originate from the Web store, and Firefox warns users if it detects add-ons that were automatically installed.

Google’s two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security to your Google Account. In addition to your username and password, you'll need to enter a code that Google will send you via text or voice message upon signing in. This drastically reduces the chances of having your Google account stolen by someone else because the hackers would have to not only get your password and your username, they'd have to get a hold of your phone.

It took quite a few years for e-commerce to find acceptance among the incredulous shoppers of India. While not actually flourishing, the Indian public is slowly warming up to the idea of shopping through an online portal without seeing or feeling the product prior to purchasing. With the rise in Internet adoption customers have become aware of the wide range of products available on the world wide web which are simply not available on their local store. Improvement in the Indian Postal Service and the launch of dozens of courier services have made product delivery reliable, and reduced logistic headache for operators. To further woo the Indian customers, e-commerce websites in India introduced the popular Cash-on-delivery model where customers pay only after the product is delivered to their doorstep.

One of the biggest challenges faced by developers when developing apps for Android is the sheer number of devices they have to support for, not to mention half a dozen or so different Android versions that are still operational in the market. Different Android versions is not so much of a problem as different screen sizes and resolution. Developers use emulators to tackle this problem, but setting up one for each device is still too much. Now you don’t have to, because Manymo offers you a way to test your apps on different screen sizes, display resolutions and Android versions right in your browser.

Mozilla has rolled out Thunderbird 16 with an utterly short list of changes, and a handful of bug and security fixed and fixes concerning stability. The new revision has only two new features – the integration of Box.com to the list of online storage services which you can use with Thunderbird Filelink, and the addition of silent updates.

Last month a large number of beautiful themes were released for Windows 7. Here is a round up of the best. Please refer to the theme author’s instructions on how to apply the themes. Checkout our customization section for more themes.

The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) of the Indian Railways on Wednesday launched Rail Radar – an online portal which allows the public to track train movement in near real time. RailRadar is built upon the popular Google Maps application. The interactive map shows train movements all over the country with tiny blue and red arrows - trains highlighted in blue indicate those that are running on time while the red markers indicate the trains that are delayed or behind schedule. Users can zoom into the map, click on any train to view the exact route of the train including details like current location, and upcoming stations. Users can also search for trains by name and number see its status.

Have you ever been intrigued by the flashing LED on your computer’s cabinet, the one that indicates hard disk activity? What is causing the hard disk to spin? Sure, you can tell by looking at your desktop. If you are web browsing, then it is your web browser saving files and images from opened webpages to the browser cache that resides on the disk. If you are watching movies or listening to music it’s the media files that are being retrieved from the hard disk. If you are typing a document than it’s Microsoft Word periodically saving the document.

When editing videos for homemade movies you might feel the need to replace the audio track with one of better quality or different sound. Maybe you want to swap voices with music, or replace the original dialogues on a movie with different set of dialogues – a process called dubbing. Maybe the audio turned out to be distorted and you need to replace it. This short tutorial will show how to do just that.

Recently, my brother-in-law bought a new Sony Bravia HD-Television that plays videos directly from USB drives. Everything was going find until we loaded a 720p MKV file and found that the TV couldn’t recognize the audio codec. The video was playing alright but the audio was missing, and a message appeared on screen saying the audio format was not supported. It turned out that certain models of the Sony Bravia TV couldn’t play DTS encoded audio but it could handle Dolby Digital AC-3 and AAC audio. A quick search on Google revealed that HD-TV manufactured by other companies like Samsung and LG have similar issues with audio codecs.

A hand-picked selection of articles published between September 23 and October 6 of previous years. 1 Year Ago How to Make Photos of Documents Look Like Scanned Copies How to Restore Specific Files from Windows System Restore Points Backup Windows and Office 2010 Activation With Advanced Tokens Manager

Gmail supports dozens of advanced search operators that can help you locate particular messages in your inbox. To find attachments one has to use the operator “has:attachment” followed by keywords that occur on the body of the email, or combine this operator with other search operators. If someone sent you a text file or an HTML file, it is possible to search for keywords within the attachments, but Gmail couldn't index PDF files, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and other popular attachment formats, until now.

Just like in Windows taskbar, not all files are welcome to the Windows 8 Start Screen. You can pin any folders and libraries but not any files. EXE files are cool, other files are not. The only way to force Windows 8 into accepting all files as tiles on the Start Screen is to use a hack offered by Winaero’s Start Screen Pinner .

My Movie Manager is yet another movie collection managing software for windows that helps you catalogue your personal collection on your hard disk. My Movie Manager will scan your computer for movies, discover video files and attempt to identify them. Successfully identified movies will have their details downloaded from IMDB.com. The downloaded details includes a poster of the movie, the movie plot, year of release, movie rating on IMDB, director, cast, genre, runtime and a couple of others. At the end of the scan you will have a nice searchable database of your personal movie collection.

Windows 8 lets you pin any program and files to the start screen, but it doesn’t allow you to customize the appearance of the tiles or the icon of the pinned program. These classic-styled program icons stick out like sore thumbs among the metro tiles on the start screen. OblyTile is a free program that lets you create custom tiles and swap them with app tiles you want to customize on the Windows 8 start screen.

Russian Internet search company Yandex has launched a new Google Chrome spin-off - Yandex Browser based on the open-source Chromium code. The browser is tailored for Russian users offering Yandex as the default search engine and Russian as the default language for automatic translation prompts. Superficially Yandex browser is identical to Chrome but the browser does have some interesting features under the hood that will appeal to all users. Thankfully, the interface is in English (which is actually odd for a Russian browser) so language doesn’t throw a barrier to adoption.

Last week we had a giveaway organized for UseNeXT Usenet and now it’s time to announce the winners. Here are the results of the random draw.