Instant Fundas

An outliner is a text editor that allows text to be organized into discrete sections in a tree structure or hierarchy, allowing users to control the level of detail that is displayed. Text may be collapsed into a node to get a quick overview, or expanded to full detail. Outliners are a great way to collect and organize ideas, take notes, brainstorm and even make presentations.

Email notifiers are usually small programs that runs in the background, polling a remote mail server for new emails, and as soon as one is found, it alerted the recipient through a notification either visual or aural. We have seen numerous Gmail notifiers before but have rarely come across an Outlook.com or Hotmail.com notifier. Lack of demand or lack of interest could have been a cause. The thing is, almost everyone who actively use an Outlook.com (previously Hotmail.com and Live.com) email address also use either Microsoft Outlook email program or Windows Live Messenger.

Google has added a new feature to YouTube Video Editor that lets anybody create slow-motion videos out of regular videos with “normal” frame rates. Ideally, slow motion videos are shot using cameras that are capable of recording videos at frame rates higher than 25 fps or 30 fps. When this video is played back at the normal playback speed of 25/30 fps, the video appears to slow down in time. The higher the recording frame rate of the original video, the slower it could be play backed without introducing stutters and jerky motions between frames. So, if the video was shot at 60 fps, you could slow the video by half and thus elongate its duration by a factor of two. Similarly, if the video is shot at 120 fps, you could slow it down by a factor of 4.

As you may already know, YouTube starts playing videos as soon as click on a video link. This is such a nuisance for people who open multiple videos on new tabs, with the intention of watching them later, before the first one is finished watching. Usually, you need to pause the video you are watching, then go to the new video that has already begun playing, pause it and then return back to the original video.

Opera Software has just released the first build of the new Opera for desktop computers based on Chromium 28, turning over a new leaf in the browser’s nearly two decades of existence. Being based on the latest Chromium build means that it includes Blink, a new rendering engine developed by Google for use with their Chrome browser, forked from Webkit. Opera had initially announced the move to WebKit in February, but after Google themselves moved to Blink in April, Opera followed suit.

Smart stock traders are increasingly using mobile phones to carry out most stock exchange transactions these days. In the recent past it has also come to notice that stock traders prefer handheld devices over personal computers due to the convenience it offers. They are versatile and easy to carry and let you make transactions even while traveling. They are almost an office away from office.

Shortly after Google introduced the open source WebM video format, they started transcoding all videos uploaded to YouTube to WebM, in addition to making them available in MP4, FLV and other formats that use the h.264 codec. Some videos are exclusively WebM, so when you download those videos from YouTube, you get a WebM file. Being a new video format, WebM support is not very good among media players. Many video editors too do not support this format. If you want the video clips to be accessible on all applications and devices, the only solution is to convert WebM videos to a format that is supported by your device or application.

deJpeg is a simple Windows program that lets you extract embedded images from data files, mainly Microsoft Word (.Doc, .Docx) and EXE files. It may work with other types of files as well, since the developer says so, but is extremely unlikely as I tried several different types with no luck. Mostly, I hoped it would support PDF, but it didn’t. deJpeg’s interface is very spartan. You click the Analyze button and then use the explorer file picker to locate the file you want to extract images from. As soon as you click OK, the status bar indicating the progress of the extraction process will shoot across the window and a message will announce the number of JPEG files successfully extracted.

The UAC (User Account Control) was introduced in Windows Vista as a protection against malicious programs, Trojans and other nasty applications from running without the user’s permission, and possibly causing harm to the system and user’s files. But the way it was implemented, it left users with few choices. Many decided to disable it because it got in their way far too often. The UAC in Windows 7 was improved and an ability to set different levels of protection was added, but it’s still not perfect. It has the annoying habit of popping up even when you are logged in as administrator.

Twitter has finally joined the growing league of companies and services that offer two-factor authentication to secure accounts of users from being stolen or misused. Account hijack is serious matter and no company is immune, especially high profile ones such as Twitter. To get started with two-factor authentication, go to Twitter’s account settings page , scroll down to the section “Accounts security” and check the box that says “Require a verification code when I sign in.”

I’m not a very big fan of browser toolbars. Well, who is? But I’m not talking about product toolbars that are bundled with software installers to promote services like the Ask search engine, Babel translation, Yahoo and other such products that barely anyone use. I’m talking about toolbars that are part of the web browser – bookmarks bar, status bar and add-on bar in Firefox. Any horizontal toolbar on the screen means less vertical space for web pages, and I like to have as much space as possible for viewing. I do not use bookmarks bar, the status bar has been thankfully done away with in Firefox. What’s left is the add-on bar.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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?

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.

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.

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.

A selection of articles containing the best tips, resources and software reviews published between April 1 and April 30 of last year. Spotflux: Free VPN With Encryption, Anti-Virus Protection and Ad Blocking Put Your Dropbox or Google Drive Folder Inside SkyDrive for Multiple Cloud Backup 20+ Chrome Apps for Google Drive

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.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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 .

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

There are a number of utilities that help users migrate files between various cloud storage and photo-sharing services. Mostly, they connect specific pairs of services, such as Facebook and Flickr, or Dropbox and Google Drive. But there is one utility that offers a complete solution.

Microsoft has released a new preview version of Skype for Windows users. The most notable feature of the new release is support for video messaging, that allows users to send and receive short, pre-recorded video messages from their Skype contacts, even when they are offline. Video messaging is already available on Skype for iOS, Android and Mac since February. Now it’s turn for Windows 7. Microsoft promises the same will be available for Skype for Windows 8 shortly.