Instant Fundas

American space agency NASA in collaboration with non-profit Saylor Foundation is offering a new massive open online course or MOOC on “Space Systems Engineering” starting March 3, 2014. The six-week, general-audience course is available to the public at no cost and provides a unique opportunity to learn from and alongside NASA's engineers. Students who participate will also earn a free certificate.

As part of reshuffling things, cutting down on old features and introducing new features that happen with any new software release, Microsoft decided to bring the axe down on a relatively useless feature called Windows Experience Index on Windows 8.1. Windows Experience Index or WEI is a benchmarking tool that rates the performance of a computer based on its hardware and software configuration. However, the tool was not entirely removed, and it was still possible to generate the WEI scores by running a process via the command prompt. It was only a matter of time before someone came up with a proper frontend to the process that benchmarks the system. The time has come.

Smartphones are precious, and losing one can be painful, which is why anti-theft and remote device tracking apps such as Prey and Cerberus are so popular on the Google Play Store with over 5 million installs each. When Google realized that remote tracking should be an integral component of Android itself, they introduced Android Device Manager, an application that allows device owners to track their devices online and even wipe all data, should the need arise.

Keyboard shortcuts are possibly the fastest way to interact with a computer, but that might not hold true for all scenarios, especially since most user interfaces are designed to be used with a mouse. Indeed, some programs don’t even have keyboard shortcuts associated with all its actions. While I haven’t seen anyone without a mice close at hand, if not in hand , the mouse could be broken or the battery could be dead and you might not have a spare one close by.