Make Tech Easier » Soumen Halder

How to Make Your Old Computer As Good As New

Soumen Halder — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 00:25:40 +0000

Every time you saw a new gadget, you sulk about that piece of junk you are sitting next to. It’s a common human syndrome and there’s nothing wrong with it. But have you given it a second thought? Can you make things a little better? What about making your old PC work like a charm like it did before? Here are a few tricks you can try to make your old computer as good as new.

Speed Up Startup Process

This is one of the most annoying things about old systems. You hit the power button, and it takes an eternity to get things loaded before you can actually start working. This happens mostly due to the startup programs and sometimes the hardware and the operating system. Windows 8 has an impressive startup time and so do some Linux distros, but on old computer with older version of Windows, you will need to do some tweaks. Programs like Startup Delayer or Soluto are great apps that can monitor your startup time and inform you which apps can be removed from the startup list.

In addition to the startup items, there is also the context menu entries that get loaded while the computer boots up. While some of menus are necessary, some stay unused. Using tools like File Menu Tools or MooO RightClicker allow you to configure the context menu and remove the entries that are not necessary.

System Performance Management

For those who never bothered to clean up their computer, you will be surprised to find that a little cleaning up and optimization can lead to a huge performance gain, even on an old computer. On Windows PC, this means you have to maintain a regular schedule to defragment and clean up your disks. Tools like CCleaner works great. Other tasks include repairing registry errors or a faulty partition, optimizing your network for faster Internet access and uninstalling useless programs or switching to newer/older versions that are faster. Also, paid tools like Auslogics Boostspeed have built-in tools to do everything mentioned above automatically on a defined schedule. A little price for some peace of mind. You can try disabling the graphics features for more RAM juice.

Get a Hardware Fix

Depending on your old computer hardware specification, you can get a performance boost by upgrading a single (or few) components. Upgrading the RAM is the first upgrade you should get. You can also consider upgrading the graphics card, provided your motherboard and CPU can support the newer generation of graphics hardware. Changing a new case with better cooling feature can also make the system run faster and smoother.

If your PC doesn’t provide you with options to upgrade, you can consider overclocking the CPU to squeeze more processing power out of it. Of course, this will require skill and knowledge, and not every CPU is overclockable. Taking proper precaution is necessary here to make sure you don’t end up destroying the existing hardware.

The whole “old computer as good as new” notion is somewhat deceiving. There is no doubt that it won’t be completely new, otherwise all the money flowing into R&D every year would be pointless. However, with a little effort, you can a get a considerably better performance out of your old PC as long as you have the proper understanding of the above-mentioned methods. If none of these really satisfy your quest for performance and you are hell-bent on dumping that clunker, don’t give up on your old PC yet. There are still plenty of use for it.

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14 Ways to Make Good Use of Your Old Computer Again

Soumen Halder — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 22:25:53 +0000

If you just bought or were given a new computer, you probably want to get rid of your old computer and save up some precious space. But before you do that, try giving your old computer a new lease of life by turning it into something useful. Here are some of the ways you can make good use of your old computer.

1. Create a Digital Photoframe:

If your PC is as good as junk, you can try turning it into a digital photoframe. Familiar is a free app that can help you accomplish the job. Other similar apps, such as Flickr slideshow or Picasa, are also handy for this.

2. An External Portable Storage

When nothing but your hard drive from the old computer is working, you still have an option to turn that into a portable external storage with a little investment in a USB caddy that can be bought from Ebay.

3. A Second Display

For Web professional, having a second (or more) external display is definitely useful. Using your old monitor as an additional external display is surely a cheaper alternative to buying a new one.

4. Sell It to Fund the Next One

You might ask why you would sell your old computer when the whole article is about using it. That’s true, but it is always wiser to invest in newer technologies. They don’t just look brilliant, they are greener and a beefier performer, designed to run better and safer apps. Selling it for quick cash is definitely better than just throwing it away.

5. Donate and Bring Smiles to Faces

What’s of no use to you might be of great help for someone else. If you think that your old PC is nothing more than an expensive waste, donate it to a charitable organization like Freecycle, Computers with Causes or Donate Your PC.

6. Contribute with Your CPU time To Distributed Computing

Iif you’re unsure about getting rid of your old computer just yet, you can volunteer your CPU power to people who can make the best out of it. BOINC is a wonderful tool to start with. You will find tons of causes, including cancer research, and can donate your time to them on that old computer.

7. Build Your Own Super Computer

If you have hardware lying in the garage, with a little technical know-how and PelicanHPC, you can get a cluster up and running for fast parallel computing with MPI (Message Passing Interface). This ensures a faster computing experience with combined processing speeds.

8. For All the Software You’ve Been Wanting to Try

If you’ve been wanting to try that new Linux thing you heard last night, but your new PC is too cramped with Windows to go for a fresh installation, this is a great chance to put your old laptop/PC to good use. If your old PC meets the requirements (no matter how old your PC is, there’s bound to have a Linux distro that will work in your PC), use it for testing new apps before installing them on your work PC.

9. Add an Extra Level of Firewall Protection

With the right set of tools, you can actually use your old PC as a firewall that sits between your new PC and the Internet. The following links demonstrate how you can take some time off and create a business class firewall with your old PC. [Link1][Link2]

10. A Media Station with Your Old PC

Within a budget, you can buy a new LED display and a proper sound system or a wireless headset and turn your PC into a media player. With all the free and versatile media players and online streaming services, you can undo the burden of entertainment on your work PC/Laptop.

11. A Game Server

If you are a passionate gamer, this is a handy use for the 10-year-old junk. Most games nowadays have an option for a dedicated server. If you wish to go online for a multiplayer experience, configure your old PC to deal with the web traffic while you enjoy the sport on your gaming rig.

12. Printing or File Server

If you own or administer a network of computers, that’s great, as you can use your old PC as the remote print or file server. Here is a guide with Windows XP as the OS on the old PC. Alternatively, you can use the old laptop storage as the file server for the network of the computers. Start with this guide to get the best out of the e-junk. If you are a fan of Ubuntu, with this resource you can turn it into a streaming server or a networked backup plan.

13. A Video Recorder or a TV

A modern day TV tuner card is capable of recording soap without a scratch. Why not use your clunker to record the F.R.I.E.N.D.S episode, while you finish your assignment.

14. A Granny Guide

While your grandmother wants to try her hand at computer, for obvious reasons, you can’t trust her with your your new PC. If you want a novice to get used to the computing environment, your old PC is a good one to start with. Teach her a few things, and she will be more than happy to use your old PC to browse the Internet. Additionally, your 5-year-old son will love to play classic Mario or Road Rash on your old computer.

Apart from those ideas mentioned above, there are other interesting thoughts like putting up the old PC somewhere visible in the room so when a thief gets in and sees it, he might have a notion you are poor enough and that might frustrate him to leave. In any case, we are already living in a state where e-junks are creating shortages of landfill, so even if you do not care about any of the above, do recycle the PC for a greener future.

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Access All Your Cloud Accounts With Cloudkafe

Soumen Halder — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 00:25:08 +0000

While there is major buzz in the cloud storage segment with almost every big company in the race, the consumers face a dreaded problem of choosing the best one to go with. In fact, some of you might even have accounts for all these services and use them for different purposes. The problem now is not how many accounts you have, but how to manage them all in one place. Cloudkafe is one such service that gives access to major web accounts from a single location.

Sign up for a free account with the cloud storage management service. You’ll have a choice to use the Facebook login. However, it’s recommended to use a fresh set of login credentials. As you verify your email address, you will be taken to your Cloudkafe main account page. Here you will find 6 categories which are used to group cloud services as per their probable usability.

1. Documents: SugarSync, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and SkyDrive.

2. Pictures: SmugMug, Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Instagram.

3. Videos: Youtube, Vimeo.

4. Notes: Evernote and Catch.

5. Contacts: Google and Yahoo contacts.

6. Music: This segment is yet to have any services listed.

You will now have to add/authorize your accounts one by one. Just head over to the categories you wish to add the services and authorize access to them one at a time. With all the services you need are connected, you can have a complete view of your data online. You can open the files, move them within the service. Alternatively, you can download them too (for some of them) if you need to. A simple feature to download Youtube videos (that you had uploaded earlier) might been a nice addition to Cloudkafe. The interface looks a little gawky at some screens but is overall quite simple and easy to use.

The great thing about using Cloudkafe is that you can search for something in all the services in one go, which is really very helpful. The app, however, do not allow you to move files across different services which is a bummer. Other premium services has cap on how much bandwidth you can use every month which could be frustrating if you are transferring large files. Thankfully Cloudkafe has no such bar on bandwidth usage. Cloudkafe is completely free and with all features available, it indeed works great for most people.

There are similar services that does a better job than Cloudkafe in certain aspects. Like Otixo that supports cross-service file transfers, indeed offers a great advantage if you prefer not to install the desktop clients from all services. I prefer to use only one (from Dropbox) that has better performance features and then use Otixo to sort files into the relevant storage. However, Cloudkafe is unique in it’s selection of services which even includes popular services like Instagram, Youtube and Google contacts which are missing from similar services. So if you are looking for a cloud storage management service instead of something that lets you organize/backup your cloud accounts, you should definitely try Cloudkafe.

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How to Stream Media From Your Desktop To PS3, Smart TV, Smartphones And Many Other Devices

Soumen Halder — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:25:45 +0000

Are you planning to use your PS3, Smart TV or smartphones to play media from your desktop computer? It’s actually wonderful that way as those devices are sure to give you a better multimedia experience than your desktop PC. Universal Media Server, built on the PS3 Media Server, will help you turn your desktop PC into a media server to stream content on DLNA compliant supported devices.

Configuring UMS:

To get started, download and install the freeware on your PC (tested on Windows 8). During the installation, you will be prompted to install AviSynth 2.6 MT, go ahead and click Yes. The graphical interface provided by the Universal Media Server is more comforting than other popular UPnP media servers for any average user.

First of all, you will need to take a look at the Navigation/Share Settings tab. This is where you will have to add folders to share with other devices. To add a folder, you need to use the folder icon at the bottom. A new dialog will open where you will be required to add folders that contains the files to be shared. You can also choose a drive as a whole.

Once you have added the folders to share, you will need to configure the HTTP settings and the network for your media streaming server. There are other options in this tab which controls several preferences to tune UMS to meet your needs.

The plugin management tab lets you install additional features with plugins like streaming music from services like Grooveshark, Google Music etc. Last but not the least, the Transcoding settings lets you control the file transcoding for proper playback on the rendered devices. If you are unsure of what it does, the default settings work just fine on most devices.

Supported Devices:

Supported devices are Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony Bravia, Google Android, Freebox HD, Freecom MusicPal, Pioneer Kuro, Nokia N900, Philips Aurea, Philips Net TV, Yamaha RX-V671, OPPO blu-ray players, DirecTV HR, Popcorn Hour, Asus O!Play, Xtreamer, AC Ryan PlayOn!HD, Brite-view CinemaTube, Samsung televisions, Philips Streamium, Western Digital WD TV LiveXBMC Media Center, Boxee, LG Smart TV Upgrader, Samsung UPC Horizon and more.

One thing to be noted here is that your devices should be DLNA compliant else this freeware won’t work as expected.

Being a JAVA application, the freeware is available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. The media server is powered by MEncoder, FFmpeg, tsMuxeR, AviSynth, MediaInfo and more. It supports all major audio and video file formats. Packed with advanced features the media server app promises a better experience than other similar tools. Follow this link to take a sneak peek at quick overview of features UMS provides compared to others.

On a concluding note, the easy installation and configuration UI of UMS sets it apart from other tools that only provide command line setup which is a little tricky for average Joes. Considering the wide range of supported file formats and devices, the tool is a one stop solution. For those who are willing to set up a desktop media server, UMS is definitely a choice to consider.

Download Universal Media Server for Windows 2.2.0

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Control Multiple PCs With A Single Set Of Keyboard & Mouse

Soumen Halder — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 22:25:36 +0000

If you use more than a PC at a time to do separate tasks, then you have already faced problem accommodating more than one pair of keyboard and mouse on your desk. Along with that, you can’t comfortably access all of them from your sitting position. One solution is use Multiplicity if you don’t want to spend a penny.

To start with, you need to install that software on all your computers. The free version lets you use two computers with same keyboard and mouse whereas the paid variant allows maximum 9 systems. Visit their site, enter your email address and download it. You need to choose a primary computer that is connected with a keyboard and mouse and denote another one as the secondary. Secondary computer is which can be controlled from your primary computer. After installing Multiplicity on both computers, you need to connect them together. If a scan for secondary machines doesn’t start automatically, click the ”Add Computer“ button and enter the name of your secondary computer. You will be instructed to give a password to ensure a secured connection to control another PC.

Multiplicity provides 3×3 grid structure where at the center you will find your primary machine. Place another machine in any other grid of your choice. If you move the mouse cursor in that directions from your primary machine you will see the cursor on the screen of another computer. This way you can control up to nine systems. Place other eight on the empty places on the grid while the primary stays at the center, it is as simple as that.

Under the ”Settings“ tab, you can set hot-keys to quickly switch between computers if you don’t want to scroll to the edge of the screen every time. Also, if you want more customization and control, just click on the button named ”Control switching based on mouse movement“ and you will find more useful mouse based controls.

The pricing for paid version is $39.95 for controlling a maximum of 9 PCs. Paid version has some more benefits like drop files and folders, send keyboard input to all PCs at once, locking all PCs with a single command etc. Also you can centralize audio from all your systems to one PC with the paid version.

This product is very easy to use and very useful for anyone who uses multiple computers like gamers, financial professionals, developers etc and the paid version seems a good fit for them. However, if you are just a normal user and happen to own a laptop and a desktop at home, this app can be used in multitude of ways like using your laptop as a remote control to watch movies on the bigger screen(desktop) while you sit back on a couch/bed which otherwise would have needed you a wireless mouse. So comfort at zero price is the most essential USP for the app and I recommend it for anyone who happens to own more than one PC.

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Serendip Discovers Music That Matches Your Taste And Does So In A More Human Way

Soumen Halder — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 14:50:19 +0000

Love listening to music? Then I am sure you have spent plenty of time scouring the web for tracks that enthral you. While there are plenty of music discovery apps, most of them use a playlist suggestion algorithm and they don’t work well all the time. Serendip is one that uses suggestions from real people, people who shared the same musical taste, to find music that truly matches with what we love to hear.

Serendip learns about your musical taste and then scans the timeline of the vast number of Facebook and Twitter users who shares common interests and presents you with a curated playlist most of which are perfectly exact to what you expected.

Usage

You can create a free account with the web app by allowing access to Twitter or Facebook accounts. Once you are in, type in your name and desired username and email to subscribe to the service. Next, you will be asked to add artists. Note that those are not artists (who actually create music) but your friends on Facebook and Twitter who shares common musical interests with you and are on Serendip. You can then choose a few or all from the list to get started to create your playlist.

You will need to authorize the app to access songs that you share on your Facebook wall so that they can be played for Serendip users who are not your friends on Facebook. Also choose how Serendip will add/suggest your new friends who are likely to share common musical interests with you. The last step is where you will be tell the app about your musical tastes.

Enter names of your favorite artists and bands to let Serendip understand your choices.

Once you have set it up, you will be presented with a player where songs will start playing from default from users who shares your musical taste. The songs are fetched in real time from the user’s social (Facebook and Twitter) timeline.

I was literally amazed at how close the suggestions were to the kind of music I really enjoy. A quick example, I discovered 3 new singers whom I’d love to hear again in just 15 minutes. That’s how actual the suggestions are. One thing that I missed though is to add a singer/band (that I loved while listening to a song) instantly from the player page. Or maybe a smart algorithm that can trace the name of the artist from the status update, tricky, I know it is. Yet a simple add box to add artist to likes would suffice. Although you can add favorite artists from the settings page.

Basic actions like voting a DJ (the Serendip user who shared the song), which is called RockOn, sharing a song (action named Air/ReAir) is possible. Cross posting those updates on Twitter and Facebook are also allowed. You can also follow an user on Serendip.

The app creates a real-time playlist based on user’s activity on Twitter/Facebook that relates to your musical taste within a nifty radio interface that offers a lean-back listening experience. With near perfect song choices, you hardly have to do anything to listen to something you enjoy except for sharing/following the eargasmic experience.

Serendip

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14 Ways To Find The Perfect Images On Web

Soumen Halder — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 23:25:28 +0000

Images constitute a large percentage of the digital content and perhaps are the most used ones. If you are a content creator and are looking for places to find the perfect images for your content, here are some of the best web tools that provide an aptly designed search engine for all kind of images available online.

1. Google Image Search

When it comes to search, no one comes before Google, and that is mainly because it contains the largest amount of indexed items. Google Image search is a great tool to search images with keywords. It also supports some basic attributes such as the size, shape, type etc. You can also search related images based on comparison with an image itself.

2. Bing Image Search

Bing is next in line with Google. It might not be as popular as Google but on a number of occasions, I’ve seen it perform better. The image search provided by Bing is a basic one, but it has a good number of relevant results for most of the searches I performed. A nice tool if you are looking for great wallpapers for your PC.

3. Yahoo Image Search

Hoping for a rebirth, the once-popular search engine also has a nice image search in place, and it welcomes you with the trending topics. The image search is equipped with all the basic standards of a image search engine. Related searches and other ancillary options makes the searching interface great.

4. PicSearch

Picsearch is a search engine dedicated for the purpose of searching images only. Picsearch boasts an indexed repository of more than 3 billion images. This is a good place to start if you are looking for something odd.

5. Flickr, Photobucket, 500px

These image sharing services are admittedly the top of the whole lot. The search functionality only makes them better to take advantage of the billions of images shared on them from the beginning of time. One of my personal favorites while looking for anything a tad different or just enjoying awesome snaps. A perfect for any photographer for inspiration or for a digital artist to create stunning illustrations.

6. WebShots

A similar service to Flickr which is mainly a photo sharing network where people shares great images. The site currently publicizes a stock of almost a billion images that you can search from.

7. Creative Commons Search

One of my most used tool as an online professional. It is strictly a search engine for creative commons materials. The tool helps you search images on popular image sharing websites like Europeana, Flickr, Fotopedia, Google Images, Jamendo, Open Clip Art Library and Pixabay. This is the best pick on this list.

8. TinEye

TinEye is a reverse image search engine. This means you can search with an image to find it’s occurrences on web. Perhaps not the best tool to search for images but any creative professional can use it to track the use of his/her work of art or you can look for a bigger and better version of an image you like.

9. Compfight

If you are looking for creative commons images on Flickr, look no further than Compfight. The tool works better than what Flickr search can do for you. The relevance of the searched images are perfect to an extent you will find excellent.

10. FotoSearch

Fotosearch will do a decent job finding you the best stock photographs and illustrations. There are a list of keywords you can start your search with.

11. Getty Images, Stock.Xchng And Corbis

Getty Images is a leading website where you can search and find great stock photographs and Stock.Xchng which is also a similar site also comes under its banner. Both the services are great at finding the perfect image. If you are looking for more options to choose from, try Corbis.

12. Images on Twitter

Twitter is a great place to find real-time content circulating on the web. There are tons of tools that does a fine job while searching those images. My personal favorites are Twicsy (for trending images), PicFog, TwiCaps (for a live image feed for a certain keyword) and Skylines (for hashtag and location based images).

13. Random Memes

Memes are buzzwords for the social networks, so if your image searching needs are purely for fun and/or having a great piece of mockery to share, Imgur hosts a ton of them and the community is hyper-active in adding more every single second. Try using their search for the best meme pictures you are looking for.

14. Visual.ly

For many, this might seem a little irrelevant, but logically infographics are a popular kind of images that share a lot of information in an entertaining yet comprehensible way. Visual.ly is one such service that hosts one of the largest collections of infographic shared on the web. If you are preparing a data sheet and need an image to complement the data in it, an infographic can be a good fit.

A great image search should be the one that can show a lot more things other than Eiffel tower when you search for Paris. That’s how versatile it should be in terms of functionality and variety of indexed content. While few of the above tools passes this test, most doesn’t. If for once I’m compelled to choose three among these, I will say Creative Commons Search, TinEye and Image sharing networks as a whole.

I tried to cover some of the bests that I have used or are suggested by most. Are there any tool that you feel I missed? I’m sure I did, since no list is complete until it’s fed from multiple sources. Help us build it, recommend some great tool in the comments section.

DISCLAIMER: While these tools guarantee the best image search experience, some of them come with a strict terms of use. Be advised to keep an eye on that and provide proper acknowledgements to the owner and/or abide by all the terms mentioned by the hosts/sharers in exact form whenever necessary. Also some images come at a price, a proper payment will mean your support for the art and the artist.

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10 Online Invoicing Softwares For Your Billing Needs

Soumen Halder — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:25:59 +0000

Be it a freelancer or an enterprise, every service provider has requirements for billing. And billing is not just restricted to recording and claiming the transaction, but also includes tracking invoices, late payments, estimates and time, as well as generating reports. Considering billing being not much of a leisurely task, here we have compiled a list of 10 online software that can help you manage and ease up your invoicing.

1. Invoicera

Invoicera is a clean online invoicing and billing app with a spartan time tracking ability which enables you to share your project from its different evolution stages to your clients in a diligent manner. It offers an array of added functionality like multi-language and currency support, data safety, multiple payment gateways, expense tracking and also synchronises with Google apps. With all these offerings, it’s not heavy on your wallet either (starts from $0 to $99 max). It’s truly worthy to use Invoicera to experience something more than invoicing.

2. FreshBooks

FreshBooks provides a nifty way to manage your clients with an automated payment reminder. With support for almost all popular currencies, it offers speedy online cash transactions and Google Chrome users also get some great FreshBooks apps/extensions. Though it offers a free account, the paid packages are a mere $19.95/month away.

3. CurdBee

If you consider your hectic business billing process a necessary evil, then CurdBee can be a breather with its intuitive and simple invoicing process. (Personally, I use this for all my billing tasks.) It offers users with some essential invoicing features like estimation, one-click recurring profile handling, time tracking all gathered within a clean interface. Convert your approved estimates within an invoice with a single click and it will slice down expensive hours breakdown by projects. An user can avail all these without spending a single buck by signing up for regular account or pro packages that are available for $5 to $20 per month.

4. Siwapp

Siwapp is an open source web app to create and manage invoicing online in a hassle free manner gratis. It’s easy to edit, search and list invoices on dashboard in a slap-up style. The best part is that it can automate generating invoices on a periodic basis with a unique serial number every time. With a printable PDF invoice feature, it wraps up a professional perspective. A growing community of developers are continuously contributing to uplift the functionality of Siwapp to make it a better tool.

5. Harvest

Are your business clients a bit low on financial standing or late on sending payments? If “yes”, then Harvest can help you with a unique feature of automating recurring pending invoice reminders. If you are a project manager and using Harvest, you are surely going to love the two most newly added features Team Status & Recent Tasks. They help you quit the hassle of asking your team. Pricing is flexible from $12 to $90 per month and a 10% discount is offered if you upgrade to a yearly plan. This might not be the best bang for your bucks, still it’s worth a try.

6. Sage Billing Boss

If the cluttered interface of your online invoicing tool is draining the last bit of your energy, then Sage Billing Boss might just be the comfort you are seeking for a long time. A normal user can create and send his first invoice with a couple of clicks using Sage Billing Boss. It integrates with popular payment gateways with features like recurring invoicing, quotes, online payment tracking and also collaborates with your accountants for better and faster business operations. With an existing 256 bit AES encrypted data transmission process, it can earn you a carefree sleep.

7. PHP Invoice

If you possess one of these professional identities – webmaster, freelancer or developer – and are looking for a versatile online invoicing software, then PHP Invoice is the right door to knock. With an unique integrated online shopping cart from where you can sell your product directly and immediately. It also offers HTACCESS and HTPASSWD for advanced page protection, automated advanced notifications, ticket support for better communication, announcements for your organisation and more. It’s free and easy to download, while professional versions are available with added benefits.

8. Zoho Invoice

Zoho Invoice is a simple yet elegant online invoicing service where users can choose and customise invoicing templates to their liking. If time saving is your foremost priority, then it has the ability to top the list as you can create new estimates and invoices by cloning similar ones; you don’t have to start from scratch every time. Create new invoices by a single click from estimates, brand it with your company logo, track and follow up your expenses. It offers easier currency conversions. You can import customer’s information from standard formats like Outlook Express and Zoho CRM. The tool has plenty more to offer. The pro version is valued at $30 a month, but you can opt for a free account as well.

9. Invoice Bubble

Invoicebubble is a free online invoicing software perfect for small businesses and freelancers. The invoicing application integrates with Paypal and offers most basic features for online invoicing with a professional hint. Sign up for a free account and start invoicing.

10. Greenerbilling

Greenerbilling lets you create and manage invoices and estimates in a fairly simple manner with a nifty user interface. It accepts PayPal payments, automates the scheduling of your invoices, clones invoice from similar ones, creates downloadable PDFs for datasheets, estimates, manages client profiles and also provides a round the clock effective customer support. The branding perspective is also not neglected in this simple yet robust billing tool.

There are notable names like Simple Invoice, Invoice Machine or Paypal’s inbuilt invoicing tool and a dozen more that can possibly handle the task like the ones mentioned here. However, to the best of my knowledge, these (ones included in the list) are the ones I can assure of being worthy of making the billing process an easy task for you.

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Mozilla Thimble Tries to Inspire The Web Maker In You

Soumen Halder — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 23:25:15 +0000

Internet has travelled a long way from the time when web pages composed of dreary texts and images to the present moment where everything is about sharing and interactions. In the past, creating a web page is easy. You just need to write, insert images and publish. With today’s technology, you probably need a degree before you can start creating a website. To bridge that gap, Mozilla (the team that developed Firefox) created a simple tool that make “webmaking” easier for you.

Mozilla Thimble is a relatively simple online tool for making HTML / CSS code, developed to introduce users to website coding, all within the comfort of a web browser without the need of downloading or installing any software. It’s easy as hell even in laymen’s terms.

Thimble has a dual-panel design. The left panel is for writing the code and the right panel displays a real-time preview of the page you are creating. This is where Thimble is a little different from other editors. Users can understand the process of coding instantly, check the preview and fix errors. The site offers two modes: “Start from Scratch” and “Pick a project”. In both modes, the two-pane is there, which serves great for debugging. If you wish to learn by seeing examples, existing projects are available with detailed comment for easy learning. Users can edit or add something to customize projects and learn from the errors made. Once everything is done, users can publish their work with a single click.

The learning part works great with Thimble, though there are better places such as Codeacademy, W3 Schools, Udemy, Stackexchange with richer resources. If you have completely no knowledge of HTML, you will probably start with the “Pick a Project” mode since the “Start From Scratch” mode requires you to have a basic knowledge of HTML. As much as anything, the Mozilla initiative to get people accustomed to web standards and educate them with the basics is laudable.

Get this straight, this tool is not for building a business site (might be for people who just need an online page). It is for understanding and testing skills by trial and error method. Mozilla thinks it is necessary for people living in 21st century to understand the language of web just like one should have general reading, writing or calculating skills.

Alongside with Thimble, Mozilla has also unveiled two more complementary projects in the Webmaker series. Popcorn is one of them and is an online video authoring tool. X-Ray Goggles is another one that reveals the code behind elements in a page. All three projects together are quite helpful for users to unlock or rather uncover the mystery of web rendering. Time will tell how far they will succeed in their efforts of educating the general mass, but it is definitely a worthy try.

Mozilla Thimble

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5 Tools To Defragment Your Storage For Faster Performance

Soumen Halder — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 23:25:29 +0000

When you ask for advice to fix your slow running computer (with Windows), one of the answer you will get is “defragment your hard drive“. Defragmentation is not the only solution to speed up your computer, but it is one of the most useful fixes to reorganize your file structure and make accessing the files a tad bit faster. It may sound complicated, but with any of these tools, the process is simply a matter of point and click.

1. Windows Disc Defragmenter Tool

To defragment your hard drive in any Windows system without installing any other software,

1. Go to “Control Panel”. If you are on Windows 8, just go to your Metro start screen by hitting Windows key and type “Control panel” to open it. Next go to “Administrative Tools” and open “Defragment and Optimize drives”.

2. From the newly opened window, choose the required partition you want to defragment and hit the “optimize” button to defragment it. You can also schedule the defragmentation process for any partition which will be performed automatically by Windows.

2. Smart Defrag

Smart Defrag is a nifty disc defragmenter tool developed by IObit and personally, it’s my way to do things. Its simple, intuitive user interface and effectiveness can make it top the list. It streamlines your file system and also places the frequently used files and directories into the top priority lists. In another words, it customizes your computer according to your usage.

Smart Defrag facilitates its users with a real time automatic disc defragmentation ability and it does it so quietly in the background that you don’t even realize it is working. The latest feature added to Smart Defrag is “Boot Time Defrag”. Users can set it to defrag those fragmented files during system boot process which can be glitchy to defrag when Windows is running.

3. Defraggler

Defraggler is a fairly good disc defragmenter with some unique features to offer to its users, mothered by Piriform, mainly an utility tool developer enterprise for Windows operating systems.

Normally any disc defragmentation tool constraints its users from selective defragmentation of hard drive. Either you defrag the whole drive or you don’t do it at all. Defraggler enables you to defrag any particular file or lump of data. Precisely, defrag what you want.

One of Defraggler’s most advanced features is the ability to move larger files to the end of the drive. Strategically, operating systems can access files faster if small files are at the start of the drive. It can put the large and less used files like videos and archives at the end of the drive so that Windows finds the smaller (application) files first which will speed up effective disc reading time.

Another feature is that user can defrag free space on hard drives which generally contains residual bits and pieces of data. This process creates a continuous chunk of free space which results to a better performance of Windows when writing new data on partitions.

With these simple enough but effective features, Defraggler is worth downloading and installing for Windows users who crave for advanced options.

4. Auslogics Disc Defragmenter

A clutter free interface, easy to read dropdown menu of partitions with some unique features makes Auslogics Disc Defragmenter a noted mention within its genre. It comes with a one-click defragmentation process and shows the speed map of any drive.

This particular element (Speed Map) shows users the slow/fast access zones by a clean demarcation line and thankfully, an option to relocate files to these zones according to user’s priority.

In addition, a user can move system files or files which are accessed frequently to the “fast disk access zone”. This may stretch defragmentation time a bit long but surely speed up disc access time afterwards. If “volume shadow copy service” is enabled for any volume on your disc drive, it will defrag that too, which will minimise this growth of volume shadow copy caused by frequent re-allocation and deletion of files on disc drives.

5. Power Defragmenter

Power defragmenter is an utility which defragments files and folders from command prompt. It was specially designed for Sysinternal’s contig as a graphical user interface.

“Contig” is a single-file defragmenter which attempts to make files contiguous on disk. As Power Defragmenter is based on Contig, installation is not required. Just download it with Contig and keep both files in the same directory and it is ready to roar at your command.

User can choose to defrag targeted files, folders or a whole drive with a dedicated “Triple pass mode” for removable drives. On the whole, Power Defragmenter can be a dead simple tool for commoners who don’t seek much super speciality from their defragmenting tool or graphical gimmick.

If there’s a tool that you think does a better job, feel free to share with us.

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6 Tools To Auto Schedule And Cross Post On Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus

Soumen Halder — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:25:56 +0000

Regardless whether it is to stay connected to the loop or to let the world know about your daily chores, being social is more of an involuntary human behavior now. It is no longer an issue of whether you are on a social network, but how many social networks you are active in. One major problem arises from this is that you no longer have enough time to update so many social network at one time and still can get things done. Before you turn crazy, here are 6 tools that enable you to auto-schedule and cross post on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

1. Buffer

Buffer is a good choice for people who mostly use social networks for updating several times a day with topics that revolves around their niche. It’s not just a cross posting tool but it also serves a great auto scheduling tool for those in need. Buffer lets you create a schedule (based on when you get most followers online) to evenly space out your updates so it doesn’t create an unnecessary clutter for your friends and followers. Although Buffer was meant to meet the scheduling needs while posting updates, it is also a great tool to cross post updates to multiple networks with equal precision. Note if you don’t use social media for a living, it’s better to stay off Buffer, it’s more like a robot who although does a superb job in helping a social marketer to promote a brand, fails to offer a human approach. Buffer supports Facebook (and pages), Twitter, LinkedIn etc and has support for browsers and mobile platforms as well.

2. Hootsuite

Before Buffer occurred to me, Hootsuite was my perfect companion. Functionally, it’s a better version of Tweetdeck. There’s a free as well as paid plans that comes with added benefits. While there are no configurable update schedule like Buffer, Hootsuite does have a message scheduling feature which do not exist in others.

3. Ping.fm

One app that packs almost every social network and instant messengers out there is Seesmic Ping (previously Ping.fm). Use it from mobile or desktop, the app performs equally brilliant. One thing that’s great about Ping.fm is that you can use the SMS feature to post updates, which comes handy if you are not having good internet reception yet can’t forbear the urge to update your social stream.

4. G++

People who are active in Google Plus long yearns for a social update or scheduling tool, but this has not been possible because of the unavailability of a working read/write API from the Big G’s end. We have showed you a workaround where you can schedule Google+ Post, but for those who wanted more integration with Facebook and Twitter, you can try G++, a browser extension currently available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. This add-on embeds Facebook and Twitter within the Google+ page allowing you to post and browse through updates to and fro from the other two trending social platforms.

5. TweetDeck

Tweetdeck is undoubtedly the best browser-based and mobile client to stay connected to your Twitter and Facebook feeds. Be it Twitter list or Facebook like, you get notified about all of that with this free tool currently owned by Twitter. This is also a great way to share updates to both the networks with a single click. Another thing that is really great about Tweetdeck is that you can share updates from one network to another. So if you find something intriguing on Twitter, you can just share it on Facebook. Like other similar tools, Google+ support is however missing here too. Tweetdeck has a scheduling feature that however is a bit of frustration for me.

6. IFTTT

IFTTT allows you to automate (almost) any online task. In context of this article, you can get it to send a welcome note when someone follows you on Twitter or someone starts following you on Twitter. With 47 apps that can be used with IFTTT, the possibilities are endless. Despite meeting almost every possible internet automation needs, IFTTT is free.

I’m sure there are other tools present and they may have better functionality. However, as I stated earlier, these tools are those I had used for managing my social presence and is trusted by big brands as well. If you have a better tool, please help this list by contributing in the comments section. Also, I have put emphasis on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ which in true sense has defined benchmark standards for social networks. Others, like Pinterest, Path, Foursquare, Linkedin, although have a big audience, revolves around specific interests. So I have left them out too.

Image credits: Web Ninja Dojo and Stephanie Fusco.

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DudePins Mimics Pinterest, Plans To Be The Similar Service For Boys

Soumen Halder — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 21:25:01 +0000

Pinterest stirred up the social scenario last year and it is continuing to do so. According to experts it had even surpassed the referring traffic count of Twitter. As time passed and more pictures got pinned on Pinterest, all those wedding dresses, nail polishes and cat pictures pointed to the evidence that majority (~80%) of the service users were women. That might just be a coincidence (as there were no claims of a planned move) that the style and mode of working lured women more than they did men.

Two guys Colin Brown and Kamil Szybalski from Vancouver decided to do something about that. A service aptly named Dudepins (dude for the boyish feel and pins for its propinquity to Pinterest) is aimed to offer an exclusive feel to male users who loves Pinterest. The service is quite rich with male content already.

The service is still in its beta stage and you will need to request for an invite to get in. Once your turn comes, you can get in to the service and set up a free profile. Everything after that works exactly like Pinterest. Starting from the repin, like, comment buttons to the floating grid like layout, Dudepins does everything the Pinterest way. The only thing that differs from Pinterest is the name for group of pins. Like Pinterest has boards, Dudepins have montages.

The startup is bootstrapped so far and claims to be growing satisfactorily in terms of users. The developers have a definite goal in mind to grow the web based app into a Pinterest modeled sharing platform for dudes. The users have obliged and if you visit the site now, you will be amazed to see the multitude of images of quotes, gears, gadgets etc that can be precisely termed as male interests.

However, to any startup enthusiast, it might seem nothing but a copycat of an already popular service. Not so long ago Pinspire attempted to make a Pinterest clone which will be targeted to country specific users. It showed an early glimpse of success but the traffic has substantially fallen after that. DudePins does just that with a Dude-ism involved. Gentlemint is another network that also aims to be the Pinterest for men and thankfully they have a different way to implement that. Maybe it’s not yet a successful service but they are unique in approach.

Only sharing dude content doesn’t make a Pinterest for boys. Pinterest’s appeal is more to do with the aesthetics than to the sheer chick content on the site. Since the style is appealing, Pinterest grew into a service that it is today. Now if a site has to target male users, it has to delve deeper into the gender demands. For instance, a very simple change in the layout that reflects manliness might do the trick. Anything that the brilliant(no doubt in that though) developers change(and if they do) in design or working algorithm should be more yielding to the idea they are working on.

Dudepins although offers a flawless experience and a successful start doesn’t seem to make the mark in the long run. No matter what, the one who comes first with a unique idea will always enjoy the stardom and attention, the second always stays second until it adds something that refines or improves what the first had already demonstrated.

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How to Build Interactive Infographics With Infogram

Soumen Halder — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 21:30:14 +0000

Reading an infographics is fun. You get all the interesting facts and figure in a single graphics and all the beautiful animation and design easily make them a viral piece of content. However, from the business side of view, if you are creating an infographics so as to promote your business, you will know that it is not an easy task. Big firms have to put in plenty of hours and efforts just to get all the facts and figures compiled and the animation/design done up, and not to mention the amount of money poured in to promote it. For those of you who can’t afford the time and money, an easy way out is to look for infographics creation tools/template that are widely available in the Web.

Infogram is one such too that helps you create great looking interactive infographics.

To get started, you have to login with Twitter or Facebook (sadly that’s the only way to sign up). Once you are in, you can choose to start a new infographic or create a new chart or enter the library.

Click on the choice and a array of templates will open up to choose from. Select the one that fits your data best and start building on it.

The data can be imported from any CSV file that can then be added to the infographic in the form of interactive charts. The four types of charts that can be used are bar, pie, matrix and line. You can work on other design attributes like color of the elements and width of the infographic. To the right of the editing window, you can find buttons to add texts, quotes, titles and pictures as well. After you have collected all the information into the infographic, arrange the elements(charts, titles, text etc) in a comprehensible way. All of that can be done just by dragging and dropping elements across the length of the infographic.

Once you are convinced that you are finished creating the infographic, you can publish it. As the infographic is posted for public viewing, you can then share it on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. A URL can also be found which will display a page with the infographic in action. Say you wish to post the infographic on a page of your website, Infogram offers you with an iframe code which can be used to embed the infographic on any web page. Note that you can also unpublish or edit an infographic (you had created with Infogram) after you had published it.

Contrary to the common infographics, Infogram lets you create dynamic or interactive information. These not only helps you engage readers but also lets you present more data within a single presentation without making it look crammed.

Visually is another great service that not only helps you find great infographics but has recently rolled out a spiffy app to create them too. All said, it’s still a prolonged research that makes the infographic an informative one. So if you have the mined data at your hand, fret not about the design costs to present them in a captivating way. These infographic creation tools does a great job.

Image Credit: schedule of exchange rates. vector infographics by Big Stock Photo.

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SlowPal: Browse Your PayPal Transaction History Without Waiting

Soumen Halder — Thu, 24 May 2012 21:30:43 +0000

PayPal seems to offer a brilliant service as long as you are ready to put up with its outlandish rules. You can use it to pay and receive online payment, and you can view the history to check your transaction record. However, long time users will notice that viewing the Paypal history is often a slow, laggy and a sub-optimal experience. SlowPal is one solution for this.

SlowPal offers a smart interface to handle and browse your PayPal history. Sign up for a free account and link your PayPal account. Once you are done, you will have to wait for sometime until you get a confirmation mail from the service that your account history (PayPal) is successfully imported. Once the account is set up, log in again to access the PayPal transaction in a seamless manner.

The spiffy interface is itself a relief to the eye as compared to the dull Paypal interface. In addition, the tool also offers a nice interactive way to browse through your PayPal transactions. The reports are categorized in a considerable manner so that you can sort your transaction in all possible ways you might need to. There are 5 types of filters you can choose from to look out for transactions you wish to find:

Type of transaction: Here you get to choose from various types of transaction you have carried out through your PayPal account. Options are bills, currency conversion, payment, recurring payment etc.
Status of Payment: The payment status is an useful feature to check on pending transactions.
Currency: Intelligent way to track currency conversion rates to your country currency used by Paypal for different transactions.
Time period: A monthly or quarterly report can be generated with this time span feature.
Additional filter: You can type in a keyword or a payee name to accurately search any transaction.

All the transactions are neatly tabulated with key attributes which include timestamp, type, email, name, transaction ID, currency, status, amount, fee and net payment. Clicking on the transaction ID opens up a popup with details of the element. You can also sort the transaction based on all the aforementioned attributes by clicking any of them. There is also an option to download your PayPal account history in CSV format which is useful for having better insights on your business by creating better charts with the data.

When it’s money or data, security is a major concern. And being online means you will do everything to protect your online money transactions. So you might be a little concerned if SlowPal is reliable or not. The tool is completely built on PayPal API and all your data on PayPal is imported using SSL. You can rest assured your data will be in safe hands. Nevertheless you can always revoke the permission from Paypal (My Account -> Profile -> My Account Settings -> More account settings -> Service providers -> Click remove beside the service you wish to stop authorizing). SlowPal is for companies or individuals with a lot of transactions to monitor. However, I would recommend general PayPal user to use the in-built account history manager as long as you don’t desperately in need of a faster way to browse through your transaction history.

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Present.me Lets You Offer Information with Engagement

Soumen Halder — Sat, 12 May 2012 14:58:51 +0000

Have you ever wondered what happens when a Powerpoint presentation gets clubbed together with a video that narrates the facts in the presentation? Present.me does just that. It offers you with a nice medium for communicating and sharing information at the same time.

Richard Garnett, co-founder of Present.me has a beautiful way of describing the service. If you were to explain facts included in a presentation how would you do that? This is the core concept behind Present.me. Consider a real life situation where you have to present a sales report for the last quarter in the sales meeting. You’ll use a presentation to show facts and narrate it to make them meaningful. Is it possible online with Slideshare (which is just facts) or Youtube (which is just narration)? True virtual environments can be created with other apps to provide a similar experience but that will need two persons (one who the data presents the data and to whom the data is presented to) to be there at the same time. Present.me can meet all the demands, presenting data, explaining them and without needing the two persons to be there simultaneously.

How To Use Present.me

1. Create a free account (you can use Facebook or Google to sign up). Once you are in, you can upload the content by going to the Create menu (at top).

2. Choose from the types of content you wish to upload and proceed to the next step.

3. You can choose files from your Google Drive (Docs) or upload presentation, PDF etc. I uploaded a PDF document.

4. Once the document is uploaded, you will get a choice to record a video by letting the service access to your computer’s camera. You can also upload a recorded video, but that will require you to upgrade to a paid account.

5. Now you can record the video and use the slides from the presentation the same way you would present it to someone in front of you. Once finished, publish the new presentation for the viewers to enjoy. The new kind of presentation can also be embedded into a webpage.

Pricing

The service has a free account that allows you to upload 3 presentations (each not exceeding 15 mins) per month. The paid plans offer you more choices and an ad-free interface. The free plan is worth a try considering the usability and engagement it offers to any presenter.

After you get all the facts right, curate it in a way that’s consumable, what, according to you, is the best way(s) to present the information? So far you used to have three choices. You can create a presentation, a Youtube video or an infographic. Each one has a specific purpose. An infographic is best for representing a survey or study over a large margin in concise form. Whereas a video or presentation is good for demonstrating and present a report. Now that you have a richer medium to present data or explain something, do you think it will be a better choice for you? We are eager to hear your opinion.

Present.me

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How to Enjoy Facebook News Feed Without Any Clutter

Soumen Halder — Wed, 02 May 2012 23:58:14 +0000

Love Facebook? Hate Apps? Then you belong to the minority who carries out painstaking task to seek the important updates from people who matters only to find the feed cluttered with updates from nonsense apps. While there are choices to mute those app updates one at a time, that seems an impossible task considering the gazillion apps that roll out everyday. If you are looking for a cleaner Facebook, head over to LeFeed. Let’s see how it might help.

Go to LeFeed and sign in with Facebook. As always, it will ask for some permissions. Choose what you want to approve and what not and lastly allows the application to connect with your Facebook account.

As you get into the service, you will land onto the Settings page where you can configure the way you wish to use LeFeed. I would recommend not to change anything as of now. Hit the Save button and move over to the Home screen. Once you figure out how it works, you can always fine tune the performance by going to the Settings menu.

Content Based Feeds

Now as you go to the home screen, there will be five feeds to choose from:

Overview – This is where you see all the updates including the activity (or notification) from your Facebook feed. Good thing is that there will be no app updates.

Recommendation – This is the feed that LeFeed curates for you based on your activity on the app. As time goes by, you will see things relevant or similar to what you have liked earlier on the feed overview.

Link – This one accumulates the links posted on Facebook by people you befriended (or subscribed) and pages you have liked.

Photo – It fetches the photos from your Facebook news feed, a good way to scan through them if you are particularly interested with photos.

Status – The plain text updates from your Facebook friends are shown here.

Video – The videos that were posted on Facebook by your contacts are listed here.

The Plus and Minus button:

This is something that makes the app better understand about what you like and what you detest. Use the “+” on anything you like and minus on anything you choose to avoid. With time, the app will learn and henceforth filter your feed and only show items you like. Based on your interests, the app will also recommend you newer items from Facebook that you would have not otherwise discover on Facebook.

Now if you choose to mute any of the above feeds, go to the Settings option and uncheck the option. You can also setup the app to Like items on Facebook on your behalf once you hit the + button for them.

I’m thankful to the lists in Twitter and with Facebook, I am more used to the Interest lists these days. It serves me great finding what people who share my interest shares. Lately it has helped me discover great stuff without the annoyance of the app updates. However, I had definitely missed out on some bland buddies (who mostly uses Facebook for apps) whom I adore otherwise. With LeFeed, I can now choose to see what they share other than those crappy app notes. Also it does help me find people who shares an interest or two with me. Although you will need to give the app some time until it starts understanding your taste and cater content you admire.

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InSync + Google Docs = Cheaper And Better Dropbox?

Soumen Halder — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 23:58:29 +0000

Dropbox is a great tool if you love to have all your important files in sync across all the computers you own. On the other hand, Google Docs is a great service to manage your documents over the cloud. The functionality that Google Docs misses is that you can’t have offline access to the files. (NOTE: If you have turned on the Google Docs offline mode you can access Google Docs and edit the documents, albeit you won’t have the access to files), yet. Insync is a much simpler solution which works similar to Dropbox syncing model.

Download InSync on all the computers you own. The currently supported platforms are Mac OSX (Leopard, Snow Leopard and Lion) and Windows (XP, Vista and 7). The Linux version is also on the way. Once the app is installed on your PC (or a Mac) you will be requested to add a Google Account to it. If it doesn’t, right-click on the InSync tray icon and add an account from the Account Info option. That much is literally needed to be done to set up this app. You can add multiple accounts to a single InSync profile. No extra steps to sign up for the app is necessary. You can log in to the service by using any of your existing Google accounts straightaway. All set, you are ready to roll.

Double-clicking the tray icon opens the InSync folder. If you have multiple Google accounts connected to the InSync profile, you will find a folder for each of them within the InSync folder. Each of the folders will have the name similar to that of the Google account you had connected. Open each folder and browse the files/folders within them. You can upload new documents, pictures, video clips and files of any type to the folder which will be auto-synced to the respective Google account once the computer is connected to the Internet. You can also edit existing documents and once you save the changes, it will get auto-updated on your Google Docs account.

Now the debate burns down to why should we prefer Google Docs storage with InSync and not the already popular and feature full Dropbox? The plain and simple answer is in the post header itself. The former is a cheaper option, to be precise, 8 times cheaper. Now, money doesn’t matter always, buyers are always looking for better products even though they put a hole in their pockets. Here are a few reasons I think the InSync way is way better than Dropbox.

Why InSync is Better than Dropbox

1. The Dropbox client only allows you to connect to one Dropbox account at one time and we have to use a hack to connect to multiple accounts. With InSync, you can add multiple Google accounts and thus a large amount of storage space can be monitored from a single tool.

2. If you are someone who wish to pay for cloud storage, Google Docs storage is a better choice since the price is cheaper and affordable than Dropbox.

3. The file size limit is another thing to consider. Dropbox desktop client lets you add files of reasonably high file size, however, the web interface adds a limit of 300MB. Google Docs lets you add files with filesize as high as 10GB which is quite high even if the Blu-ray movies are to be considered.

4. Individual file sharing is not allowed in Dropbox. Only folder sharing is available. InSync lets you share a single file and a folder as well.

The obvious reason that Dropbox still has an upper hand on Google Docs is the free storage it offers is more than the latter. Well news doing the rounds that the internet giant soon entering the cloud storage market suggests that the free storage is going to change. With endless possibilities with Insync, I’ve already jumped on the Google Docs bandwagon. What are your plans?

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3 Tools To Use Pinterest As A Marketing Tool For Your Brand

Soumen Halder — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 23:58:20 +0000

Being social is the need of the day. Plethora of social networks are being developed and some are really making the impact while most are just being used and dropped by users. Lately Pinterest is a service that is showing the signs of being the next big thing after Facebook and Twitter. It’s a simple thought of curating your inspirations around the web that has turned Pinterest into a potentially big referral website. Publishers are trying to leverage its reach by turning it into a new marketing media for their content. If you are among those, here are three tools you can use to rip the best out of your PINs.

1. Pinpuff – Influence Metrics for Pinterest

Being social is a necessity for you, what’s more important is what influence you have on your network. Enter Klout a tool to measure you social influence across popular social networks. Now gradually as the social aspect is changing and with the advent of Pinterest, new tools are emerging to measure your influence on Pinterest aka pinfluence. One such tool is Pinpuff. Just provide your Pinterest username and you will be provided with insights that reflect how you rank on the network. Intelligent and it also figures out the average economic value for a single pin on your boards/profile.

2. PinReach – Pinterest Analytics

If your marketing strategy involves Pinterest for promotion. Here is a nice tool to collect and analyze your Pinterest stats. Nice tool to better design your plan of action based on real user data. Previously named Pinclout but renamed after being threatened by the popular social media influence tracking service Klout. Analytics provided by Pinreach include repin stats, popular boards etc. The boards are analyzed to provide a cumulative view on how they are performing and what kind of user engagement they are receiving. The app rates you with a score that reflects your reach on Pinterest. There’s also an interesting section that shows influential Pin-ers who follows you. Use it to build relations, grow influence.

3. Pinerly – Pinterest Scheduler

Having a socially active profile is as tough as being only one responsible for saving the world. Heck it gets tough to provide news for followers from such a variety of time zones. Kudos to Hootsuite and lately Buffer (watching my back all the time) that people can schedule their updates at any future time. Sadly, Pinterest is still out of their scope. Hopefully, Pinerly akin to the previously mentioned service will help you pin things in future. However, you have to wait for a while as this tool is in beta and you need to wait for an invite in order to use it.

Pinterest is getting immense user engagement and got an iPhone app to let people PIN even on the go. Pity that there is still no app for the Android users. Frustrating, but it does not necessarily mean that you can’t use Pinterest on your Android. There are numerous third party tools that you can choose from. However, so far none has been better than the HTML5 Pinterest mobile site. So what are you waiting for, if you have something worth sharing, go ahead PIN them, who knows, they might go viral. And if they do, you have the tools of the trade to better utilize its reach.

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Here’s An Online App That Can Analyze Your Offline Life

Soumen Halder — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 14:58:41 +0000

In the days of social networking, there is no prize for guessing that we are actually missing out on our real social life. The one we share with real people everyday throughout life or whatever is left of it after Facebook and Twitter. Sometimes it is really necessary to be reminded of the offline life and the app we are going to feature here does just that. Not literally but finding areas of improvement. Social Life Audit (SLA) is an online service that based on some key observations interpret how you engage socially in real life.

The fact that we are almost nobody without a Facebook profile is yet again proved here. Why?? This very tool that offers to audit your offline life and does so by evaluating your Facebook activities. You need to have a Facebook account to use SLA. Your social rating depends on how circumstantially you share your real life on Facebook. The more the merrier. No wonder I failed miserably.

SLA is powered by the Face.com’s facial recognition API to analyze the photos related to you (uploaded, tagged or liked/commented). Once you are recognized, the game begins to roll in the more obvious direction. Your moods, the number of people you are with, the number of people from opposite sex you are seen with and even the mood of those people are considered as parameters. Based on the observations made, the algorithm estimates your score and comments on your social behavior.

The service serves a better purpose when it comes to evaluate location based services (or check-ins). Facebook check-ins are compared with the popular Black-book listings to find out whether you have been hanging out at the right place or hanging out at all. Well my result was even worse, my city was not even listed (and I was instructed to move to a city with improved social life, such a bummer, although it’s normal for any average town).

Apart from auditing your own social life, you can get a glimpse on your friends social engagement too. Search for a (Facebook) friend by typing in his name and you will get a comparative view of friends social rating matched to yours.

The observations made are not close enough (not because I failed) for those who uses Facebook as a promotion/marketing tool, or people who are strictly aware of the Facebook’s privacy concerns and refrain from sharing their real life in full detail. However for most of the Facebook generation, the results can be considered to be near perfect (for some I know personally, it does). The app seems to rely too much on Facebook. Images speak a thousand words, true, but if images were to be considered to evaluate somebody, there are other places/services where people love to share their life in pictures, such as Instagram or Flickr. It would be better if more location based social networks like Foursquare or interest based services like Path or Pinterest gets considered in the scoring system, as in current scenario people (and a notable smartphone population) tend to share their life here too. Overall, the app does a great job based on a unique idea but fails to seal the opportunity. So worry not if you fail here, better put your efforts on getting a life out of Facebook, that’s what the SLA is here to remind you.

The post Here’s An Online App That Can Analyze Your Offline Life appeared first on Make Tech Easier.

Turn Dropbox Into A Blogging Tool With Scriptogram

Soumen Halder — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 23:00:33 +0000

When it comes to syncing your files across multiple computing platforms, Dropbox deserves to be an obvious choice. That is the sole purpose it was developed as a service, at least its developers thought so. With time, as the service grew into an everyday app, several apps like AirDropper, JotForm, Dropittome, Dropboxifier, Akira etc came into existence that made Dropbox useful for other purposes too. Scriptogram is a similar app that harnesses the (public) sharing capability of Dropbox to turns it into a blogging tool, a dead simple one. To get started you will need a little understanding of the Markdown markup language.

A few words about Markdown:

Markdown is a markup language from John Gruber and Aaron Swartz. This also serves as a text-to-HTML conversion tool. You can get a taste using Dingus, an online Markdown editor from the developers. Since Scriptogram uses Markdown markup language for generating pages, you will need to learn a thing or two to get started with it. Move over to the syntax page to find a detailed documentation on how it is written. The markup language is well optimized for blog posting. Apart from the common tags (for any markup) you get the likes of Published, Type, Title, Slug, Tags, Excerpt which are meant to define the similar entities necessary for a blog post. This language is quite easy to read and write once you are done writing a couple of pages with it.

Setting Up Your Scriptogram Blog:

1. Use the Dropbox Connect button to provide Scritogram access to your Dropbox account. Login to your Dropbox account and press Allow when prompted.

2. Personalize your blog by giving it a unique username, your real name and a description to your Scriptogram blog. The username will be appended to “http://scriptogr.am/” and acts as your blog URL. The real name will be used as your blog title. The description serves as a brief intro to what the blog is about.

3. After you are done, press Finish and you will be redirected to the blog you just created with a sample post that illustrates on how to use Markdown to create your blog posts for your Scriptogram blog.

Formatting Your Blog:

Once you are done setting up your blog, you can fine tune the blog by going to the Admin section, which can be also be accessed using the Scriptogram icon to the top right corner of your blog page. You can modify the layout with the HTML and CSS editors, choose from available themes or even use a custom domain name if that really matters to you.

When You should consider Scriptogram?

1. If typing is something you really enjoy, Scriptogram is for you.

2. If all you just love to share with the world is TEXT, go for Scriptogram.

3. If you are tired with the heavy duty blogging tools/interfaces and all you seek is the dead simple notepad to convey your writing prowess, Scriptogram is all you have been waiting for.

On an ending note, Tumblr, Blogger and WordPress still remain my favorites while recommending someone a tool to blog. However, if you are planning for a text blog and are keen on keeping things really simple & old-school, Scriptogram is a nice tool to start with. Three simple steps and you have a place to share your words. Easy peasy.

The post Turn Dropbox Into A Blogging Tool With Scriptogram appeared first on Make Tech Easier.