5 great apps to customize your Android home screen experience

Nova Launcher Prime

There are a number of launcher applications that let users override the standard look and feel that comes with the phone's out-of-box experience, but Nova Launcher Prime ($4.00) is one of my favorites. Don't like the preset shortcuts across the bottom of your handset? Not a fan of the app drawer setup? You can change all that.
In a nutshell, Nova Launcher alters the way your phone behaves when tapping the Home button. Specifically, you can define how many panels you have, the number of icons that fit on the home screen, scrolling effects, and much more.

Among Nova Launcher Prime's options is selecting the grid size (number of rows and columns), placing a persistent Google Search bar, and tweaking margins. I love using the launcher's revolving door effect. It looks much cooler than a simple slide. Additionally, users can opt to remove icon labels, allow for widgets to overlap, and lock the desktop in place.
I also appreciate the way I can sort my app drawer, hide unused titles, and organize content into tabs. Other minor touches include infinite scrolling panels, custom grouping, menu transparency, and transitions. Suffice it to say, I'm constantly backing up and restoring fun layouts all the time.
A particularly fun, and easy, way to spice things up is to replace the icons representing apps and games. There are innumerable icon packs or themes that one can download to adjust the overall aesthetics. Some of the more popular ones I've encountered along the way are Tersus, Snack Pack, and MIUI 5. Again, hit up some forums or search Google Play and you'll find some rather inspiring stuff.
Nova Launcher Prime isn't the only option for those looking to customize the home screen; the free version is a great way to take advantage of most options and settings. At nearly 5 million installs, the free Nova Launcher is a popular and feature-rich home screen launcher. Others you may enjoy include Go Launcher EX, Apex Launcher, and ADW.Launcher.

Read More

Windows 8.1 to let you secure folders with your fingerprint

 

Windows 8.1 will have a couple of tricks up its sleeve for people who use fingerprint readers.
One of Monday's sessions at Microsoft's Tech-Ed conference highlighted the support that Windows 8.1 will offer for fingerprint recognition, as described by The Verge. Prior versions of Windows handled fingerprint readers through third-party software. But Windows 8.1 will be the first edition of Windows to natively support the technology.
Users will be able to log into their PCs via a Microsoft Account, purchase apps, and open different programs with a swipe of the finger. They'll even be able to lock down certain folders so they're accessible only through a fingerprint.
Microsoft is "working very closely" with two or three manufacturers to outfit Windows 8.1 with the necessary fingerprint support, according to The Verge. The company is also asking more manufacturers to outfit their laptops, tablets, keyboards, and mice with fingerprint readers.
"You'll begin to see these be more pervasively available just to make it that much easier to log in to Windows," Microsoft's Stephen Rose said, The Verge added.

Read More

ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter

If you really need to watch your Internet bandwidth, you need ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter. Unlike online bandwidth meters, ShaPlus monitors your Internet bandwidth instead of testing your connection speed. ShaPlus is designed to stay open in the Windows system tray, with a more detailed (but still compact) display for the notification area or anywhere on the desktop you care to drag and pin it. This free tool keeps track of your bandwidth use for the current session, the day, and the month. You can set it to track your billing period and even to stop tracking between specified times. Recent updates include the ability to display bandwidth in gigabytes, a counter reset option on the tray menu, and better stability in Windows 7 and 8.
ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter's installer offered the option to stay open in the system tray. If, like us, you choose this option, we recommend clicking Customize and making the icon permanent in the tray. Hovering over the tray icon shows current bandwidth use; clicking the icon opens a menu with options such as transparency and whether to display bandwidth in KB, MB, or GB. A Settings sheet offers more options, including a list of all our system's network interfaces to choose which ones to monitor and basic program options such as Start with Windows and Always on Top. We could also set the monthly start date and enter Do Not Track times for a 24-hour cycle. The three-part meter display will probably be the program's most useful feature to the majority of users. It showed our bandwidth use for Now, or the current session; Today; and This Month. A neat little feature let us change the meter's transparency right from the interface.
ShaPlus Bandwidth Meter is the perfect tool for those users who must keep track of every byte of network bandwidth, whether it's Internet use or any of your system's connections. It won't test your Internet connection speed, but there's no lack of free Web-based bandwidth meters that can do that job. For its rather more specialized function, ShaPlus is the best tool we've tried so far.



http://www.shaplus.com/bandwidth-meter/    click the link for the official website

Read More

Panna

Panna is the first-ever video, cooking magazine for the iPhone, iPad and iPad mini. You receive one free recipe inside each issue, whether or not you choose to buy the full issue. A year subscription gives you access to our current issue as well as the next five bi-monthly issues.
An entirely new resource for the home cook, Panna merges beautiful high definition video technology with the expertise of established master chefs including Rick Bayless, Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirscheimer, Anita Lo, Seamus Mullen, Nancy Silverton, Michael Tusk, and Jonathan Waxman. Panna also includes a department with New York Times food writer and recipe developer, Melissa Clark. She shares her knowledge of kitchen equipment from a seasoned home cook's perspective, offering recipes that will expand and refine your cooking repertoire.

Read More

How To Try Google Chrome OS On Your PC

In this article, I’m going to walk you through how you can run a free version of the Google Chrome OS on your PC using Oracle VM VirtualBox. I’ll also highlight a little bit of what Chrome OS will look like on an older PC if you decide to use it.

Installing Chrome OS Inside VirtualBox

Chrome OS is open source, so you can find a number of flavors out there to play with. The one that I’m going to use in this “test” version on VirtualBox is actually a Chromium OS build from Hexxeh.net that you can get for free. It isn’t identical to the fully-fledged Chrome OS, but close enough so that you can get a sense of the look and feel of what running Chrome OS is like.
In fact, after running the OS on your VirtualBox and getting a taste of it, you can download a lightweight version of it for VMWare or your USB stick that you can actually run all the time.

Read More

How To Install Multiple Bootable Operating Systems on One USB Stick

Fellow reader  asked us, “How can I run multiple operating systems from a single USB?” He goes on to specify some different operating systems (OSs) that he would like to run and a few of them are Windows OSs. He adds that he would like to be able to boot into Windows on a USB and then install Windows from that same USB.
In theory, it could be done, but I’m not sure why a person would want to do that. First, you would be breaking some licensing agreements with Microsoft, unless you had some sort of site-licensing deal with them. Second, it would be a painfully slow installation process. Third, USB flash drives aren’t that expensive – why wouldn’t you have a few drives with the different Microsoft OSs on them? So, although I’m not going to answer Dado’s entire question, I will answer the part about having multiple OSs on one USB stick.
Where this becomes practical is if the different operating systems are Live CDs, that is, small operating systems designed specifically to provide maintenance to a computer from outside of the computer’s own operating system. This can be handy if the computer’s own operating system is corrupted through misuse, poor maintenance, or worse, malware.
There are a few nice programs that will help you create your multiboot USB stick. Today, we’ll take a brief look at three of them: XBoot, MultiBootUSB, and YUMI. Prior to using each of the different multiboot creation programs, I formatted my Kingston DataTraveler 101 16GB USB 2.0 flash drive, to ensure there would be no issues from the flash drive itself.

Read More

Home » Windows »

20 Ways To Increase Laptop’s Battery Life

• 
  

Mobile computing has got better with lighter components, better chips and faster processors. But the Achilles heel of a laptop has remained its battery. So here are we are going to look at ways to increase laptop battery life.
Modern graphic intensive operating systems and resource hungry applications are cutting down the life of your laptop’s battery every day. The average battery life per continuous use still stands at a maximum of three to four hours. So, a fast depleting battery could very swiftly put the crutches on your ‘mobile’ road trip.
Falling just short of carrying an extra pack of batteries in the back-pack, are several ways to keep the juice flowing through the batteries.

Read More

WindowsFx by Staredocks

WindowFX^™ in action

Stardock’s WindowFX is a one-of-a-kind program that lets you super charge your Windows® experience. Today’s modern computers have video cards that are powerful enough to create amazing gaming experiences. Yet, when you leave the game, your desktop is basically the same desktop you’ve had for decades.

WindowFX brings you polished and reliable window enhancement capabilities. Add an amazing assortment of features to Windows, which can be applied in a subtle way to give Windows a little umph.

See WindowFX in action by viewing the demo to the right. 

Read More

Top 8 Download Manager Apps for Mac

1. Folx – Downloader for Mac

Folx is the best download assistant for Mac.  Folx is a free download manager for Mac OS X. Its friendly interface will help you take the most of your downloads. It’s not overloaded with tons of unnecessary features and is extremely easy to use. All you have to do to download files is click the link in your web browser and Folx will catch it.
By the way, Folx is a 2-in-1 app: you don’t need one program for common downloads and other one to download torrents. Folx can handle both as a piece of cake.

Read More

Best Download Managers for Windows

The need of a download managers is vital when we stuck with the default download managers, integrated within the browser. most of browsers such like Internet explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or Apple Safari.. they, themselves not giving a user friendly service for down loaders. Therefore different 3rd party tools has been created for fulfill  the gap between traditional browser integrated download managers and user's preferred DM.

The following are the most used and most popular Download Managers in nowadays. I will give you details information each of everyone in another article. for now you may use one of these Download Managers for your downloading purpose. Most of the following gives you a free trial for use. Try and enjoy it

Read More