iflux : screen brightness controller

Get the digital cucumber slices for your eyeballs.
try iflux

It manages your screen's brightness and keeps in under control as per the day light.

https://justgetflux.com/
https://justgetflux.com/research.html

Gone are the days when project managers needed to know MS Project

As long as long you are not a service company where weekly you need spend an hour on international phone call discussing the progress in MS Project following tools are good enough to manage small teams.

• MS Excel.
• Google Spreadsheets.
• Trello

If these were less and you want to explore more here you go

http://www.inc.com/young-entrepreneur-council/10-apps-that-make-managing-projects-remotely-a-breeze.html

Best Youtube downloader for Android.

I had been looking some method to download Youtube video on my Nexus 7.
My search ended at a free and open source android app called "Youtube downloader for Android."

For obvious reason its not available on Goolge Play.
You should try to download it using Firefox as Google Chrome may not allow to download APK sometime.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ytdownloader/

Its Awesome, works flawlessly, Kudos to Devs. I would have paid 1$ for this app if they had asked me.

'Settleup' an ultimate android/iOS app for managing expenses and accounts.

Recently,  Our  www.AdobeKnowHow.com  team had been to Goa for team outing with family.

It was such great 4 days trip after a hectic release. While on trip we dint worry about splitting the bill, we just recorded all expenses. After returning the bigger problem was how do we split the bills? Some were with family some were not,  some dint booze while some did? some dint come for karwar trip. 

We then found this super start app called SettleUp 

• It allowed us to manage uneven share ( i.e. some people with family had three head  or two head, while bachelors had only one head) 
• It allowed one particular expenses to be shared among specific set of people, out of 9,  4 dint booze.
• Some places where credit card were not accepted, money was collected from all and we paid the bill.

At the end it just reduces the number of transactions that need to be done. If 'A' had to give 'B' 100 bucks and 'B' had to give 'C' 100 bucks.  Summary would tell that 'A' need to pay 'C' 100 bucks. 

When I read settleUp FB page or blog, they mentioned that Google is trying to patent algorithms that reduces the number of transactions in such group expenses.

Another good feature of this app was, not all group member need to install and sign-up for this. One person can do it for all, and later add group members, without affecting already entered transactions.

I guess it should be very good app for all flatemates/roommates, college students. 

A big thumbs up  to settleUp team.

"Copy.com" One of the best cloud storage and file Sync service like Dropbox, Google drive, Skydrive.

Copy.Com is a cloud storage and file sync service like Dropbox/Google Drive/ SkyDrive/Box etc. I  have used Dropbox, Google Drive and Box very extensively. I have very rarely seen such an amazing feature rich and mature software as version 1 from any newcomer in market. Its from famous hard drive maker Barracuda. They are giving away 15GB Free space for new sign up. 

They have some amazing referral scheme.  Referrer and Referred both earn 5 GB free space, hence this post :), and there is no upper-cap like dropbox has 16 GB upper-cap.

Please sign up only and only using my link  https://copy.com?r=Z764BP 

Here is my review comment: 

• Their web interface doesn't require any learning, its  ditto as as Mac OS Finder.
• After installing their desktop sync client  you can simply right-click and get a public link of a folder, which you can share with anyone.
• Their Sync client for desktop is super fast,and smart, it chooses to upload small files first before uploading bigger files.
• They have local peer discovery. I had sync client installed on three PCs in same network, It copied about 1.5 GB data in less than a minute, that was lightening fast, I was shocked as it was faster than normal network files transfer, don't believe me? you think I am bragging, try it out yourself in high speed LAN. 
• Sync client has options to limit upload/download rate ( I wish they had option to schedule rate changes)
• Sync client has options to choose which files you want to sync ( normally everyone will have this)
• Android app has option to auto-upload newly clicked photo/video to cloud(It has becomes norms now).
• You would be able to preview all most all types of files on their web interface. 
• Like all other cloud storage vendors they also have client for all sort of devices and computers.

Whats missing?

• Local peer discovery doesn't work for Windows 8 PC.
• Dint get any option to 'create a new folder' while sharing pics from Gallery via Copy. However their android app had an option to create folder, and had an option browse through images on phone and upload.
• Bug: On Windows 8 notifications wouldn't come on desktop ( like you get from dropbox or outlook email notification). 
• Limitation: Web interface had no search option or may be I couldn;t discover it)
• Bug: On my desktop 1 (win7), I pasted a 1.5 GB folder into root folder of Copy, It took about 1.5 hours to upload, while this folder was getting uploaded, on 2nd Win8 desktop (that was in the same network) , this 1.5 GB folder newly pasted never appeared. It dint appear event one after it was completely uploaded from my desktop 1, So its seems they have some bug with Win8 client, but when I installed the Copy client on 3rd win7 desktop, It copied everything in about 1 minute as mentioned before.

Final verdict? 
Its a must to have, its as mature as Dropbox in its first version itself. It gives more free space than dropbox. its very fast. 
Please signup using https://copy.com?r=Z764BP

Which is the least expensive yet reliable 'Unlimited' cloud storage service for 'personnel' use

My requirements are: 

1) 'Unlimited' cloud storage for keeping personnel data.

2) Sync client on multiple plateforms  Windows/Ubuntu/Android/Blackberry.

3) Safety of data: If service is down 30% of the time, that's fine but should never loose data.

4) Privacy: is not a big concern, good to have.

5) Easy on pocket : must have feature

highlight text, Comment annotateon web pages and collaborating with friends and colleagues using annotary

I had been looking  for a tool to

1. highlight portion of text on web pages
2. comment on web pages
3. draw circle shapes on pages to highlight important sections of pages
4. add a sticky note on some highlightes section of pages, on top of which i can collabrate with my friends.

I tried following tools 

Web Klipper - 

 + Simple and best , I can highlight section of text, color is prominent florescent yellow

 + I can share the highlitest text with others

 

 - when i share somehting with frineds, its opens them in webklipper url.

Scribble

-Its slow

-It requires a toolbar.

Diggo

+ Its quite old and famous tool

+ allows all except collaboration

- usability is not all that good

-UI looks quite old

Annotary

+ this was best among all

+ Its fullfilled all my requirements except collaboration, collaboration is a paid feature

+Usability is good, UI is good.

+ even though collaboration is not there , you can see what your friend have highlighted on current page.

https://annotary.com/

Xubnutu Rocks

Converted 3rd machine to Xubuntu from Windows 7, my brother's machine it works like charm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xubuntu

Xubuntu really rocks. Its very light weight operating system, boots and shutdown with lightening speed, its so user friendly even your granny can use it.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/if-my-mother-in-law-can-use-ubuntu-linux-anyone-can/10802

Has everything that you would need on a home PC, you can download movies using torrent :) , play audio,video , you can browse, has a app-store kinda of thing called ubuntu software center, which has huge collection of really cool softwares.
you constantly keep getting updates as you get on Windows and Mac.



To experience it you do not really need to install it ,

1) just download the iso file from  http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/

2) burn it on a CD ( you dont need DVD its that small)
3) Restart your machine and boot from CD.

That's all, experience it, if you like it install it.
Need any help comment here.

 highly recommended for PCs and laptop 3-4 year old or more, cause its meant for machines with older configurations, so that they still remain usable and valuable :)

Folder Size

Folder Size, is an add on for Windows Explorer. When we go to Windows Explorer's detail view, the "Size" column show size of files but not the size of folders, and that 's what i was looking for.

I thought of of writing a shell extension myself, but before that I searched if something similar existed and I found this one back in 2006. and since then I have been in using it. 

In between I had uninstall it for because it's background service which keeps calculating the size of fodler was consuming my CPU a lot. but the newer version but the latest version 2.5  rocks. it has overcome all those performance issue.  Kudos to author.

FreeFileSync :File/Folder comparison synchronization tool

FreeFileSync is an open source and free tool hosted on source forge. 

It's very useful for those who have multiple machines, 

I have got two laptops, two windows desktops and one Mac machine in office.

and all machines have one folder in common "Software" 

I always want to have these folders in synch, If I download a new software on my machine

and save it to software folder, i want it to be available on machin2  to machine 5.

Beyond Compare ( A file/folder comarision tool)

I have been used Beyond Compare in my previous company for 3 years. 

it's a great tool file comparision and folder comparsion.  

Why I love it? 

File Comparision: 

-   Two side file comparision is simple and smarter than other tool ( EXamDiff etc)  

    it try to find the context of source code and compare 


- If there is only few characters changed in one particular line, it doesn't mark 
   entire line by one color, it marked only those changed characters, 

   which makes it more readable.

-  Aligning option rocks , If the tool could not it smartly ,

     You can align a chunk of code to other side manually.
     say this is your content

   --------------------------------
           Before Manual Align 

   --------------------------------

         Chunk 1  | Chunk 1
         Chunk3   | Chunk 2

         chunk 2   |                  

   --------------------------------

    Right Click on Chunk 2 on right hand side and say "Align"
    now right click on Chunk 2 on left hand side and say align >
    now the result will look like this.
    

   --------------------------------
           After Manual Align 

   --------------------------------

         Chunk 1  | Chunk 1
         Chunk3   |

         chunk 2   | Chunk 2                  

   --------------------------------

Folder Comparision: 

 I just love it's folder comparision. 

 I wish it was avaiable for Mac also,  ireally have hard time in finding the folder diff on Mac
 any of you know any simple and good folder diff tool on Mac? 

- Easy to use -
            a) in explore right click on any folder and say select for comparision
                 say your folder name was "xyz"

           b) now right click on any other folder and say Compare with "XYZ".

- Filters and sesssion : I often compare my source code on one machine with source code
            on other machine, which belong s to same source code repository.
            I want to compare only source code file and not the binay files or intermeidates fiels
            generated by developement tool 
            like Visual Studio generates PDB, IDL, etc ... so can just right click on one of them  

            say exclude, it will ask me , all files of this type or just this one, I say all files of this type...
           and ingnores all the files of that type( PDB,IDL,....) 
            and now I can save the session and use the same session again , so that I don't need to
            excude those files again. 

-  Auto refresh : If you keep FolderDiff Open on some interval it keep checking if there were any
                             changes.

- Cool color coding : color coding is a plus point from usability side

-  Filters :    you wan to see
                - all files

                - only differences
                - only orphens 

                - orphens only on left side

                - orphens only on right side. 

Overall I love this utility and planing to buy it's next version Beyond Compare 3 very soon. 

Wakoopa.com

I was recommended to to check out the Wakoopa by my frined Xual.

wakoopa is a cool website where you can find out 

- What are the software other people in world are using? 

- Which of them are most used( category wise as well) 

- You can add people to your freind list. See waht they are using. 

-  You cna download their tracker,which will let Wakoopa know what are the software's you are
    using.

- If you want few of your software not be tracker by wakoopa tracker you can do that as well.
    for Example : I do not want Wakoopa to track Firefox and chrome.

 

Mozilla Bespin review

Mozilla Labs has recetly introduced thier new innovation "Bespin" , a web-based text editor speally meant for web developers, as it shows color coding for web based languages.

"Bespin" is based on new technology HTML 5, which so far being implmented only in very few browsers MOzilla firefox 3 and WebKit Nighty.  yes it doesn't work in Chrome for now.

This release is still in Alpha.

I still like the look and fill off this web-based text editor. 

Worth trying once.

For more information visit  https://bespin.mozilla.com/

Source[via Lifehacker]

Begining note

I had been thinking to start a separate blog on 1) software review 2) Social issues and 3) Driving techniques. let me take first step with software reviews..