26 April 2013

Wunderlist Updates With New Features, Introduces Pro Version For Groups [Updates]



Wunderlist is working towards a monetization system for its cross-platform to-do list application, rolling out a Pro version with some interesting new features. If you’d rather stay a free user, that’s still possible, and you too can enjoy an update and some new Wunderlist features.


Many Wunderlist users were asking to assign tasks to other users. Wunderlist Pro adds this ability, meaning users will now be able to use the application to manage a team, which could be helpful for business users. You can also have the Pro version keep track of unlimited sub-tasks, helping you keep track and manage a large number of complicated items.


In addition, Pro users will get access to some visual tweaks in the form of eight different backgrounds that free users will not have access to. While this is not as major as new features, it’s still a way to make Wunderlist a more enjoyable place to manage those important tasks.



Aside from these new features and backgrounds, not much else is added for Wunderlist Pro users. However, the company does promise that additional functionality will be added in the future. The cost for the new service is quite affordable: $4.99 per month or $49.99 for a full year.


Not going for the Pro version? All Wunderlist users, free ones included, will notice a big interface change starting today. The to-do list platform now has a new Action Bar that grants quick access to several key functions such as sharing, sorting, and printing.


Wunderlist is available on almost every major platform under the sun including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and the Web. Wunderlist Pro is only available for iOS, Mac and the Web to start with, but should expand to other platforms in the future. Head over to Wunderlist’s website to download the app for your favorite platform.


Will you upgrade to Wunderlist Pro, or are you happy with the free version?


Source: Wunderlist Blog via TheNextWeb


The post Wunderlist Updates With New Features, Introduces Pro Version For Groups [Updates] appeared first on MakeUseOf.



The Hidden Facebook App – Finding The Lost App You Didn’t Mean To Hide



In the short time Facebook has been around, it’s gone through many significant changes. If you laid your eyes on the Facebook of 6 years ago, I daresay you’d barely be able to recognize it. These updates have seen features come and features go, but there’s one feature that’s been around almost forever, and is fortunately still available today: the ability to hide apps and even people from your news feed.


As you’ll all agree, this is a great feature, so where’s the catch? The trick that comes with hiding items from your timeline, is unhiding them. Why is this tricky? While hiding things stays simple enough through Facebook’s multiple incarnations, unhiding them tends to require a short game of hide and seek (especially seek), and just when you’ve finally found this elusive option, Facebook moves it yet again, sending you on a renewed chase.


So maybe the best thing to do is to stop hiding things altogether? You could, and there are other ways to make Facebook show you what you really want to see, but hiding can be a great way of preserving your sanity, especially if you have lots of fun-loving friends who like playing Facebook games all day long. So at least for now, here’s everything you need to know about hiding and unhiding items from your Facebook feed.


Why Hide?


Before we get started, it’s important to go through the different names Facebook currently has for “hiding”. As detailed by Ryan in his post about Unraveling the mystery of the missing friend updates on Facebook, it’s now possible to control almost every aspect of the updates you get from friends. We’ll get into that shortly, but to make a long story short, if you choose to completely hide a friend from your news feed, it’s currently called “unfollow” For apps, it’s still called hide.


unhide-facebook-apps-1


So why would you hide an app or a person from your news feed? For apps, this is quite obvious. I currently have 47 apps hidden from my news feed, and I still get the occasional time-wasting, eye-scorching post about a friend who’s just won 45,304 point playing Whatchamacallit Blitz. For me, Facebook is for keeping in touch with people I (mostly) care about, so posts like this are usually a distraction.


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To hide updates from an app, click the small triangle on the right side of the update, and choose whether you’d like to hide all activity from this app, this specific post, etc. You can do the same with people — click the triangle and choose “hide”, but in this case, you’ll only be hiding the story. To change which updates you can see from this person or unfollow them completely, click on “Change what updates you get from <name>” which will appear as soon as you hide a story from someone (see screenshot above).


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Why would you want to hide people? Well, strictly speaking, it would be easier to simply unfriend someone if you’re so uninterested in their updates. If, however, you’re worried about social consequences, or want to keep your options open without this person knowing about it, hiding (or unfollowing) is a good way to go.


These are nice options, but as such things go, you might find that you’ve hidden a person or an app, and now you want them back. It’s also possible to hide an item by mistake, when you actually do want to get updates from it. What then?


Unhiding Items: Bring Them Back To Your News Feed!


For some reason, Facebook thinks it’s a bright idea to keep moving this option around. It used to be done through the “Edit Options” link at the bottom of your news feed, and it still can be, if you feel like scrolling for 10 minutes straight until Facebook stops displaying old updates. Later, it became available immediately after hiding an item from your news feed, and it still is for apps, but for people. So how is it done today? And how do you do it if you don’t change your mind immediately? In true Facebook style, this is hidden right in plain sight:


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Yes, all you need is to edit your news feed’s settings. By hovering next to the News Feed item in the sidebar, you can make the edit icon appear. Click it and choose “Edit settings” to open the full list of hidden apps and people.


unhide-facebook


From here it’s easy: click the “x” next to the person or app you wish to unhide, and the culprit will be back on your news feed safe and sound.


What About Those Pesky App Requests/Invites?


Good question. Even after blocking every app in sight, friends can still send you requests and invitations using apps. Fortunately, you can prevent people who do this a lot from bothering you by blocking app invites from them.


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This can be done from Facebook’s settings. Click the cogwheel icon on the top right and choose one of the settings menus. Now look for “Blocking” in the left sidebar.


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From here you can block app invites, as well as some other things. Luckily, these are easy to undo (so far). After blocking someone or something, you’ll find an “Unblock” link sitting right next to the person’s or app’s name.


Can’t find what you’re looking for in the settings? Try our short guide to Facebook’s new privacy settings.


Ready, Set, (Un)Hide!


Now that you know all about hiding and why you should do it, and also know all about unhiding someone or something if you change your mind or made a mistake, you can become the true master of your Facebook domain. Your news feed is yours, and it should not display things you don’t want to see.


Don’t forget to check out our weekly Facebook tips for more useful information that will help you make better use of Facebook.


Got a cool Facebook tip too? Share it in the comments!


Image credit: mkhmarketing


The post The Hidden Facebook App – Finding The Lost App You Didn’t Mean To Hide appeared first on MakeUseOf.



No More Quick View in Google Search?



The latest Google Search update removed a very useful feature: quick view. The link was displayed next to PDF files and Microsoft Office files and allowed you to open them in the Google Drive Viewer.






If you don't want to download the file, you can click the green arrow and select "cached", but this shows a text-only version of the document that doesn't preserve formatting. Let's hope that it's just a bug and "quick view" will be added back.



Please note that the feature has nothing to do with the "quick view" for mobile phones.


Chrome Viewer for Microsoft Office Documents



Last year, Google acquired Quickoffice, a mobile app for editing Microsoft Office files. The app is still available and it's not free. It's probably the only mobile Google app that's not free (there's a free version for Google Apps for Business users).



Google started to port Quickoffice to Chrome OS, first as a Microsoft Office viewer. Now the Office viewer is available as an extension for Chrome. It requires at least Chrome 27.0.1453.65 for Windows and Mac, so you can use it if you have Chrome Beta, Chrome Dev Channel, Chrome Canary or a recent Chromium build.



The extension lets you open Microsoft Office files that have the following extensions: .doc, .docx, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx. It looks just like the PDF viewer and it works pretty well.






You may wonder: why not open these files using Google Drive apps? Why not use the Google Drive Viewer? They're great options, but the Chrome Office Viewer is better than the Google Drive Viewer because it doesn't convert files to images. Opening files using Google Drive apps like Google Docs or Google Sheets takes more time: the files need to be downloaded and then converted to the Google Drive format. Another explanation: "Quickoffice has an established track record of enabling seamless interoperability with popular file formats" and this is especially important for business users.



{ via Chrome Blog }


Google Chat in Google Docs



Do you remember the post about the animal icons from Google Drive? They're only displayed for anonymous users ("people who are not given explicit access"). For everyone else, Google will show the Google Profile photo and link to the Google+ page.






There's also a group chat feature powered by Google Talk/Chat. It's a simplified version of the chat feature from Gmail, Google+, iGoogle and orkut. There's only one chat box that lets you talk with the other signed-in users that edit or just view a document, presentation or any other file. For some reason, it doesn't work in Google Sheets/Spreadsheets.



"To begin a group chat with everyone viewing the document, click the Chat button, which you'll find in the top-right corner of your window. A chat box will appear at the bottom of your file, and everyone who's viewing the document and who's signed in with a Google account will be included in the group chat," explains Google.






The group chat feature from Google Drive doesn't support voice or video chat, conversations aren't saved in Gmail and they're not available in other services that use Google Chat. "If you've chatted in Gmail and Google+, you may have noticed that a chat started in Gmail will carry over into Google+, and vice versa. The same isn't true for chats in Google Drive. Chats you start in Google Drive won't carry over into other Google products, and chats you start in other products won't appear in Google Drive."



{ via Google Drive Blog }