Finally, A Way To Change Windows 8 Boot Screen

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Ever since we published customizing Windows 8 boot screen article, we are getting a lot of questions on Windows 8 boot: “Is it possible to change the default Windows 8 boot logo with a custom picture?” “Is there a software to change Windows 8 boot logo?” Of course not everyone is interested and dare to [...]

How To Embed YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, And Google Maps Responsively

One of the biggest buzzwords in the online design world in the past two or three years has to be ‘Responsive.’ With the advent of browsing on everything from a 4 inch smartphone screen to a 27 inch display, it can be difficult to make sure that your website or blog looks good no matter what. That’s why a responsive design is essential because it can automatically detect what device you’re using to access the site, and adjust it to fit the size of your screen. While you can design your entire website to be responsive, when you’re embedding external...

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YouTube's Title Shows if a Video Is Playing

Here's a very simple YouTube feature that's really useful. YouTube started to add a "play" Unicode character to the title of the YouTube page, but only when the video is playing. Pause the video and the "play" character disappears. It's a great way to find a "noisy" tab, especially if you open more than one YouTube video.



The "play" symbol is actually the black right-pointing triangle Unicode character. It's small, subtle and it's better than an animated favicon.



Here's an example: there are 2 YouTube tabs in the screenshot below. In the first tab there's a paused video, while in the second tab there's a video that's playing.

Google Play Music Offers Tag Suggestions

Google's online music service started to suggest better tag values for the songs you've uploaded. If you right-click a song or an album and select "edit info", you might see some suggested values for the album's name, the track number, genre or even the artwork. Click the suggested value to use it or click "use suggestions" to add all the suggested values, then click "save".



There's no magic "fix all my tags" button, so you need to manually fix the tags for each song or album. Google's suggestions aren't always great, so maybe it's better this way.

{ Merci, Alexandre Olliet. }

Partial YouTube Embeds

Let's say you want to embed a long YouTube video, but you only need a short excerpt from that video. The Nexus 7 & Chromecast Press Event video has 64 minutes, but you only want to embed the part about Android stats from 02:50 to 06:30.



Start with the standard embedding code:



<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GbXeZ16FoCY" width="560"></iframe>



Then add the start and end parameters. Both use seconds, so you'll need to convert minutes to seconds. For my example:



* 02:50 = 2 minutes and 50 seconds = 2*60+50 seconds = 170 seconds, so start=170

* 06:30 = 6 minutes and 30 seconds = 6*60+30 seconds = 390 seconds, so end=390.



Here's the final code. You only need to add the underlined text in red:



<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GbXeZ16FoCY?start=170&end=390" width="560"></iframe>



Here's the video embed:

When you click the play button, YouTube will only play the excerpt you've selected. Visitors can always use the seek bar and skip to other part of the video or continue to watch the video.

5 Tips To Research A Company Before You Sit Down For A Job Interview

If you’re looking for a job, the interview aspect is probably the most nerve-wracking aspect of the search. Bombing an interview means losing out on an opportunity that was within your grasp but slipped through your fingers at the last moment. And while most people focus on dressing well and being charismatic, the importance of pre-interview research is often overlooked. Companies aren’t just looking for another grunt worker to add to their team – they want someone who’s excited, motivated, and eager to contribute to said company’s mission. You aren’t the only one interviewing, so if it comes down to...

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Managing Notifications in Windows 8

Windows 8′s new app platform provides an integrated notification system for Modern apps. Windows 8-style apps can use several different types of notifications — traditional toast notifications, lock screen notifications, and live tiles. All of these can be managed, whether you want to disable an app’s notifications, allow notifications only for certain email accounts, or temporarily silence notifications so they don’t bother you. Unfortunately, Windows 8 doesn’t include a notification center that allows you to view a history of your notifications in one place. Windows 8′s pop-up notifications are much more transient, while its live tiles and lock-screen apps display...

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Automatically Bundle Your Browsing History With cottonTracks For Chrome

Are you sick of trawling through your browsing history to find that one article you saw last week and suddenly wanted to send to someone? Or have you been researching a particular topic only to wonder which of the many pages you viewed was the one you want to take another look at? Or do you just love seeing intuitive apps in action and want to see what this is about? Right, then cottonTracks is going to blow your socks off. cottonTracks is the latest and greatest Chrome extension for organising your browsing history. It automatically aggregates the sites you’ve...

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Google Cast for Local Files

Who said that Google Cast is only for files stored online? Koushik Dutta, a CyanogenMod developer, wrote an Android app that lets you watch videos from your phone or tablet on your TV.



The application is not yet publicly available, but it's not difficult to guess that it uses a local web server. "It's heavily leveraging another project that I've been working on for the better part of 2 years," says the author. The project is probably AndroidAsync.



Here's a demo:

I'm sure we'll see Koushik's app or a similar app in the Google Play Store pretty soon. It will make Chromecast more useful. The next step would be to mirror the device, but that's a lot more complicated.



Right now, Chromecast is only available in the US, at least officially. If you're not in the US, you can try eBay and buy one for $45-$65.

Android Device Manager

It looks like Google really wants to close the gap between Android and iOS and add all the missing features. After Google Play Games and Google Cast, Google will add a feature that lets you find your lost phone. There are many third-party apps that offer this feature (some are even included by hardware manufacturers), but nothing beats a built-in feature like "Find my iPhone", especially when it's free and easy to use.



"If you ended up dropping your phone between those couch cushions, Android Device Manager lets you quickly ring your phone at maximum volume so you can find it, even it's been silenced. And in the event that your phone or tablet is out of earshot (say, at that restaurant you left it at last night), you can locate it on a map in real time. (...) If your phone can't be recovered, or has been stolen, you can quickly and securely erase all of the data on your device."

This service will be available later this month for all devices running Android 2.2 or later. It will integrate with your Google Account and you'll be able to install an app that lets you find and manage your devices.



If I were to guess, the service will be added to the next Play Services update. The app is updated automatically by Google Play Store and it requires Android 2.2 or later. Now it also has an icon: you can find it as Google Settings, which groups various settings related to Google+, Google Play Games, location, search, ads, app scanning.



What other standard iOS features would you like to see in Android? I really like "scroll to top", battery percentage in the status bar, changing permissions for each app (location, contacts, photos), "do not disturb" and the full iCloud backup. Some are available in CyanogenMod, TouchWiz, HTC Sense or in third-party apps.