02 April 2014

Rdio, Vudu, and Crackle Add Chromecast Support



chromecast-rdio-vudu-crackle

Google’s $35 media streaming device known as the Chromecast is picking up steam with users, and as such, more companies are launching support for it. Rdio, Vudu, and Crackle have just joined the ranks of Chromecast supporters with updates for each of its services. Starting with Rdio, both the iOS and Android application have received updates that add support for the Google streaming stick. It features a very simple big-screen interface that puts the album art right in the center of the screen. You can also pause and scrub through the track using the smartphone’s controls. Additionally, Rdio also added...


Read the full article: Rdio, Vudu, and Crackle Add Chromecast Support



Rdio, Vudu, and Crackle Add Chromecast Support



chromecast-rdio-vudu-crackle

Google’s $35 media streaming device known as the Chromecast is picking up steam with users, and as such, more companies are launching support for it. Rdio, Vudu, and Crackle have just joined the ranks of Chromecast supporters with updates for each of its services. Starting with Rdio, both the iOS and Android application have received updates that add support for the Google streaming stick. It features a very simple big-screen interface that puts the album art right in the center of the screen. You can also pause and scrub through the track using the smartphone’s controls. Additionally, Rdio also added...


Read the full article: Rdio, Vudu, and Crackle Add Chromecast Support



The Best Online Tools To Know Everything About a Website



How do I contact the owner of a website? Where is a particular website hosted? What other websites are hosted on that same server ? Is the site using WordPress or the Drupal platform? What ad networks are they using to monetize a site? Is the site accessible from China?


The best tools to know everything about any website. Picture credit: Flickr

The best tools to know everything about any website. Picture credit: Flickr



Here are some of the most useful online tools that will help you know each and every detail of any website. Let’s get started.



  • just-ping.com — Use Just Ping to determine if a particular website or blog is accessible from other contries. Unlike other online ping services that have service in a couple of locations, Just Ping has 30 monitoring stations across the world including Turkey, Egypt and China. If the ping results say 100% Packet Loss, most likely the site is inaccessible from that region.

  • who.is — If you like to know the contact address, email and phone number of the website owner, this free whois lookup service will help. This is a universal lookup service meaning it can simultaneously query the whois database of all popular domain registrars.

  • whoishostingthis.com — Enter the URL of any website and this online service will show you the name of the company where that website is hosted. This may come handly if you need the contact information of the web hosting provider for writing a DMCA Notice or if you are looking to switch web hosts.

  • popuri.us — You can use popuri to estimate the relative popularity of a website on social sites like Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. It also display the Google Pagerank of a website and the Web of Trust matrix.

  • chillingeffects.org — When there’s a copyright related complaint against a website, a copy of that letter is archived in the Chilling Effects database. Anyone can query this public database to know about all the copyright infringement complaints against a particular website.

  • myip.ms — MyIP.ms offers a comprehensive report of any website or I.P. Address. You get to know about the hosting provider, the physical location of a website, the IP Address change history of a website and the DNS information. Netcraft also offers similar reports.

  • ewhois.com — Ewhois, short for enhanced whois lookup, will help you determine other websites of someone. It looks the whois details, the AdSense publisher ID and the Google Analytics code of websites to figure out other web domain that may belong to the same owner. See example.

  • builtwith.com — Use BuiltWith to know the technology stack of any website. It helps you figure out the mail service provider of a domain, the advertising partners, the tracking widgets that are installed on a website and whether the site is using any CDN like Amazon S3 or Google Cloud. See example.

  • whatsmydns.net — When you buy a new domain or switch from one host to another, the DNS records for the domain change and it may take a while to propagate these changes worldwide. WhatsMyDNS check your DNS records from various locations and it can check your domain’s A, CNAME and MX records.

  • modern.ie — This online app will help test your website’s compatibility with various web browsers and detects coding errors that might cause problems. The site is integrated with BrowserStack so you can quickly know how your site looks on different devices and browsers.

  • developers.google.com — Find the Page Speed score of any website on both desktop and mobile devices. The higher this number, the better. The Google tool also offers suggestion on how the score can be improved.

  • ctrlq.org/sandbox — – The AdSense sandbox solves two problems – it shows the various advertisers that are targeting a website and it will also help you figure out if a particular web domain is banned in the AdSense network or not.

  • httparchive.org — The HTTP Archive is a repository of all performance related metrics for a website. It keeps a record of the size of pages, their average load time and the number of failed requests (missing resources) over time. See example.


Also see: 101 Most Useful Websites




This story, The Best Online Tools To Know Everything About a Website, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 02/04/2014 under Web Domains, Internet, Tools

How To Format A Write Protected USB Flash Drive



format-write-protected-usb

32GB of sweet USB flash drive storage space just sits in your office drawer, ironically taking up space. Why? Because you can’t put anything else on it. It’s write protected and you can’t format the stupid thing! Or can you? We get a lot of people asking about formatting write protected USB flash drives. First, make sure this is what you need to do. Are you sure you don’t just have a dead USB port? Maybe it’s just that your flash drive is corrupted? We’re going to get to the bottom of this problem and either you’ll be stashing all...


Read the full article: How To Format A Write Protected USB Flash Drive



April Fools Roundup, Apple Attacks Samsung, Mozilla CEO Controversy [Tech News Digest]



april-fools-jester

Today in Tech News Digest, enjoying April Fools, Apple versus Samsung, Mozilla CEO speaks out, Amazon adds Metacritic scores, Zuckerberg takes pay cut, Coursera on Android, and Kaspersky maps the Cyberwar. April Fools Hits The Web Dumbledore is alive! April Fools. — Professor Snape (@_Snape_) April 2, 2014 April 1 is the worst day of the year for anyone seeking real technology news, which is why yesterday’s edition of Tech News Digest wasn’t all it at first appeared to be. Fake news was everywhere on the Web, so what follows are just a few of our favorites from the roundups...


Read the full article: April Fools Roundup, Apple Attacks Samsung, Mozilla CEO Controversy [Tech News Digest]



Dukto Offers Cross-Platform, Drag-And-Drop File Sharing



dukto-file-sharing

Drag and drop a file; send it to the desktop of another computer on your network. Dukto makes local file sharing simple, regardless of operating system. Setting up a home network can be complicated, especially if some combination of Mac, Linux and Windows is involved. Sometimes, giving someone access to your shared folders isn’t worth it – when a guest wants to quickly share a few files, for example. Don’t reach for the thumb drives: any two computers with Dukto installed can quickly share files and text. There’s no setup, and no cloud service to sign into: the transfer occurs...


Read the full article: Dukto Offers Cross-Platform, Drag-And-Drop File Sharing



Dukto Offers Cross-Platform, Drag-And-Drop File Sharing



dukto-file-sharing

Drag and drop a file; send it to the desktop of another computer on your network. Dukto makes local file sharing simple, regardless of operating system. Setting up a home network can be complicated, especially if some combination of Mac, Linux and Windows is involved. Sometimes, giving someone access to your shared folders isn’t worth it – when a guest wants to quickly share a few files, for example. Don’t reach for the thumb drives: any two computers with Dukto installed can quickly share files and text. There’s no setup, and no cloud service to sign into: the transfer occurs...


Read the full article: Dukto Offers Cross-Platform, Drag-And-Drop File Sharing



Gallery for Custom Gmail Themes



Gmail Skins is a site with nice pictures you can add to Gmail as custom themes. The site was built by Greg Bullock, from the Gmail team.



You can sort photos by date, title or popularity, select a category like macro, water or nature, find your favorite image and set it as a Gmail background. There are two options: light themes and dark themes.



The site also lets you upload your own photos to the gallery. "Only upload images which you own.

Only images which are 1) mega-awesome and 2) sufficiently large will be published."









{ Thanks, Greg. }

What A Busy Day: 10 Savvy Ways To Find Time For Your Personal Projects



personal-project

Lisa Sugar worked in advertising but loved celebrity gossip. Ray Chen was a university student who just wanted to share funny images. Craig Newmark was new to San Francisco and worked for a brokerage and banking company. These three sound everyday people. They also created little websites — PopSugar, 9GAG, and Craigslist in that order. These were all personal projects of the three founders while they were busy earning their bread doing something different. Dig deeper and you will find many success stories that came from following large passions with tiny first steps. Do you have a passion that is...


Read the full article: What A Busy Day: 10 Savvy Ways To Find Time For Your Personal Projects