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.

6 Best Netvibes Widgets For Bloggers And Journalists

Through the years, we’ve always had an interest in good Internet start pages here at MakeUseOf. Of course, one of the most popular and well-used start pages, iGoogle, has been sacrificed by Google. This provided Netvibes with a surge of new users and of course even greater interest here at MUO. We’ve offered interesting ways to to use Netvibes to do things like manage your life, or use it as a feed reader. The growing volume of widgets and tools that are available on Netvibes makes it a useful tool for all sorts of great things. One of the uses...

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Moto X: All About User Experience

After so much hype, many people were disappointed to see Motorola's first phone influenced by Google. Motorola was acquired by Google two years ago for $12.5 billion, but the real reason why Google bought Motorola wasn't clear. Motorola's patents weren't that useful, Motorola's market share is declining and the company continues to lose money every quarter.

source: Wired

Moto X is supposed to be Motorola's "hero" device, the flagship that shows the new direction of the company. More than 70 Google employees work at Motorola: from Motorola's new CEO, Dennis Woodside, to Steve Horowitz, Motorola's head of software and one of the original members of the Android team. "Nobody's buying products because of minor incremental improvements to Android. So let's rely on what the Android team does and build experiences that will leverage Google services," says Steve Horowitz.



Motorola's phones now use tweaked version of the stock Android. There are some changes, some new apps and some new versions of the stock apps, but they're added on top of the stock Android, so you'll see faster updates. Motorola not only uses Google's Android software, but it tries to create hardware that makes it easy to use Google's software and enhances its features.



Moto X is assembled in the US, in a former Nokia factory. "Motorola placed its entire assembly operation for the X in Fort Worth, Texas. Components come from 16 states and countries around the world, but 2,000 or so workers assemble the phones in Texas and ship them all over America," informs The Verge. Phones are personalized using an online service called Moto Maker, which lets you select the color of the backplate, the front and of the volume buttons, add a signature, pick some matching headphones and make the phone your own. In the future, you'll also be able to pick a different material: wood instead of plastic. At launch, Moto Maker will be limited to AT&T. Motorola will open it to the other US carriers in the near future: Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular.

"When a car company allows you to choose your interior details or Nike allows you to design your own shoes, it creates what Moto X head product manager Lior Ron calls 'the Ikea effect.' 'Once you finish assembling it, you're emotionally attached to that furniture,' Ron says. 'It's now yours. We see the same attachment here. You've basically gone through the process to build your phone - you are now emotionally attached to that phone.'"



The phone uses two low-power processors that are used by Moto X's most important features. Moto X is always listening, so you can say "ok google now" and then ask something. It's called touchless control and it always you to use your phone without having to touch it. The hotword feature is available in the Google Search app, but Moto X's hardware makes it more useful because you don't have to interact with the device first. There's also a gesture that quickly launches the camera app: just shake your wrist.

Moto X always shows the time and some notification icons. This feature works well because the phone has an AMOLED screen and black pixels are unlit, saving power.



So why are people disappointed? The phone doesn't have great specs: a 4.7-inch 720p AMOLED display, a dual-core Snapdragon S4 Pro 1.7GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, 2200 mAh battery, 10 MP camera. So last year, you might say. A mid-range phone that costs the same as Samsung's Galaxy S4 or HTC One ($200 on contract for the 16GB version)? Non-removable battery and no SD card?



"We could go and make a higher-resolution screen, but it would just suck battery and nobody would know the difference," says Motorola's Jim Wicks. Most likely, Motorola couldn't source from Samsung a 1080p AMOLED screen and the 720p display was good enough. The dual-core CPU is cheaper, improves battery life and has a similar performance with the quad-core S4 Pro. It uses the same GPU from Nexus 4 and the new Nexus 7 and that's great. A phone is not about raw power, it's about responsiveness, battery life, ease of use. Most of the time, that raw power is left unused. Phones are more about GPU than CPU because responsiveness is more important than performance.



Moto X is not about specs, it's about experience and that's a lesson from the Apple school of thought. Specs are great, but only if they're actually used to build a great experience. A 400+ PPI 1080p screen and a quad-core CPU have their drawbacks and they're probably overkill. Apple's products don't use them, but they work well and are often more responsive than Android devices. The secret is probably software optimization and the integration between hardware and software.



"We've done additional optimizations on top of that such as optimizing the entire Linux user space to move it to an ARM instruction set, cache optimization, Dalvik just-in-time optimization, and we've changed the file system. It's full hardware-software integration to deliver best-in-class performance," says Iqbal Arshad, Motorola's senior vice president of engineering.



It's more about a high-end experience than high-end specs and that's hard to measure. People read the specs and assume that the phone with the fastest processor is the best one, but that's not always true. It's also about tricks that make the device appear more responsive than it really is, tricks that conserve battery, animations that make the experience more pleasant, squeezing every bit of performance from the hardware.



Moto X tries win the specs wars by ignoring it and focusing on something else: the human factor. Patriotism, esthetics, customization, efficiency - all of these try to make the phone more appealing. It's a new Motorola and they're just getting started.

"The Moto X will go on sale in the United States at the end of August or the beginning of September for a suggested retail price of $199.99 to customers who sign a two-year contract at five of the biggest U.S. mobile network operators," informs Reuters.

Flipboard Now Offers Web Based Magazines [Updates]

Flipboard, the popular social magazine app for mobile users, announced on July 23rd that its socially curated magazines are now available via the web, accessible from any desktop PC. Flipboard users are able to create virtual magazines by sharing collections of articles and content from around the web. Up until now, after creating a Flipboard magazine covering any topic imaginable, those Flipboard curators were only able to share those magazines with other mobile users. Now, anyone can read Flipboard magazines that are published to the web by mobile users. The content of these online magazines cover everything from health and...

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How To Hide Macintosh HD (Partition) In Windows

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Many Mac users have installed Windows on their Macs with the help of Boot Camp Assistant software from Apple to get access to games and software that are exclusively available for Windows. Users who have installed recent versions of Windows on Mac via Boot Camp probably have noticed that Macintosh drive appears in Windows Explorer [...]

Try A Visual Shopping Wishlist With Wantworthy

Today’s web apps and extensions seem to have finally cottoned on to the idea that pictures are extremely useful when it comes to creativity and desirability. I guess we have the likes of Pinterest and Tumblr to thank for that. A collection of images manages to express so much in a quick viewing. It gives a great overview to the sorts of things that appeal to the collector, and makes you wonder if you like the item yourself. However, in order to have people make a beautiful collection of images, we need to ensure it’s easy for them to do...

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4 Vital System Tools Every Windows User Should Know About

Not sure why your computer keeps crashing? Investigate – all while getting to know your Windows system better – using built-in tools that come with Windows. If you’ve been afraid to poke around your system and figure out how to maintain it, don’t fear: it’s simpler than you think. There are plenty of articles on this very site pointing out third-party tools for maintaining your Windows system. What we occasionally overlook, however, are the tools Windows provides out of the box for doing the same things. Sure, they may be less feature-filled than some of the downloadable options – but...

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Use Google Search as an Online Timer

Learn about a simple search command that will let you use Google as an online timer to help you remind of any upcoming tasks.

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This story, Use Google Search as an Online Timer, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 01/08/2013 under Google, Internet.

The LinkedIn Connections You Don’t Want — How Marketers Target You

Before the days of the Internet, most marketers were stuck using the tried and true vehicles for obtaining business or sales leads. They turned to things like cold-calling over the phone, sending out mass mailings, and other efforts to reach as much people with as little effort as possible. With the advent of the Internet, and particularly social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, Marketers now have a whole toolbox full of tricks to convert you into a buying customer. The reality for most people on social networks is that they want to spend time connecting with others, having meaningful...

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Listen To Your Favorite Comedians On Spotify With The Official Comedy App

Spotify is often called a music streaming service, because, well, it’s a service that streams music. Obviously. However… Quick, stop the presses and hold the front pages, Spotify deals in more than just music. I know, right? Because audio doesn’t necessarily mean music, as any fan of podcasts will tell you. Comedy albums have been a thing for over 100 years, with gramophone records of a comic named Cal Stewart reciting humorous short stories having been released as long ago as 1898. famous comedians and comedy troupes have released albums in every recent decade, and the medium is still immensely...

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How To Format External Hard Drive In FAT32

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Majority of computer users own at least one external hard drive these days. While it’s always a good idea to format the external hard drive with NTFS because of its advantages, sometimes you might have to format your external hard drive with FAT32. For instance, if you want to transfer files from a Mac to [...]