First Generation Kindle Paperwhite Gets Second Generation Software Update

Amazon’s first generation Kindle Paperwhite, originally launched back in October of 2012, is finally receiving a software update to bring it up to date with the second generation Paperwhite. The update should be rolling out automatically to all devices over the coming days and weeks, but your device must be connected to WiFi for this happen. If you want to update sooner, it can be downloaded from Amazon’s website. The biggest new features include: Kindle FreeTime, which allows the user to set up personalized profiles for young children that tracks their progress and awards badges for reading; Goodreads, Amazon’s reading-centered...

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Discover New Music From Your Desktop With 8tracks For Windows 8

Remember when you had to sift through hundreds of CDs to discover new music? Those were fun days, but they’re mostly gone. These days, you discover new music online, and we’ve already covered some great ways to do this. Two problems tend to arise when looking for new music online: intrusive ads and geographical limitations. If you want to listen to new music every day without dealing with any of these, one great option is 8tracks. But did you know 8tracks is more than just a website? Turns out 8tracks also offers a Windows 8 Modern app, and a pretty...

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What Are Backlinks, Why Are They Important, And How Can I Get Them?

If someone like Apple CEO Tim Cook were to recommend a good website for iPhone app reviews, you would probably pay attention, right? That is what backlinks are all about, and it’s why Google cares so much about them. Backlinks, also known as “incoming links” are where people elsewhere on the Internet are talking about and linking to your website. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but on the Internet, linking to someone is by far the greatest compliment you could give. A link is a sign of trust and of respect. It means, you vouch...

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Internet Bill Of Rights, ASUS Chromebox, iOS 7.1, Between Two Ferns [Tech News Digest]

Today in Tech News Digest, the Internet needs a bill of rights, Xbox Live suffers a Titanfall outage, the ASUS Chromebox sells well on Amazon, Neil Young’s PonoPlayer is a Kickstarter hit, Apple releases iOS 7.1, and Barack Obama appears on Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. Berners-Lee Wants Web Bill Of Rights “My dream is that one day we’ll be unable to skip a car advert before we can watch a video of kittens wrestling.” – Tim Berners-Lee, 1991. — Michael Spicer (@MrMichaelSpicer) March 12, 2014 Tim Berners-Lee, the man who essentially invented the World Wide Web, has called...

Read the full article: Internet Bill Of Rights, ASUS Chromebox, iOS 7.1, Between Two Ferns [Tech News Digest]

Internet Bill Of Rights, ASUS Chromebox, iOS 7.1, Between Two Ferns [Tech News Digest]

Today in Tech News Digest, the Internet needs a bill of rights, Xbox Live suffers a Titanfall outage, the ASUS Chromebox sells well on Amazon, Neil Young’s PonoPlayer is a Kickstarter hit, Apple releases iOS 7.1, and Barack Obama appears on Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis. Berners-Lee Wants Web Bill Of Rights “My dream is that one day we’ll be unable to skip a car advert before we can watch a video of kittens wrestling.” – Tim Berners-Lee, 1991. — Michael Spicer (@MrMichaelSpicer) March 12, 2014 Tim Berners-Lee, the man who essentially invented the World Wide Web, has called...

Read the full article: Internet Bill Of Rights, ASUS Chromebox, iOS 7.1, Between Two Ferns [Tech News Digest]

Record your Desktop Screen with SnagIt for Chrome

SnagIt, the popular screen capture app for Google Chrome, now includes support for recording screencasts as well. It can record the video as the background audio and your screencasts can be uploaded to YouTube or Google Drive with a click.

Upload screencasts to YouTube or Google Drive

Screencasting Meets Google Chrome

It does take a few steps to enable screencasting support inside Google Chrome.

The first step is to install the SnagIt app and extension from the Chrome Store. Next type chrome://flags in the browser address bar and enable the setting that says Enable Screen Capture Support in getUserMedia(). Restart the Chrome browser.

Now open the SnagIt app from the Chrome launcher, click the Settings gear icon and turn on the option “Enable Experimental Features.” You are now all set to record your first screen video, including audio, with Chrome.

Internally, like the other screen sharing apps for Chrome, SnagIt is using WebRTC to record the screencast. When you hit the record button, it starts a private screen sharing session, with no other participants, and all your on-screen activity during the session is saved as .AVI video.

Also see: The Screencasting Toolkit

The developers are calling the feature “experimental” and rightly so because it is quite limited in its current avatar. One, it only records the entire screen and not a tab or custom area. There’s no option to save the recorded video to the desktop (at least on the Mac version).

While it is obvious that TechSmith will improve SnagIt’s screen recording feature, a better alternative at this time is Screencastify for Chrome. It lets you screen record individual browser tabs or the entire desktop screen.

Videos are recorded as .webm files that play in nearly all modern browser without requiring plugins. The videos can be saved locally or you can upload them to Youtube and Google Drive with a single click.

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This story, Record your Desktop Screen with SnagIt for Chrome, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 11/03/2014 under Google Chrome, Screencasting, Software

Manjaro Linux: Arch For People Who Don’t Have Time

There are plenty of things that make Arch Linux highly appealing to users: it’s always up-to-date, it’s a rolling release, and there’s tons of software available for it in its repositories. But what isn’t so appealing is the learning curve and pure difficulty of setting up an Arch system. If you want the best aspects of Arch, without the bad parts, you need Manjaro Linux. About Manjaro Linux Manjaro Linux is an Arch-based distribution, meaning that it runs on the same backbone and the same repositories as Arch itself. It also implements the rolling release upgrade model, meaning that you...

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Restaurant Menus in Google Search

Google mentioned this feature a few weeks ago, but I think it's important enough to write a post about this. If you're in the US and you search for the name of a restaurant followed by "menu", Google will display the restaurant's menu above the list of results.

"Next time you're planning a brunch or a date night, check to make sure the menu has something to satisfy everyone in your group, without having to browse through several restaurants' websites. Just search Google to show you the menu for the eatery you're considering and you can see it right on the top of your search page — complete with tabs for different parts of the menu (like appetizers, brunch or dinner) and, often, prices — before you make your reservation. Menus are available in the U.S. only for now."



Google used to display short answers to simple questions and now it shows full restaurant menus, driving directions, animated widgets with details weather information, long lists of sport results, facts and more.

Google's goal used to be sending people to the most relevant results. Now Google wants to show the best answers and that's the reason why search results are less important. As more and more people use smartphones to search the web, Google has to provide answers, not just search results. Having to open multiple pages, scroll to the right section to find an answer is inconvenient, especially if you are on the go, your internet connection is slow and you don't have too much time.

Google Drive Add-ons

Google Docs and the new version of Google Sheets now support add-ons. Just click the new Add-ons menu, select "Get add-ons" and install some of them. They're not browser extensions, they're just ways to add new features to Google Docs and Sheets. Some of them are developed by Google, while others are developed by third-parties.

"Once you install an add-on it will become available across all of your documents or spreadsheets and you can start using it right away," informs Google. You can always find them in the Add-ons menu.



There are add-ons that translate the selected text, find synonyms, create a table of contents, insert maps, create charts from spreadsheets, generate bibliography, check your writing for consistency, add mail merge to Google Docs, print address labels and more.

Here's the Translate add-on in action. Select some text, go to the Add-ons menu, click Translate and Start. You can select the destination language in the sidebar that shows up. For some reason, only a few destination languages are supported.

A Google Experiment Makes Page Titles Bigger

Google tests a new search interface for desktop that removes underlines from links and increases text size for page titles.

Here's a screenshot that shows both the experimental UI for search results and the standard interface:

{ Thanks, Matt Cleinman. }