Google Search App For iOS Gets Push Notifications And New Card-Based Interface

The iOS version of the Google Search app has been updated with new features and a fresh design. Google’s 15th anniversary was probably a red-letter day for the company as it invigorates things with a few design and functional changes. Tablet and mobile users will now see a new card-based user interface with their search results. The card-based UI is more in line with the consistent design seen first in Google services like Google Now and later adopted by Google+. The objective behind the design changes in the iOS app remains the same – a more unified design that’s cleaner...

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4 Methods For Dota 2 Players To Keep Track Of Stats

In the world of Dota 2, stats are incredibly important. Players obsess over numbers, both their own and those of the pros. Valve offers the ability to view your recent games and your wins, losses, and abandons in the client, but for most players, this just is not enough information. Thankfully, plenty of third-parties have stepped up to the plate to provide users with the detailed statistics they crave. Whether you are looking for information about your own games, or you prefer to check out the stats of the professional players in recent tournaments, these websites have you covered. Perhaps...

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What Is Tumblr? [MakeUseOf Explains]

You may have heard of Tumblr before, but it’s difficult to figure out what it really is without first using the service. In the simplest terms, it’s a social network and a microblogging site; kind of like a mixture between Blogger and Twitter. It’s populated by a wide range of content, ranging from Doctor Who and Sherlock fandoms to funny pictures of cats to nature photography. Its simplistic interface makes it appealing to a younger audience, giving them the freedom of a blog along with the content curation of a social network, all in an easy-to-use package. But what began...

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How To Install Windows 8.1 On Mac Without Boot Camp

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Mac users have a couple of options when it comes to installing and running Windows on Mac. One can install Windows 8.1 on Mac with the help of Boot Camp software, use virtualization software like VirtualBox to install Windows 8.1 inside Mac, or manually create a new partition and then install Windows 8.1 without the […]

How To Create Windows 8.1 Bootable USB On Mac

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There are a couple of reasons why you would want to create Windows 8.1 bootable USB flash drive on your Mac. Maybe you’ve decided to install Windows 8.1 on Mac without Boot Camp; or maybe your PC is unbootable and you want to prepare a bootable USB using the ISO file that you have on […]

Chrome Font Finder

You're reading a web page and you're suddenly wondering: what font is that?

You can check the source code or select some text, right-click and pick "inspect element". You'll probably find a list of fonts and you won't be able to tell which one is actually used.



Chrome added a feature that tells you the name of the font that's used. This feature is available in Chrome 31+, so you can try it if you've switched to the Dev Channel or you use Chrome Canary. Right-click the text, pick "inspect element", switch to the "computed" tab, scroll down and you'll see "a summary of the typeface(s) used for that element". Paul Irish says that it "works great with Google Webfonts, Typekit, local fonts, @font-face typefaces, unicode glyphs, and all other interesting font sources."

As you can see, it's Helvetica, not Arial. No need to use WhatTheFont or WhatFontIs.



{ via Kristian Serrano. }

Audio Ammunition: Google’s 5 Part Documentary About The Clash [Stuff to Watch]

The Clash were the English punk band who famously fought the law and lost, and now thanks to Google Play you can relive the band’s story with some exclusive never-before-seen footage. Despite being more commonly associated with searches and apps, Google have turned their attention to the late great Joe Strummer and bandmates in a documentary that explores life in one of the most influential bands of the last century. The Clash first emerged in 1976 during the first wave of the British punk movement but internal struggles put an end to them only ten years later. Even if you’re...

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Google's Music Carousel

Remember the post about Google's new music video results? They're used by a Knowledge Graph carousel that shows a long list of songs when you search for things like [Moby songs], [Michael Jackson music], [Nina Simone list of songs], [Beatles track list].

Click one of the songs and you'll see the search results for that song's name. The top result is a music video from YouTube, which has a huge thumbnail. The video doesn't play inline, the thumbnail only links to a regular YouTube page.

It would be nice to play songs from the Google search results page. Even a short Google Play preview would be pretty useful. If that's not possible, then Google could embed YouTube's player, so you can watch music videos without opening a new page. Another improvement would be to automatically generate a YouTube playlist from all the music videos listed in the carousel, like YouTube does.



{ via Search Engine Roundtable }

How To Create A Windows 8 Recovery Disk

The days of reinstalling Windows whenever your PC runs into trouble are long since gone. All you need to fix Windows 8 is a recovery disk, either on CD/DVD, USB drive or an external hard disk drive. Whether you’ve upgraded from an old version of Windows or bought a new device, one of the first things that you should do is set up your own recovery disk, a process that basically installs a set of tools onto your chosen media that can then be used to repair issues with Windows 8. These useful tools will enable you to boot your...

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Burned: Why Trusting Shopping Reviews On FocalPrice.com Is a Bad Idea

“Absolutely terrible,” I wrote, proceeding to explain exactly what was wrong with the LED light I bought from FocalPrice.com and protect future buyers against making the same mistake. Only the review was never published: When I signed back on a couple of days later to check on it, I discovered it had been inexplicably marked as Rejected: The Story I first found out about FocalPrice after I wrote about 3 Interesting Shopping Websites Offering Free International Shipping. One of the sites I mentioned was DealExtreme, and FocalPrice was mentioned in the comments as an alternative. While the review’s title may...

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What Is the Best Podcast Manager For Windows?

The tech world is obsessed with mobile apps and web-based software, but the reality is that many people — if not most people! — still use Windows most of the time. If you want to listen to podcasts while at your Windows PC, the best option is still a Windows desktop application that will play them for you. With these programs, you can listen to the MakeUseOf podcast and all your other favorite podcasts. As with many things in life, there’s no one best podcast manager for everyone. If you have an iPod you want to sync your podcasts to,...

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7 Photography Websites Every Shutterbug Should Keep A Click Away

Whether you’re looking for inspiration, want to see what other photographers are up to, see the latest gadgets and toys, read reviews, or even feature your own work, there are a variety of sites that every photographer should follow to do just those things. There is no better way to improve your photography technique than by keeping up with the latest — whether on the amateur or professional level — on sites that are run by people who are just as passionate about photography as you are. These seven sites fit that description and are a surefire way to keep...

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Panoramic Virtual Tour Of CERN Comes To Google Street View

The Large Hadron Collider is the centerpiece of CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research). It is the world’s largest laboratory for studying particle physics. Now, thanks to Google Street View, you won’t have to travel to Geneva to understand how it is helping to develop our understanding of the universe we live in. The Google Maps and the Google Street View project team have created a panoramic virtual tour of the CERN site and some of the behind the scene experiments. Start your CERN virtual tour. The CERN home webpage had this to say about the process, which must...

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Google Mobile Image Search Regression

Google has a great mobile interface for image search. It was launched in 2010 and improved multiple times since then. You can use swipes to go to the next image result or to the previous one. It looks like Google changed the image search UI for smartphones and tablets and now sends you to a landing page that shows the image and loads the corresponding page in the background. Intuitive gestures are gone and now you have to use the back button.

This seems to be limited to iPhones and iPads running iOS 7, so it's probably a bug. A lot of people complain about this in the Google Search Forum.



There are many reasons why the new interface is strange: loading the associated page uses more bandwidth and that's not a good idea for mobile devices, it's more difficult to check multiple search results, thumbnails are smaller and even the desktop interface shows a bigger image instead of sending users to a new page.

How To Select Specific Wallpapers In A Theme To Use As Desktop Background In Windows 7/8.1

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Desktop slideshow, a feature first introduced with Windows 7 (available in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 as well), is a handy feature designed to automatically change the desktop background at pre-defined time intervals. Microsoft has been releasing new themes almost every week ever since the release of Windows 7 and one can download hundreds of […]

4 Great Windows 8 Apps For Entertaining Little Kids

Bored kids are a nightmare, and that’s why tablets were invented. Weren’t they? Much as you may love your tablet, if there are kids around you know sometimes your tablet is going to wind up in their hands. It might be that you want to keep them entertained while you wait somewhere, or maybe the kids just really love to play with it. Either way, you’re going to want to have a few apps ready and waiting. Here are a handful of apps which are perfect for entertaining little kids, from toddlers to nearly school age. There’s a paint app,...

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Installing Firefox Metro In Windows 8.1

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By now, you’ve likely heard about the release of Firefox Metro for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. For those who missed the big news, Mozilla released the Metro version of Firefox browser to the Aurora channel about a week ago and is now available for download. Firefox Metro sports a clean interface, shows address bar […]

A Life Less Ordinary: 7 Places On Reddit For Your Own Personal Growth

Wisdom of the crowds. There’s no other way to describe Reddit. While it won’t win any awards for its pretty face in a hurry, there’s no denying that Reddit is one of the more influential websites on the planet today. So, what better place to go to if you are starting to feel that your life needs to be more than ordinary. After all, many consider it to be among the websites you cannot live without. Feeling deflated is a perfectly fine human condition. Feeling absolutely demotivated is easy when one is caught in the bear trap of humdrumness. But...

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How To Open Command Prompt As Administrator In Windows 8.1

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As we all know, a Command Prompt is used to launch programs, change various Windows settings, and enable or disable some Windows features. An elevated Command Prompt or Command Prompt with administrator rights is necessary to execute certain commands in Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 versions. For instance, you have to run […]

Take Google Task Management And Scheduling To A Whole New Level With GQueues

Task management is about as exciting as getting a health exam. The truth is, task management is as important to your work health as a health exam is to your physical health, so it’s important to get it right early before you drown in all the chaos. A Google Task replacement called GQueues may be one of the best solutions around. We’ve explored a steady stream of time and task management apps through the years. One good example is Bakari’s review of Wunderkit, or Azim’s review of Chaos Control. I’ve personally tried a number of those recommended here at MUO...

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