Search Tips for Chrome App Launcher

Chrome's app launcher has an interesting way to match results. Let's say you want to open Google Play Music. You can search for google play music, play music or you can just type the the first letter from each word and search for gpm. It also works if you type the first letters from the first word, followed by the first letters from the second word and so on. For example, you can also search for goplm, gplam, gmu.

Another example: launch Mahjong Solitaire by searching for ms.

{ via François Beaufort. }

Public Transit Directions in Google Search

Google Search not only shows driving directions, it also shows a card for public transit directions. This feature seems to be limited to trains, even if Google says that it should also work for buses. Another limitation is that this feature only works in the US.



"Find the best route to travel using public transportation without ever leaving the Google Search page. For example, if you're in New York and traveling from Fulton Street to Times Square, you can search [from columbus circle to times square by train] to find information about the next train that's leaving. You can also search for directions between cities, like [seattle to portland by train]," informs Google.

Click the Settings button to specify the date and time for your departure or arrival.

You can also append to your query "arriving by 5 pm" or "departing at 6 pm".

How Many Books Do You Have On Your eReader? [MakeUseOf Poll]

Before we get into last week’s poll, I owe all of you an apology. It seemed that due to some script glitch, the poll itself disappeared from the page a day after it was published, meaning only a handful of you got to vote before it was gone. Therefore, the results we got for this poll are not as accurate or as representative of our readers as they usually are. What can I say, no one’s perfect! In the 24 hours the poll was around, over 200 of you managed to vote. Here is how you voted: 8% say they...

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Reddit Adds New List Of Trending Subreddits To Homepage

Reddit is one of the most popular websites on the Internet, but it’s not a site that makes headlines often with big changes. Usually, when Reddit is in the news it’s because someone of great importance is doing an IAmA, or something controversial happens. This time though, we actually have news of Reddit launching a new list of trending subreddits right on the very top of the homepage. Many Reddit users end up hanging around the default subreddits, never venturing out to experience some of the other very active communities the website has to offer. This new feature could fix...

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Cast Videos in Chrome for Android

The latest beta release of Chrome 35 for Android added support for casting HTML5 videos. You can now send videos to the Chromecast from any site that uses HTML5 video players, including YouTube.



To connect to a Chromecast, you need to play a video in fullscreen, click the cast icon and select a Chromecast device. You can then change the volume, fast forward or switch to a different video. YouTube's mobile site has support for the TV queue, so you can add videos to the queue instead of playing them right away.

The Chromecast integration is not perfect, there are some bugs that need to be fixed, but it's nice to see that you can cast almost any video right from the mobile browser, without having to install other apps and wait for the developers to integrate their apps with Chromecast.



Chrome 35 for Android also adds support for undoing tab closing, Samsung's multi-window feature and fullscreen videos with subtitles and HTML5 controls. Here's a video that shows the undo close tab feature in action, courtesy of Android Police:

{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Diving Into LinkedIn? 5 Tips To Get You Started

When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it was a pretty simple idea: a social network for the professional sphere. But since then, the site and the way people use it have increased in complexity, and it can be a bit overwhelming trying to get into it for the first time. These 5 tips will get you from total newcomer to all-star networker in no time. 1. Create a Great Profile Your LinkedIn profile is your professional face online, so make it a good one! If someone comes to your profile, you want them to be impressed. You don’t want sloppy writing,...

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Get 1TB Of Cloud Storage With MediaFire For $2.50 A Month

The regular price for 1TB of MediaFire storage is normally $5, but for a “limited time”, you can sign up for the 1TB plan for $2.50. Your move Google! It’s getting crazy in the cloud storage business. No sooner did Google Drive announce rock-bottom prices for their cloud storage options, than MediaFire has come along and announced that they too are having a sale and everything must go! In a press release, MediaFire also announced several other new features, which they hope will tempt you away from the other major players : Both free and paid users can upload individual...

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Edit Translations to Improve Google Translate

Google Translate now lets you edit translations. Click the "Improve" icon below the translation, edit the text and click "Contribute". Google shows this message: "Your contribution will be used to improve translation quality and may be shown to users anonymously".



Until now, you could only click the words from the translations and pick one of the alternate translations offered by Google.

{ Thanks, Emanuele Bartolomucci. }

WordPress Blog Too Slow? 7 Ways You Can Speed It Up Again In Minutes

Your WordPress site is slow, and you’re losing page views and revenue because of it. But you’re also busy – I get it. Here’s seven speed tips you could have a crack at on your lunch break – they’re so simple and easy. Optimize Images This is a two-parter. The first thing is to equip yourself with the knowledge of using the best format for the job. When we talk about images used on the web, it’s generally restricted to either a JPG or PNG. PNG is a lossless format, best suited to simple images and illustrations, or screenshots. JPG...

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Why You Should Replace Microsoft Security Essentials With A Proper Antivirus

Microsoft threw its hat in the anti-virus arena in 2009 with Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), a tool that runs on Windows XP, 7 and 8. The move received early praise, as it seemed strange that the company had gone so long without providing even the most basic anti-virus protection, and early tests showed MSE to be nearly as effective as paid competitors. The honeymoon didn’t last, however. More recent tests have shown that MSE doesn’t provide the features users should look for in an effective anti-virus. Here’s where it falls short – and what you should look for in a...

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Amazon Prime Air Update, OpenSSL Author Speaks, Google Glass For All [Tech News Digest]

Today in Tech News Digest, an Amazon Prime Air progress report, OpenSSL Heartbleed culprit speaks, Google Glass for everyone, gamers get frustrated, Amazon buys ComiXology, Skype TX arrives, and S.E.L.F.I.E. automates the selfie-taking process. Amazon Prime Air Drones In Flight Testing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has issued his annual letter to shareholders detailing how the company is doing and where it’s going. The most interesting part of which concerns Amazon Prime Air, the delivery by drones initiative first revealed in December 2013. Bezos reveals, “The Prime Air team is already flight testing our 5th and 6th generation aerial vehicles, and...

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Disqus Commenting Platform Introduces Sponsored Comments

Just when you thought there were no new ways to introduce ad space into a website, a brand new approach to earning more income with your website comes along. On April 7th, the popular commenting platform Disqus announced that it is actively testing a new and innovative ad revenue stream called Sponsored Comments. It was only a month ago that the company introduced the Featured Comments feature, where website owners could choose select comments to “feature” at the top of a comment thread. In this case, the company is taking the same approach, but placing advertisers at the top of...

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6 Of The Simplest Ways To Spark Your Passion With Creative Ideas

There are no bad ideas. Okay, I stole that line from a favorite TV show, and it goes like this… There are no bad ideas Lemon, only great ideas that go horribly wrong… – Jack Donaghy, ’30 Rock’ Ideas are little sparks. Miss them and they are vapor. Catch them. Fan them. They turn into flames. Of course, like the soap quote above, bad ideas can burn. But why be so pessimistic. We have seen that ideas are basic to any creative process, and when you are brainstorming alone or in a team, all ideas are welcome. Think of this...

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Anti-Malware Monitoring for Android Apps

By default, installing apps outside of the Google Play Store is disabled on most Android phones. If you try to install an APK file, you'll see a warning and you'll have to check an option in the Settings to enable app sideloading.



Just in case you install APK files, Google Play Services includes a feature that verifies apps when you install them. It blocks potentially harmful apps and it has been used more than 4 billion times. The anti-malware feature is now a lot more powerful: it now monitors apps even after installing them.



"We're rolling out a new enhancement which will now continually check devices to make sure that all apps are behaving in a safe manner, even after installation. In the last year, the foundation of this service - Verify apps - has been used more than 4 billion times to check apps at the time of install. This enhancement will take that protection even further, using Android's powerful app scanning system developed by the Android security and Safe Browsing teams."

Apparently, Android is more secure than you would think. "We've found that fewer than 0.18% of installs in the last year occurred after someone received a warning that the app was potentially harmful," mentions Android's blog.



QZ.com reported last year that the percentage was 0.12% and that "0.001% of app installations on Android are able to evade the system's multi-layered defenses and cause harm to users". 95% of the phones have Verify Apps enabled by default and 0.5% of app installs from unknown sources receive a warning. Just because you receive a warning doesn't mean that the apps are actually dangerous: 40% of the warnings are for apps that root your device, another 40% are for fraudware apps that send premium SMS messages and another 15% of the warnings are for commercial spyware.

Google Play Music Integrates With Sonos

A few months ago, I was about to buy 2 Sonos wireless speakers, but I realized that Sonos doesn't support Google Play Music. That was unfortunate, especially considering that Play Music doesn't even have a public API. The good news is that Google Play Music now integrates with Sonos.

"Now available around the world, you can stream directly to Sonos from within the Google Play Music app on your Android device, or simply stream Google Play Music from your Sonos app to any Sonos player throughout your home," mentions the Sonos blog. "Enjoy all the features of your Google Play Music app in Hi-Fi sound by playing directly to Sonos from Android devices. Use the Google Play Music app to start a song in any room and control the volume without ever leaving the app. For full access of all your music services and multi-room control, use the Sonos app to stream all the music you love to any room."



Google Play Music uses the same "cast" icon that's also used for connecting to Chromecast. Apparently, Play Music's database now includes 22 million songs.

How To Generate Dummy Data in Ruby, Perl and Python

You’re building a web application, and you need some realistic information to shove into it. You need to check that your validation functions work perfectly, and see that your product actually works. The only problem is, you can’t really use real-world data. There are just far too many legal and ethical considerations you need to make. Indeed, in some jurisdictions, there are specific legal obstacles to using real-world data in development environments. Take, for instance, the UK. Here, there’s something called the Data Protection Act, 1998. It’s quite unambiguous with how companies are allowed to handle the data it retains:...

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3 Easy Ways To Stop Email Overload From Hitting Your Inbox

Email has quite a reputation as a productivity killer. Managing email well can help you keep your inbox clean, but wouldn’t it be great if you got less of it to begin with? Methods that help you organize your emails are often designed to work on emails that have already arrived in your inbox. To minimize the amount of time you spend sifting through email, you need to stop it at its source i.e. before it hits your account. The following simple hacks can help ensure that there are fewer incoming messages for you to deal with. Move Your Conversations...

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How To Clean Install Windows 8.1 Update From USB Drive

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Windows 8.1 Update has finally been released via Windows Update to all existing Windows 8.1 users and is a mandatory update. PC users who’re running Windows 8.1 can now get the major Update either via Windows Update or by manually downloading the same. As you likely know, this is a free update to Windows 8.1 […]

4 Websites That Look Official But Will Take Your Money

We tend to be trusting of official-looking websites, but not everyone out there is as honest as we’d like to believe. Even if you’re a scrupulous person, it can be easy to get tricked by an official-looking site. Here are four examples. These four have caught a lot of people off-guard: make sure you’re not one of them! These aren’t “scam” websites (though it’s important to watch out for scams, too), as they do actually state what they offer and, if you’re paying attention, you’ll see that you’re going to pay more than is required for what you’re looking for....

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How To Free Up Disk Space Without Booting Into Windows

Hard drives spend most of their time in the computer they were originally shipped with, but as computers age and user needs change they may eventually be replaced by a better drive, placed in storage, or moved to a new PC. This may, in turn, leave you with a need to free up disk space without booting into the Windows on the computer a drive was originally used with. Taking care of this is easy if you have the correct tools. The Hardware Path Failure of a computer, or corruption of Windows, can be one reason why you need to...

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