Win Launch Brings OS X's Lauchpad for windows

It might not be the fastest way of launching apps but it categorizes and is very easy to use. If you wish to have a mac appearance on your windows the go to the official website of WinLaunch and garb it!!

Once you install WinLaunch, you can assign it to a hot corner, your middle mouse button, the default Shift+Tab keyboard shortcut, and a few other options. No matter how you choose to launch it, once you do, your desktop will fade away to make room for a Launchpad-like grid of applications. Just like Launchpad, you can organize your icons onto different pages, and drop them on top of each other to create folders. Unfortunately, the launcher doesn't auto-populate with all of your applications on first launch, so it'll take a little work to get up and running. Once you do though, it's every bit as fluid and responsive as Apple's version.

The Best Apps and Extensions to Supercharge Firefox's New Tab Page

Firefox includes a couple of options for your new tab page. You can go with a grid of your most commonly visited sites, use the Firefox Start Page that has a Google search bar and quick-links to your history, add-ons, or downloads, or stick with the classic ""about:blank."" If you don't like those options, or you want something a bit more flexible, you do have options that add more features to every new tab. Let's look at some of them.

Firefox's new tab page is fairly customizable on its own. You get commonly visited sites by default, but you can add bookmarks if you prefer and make your own personal speed dialer. The Firefox Start Page is pretty cool too, since you can search right from it, or jump over to Firefox's settings, your downloads, add-ons, browser history, and so on. Still, if you want something more functional than that, and you're tired of just a blank tab, here are some extensions to try.

Use Google Search as an Online Timer

Use Google as an Online Timer

Do you need a simple timer to remind you of upcoming tasks like picking up the laundary, making that phone call to your client or for sticking to the Pomodoro technique. There are good web apps, e.ggtimer.com for example, that let you create countdown timers in the browser quickly but you probably don’t need them anymore.

That’s because you can now setup online timers inside Google itself by entering the timer command in the search box in the following format (the word “set” is optional):

timer for <time> OR set timer for <time>

The <time> can use a combination of hours, minutes and seconds. For instance, you may use search commands like set timer for 20 seconds or timer for 1 hour 2 minutes and the timer will spring into action. When the time has passed, the browser plays a sound.

One more thing. Instead of setting the time in the search command, you can just use the search query “timer” inside Google and then manually set the timer.

This tip is courtesy Lifehacker and DigitalInspiration . And while we on the topic of online timers, you should also check out timer-tab.com – this one lets you set any YouTube video as the notification alarm.

Best RSS Readers a.k.a. Google Reader Alternatives

Google is shutting down Google Reader, the only decent RSS reader which has no jazz or UI elements/tweaks to modify RSS from its core simple function to a fancy app like experience. Not that people hate seeing some good UI app, but kills the reason why RSS was made. But that’s a discussion(rant) for some other time.

There’s a Scientific Calculator inside your Web Browser

You are probably using the Google search box in your browser as an instant calculator but there’s another calculator in your web browser that also works offline. You may use this inbuilt browser calculator for basic Maths calculations or even for solving complex expressions that involve trigonometry and logarithmic functions.

This calculator can be found under Developer Tools that are now a standard feature of all browsers including Chrome, Firefox and IE.

Your browser can perform calculations, including complex ones

How to Use Browser as a Calculator

In Google Chrome, press Ctrl + Shift + J to access the console. The shortcut is Ctrl + Shift + Kfor Firefox while in the case of IE, press F12 and then switch to the Console tab.

You can now write any Maths expression at the command prompt (see GIF above) and get an instant answer. Use the UP & DOWN arrow keys to navigate the command history.

If you using Maths functions, remember to append Math to the function name – like Math.sin or Math.log – as shown below. Here are some more tricks for Chrome Dev Tools.

Math.sqrt(512) + Math.pow(2, 6) 
Math.log(10000, 10) 
Math.floor((Math.random()*100))
Math.sin(45)

How to Find Your Blog's Secret ID Number in Blogger

Every blog hosted at blogger has its own unique ID Number, which presents its identity and makes it different from the other blogs present on a specific blogger account. Most of the time, there is no need to be anxious about these ID numbers, but occasionally it could be useful for everyone to know this number. While installing several third-party services, these numbers would be useful. So in you are looking to figure this out then you have arrived to the right place. In this article, we will show you How to Find Your Blog's Secret ID Number in Blogger.

The first thing you need to do is to login into your Blogger dashboard through your Google Account. After logging in, from the list of your blogs under your account, select any one blog. It depends on you whether you click over its name or open any other area of the same blog.

Now from the posting, setting, layout or template area, you can find your blog's Secrete ID Number if you look at the URL in the address bar of the browser. Towards the end of the address, you would see something like this blogID=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX where the "X's" represents your Blog's ID. For more detailed instructions, check out the following screenshot.

Note: Every blog that you have on your account consists of different ID numbers, so be sure that you are getting the right one. The Number ID consists of 19 digest code, so before you use them make sure that you are copying the right numbers in the correct pattern. 

We hope this article has helped you in learning How to Find Your Blog's Secret ID Number in Blogger. In the coming tutorials ahead, we will be showing you some ways through which you can use this ID Number to install some third-party Plugins for your blog. Keep in mind that, these are the secrete numbers which can only be seen by either Blog authors or administrators. Take extreme precautions while using them. If you have any confusion, try commenting below.

How to Create a Professional Blogger Template using Artisteer

Blogger has a remarkable Template designer that helps you in customizing your themes and templates. The designer tool helps you to change the background, fonts, color etc, but it does not allow you to change its appearance. Often we get emails from users that how we can design a custom Blogger template without learning HTML or CSS coding?  In most cases, people prefer to hire some developers but a person who is new to blogging, perhaps he is a beginner cannot pay thousands of dollars to a professional web developer. Using Artisteer you can create your very-own custom blogger template within few minutes. Today in this article, we will discuss How to Create a Professional Blogger Template using Artisteer.

How to Host CSS or JavaScript Files in Blogger using Google Drive

Hosting CSS and JavaScript files on your Blogger blog has always been a matter of concern for a webmaster. People prefers to add their entire StyleSheet coding in one file, so they can upload it to their hosting and can easily apply it on their website.  Unfortunately, blogger has quite a few limitations that stop you from hosting CSS and JavaScript files. Recently our user sent us an email asking: is there any way to host files on blogger? What are the advantages of hosting CSS (StyleSheet) files?  Luckily, Google Drive provides you the opportunity to host CSS, JavaScript and HTML Files for FREE. In this article, we will show you How to Host CSS Files with Google Drive in Blogger?

Use Dropbox to Test your Website Locally

Whether you are designing a one-page basic HTML site or are developing a slightly more complicated site that uses JavaScript and jQuery functions, you need to thoroughly test the design and functionality before putting the HTML/CSS/JS files on a live web server.

How do you test the files associated with your project?

If you are a professional web designer /developer, you’ve probably set up a local server to test the sites on the computer itself but the workflow is a little more tedious for the rest of us.

You write the code in a local folder, then upload the associated files to a FTP server and finally, you load these online files in a browser for testing – this code-upload-test cycle may have to repeated multiple time until your site works as expected.

Test your Local Website with Dropbox

There is however an easier way as well that should save you some time.

If you can move your local development folder to the Dropbox public folder, you don’t have to worry about uploading files to an FTP server as Dropbox will do that for you.

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As soon as you change code in the local file, the changes get uploaded online to Dropbox servers almost immediately and you can use the “public link” in Dropbox to open and test that file in your web browser. Dropbox can understand relative URLs and hence your associated JS and CSS files will also get picked up without you having to specify the full path.

In other words, you code websites on a local computer but test them online just like the real environment. This technique may however not be used for testing PHP and other non-HTML sites.

How to Monitor your Computer Remotely with Dropbox

There are quite a few software tools that let you access your home or work computer from any another computer simply over the Internet. Some of the these tools even provide mobile apps so you can control your remote desktop using an iPhone or a BlackBerry.

Remote Monitoring, not Remote Access

Now consider a slightly different scenario where you don’t want to remotely access the computer but simply monitor it from another location. For example:

Case 1. You make it a point to lock your workstation every time you leave the office. How do you confirm that no one else is using your computer while you’re at home sleeping.

Case 2. Your kids want to use your computer while you are out shopping. They are pretty young so you really want to know what they are doing on the computer in your absence.

Case 3. You are running some task on your computer and want to track the progress from another computer remotely.

Remote Desktop Monitoring with Dropbox

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The idea behind using Dropbox for remote monitoring is fairly simple.

If you take a screen capture of your desktop screen and place that image in one of the Dropbox folders on your computer, the image will automatically get uploaded to the Dropbox website.

Repeat the screen capture process at regular intervals and you’ll get a time-lapse like recording of your desktop screen that you can view from any Internet connected computer or mobile phone since everything is now on dropbox.com.

Let’s see how we can implement this idea. First, you need to download Screen Grabber – a free screen capture utility that will save the screenshots directly in your Dropbox folder. If you have SnagIt, you can use it instead.

Next we need a mechanism that will capture screenshots at regular intervals. For that, you can use the following Autohotkey script* that runs in the background and will press the hotkey for you at set intervals.

Loop {
   Send,  {SHIFTDOWN}{F10}{SHIFTUP}
   Sleep, 300000
 }

The default hotkey for Screen Grabber is Shift+F10. This script will press that hotkey and then wait for 5 minutes (5x60x1000) in a cycle. As new images get captured, they are simultaneously uploaded online.

Run this utility on any desktop that you want to monitor remotely and you’ll soon have a stream of screenshots in your Dropbox account as shown below. Everything runs quietly in the background so most people won’t notice any activity.

When you lock your workstation, the screen capture process is suspended but it resumes automatically as soon as you log in. You can run this tool on your office desktop and lock the workstation – if you find any screenshots in your Dropbox stream the next day, someone else probably used that machine.