Open Source App Lets You Control Your Phone over SMS

Open Source App Lets You Control Your Phone over SMS:
Security applications are a dime-a-dozen these days. While it normally wouldn’t be noteworthy to have a new entry into the fray, this one is different in one very important way: The developer knows none of your information. AeGis, which comes to us from XDA Recognized Developer Decad3nce, is unlike competing applications in that it does not require a data connection, you are not asked to log in to anything, and you do not need to register and pay a large firm a yearly fee in order to use the below features:

Features:

- Ability to remotely lock your device via SMS

- Ability to remotely enable sound on your device via SMS

- Ability to remotely locate your device via SMS

- Ability to remotely wipe your device via SMS

- Ability to lock application with a password

In what may be the best feature of them all, Decad3nce has chosen to completely open-source the application, giving you the ability to fork and add new features as you see fit. AeGis utilizes the latest in Android’s Holo design principles, and requires Android 4.x.
If you want to check out what could be one of the best new security apps, visit the original thread for more information or you can view the source at Decad3nce’s Github.

How To Fix The Limited Wi-Fi Connectivity Issue On Microsoft Surface

How To Fix The Limited Wi-Fi Connectivity Issue On Microsoft Surface:
After a long development cycle and some cheesy advertisements, both Windows 8 and the Surface RT tablet finally made their way to the consumers on October 26th 2012, apparently to mixed reaction from critics and users alike. Rather than encouraging the UI overhaul, various users have found the latest version of Windows to be schlocky and flawed. According to some recent reports, a number of Surface users (including ourselves) have been facing limited Wi-Fi connectivity issues since day one. The tablet sometimes shows ‘Limited Connectivity’ error in network status, thereby leaving you unable to use the internet unless you reconnect to the Wi-Fi router or access point. Although Microsoft has released an update to combat this issue, a lot of users are still facing the same conundrum. On the bright side, however, the issue can be easily fixed by following a few simple steps.

Disclaimer: Please be advised that the solution provided in this guide requires changing a few core Windows RT files on the Surface tablet, which may result in malfunctioning of the OS if things go wrong. Proceed at your own risk as AddictiveTips won’t be held responsible if your device gets harmed in the process.

To get started, go to the Start Screen by pressing the Win key on the tablet (alternatively, you may press the Win key on your Touch or Type cover). Now open the Search Charm by swiping from the right edge of the screen and type ‘cmd’ (without the quotes) in the search bar. Press and hold the ‘Command Prompt’ app in the search results, swipe down to bring up the app bar at the bottom, and tap the ‘Run as administrator’ button.

This in turn will open the Command Prompt window in the desktop running under administrator privileges. Now enter the following three commands one by one:

netsh int tcp set heuristics disabled

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

netsh int tcp set global rss=enabled

You will see an ‘Ok.’ confirmation after each of the aforementioned commands.
Next, type the following command and press Enter:

netsh int tcp show global

After entering this command, you will see the some output similar to what’s demonstrated in the screenshot below. Verify that all the settings are disabled, except for the few shown below as enabled or having other values.

Now close the command prompt window and reconnect to your internet Wi-Fi router. That’s all, we hope you won’t face the Limited Wi-Fi Connectivity error anymore.
Tried this hack on your Surface? How did the experience go? Don’t forget to let us know in the comments below.
[via Microsoft Answer]
Read How To Fix The Limited Wi-Fi Connectivity Issue On Microsoft Surface by Waqas Ahmed on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Install Popular Audio & Video Codecs On Windows 8

Install Popular Audio & Video Codecs On Windows 8:
Whenever we install a fresh copy of Windows, limited codec support often ruin the initial media playback experience. The limited number of codecs out of the box has always been a major set back in Windows Media Player and apparently, the story hasn’t quite changed in Windows 8 either. Perhaps this is the reason most users avoid using Windows Media Player as their default application to play audio video files. Even if you download your favorite media player off the internet, the problem of missing codec can still occur one way or the other. If you have recently jumped on to the Windows 8 bandwagon and are looking for a way to install all the required codecs to play almost every audio and video format out there, give Windows 8 Codecs a shot. It’s an audio and video codec package for Windows 8 that installs most of the popular codec packs in one go, and the installed codecs work with Windows Media Player, Media Center, and third-party media players.
By default, when you try playing a media file such as MKV using Windows Media Player, the application gives an error about unrecognized extension or unsupported codecs, the latter being the issue most frequently.

Windows 8 Codecs takes care of this nuisance by installing all the major codecs. The downloadable package comes with FFDShow, Lav Filters, Haali Media Splitter, MPEG-2 Decoder (used by Media Player Classic), and VSFilter. The package also installs Media Player Classic along with the codecs.  The app uninstalls all the existing codecs from your machine prior to installing its own codecs to avoid any conflicts. Furthermore, you can mark the codecs that you want to install and unmark the ones you don’t require.

After installing the codecs, Windows Media Player and most third-party applications will be capable of playing all major audio and video file formats including AMR, MPC, DIVX, APE, MKA, EVO, FLV, FLAC, M4B, MKV, XVID, OGG, RWVB, OGM and OGV. We gave Windows Media Player a shot after installing Windows 8 Codecs, and faced no problem whatsoever in playing the supported file types.

Overall, Windows 8 Codecs is a must-have applications for those looking for a flawless media playback experience on their upgraded or new Windows 8 machine. The application works on both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 8.
Download Windows 8 Codecs
Read Install Popular Audio & Video Codecs On Windows 8 by Waqas Ahmed on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Set Wallpaper To Automatically Change By Time, Mouse State Or At Logon

Set Wallpaper To Automatically Change By Time, Mouse State Or At Logon:
Changing your Windows wallpaper helps keep your desktop fresh with a new look every now and then, as keeping the same one for long makes the look rather stagnant. One way to change the wallpaper is to select the image in Windows Explorer and choose the “Set as desktop background” option. Furthermore, Windows already offer you to automatically switch the wallpaper after a specified interval under Personalization options, and we have already covered tools like Kuvva for setting a new wallpaper each day, and Mourao Wallpaper Changer for more control over automatically changing it after an interval. However, if you want a trigger other than time for changing the wallpaper, none of these third party tools or the built-in Windows Personalization option do the job. Today, we bring to you a free Windows application by the name of Wallpaper Change Scheduler that allows you to change the wallpaper using different triggers including weekly, daily, on mouse idle, on mouse move and at logon.

The application has a really simple interface that provides you with bare-bones, user-friendly controls to configure the options. At the top, you get buttons to Add Event, Remove Event, Edit Event and access the app’s Options. You can click the Add Event button to add new triggers for changing the desktop background. In order to create a new event, select the trigger, set the wallpaper style, specify relevant settings for the selected trigger (for instance, time of you want the trigger to be activated daily), browse for the wallpaper’s image, and choose a name for the event. When all settings are done, click the Create button to create the event.

The tool offers several triggers for changing the wallpaper including Weekly, Daily, On mouse idle, On mouse move and At logon. Each trigger comes with its own specific settings.

You can set the Wallpaper Style to Tile, Centre, Stretch, Fit and Fill by selecting the required option from its drop down menu.

You can create multiple events in the same way. Once created, they will be listed in the main interface with their Name, Trigger and Image Path. You can remove or edit an event by choosing it from the list and clicking the relevant button. That’s pretty much all there is to it, but it’s good enough to get the job done. It can work great if for instance you want particular wallpapers to reflect the time of the day, or the day of the month.
One shortcoming of Wallpaper Change Scheduler is that it only lets you set a single wallpaper for one trigger. The ability to add more than one wallpaper for one trigger, for instance to set a new wallpaper from a folder each day would be a welcome addition to the application. Wallpaper change Scheduler works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Download Wallpaper Change Scheduler
Read Set Wallpaper To Automatically Change By Time, Mouse State Or At Logon by Fawad Mir on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Turn Your USB Drive Into A Portable Apps Launcher & Media Manager

Turn Your USB Drive Into A Portable Apps Launcher & Media Manager:
Have you ever wanted to take your favorite Windows apps with you and use them wherever you have an access to any Windows PC ? CodySafe is what you’re looking for! It’s a handy portable applications manager that lets you install portable apps on a USB thumb drive or external portable drive. Both the software itself and the downloaded apps are directly installed to your flash drive. In addition, you can carry you favorite media files with you in its pre-configured and well-organized Music, Pictures, Videos and Documents folders. You may also enable the integrated autorun option for CodySafe to automatically launch itself as soon as you plug in the drive. Likewise, the installed apps can be set to auto-execute similarly as well.

The application is designed to be installed on a USB drive rather than your computer’s hard drive. During installation, you can label the drive by entering your desired name. The app itself is installed under CodySafe directory, while the media and other files go under Documents, and the installed applications can be found in the PortableApps folder on the drive.

Once launched, the application resides in the system tray area and start menu-like interface can be opened by clicking its notification icon. The interface may look outdated by todays standards, but it is easy to both use and configure. The UI gives you quick access to the folders within the drive, the portable apps you have installed to it, and an overview of the used, free and total space on the drive. You can use the stop and eject buttons to exit the application or plug out the USB drive respectively. The installed applications are displayed in the left pane. You can download and install additional portable apps from CodySafe’s own software repository, which contains popular apps like KMPlayer, Teamviewer, Skype, PicPick, Wise Disk Cleaner, and plenty of other useful tools and utilities.

Clicking Options on the main screen gives you access to the settings window. Here, you can change the language, configure a few generic options, assign hotkeys, and manage your existing apps. Furthermore, there’s a Drive Doctor feature that scans the flash drive for any viruses or disk errors, and try to fix them automatically if possible. You can also save your contact information in the drive so that if it gets stolen, whoever finds it can use the information to return the device to you.

Under Applications Manager, you can add or remove portable apps according to your preferences. In addition, you can specify a custom number of applications that you want to auto-execute whenever the drive is plugged into a PC.

The Hot Keys feature can come really handy for keyboard shortcut fans, as it allows you to assign global hotkeys for various program-related actions such as show, hide or exit CodeSafe, eject the drive, open the Control Panel, or run any of the installed applications.

Overall, CodySafe is an excellent application launcher for managing your portable apps and media on the go. It works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Download CodySafe
Read Turn Your USB Drive Into A Portable Apps Launcher & Media Manager by Waqas Ahmed on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Remotely View The Screen Of Another PC On Network & Take Screenshots

Remotely View The Screen Of Another PC On Network & Take Screenshots:
Remote desktop tools allow you to diagnose and manage problems on other computers without having physical access to them. While some of the remote access applications only let you view the screen of another computer, others also let you control it from a remote location, making it easy to get assistance from others when you are in need, or provide the same service to others. Network administrators often need to manage and monitor several computers on the network. If you are running some tasks on one or more servers and you just need to keep an eye on them in order to know if and when an error is encountered, remote viewing access can come real handy, especially if the servers are in another room and it isn’t physically possible to be in front of them as well as your workstation all the time. Today, we are bringing you an application called ScreenView that displays the screen of a computer on one or more computers by multicasting the screen over the network. You can change the view to full screen mode and take screenshots of the remote computer using the ScreenView client application.

ScreenView is a Java based application and does not require any installation, making it fairly easy to use on multiple computers. You can just carry it around on a USB flash drive and copy it to whichever computer you want to remotely access. The application sports a simple, minimalistic interface and provides easy one-click options to set it up.
There are two instances of the program; the Server and the Client. In order to view the screen of one computer on another computer, run the Server on the computer that needs to be monitored and the Client on your primary system from which you will do the monitoring.
The Server’s user interface has three tabs at the top named General, Advanced and Network. In the General tab, just click Send to start sending the current state of your screen over the network.

The Advanced tab lets you change the scaling of the transmitted video and increase or decrease the interval for sending the screen state. The Network tab allows you to specify the quality of your network connection.

To connect to the ScreenView server from your client PC, start the ScreenView Client. First of all, check the port to make sure its same as that of the Server, and click the Receive button to start viewing the desktop of the remote computer. You can change the view to full screen and take screenshots using the corresponding buttons provided by the minimal interface.

The ScreenView Output window can be resized using the scaling options, or just manually by dragging the window edges.

ScreenView works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Download ScreenView
Read Remotely View The Screen Of Another PC On Network & Take Screenshots by Fawad Mir on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Remotely Manage Multiple Android & iOS Devices With Droid Manager

Remotely Manage Multiple Android & iOS Devices With Droid Manager:
If you want to remotely manage a single Android device from your desktop browser over your home network, AirDroid and several similar alternatives can suffice quite adequately for the purpose, but what if you wanted remote control of multiple devices from your computer over Wi-Fi as well as the internet? Enter Droid Manager – a comprehensive mobile management & security app for Android and iOS to remotely define and trigger location-based notes & events (system settings), wipe mobile data, secure sensitive apps, lock device screen, manage your device’s multimedia & other files, push custom URLs to it, track call logs & text messages, check current device settings status & unattended phone notifications, and keep a close tab on multiple devices right from your browser. All in all, Droid Manager could prove to be a very handy utility for individuals as well as small-scale organizations, since it puts you in complete control over remotely accessing and managing several mobile device in just a matter of a few clicks, without having to rely on a dedicated desktop server.

Configuration

In order to access Droid Manager’s features, you must first log in with a Droid Manager account on all the devices as well as the desktop browser. The account will be used by Droid Manager as a master ID, binding all the registered devices – whether Android or iDevices – together. Registration is free, and you can sign up for a new account right from the mobile app itself, or by visiting the Droid Manager website (link provided at the end). The app supports registration through an email address, or your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn ID.

Web App & Browser Extensions

Once you’ve signed in with the master account on all the mobile devices, you’re ready to remotely manage them from the Droid Manager web app. The app’s UI is split into various tabs, each providing instant access to the connected devices as well as the features discussed above. A compact widget at the top lets you view the device name, current battery status, mobile network provider and notifications for missed calls and new SMS messages. In addition, you can toggle the selected device’s Wi-Fi, sound profile and Bluetooth.
Droid Manager browser extensions are available for Chrome and Firefox, and allow instant remote access to your text messages from the browser. You can also push any website URLs from the browser to the mobile devices.
Let’s now take a look at the other remote control and management features offered by the web app for your devices. Note that most of these features are available for Android devices only, while some of them work for iOS devices as well, as we’ll detail below in the sections for these devices.
Location-Based Reminders & Automated System Events Setup: The Locations tab can be used to remotely create location-based reminders on your mobile in the form of custom notes supplemented by brief comments. Moreover, you may use this feature to specify custom rules for automatically triggering various system features – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound profiles & vibration – on your Android device upon leaving or entering a particular user-defined geo-fence on the map. In this regard, you are first required to define the required points of interest on map, complete with their precise geographic coordinates, relevant geo-fences, custom color indicator, and the notification setting itself. You may manually navigate to the desired location on the map, or use the app’s dedicated search bar to instantly look for it.

After the required points have been added, you can start defining your custom rule-based events and notes for each place in terms of both arrival and departure. For instance, you may set your device to silent upon reaching your workplace, set a custom notes-based reminder when in the grocery store, enable Wi-Fi upon reaching your home, activate vibration mode while in transit, or disable Bluetooth when at a certain location.
Applications: From the Applications tab, you can view and search for apps installed on the selected Android device. Moreover, you may temporarily block certain apps, view the trust status of each app, or recommend an app to your Facebook friends. Apps blocked via Droid Manager can be unblocked through the unique unlock code that can be generated from within the web app itself.

Security: The Security tab lets you specify and remotely apply a custom password so that you may protect your Android devices from unauthorized access. You can also remotely lock your device’s screen, or erase all your data on it in case the device gets lost or stolen.

Text Messages: As the name suggests, the Text Messages tab caters to all your SMS viewing and replying needs, right from your desktop browser.
Phone Calls: Lists your incoming, outgoing and missed calls. You’ll also get real-time alerts for new text messages and calls on your desktop toast notifications on your browser, or email.
Stream Messages: A dedicated messenger that allows remote sharing of texts and URLs to select or all connected devices via push notifications.

Local Connection: Perhaps the most feature-rich tab of the entire package, the Local Connection section enables you to remotely browse your Android device’s content from under three main sub-sections namely music, files and pictures. In order to use this feature, the required devices must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network. To secure the remote connection session, you have the option of using a Remote Access Password. All you need to do is navigate on the desktop browser to the URL / port as displayed under the Local Server tab on the Android app, and voila!

You can now play around with your SD card content, batch upload or download files between the computer and the mobile device, preview files, create and extract compressed archives, search for required files, and remotely manage all the stuff as you like.

Android App

The Android app is neatly designed, and is void of any perplexing configurations to keep it simple. Once you log in with your Droid Manager account, you’re greeted by a few tutorial screens followed by the app’s Dashboard UI listing your current location, stream posts and various location-based notes & system events.

Using the dropdown menu at the top, you may jump to the app’s Locations, Stream Messages and Local Server screen. The last of these options has already been discussed in the web app’s Local Connection section.

The Stream Messages option can be used to view, create and push custom messages, whereas the Locations tab operates more or less in the same way as has already been described for the web app.

iOS App

Most of the aforementioned features of Droid Manager are exclusively available to Android users only, whereas iOS users can currently benefit from the app’s location-based notes, reminders and remote content streaming features in a way similar to that described for the Android app above.

Conclusion

While Droid Manager emerges as a nifty location-based reminder and remote message streaming app for iOS, it can be seen as a worthy competitor of AirDroid and other remote device managers & protection services available for Android. In fact the app’s ability to allow remote management of multiple Android & iOS devices over Wi-Fi as well as internet puts it in a league of its own. That said, the app still has plenty of scope for improvement and addition of new features to be cited as the ultimate remote mobile management, task automation and security tool for both Android and iOS
The Droid Manager service is available in the form of three different package plans: Personal, Family and Business. The Personal plan is free forever and allows remote management of just one device at a time. The Family and Business plans, however, allow simultaneously management of multiple devices, but this luxury comes at a certain yet-undisclosed cost. The mobile apps are available for free for both platforms.
Download Droid Manager For Android
Download Droid Manager For iOS
Visit Droid Manager Website
Read Remotely Manage Multiple Android & iOS Devices With Droid Manager by A. Rehman on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Install Asus Supernote on Any ICS or Later Device

Install Asus Supernote on Any ICS or Later Device:
Unlike most other Android device manufacturers, Asus isn’t exactly known for heavily customized interfaces. The company keeps the experience as close to stock Android s possible. That said, the maker has always included several useful apps in its devices that have become the envy of other device users due to their utility and looks. One such app is Supernote, which allows you to easily take and organize rich notes with text, graphics, and freehand drawing.
XDA Senior Member jujuburi shared the APK with us, and it works pretty well on any high-resolution device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich or later. The app really shines on devices with large screens, and could be a bit cumbersome to use on smaller ones. Though as we mentioned, the screen resolution plays an important part here as well. For instance, the app seemed to render perfectly fine on the 1280 x 720 screen of the Galaxy Nexus, despite not being as usable on our Kindle Fire perhaps due to its lower resolution of 1024 x 600. On large-screen, high-resolution tablets and even large phones / phablets, it should work just fine.
So what are you waiting for? Grab the APK from the forum thread, sideload it to your Android device, and start jotting your notes down.

Get More, Much More From Your Nexus 7 with MultiBoot

Get More, Much More From Your Nexus 7 with MultiBoot:
The Nexus 7 is one of the best devices for a few reasons: perfect size, loaded with power, easy to use, and most importantly best bang for your buck. Yes, it has a few quirks, which many of us are annoyed at like the lack of an SD card port (devs are working on this as we speak), but overall this is a great device for people getting started on Android, as well as for those who are more seasoned in the field of Android development. So, how could you make something this good even better? XDA Recognized Developer Tasssadar can answer this question with his latest creation: Multi-Boot for the Nexus 7.
You are likely familiar with the concept of dual booting or multiple booting different operating systems on your devices or your computer. However, more often than not, doing this comes at a price where you have to modify your bootloader, erase all your data, or a slew of other unsavory things that most people outside of our little world would rather not do. This tool saves you from all of the above, as it does not touch the /system partition on your device, nor does it wipe your data. That said, there is an inherent risk of wiping your data or even damaging your device, as it does mess with the /data partition and boot sector. However, if everything works the way it should, your system and data should be safe. So, what can you run with this? Pretty much anything that you want: other versions of Android (as long as the ROM is made for the device, of course), different versions of Linux such as Ubuntu, and more.
Currently, the only caveat is that the ROMs will need to run from the internal storage, but the dev is hard at work trying to get around that issue to enable booting the images through USB.. Oh, and for those of you with 3G versions, you are covered as well. Please take this for a spin and breath new life into this small powerhouse.

MultiROM is multi-boot solutiom for Nexus 7. It can boot android ROM while keeping the one in internal memory intact or boot Ubuntu without formating the whole device. For now, ROM can be only in internal memory of the device, but booting from USB is planned, I am trying to get support for kexec into Ubuntu, which is essential for this.

You can find more information in the original thread.
Want something published in the Portal? Contact any News Writer.
[Thanks Diamondback for the tip!]

Google Apps Developer Blog: Announcing Google Drive Site Publishing

Google Apps Developer Blog: Announcing Google Drive Site Publishing: Would you like to programmatically publish some web content? Or let your users do so in the context of your Drive app? This is possible n...

PPSSPP: A New Free and Open Source PSP Emulator for Android

PPSSPP: A New Free and Open Source PSP Emulator for Android:
Who doesn’t like video game emulators? Considering how powerful our computers and mobile phones have become, emulators can often run on them nearly as well as the original devices.
We have featured various game emulators here in the past, and the latest one we’re bringing you today is PPSSPP. The app is a free and open source emulator of Sony’s popular PSP (PlayStation Portable) handheld gaming console for Android devices. Before we get into more details, here is a video of PPSSPP in action:

Spotted online and shared with us on XDA by Senior Member bubblegumballoon, PPSSPP is a new project and currently work in progress. Based on the details available on its website and user response on the forum thread, not all PSP games work. However, the ones that do, work flawlessly. The developers are working on it actively to add support for more games.
If you’re into mobile gaming and would like to give PPSSPP a shot, join the discussion at the forum thread for more details or visit the PPSSPP website for its download link and the current game and device compatibility list.

Ubuntu Nexus 7 Desktop Installer Available

Ubuntu Nexus 7 Desktop Installer Available:
The wonder of being part of a community like XDA is that it doesn’t take long before someone catches an inspiration and starts finding ways to put different flavors of an OS on their device—or even a different OS entirely. One need only look at the HTC HD2 to find the perfect example of that inspiration with Windows Mobile 6.5, Android, Ubuntu and Meego all making an appearance on what was arguably one of HTC’s most notable devices. Every time a new, more powerful device comes along, it isn’t long before threads talking about how to load Ubuntu on that device start popping up. Most of the time it is in the form of such methods as chroot, but occasionally you’ll find someone like XDA Recognized Developer lilstevie porting full-blown Ubuntu to devices like the ASUS Transformer TF101.
A while back, Ubuntu informed the tech world that they would be bringing the full Ubuntu experience to dual-core Android phones, but the “how” was shrouded in marketing-speak for “we’ll leave it up to the carriers to figure out how to deploy it.” With the release of the Google Nexus 7, the first Nexus tablet, came the natural interest to get Ubuntu loaded onto this device and Canonical rose to the occasion.
Last week, Ubuntu released the Ubuntu Nexus 7 Desktop Installer, a one-click process for installing Ubuntu 12.10 onto the Nexus 7. While it is only a developer preview and not a final release, it has been reported that the process works really well and is relatively stable. Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu, was quoted on OMG! Ubuntu as saying:

“We’ve said that the driver of Unity was to build an experience that spans phones, tablets, desktops and tv. I think we can do that by 14.04.
So in 13.04 we’re focused on tuning the performance of the base system in mobile settings - memory footprint, boot performance, battery life, etc.
We’ve ported Ubuntu to the nexus 7 (it’s just the desktop) and will all be focused on that for 13.04.”

So if you’re interested in taking the plunge, feel free to visit the installation guide and the general discussion thread.