Thursday, June 6, 2013
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Say Goodbye to Custom “Stock” Roms and Hello to Xposed Framework
Say Goodbye to Custom “Stock” Roms and Hello to Xposed Framework: 
Every so often, an OEM will do things right. Well, nearly right anyway—right enough at least for their stock ROMS to only need some minor tweaks before they are almost perfect. More often than not though, these tweaks are things that can be tricky to implement for the average user—a user who will often find himself looking to install a custom ROM that is pretty close to stock with these desired tweaks added in. Usually that means downloading a pretty large file and then following the obligatory backup/flash/restore process that many of us now have down to a fine art. It shouldn’t have to be this way though, and luckily it isn’t. You just might not know it yet.
You may or may not have heard of the Xposed Framework, the brainchild of XDA Recognized Developer rovo89. If you’re already familiar with this particular mod, there’s really no need for me to tell you how awesome it is. You’re excused and can go play outside. If you aren’t already familiar with the framework, take a seat and listen up. While the Xposed Framework certainly isn’t a new thing, it doesn’t get nearly as much recognition as it deserves, and it’s time to do something about that.
According to the developer, Xposed works as follows:
Installation is incredibly quick and painless, considering the scope of this utility. Simply grab the Xposed Installer from the forum thread and sideload to your device, open up the app once it’s installed and click on “Install/Update,” reboot the device, and you’re good to go. No seriously, it’s that simple.
Installing each individual module is as easy as sideloading the APK, installing, activating it via the Xposed application and rebooting. Some mods will offer a user interface depending on how much functionality they are capable of, others just have one specific purpose and need no attention at all.
A perfect example is Smart Alarm Icon, created by XDA Forum Member Mantelinho. This mod will configure the alarm icon in your status bar to only be displayed at a predetermined period before the alarm is due to sound. Let’s say you have your alarm set Monday through Friday. You can leave the alarm set all week but won’t have to see that little clock shaped reminder of Monday morning hanging around in your status bar over the weekend.
There a multitude of mods out there for various purposes, and you can bet that we’ll be highlighting as many as we can in the future. In the meantime, you can check out a repository for various modifications that was put together by Developer Admin pulser_g2. There is also a development tutorial aimed at getting people to create their own modules and making this the single most powerful tool for customisation there is.
Just when you thought this whole thing couldn’t possibly get any more awesome, it’s all open source. Be sure to check out the original forum thread on the Xposed Framework for more information.
Class dismissed.
Every so often, an OEM will do things right. Well, nearly right anyway—right enough at least for their stock ROMS to only need some minor tweaks before they are almost perfect. More often than not though, these tweaks are things that can be tricky to implement for the average user—a user who will often find himself looking to install a custom ROM that is pretty close to stock with these desired tweaks added in. Usually that means downloading a pretty large file and then following the obligatory backup/flash/restore process that many of us now have down to a fine art. It shouldn’t have to be this way though, and luckily it isn’t. You just might not know it yet.You may or may not have heard of the Xposed Framework, the brainchild of XDA Recognized Developer rovo89. If you’re already familiar with this particular mod, there’s really no need for me to tell you how awesome it is. You’re excused and can go play outside. If you aren’t already familiar with the framework, take a seat and listen up. While the Xposed Framework certainly isn’t a new thing, it doesn’t get nearly as much recognition as it deserves, and it’s time to do something about that.
According to the developer, Xposed works as follows:
“Some technical details:What that means is that modifications (known as Xposed modules) can be made to any app or element of the OS itself by simply coding the desired change, packing it into its own APK, and installing to the device. The Xposed Framework takes care making sure it gets to where it needs to go and stays there. This eliminates the need to decompile the specific item you’re modifying or creating different versions for different ROMs and devices. There may be a need to alter an Xposed module after a major change in Android itself, for example 4.1 to 4.2, but let’s face it: That’s a fairly infrequent occurrence. No files on the device itself are modified, and this means that in the event something does go wrong, returning the device to a stable state is no more complicated than flashing a zip to disable the framework. That’s right, no more lengthy and storage consuming nandroid backup process every time something goes wrong.
I extended the /system/bin/app_process executable to load a JAR file on startup. The classes of this file will sit in every process (including the one for system services) and can act with their powers. And even more: I have implemented something that allows developers to replace any method in any class (may it be in the framework, systemui or a custom app). This makes Xposed very powerful. You can change parameters for the method call, modify the return value or skip the call to the method completely – it’s all up to you! Also replacing or adding resources is easy.”
Installation is incredibly quick and painless, considering the scope of this utility. Simply grab the Xposed Installer from the forum thread and sideload to your device, open up the app once it’s installed and click on “Install/Update,” reboot the device, and you’re good to go. No seriously, it’s that simple.
Installing each individual module is as easy as sideloading the APK, installing, activating it via the Xposed application and rebooting. Some mods will offer a user interface depending on how much functionality they are capable of, others just have one specific purpose and need no attention at all.
So what kind of modifications are we talking about here? Well, if you can think of tweak then chances are it can be packed into an Xposed module. Think of the added little extras that make your favourite custom ROM so appealing. Those are the sort of things that Xposed was created for.
A perfect example is Smart Alarm Icon, created by XDA Forum Member Mantelinho. This mod will configure the alarm icon in your status bar to only be displayed at a predetermined period before the alarm is due to sound. Let’s say you have your alarm set Monday through Friday. You can leave the alarm set all week but won’t have to see that little clock shaped reminder of Monday morning hanging around in your status bar over the weekend.
There a multitude of mods out there for various purposes, and you can bet that we’ll be highlighting as many as we can in the future. In the meantime, you can check out a repository for various modifications that was put together by Developer Admin pulser_g2. There is also a development tutorial aimed at getting people to create their own modules and making this the single most powerful tool for customisation there is.
Just when you thought this whole thing couldn’t possibly get any more awesome, it’s all open source. Be sure to check out the original forum thread on the Xposed Framework for more information.
Class dismissed.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
What Is TWRP & How To Install & Use It On Android Devices [Guide]
What Is TWRP & How To Install & Use It On Android Devices [Guide]:
Till just over a year back, ClockworkMod (aka CWM) was the go-to custom recovery for pretty much every mainstream Android device. Things have changed a lot since, with a newer player entering the game and gaining a lot of critical acclaim, as well as a huge user base. TeamWin Recovery Project – or TWRP for short – is a fully touch-based custom recovery that was initially developed for Nexus devices, but has since been made available for countless other smartphones and tablets as well, in form of both official and third-party builds. Just like we took you through a very detailed tour of ClockworkMod recovery and its features, we’re going to guide you through all the features of TWRP right after the jump.
In case you aren’t familiar with the concept of a custom Android recovery, we suggest you check out our ClockworkMod recovery guide (linked above) and go through the ‘About Android Recovery’ section. That said, let’s take a closer look at TWRP.
The first thing you’ll probably notice about TWRP is its GUI that looks impressively modern when it comes to a recovery environment, especially compared to that offered by ClockworkMod. You get the same basic set of features that you’d expect from any modern and full-featured custom Android recovery, all laid out in a very organized manner with large, touch-friendly buttons that make using it a breeze. Furthermore, the tablet variants are actually tablet-optimized. Here, take a look for yourself:
Installing a custom recovery on Android
The log is normally shown automatically while any recovery operation is taking place, but goes into background when the operation is complete. By using the Log button, you can bring it up again if you missed out on anything, or needed to look up some info for troubleshooting purposes.
Upon hitting Install, you’re presented with the files and folders on your phone’s storage, from which you can select the file you want to flash. With the file selected, you can either swipe the slider to confirm and start flashing the selected file, or hit the ‘Add More Zips’ button to queue up more files for flashing one after the other in a batch – a feature we haven’t come across in any other custom recovery. It will present you with a file selection screen just like the first one, letting you add up to 10 files to the flashing queue before flashing them all in the selected order. You can also clear the queue any time by tapping the ‘Clear Zip Queue’ button to start file selection from scratch.
Once the flashing process is complete, TWRP gives you some handy options for quick access to certain tasks that many users would need to perform after flashing, eliminating the extra steps required to pick them from their individual sections. These include wiping cache and dalvik cache, and rebooting the system, in addition to a Home shortcut.
If you would rather want to wipe EVERYTHING including the aforementioned data, tap ‘Format Data’. This will wipe all your apps, backups, downloads, pictures, videos and media, and will also remove encryption on your internal storage, if you have applied it, essentially leaving nothing but the operating system itself on the device, in a complete factory state.
If you want to be more specific about the partitions you want to wipe, hit ‘Advanced Wipe’ instead. You can then select one or more common partitions to wipe specifically, leaving the rest untouched. The partitions available for wiping include system (where your operating system is stored), data, cache, Dalvik cache, and usb-otg in case of our Nexus 4, but may (or may not) include other partitions as well. Just remember – if you are unsure of whether to wipe a partition or not, NEVER touch it, especially if it’s the system partition. If you are following instructions provided somewhere, wipe only the partitions that the instructions clearly specify to wipe, and leave the rest untouched. Otherwise, you might be stuck with a device with no operating system installed, or lose all your data stored on the device.
You are also shown your available storage space, and you can calculate if it’s enough for the backup, based on the sum of the individual partition sizes, that are shown with each partition.
Do remember that restoring a backup will essentially wipe the current state of your phone, meaning any changes made after that backup will be lost. However, your internal or SD card storage will remain untouched, and any files that you may have added there after the last backup will still be there.
The Time Zone option lets you specify your own time zone for the time display in recovery mode, by choosing it from a list of all global time zones, and optionally specifying any offset if required.
To keep things secure, TWRP also comes with a lock screen that activates automatically after a predefined screen timeout period, and can be unlocked with a swipe similar to the unlock gesture on the iPhone, as you can see in the screenshot above. This option can be toggled from the Screen section.
The ADB Sideload mode is also accessible from here, which essentially allows you to put your phone into a mode where files can be flashed to it from a computer using the ADB sideload command. This mode shouldn’t generally be required by anyone who doesn’t already know how it works, and those unfamiliar with it don’t really need to worry about it. For those who are going to use it, the Wipe Cache and Wipe Dalvik Cache options can come handy to ensure that both these cache partitions are wiped after the ADB sideloading process completes.
There are two more options here – Terminal Command and File Manager. These (especially the File Manager) deserve a section of their own, so let’s now take a look at them.
Once a file or folder has been selected, you can then copy or move it to another location, set its permissions to rw-r—r– (755) by using the ‘chmod 755’ button, or to any other permissions you want by using the ‘chmod’ button, delete the item, or rename it. These options can come incredibly handy when attempting to fix things from recovery in case of any issues that have made the phone inaccessible in normal Android mode. However, use these only when you are sure of what you are doing, and don’t mess around with any files that you don’t know much about, or else you might end up harming your OS.
TWRP has replaced ClockworkMod on all our devices here at AddictiveTips, and we have no hesitation in recommending it to any Android user looking for a custom recovery for their device.
Visit TWRP Website
Read What Is TWRP & How To Install & Use It On Android Devices [Guide] by Haroon Q Raja on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter
Till just over a year back, ClockworkMod (aka CWM) was the go-to custom recovery for pretty much every mainstream Android device. Things have changed a lot since, with a newer player entering the game and gaining a lot of critical acclaim, as well as a huge user base. TeamWin Recovery Project – or TWRP for short – is a fully touch-based custom recovery that was initially developed for Nexus devices, but has since been made available for countless other smartphones and tablets as well, in form of both official and third-party builds. Just like we took you through a very detailed tour of ClockworkMod recovery and its features, we’re going to guide you through all the features of TWRP right after the jump.
In case you aren’t familiar with the concept of a custom Android recovery, we suggest you check out our ClockworkMod recovery guide (linked above) and go through the ‘About Android Recovery’ section. That said, let’s take a closer look at TWRP.
The first thing you’ll probably notice about TWRP is its GUI that looks impressively modern when it comes to a recovery environment, especially compared to that offered by ClockworkMod. You get the same basic set of features that you’d expect from any modern and full-featured custom Android recovery, all laid out in a very organized manner with large, touch-friendly buttons that make using it a breeze. Furthermore, the tablet variants are actually tablet-optimized. Here, take a look for yourself:
Installation
Installing TWRP is super-simple and if you’ve previously installed a custom recovery, you shouldn’t have any trouble doing it. Though for those who haven’t had any prior experience with custom recovery installation, we have you covered. Just head over to the guide linked below and follow the GooManager method for rooted devices or the fastboot method (for both unrooted and rooted devices with an unlocked bootloader) to get TWRP up and running on your device in no time. If neither of these methods work for you, the flash_image method should come handy, though it requires root access.Installing a custom recovery on Android
Features
TWRP gives you access to all the features you would expect from any custom recovery, and then some. Let’s take a look at them in detail.Interface
The interface of TWRP comprises of large buttons that make it easy to spot the feature you require at a quick glance and select it with a quick tap. You’ll also find soft buttons for Home and Back here, along with one for the log view that shows progress of all the operations you’ve performed in recovery. The log is normally shown automatically while any recovery operation is taking place, but goes into background when the operation is complete. By using the Log button, you can bring it up again if you missed out on anything, or needed to look up some info for troubleshooting purposes.
Install
As the name suggests, the Install option lets you install any recovery-flashable zip file to your device. This can be a ROM, a kernel, a mod, a theme, a system app – pretty much anything that’s available in the recovery-flashable zip file format. Upon hitting Install, you’re presented with the files and folders on your phone’s storage, from which you can select the file you want to flash. With the file selected, you can either swipe the slider to confirm and start flashing the selected file, or hit the ‘Add More Zips’ button to queue up more files for flashing one after the other in a batch – a feature we haven’t come across in any other custom recovery. It will present you with a file selection screen just like the first one, letting you add up to 10 files to the flashing queue before flashing them all in the selected order. You can also clear the queue any time by tapping the ‘Clear Zip Queue’ button to start file selection from scratch.
Once the flashing process is complete, TWRP gives you some handy options for quick access to certain tasks that many users would need to perform after flashing, eliminating the extra steps required to pick them from their individual sections. These include wiping cache and dalvik cache, and rebooting the system, in addition to a Home shortcut.
Wipe
This section is dedicated to wiping all standard partitions on your Android device. By default, TWRP offers you to perform a full factory reset upon hitting Wipe, since it’s the most common form of wipe operation that most users need in recovery. This will wipe all your user data from the phone, including your installed apps, cache, and dalvik cache. This will not effect the internal or SD card storage area of your phone, meaning your documents, downloads, pictures, music, videos and other files will stay safe. If you would rather want to wipe EVERYTHING including the aforementioned data, tap ‘Format Data’. This will wipe all your apps, backups, downloads, pictures, videos and media, and will also remove encryption on your internal storage, if you have applied it, essentially leaving nothing but the operating system itself on the device, in a complete factory state.
If you want to be more specific about the partitions you want to wipe, hit ‘Advanced Wipe’ instead. You can then select one or more common partitions to wipe specifically, leaving the rest untouched. The partitions available for wiping include system (where your operating system is stored), data, cache, Dalvik cache, and usb-otg in case of our Nexus 4, but may (or may not) include other partitions as well. Just remember – if you are unsure of whether to wipe a partition or not, NEVER touch it, especially if it’s the system partition. If you are following instructions provided somewhere, wipe only the partitions that the instructions clearly specify to wipe, and leave the rest untouched. Otherwise, you might be stuck with a device with no operating system installed, or lose all your data stored on the device.
Backup
A timely backup can save you from a lot of hassle later on in case of any data loss due to a faulty installation or an operation performed by mistake in recovery mode. That’s why all custom recoveries for Android come with a backup feature (also called NANDROID backup). TWRP’s backup section lets you take a backup of the current state of your phone, allowing you to select the partitions you want to be included in the backup, and even letting you give the backup a custom name on the go. You are also shown your available storage space, and you can calculate if it’s enough for the backup, based on the sum of the individual partition sizes, that are shown with each partition.
Restore
This section lets you restore your phone to the state of any previously taken backup. Simply select the backup that you want to restore, optionally choose the specific partitions that you want to restore, and swipe the slider to begin the restore process. Do remember that restoring a backup will essentially wipe the current state of your phone, meaning any changes made after that backup will be lost. However, your internal or SD card storage will remain untouched, and any files that you may have added there after the last backup will still be there.
Mount
Most casual users will never really need this section, but for power users, this can be immensely useful. Here, you can mount or unmount several key partitions of your device, in order to access them over ADB (or certain areas of the recovery, as we’ll see later.) You can also see the amount of free internal storage available on your device here.Settings
TWRP lets you tweak a few recovery-specific settings, such as toggling signature verification for the zip files you flash, using the rm -rf command for wiping instead of the format command, wherever applicable, skipping MD5 generation during backup, enabling MD5 verification of backup files, using military-style time for the clock display, and a simulation mode in which you can test out recovery operations without actually performing them, which is super-useful for those creating custom TWRP themes, in testing them out to ensure they apply properly to all areas of the recovery. The Time Zone option lets you specify your own time zone for the time display in recovery mode, by choosing it from a list of all global time zones, and optionally specifying any offset if required.
To keep things secure, TWRP also comes with a lock screen that activates automatically after a predefined screen timeout period, and can be unlocked with a swipe similar to the unlock gesture on the iPhone, as you can see in the screenshot above. This option can be toggled from the Screen section.
Advanced
In the Advanced section, you’ll find some further features that many users might not require. You can copy the recovery’s log to SD card for accessing it later, which can be useful for debugging purposes. You can also fix file permissions, which can help if things aren’t working properly due to improperly set permissions for important files. There’s also a Reload Theme option that is useful for those developing a custom theme for TWRP. The ADB Sideload mode is also accessible from here, which essentially allows you to put your phone into a mode where files can be flashed to it from a computer using the ADB sideload command. This mode shouldn’t generally be required by anyone who doesn’t already know how it works, and those unfamiliar with it don’t really need to worry about it. For those who are going to use it, the Wipe Cache and Wipe Dalvik Cache options can come handy to ensure that both these cache partitions are wiped after the ADB sideloading process completes.
There are two more options here – Terminal Command and File Manager. These (especially the File Manager) deserve a section of their own, so let’s now take a look at them.
File Manager
Not many custom recoveries come with a built-in file manager, but TWRP has taken things one step further by adding one to the mix. Once you launch it from the Advanced menu, you are shown the file or folder selection screen. Simply navigate to the file or folder you want to manage, and hit the ‘Select’ button. For conveniently locating the required file or folder, you can use the sorting options. Once a file or folder has been selected, you can then copy or move it to another location, set its permissions to rw-r—r– (755) by using the ‘chmod 755’ button, or to any other permissions you want by using the ‘chmod’ button, delete the item, or rename it. These options can come incredibly handy when attempting to fix things from recovery in case of any issues that have made the phone inaccessible in normal Android mode. However, use these only when you are sure of what you are doing, and don’t mess around with any files that you don’t know much about, or else you might end up harming your OS.
Terminal Command
The Terminal Command mode found in the Advanced menu lets you run a batch file that contains Terminal commands that you want to execute. These files usually have a .sh extension, and if you are unsure about this mode, just let it be, as you won’t exactly need it in that case. For those advanced users who do need to run such a file, TWRP offers the same file selection interface in this section that’s featured in the other parts of the recovery, as we’ve seen above. Simply select the file and you’ll be able to run it right from recovery.Reboot
This menu provides you with handy options of rebooting your device directly into specific modes right from recovery. The options available include System (normal Android mode), Recovery, and Bootloader (fastboot mode). In addition, you can also directly power your device off from here.Final Words
TWRP is nothing short of a breakthrough when it comes to Android recoveries. It provides the most impressive user interface we’ve seen in recovery mode, making it a very easy-to-navigate GUI – a major jump from the traditional menu-based boring and complicated recovery interface found in most other recoveries including ClockworkMod. And the interface is just the icing on the cake; the several handy features offered by TWRP that are nowhere to be found in other custom recoveries make it THE best custom recovery currently available for Android, period! It also allows users to theme it to their liking by editing an XML file, and fully conforms to the OpenRecovery standard for its recovery operations, rather than going for its own non-standard ways. This standards-compliance makes it compatible with the excellent GooManager app for scheduling flashing of files without leaving the Android environment.TWRP has replaced ClockworkMod on all our devices here at AddictiveTips, and we have no hesitation in recommending it to any Android user looking for a custom recovery for their device.
Visit TWRP Website
Read What Is TWRP & How To Install & Use It On Android Devices [Guide] by Haroon Q Raja on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Monday, April 1, 2013
RecordMyScreen Is A Free Alternative To Display Recorder For iPhone
RecordMyScreen Is A Free Alternative To Display Recorder For iPhone:
With the passage of time, it becomes impossible for any popular iOS app to maintain its monopoly in the App Store. Sooner or later, there are bound to be some competitors out there, trying to outdo the older apps in terms of functionality and interface. It might have taken a long time, but the Display Recorder app finally has a worthy alternative. For a brief period of time, Ryan Petrich’s screen recording app did have a clone in the App Store, but Apple pulled it pretty quickly. Now, however, RecordMyScreen has been released in the Cydia store, and it is anything but a clone of Display Recorder. The app records your iPhone’s screen for as long as you want, and uses your device’s microphone to provide audio in a separate file. Both the video and audio files can then be exported to the camera roll or other compatible apps installed in your device from within RecordMyScreen.
RecordMyScreen is a new release and does not come with a lot of options yet. Using the app is really simple, as it’s main screen has just two buttons: ‘Record’ and ‘Stop’. Unlike Display Recorder, you can’t configure the app to start recording using a gesture, so for now, all the videos shot using RecordMyScreen will have to start with a shot of the app’s home screen. Before you get down to business though, it’s better to check if there is any need to make changes to the app’s settings. It is possible to capture the video in native iOS resolution or half of that. When it comes to orientation, all four combinations that are available in iOS are supported by RecordMyScreen. For audio, channels and sample rate can be selected.
While recording your screen outside the app, there is an omnipresent, pulsating red bar at the top of the screen. Unfortunately, this bar shows up in all the captures, and there is no way of disabling it. Having said that, the bar is invisible in full screen apps, so this might make the problem less extreme for most users.
RecordMyScreen captures audio via the microphone of your device, but the developer has promised to add support for system audio in the future. The audio and video files can be accessed from the ‘Recordings’ section of the app, and you can export them both by hitting the blue arrow icon next to their names. The video is captured in MP4 format, while the audio is in CAF.
Display Recorder might be more feature-rich when pitted against this new release, but you have to bear in mind the price difference between the two. DR costs $4.99, while RecordMyScreen is a free and open-source app. If you have a developer account, you can run the app on non-jailbroken devices, but ordinary users need access to the Cydia store if they want to create screencasts for free. RecordMyScreen is available in the BigBoss repo, and works with iOS 5 or later firmware versions.
Read RecordMyScreen Is A Free Alternative To Display Recorder For iPhone by Hamza Khalid on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter
With the passage of time, it becomes impossible for any popular iOS app to maintain its monopoly in the App Store. Sooner or later, there are bound to be some competitors out there, trying to outdo the older apps in terms of functionality and interface. It might have taken a long time, but the Display Recorder app finally has a worthy alternative. For a brief period of time, Ryan Petrich’s screen recording app did have a clone in the App Store, but Apple pulled it pretty quickly. Now, however, RecordMyScreen has been released in the Cydia store, and it is anything but a clone of Display Recorder. The app records your iPhone’s screen for as long as you want, and uses your device’s microphone to provide audio in a separate file. Both the video and audio files can then be exported to the camera roll or other compatible apps installed in your device from within RecordMyScreen.
RecordMyScreen is a new release and does not come with a lot of options yet. Using the app is really simple, as it’s main screen has just two buttons: ‘Record’ and ‘Stop’. Unlike Display Recorder, you can’t configure the app to start recording using a gesture, so for now, all the videos shot using RecordMyScreen will have to start with a shot of the app’s home screen. Before you get down to business though, it’s better to check if there is any need to make changes to the app’s settings. It is possible to capture the video in native iOS resolution or half of that. When it comes to orientation, all four combinations that are available in iOS are supported by RecordMyScreen. For audio, channels and sample rate can be selected.
While recording your screen outside the app, there is an omnipresent, pulsating red bar at the top of the screen. Unfortunately, this bar shows up in all the captures, and there is no way of disabling it. Having said that, the bar is invisible in full screen apps, so this might make the problem less extreme for most users.
RecordMyScreen captures audio via the microphone of your device, but the developer has promised to add support for system audio in the future. The audio and video files can be accessed from the ‘Recordings’ section of the app, and you can export them both by hitting the blue arrow icon next to their names. The video is captured in MP4 format, while the audio is in CAF.
Display Recorder might be more feature-rich when pitted against this new release, but you have to bear in mind the price difference between the two. DR costs $4.99, while RecordMyScreen is a free and open-source app. If you have a developer account, you can run the app on non-jailbroken devices, but ordinary users need access to the Cydia store if they want to create screencasts for free. RecordMyScreen is available in the BigBoss repo, and works with iOS 5 or later firmware versions.
Read RecordMyScreen Is A Free Alternative To Display Recorder For iPhone by Hamza Khalid on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Create A Personal Dashboard & Sync It Across All Your Windows 8 & RT Devices With Qool
Create A Personal Dashboard & Sync It Across All Your Windows 8 & RT Devices With Qool:
When was the last time you saw something and said “cool”? Can’t recall? Well, today you just might, when you check out Qool – clever name, no? Qool is an app for Windows 8 RT that can boost your productivity in a number of ways. The app lets you create your own fully customizable dashboard, on which you can paste sticky notes regarding to-dos and important events, graphical charts related to an important business presentation, images and videos, and various files of other types. What’s even more impressive is that everything you add to your dashboard automatically gets synchronized across all your Windows 8 and RT devices via your Microsoft account, which can be really useful if you have let’s say, a Windows 8 PC and a Windows RT tablet, or a Windows 8 PC at work and one at home.
The elegant interface of Qool is worth commending from top to bottom. Upon launch, you can pick your dashboard ‘draw’ (the developer’s name for each canvas of the app for you to work on) from a host of custom designs, where each design boasts its own format and purpose. You can either pick a clean dashboard to keep things simple and minimal, or choose among other patterns like planning your week, organizing your priorities, creating a to-do list , business model canvas etc. You can also change to a different draw at anytime later on.
The app also gets you acquainted with how to use Qool on a touchscreen-based Windows RT device. For instance you can double tap to create a tile, use the app bar to navigate other elements, and so on.
Even if you skip all the how-to instructions, the usage is dead simple. What you basically have to do is double click or double tap anywhere on the dashboard to create a new tile. The tile lets you jot down anything you want, be it a sticky note, or a reminder to pick up your spouse from the airport. You can also customize the color of the tiles on the fly, and use the rounded arrow buttons near any tile to increase or decrease its size. Since the dashboard allows to keep things organized, you can easily move the tiles around by dragging them wherever you want. Likewise, any uploaded files, images or videos can also be moved around.
If you want to quickly manage the added tiles on dashboard, hit Organize from the app bar and you will presented with a few different ways to reorganize them like Light, Dynamic, Structured, and Stair.
Speaking of the app bar, you can do a few other things from here as well. For example, along with changing the color or organizing things a bit, you can use mark a task as completed using the Score button, pin a tile to the Start Screen, or simply remove it from the Dashboard.
If you bring up the app bar without first selecting a tile, you’ll be presented with a separate set of controls including Upload file, Audio Record, Video Record, Take Picture, Clean, Select All, and Dashboard – the last of which allows you to change the draw and the background of your dashboard.
The app is available for free at Windows Store and works on Windows 8 and Windows RT.
Download Qool
Read Create A Personal Dashboard & Sync It Across All Your Windows 8 & RT Devices With Qool by Waqas Ahmed on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter
When was the last time you saw something and said “cool”? Can’t recall? Well, today you just might, when you check out Qool – clever name, no? Qool is an app for Windows 8 RT that can boost your productivity in a number of ways. The app lets you create your own fully customizable dashboard, on which you can paste sticky notes regarding to-dos and important events, graphical charts related to an important business presentation, images and videos, and various files of other types. What’s even more impressive is that everything you add to your dashboard automatically gets synchronized across all your Windows 8 and RT devices via your Microsoft account, which can be really useful if you have let’s say, a Windows 8 PC and a Windows RT tablet, or a Windows 8 PC at work and one at home.
The elegant interface of Qool is worth commending from top to bottom. Upon launch, you can pick your dashboard ‘draw’ (the developer’s name for each canvas of the app for you to work on) from a host of custom designs, where each design boasts its own format and purpose. You can either pick a clean dashboard to keep things simple and minimal, or choose among other patterns like planning your week, organizing your priorities, creating a to-do list , business model canvas etc. You can also change to a different draw at anytime later on.
The app also gets you acquainted with how to use Qool on a touchscreen-based Windows RT device. For instance you can double tap to create a tile, use the app bar to navigate other elements, and so on.
Even if you skip all the how-to instructions, the usage is dead simple. What you basically have to do is double click or double tap anywhere on the dashboard to create a new tile. The tile lets you jot down anything you want, be it a sticky note, or a reminder to pick up your spouse from the airport. You can also customize the color of the tiles on the fly, and use the rounded arrow buttons near any tile to increase or decrease its size. Since the dashboard allows to keep things organized, you can easily move the tiles around by dragging them wherever you want. Likewise, any uploaded files, images or videos can also be moved around.
If you want to quickly manage the added tiles on dashboard, hit Organize from the app bar and you will presented with a few different ways to reorganize them like Light, Dynamic, Structured, and Stair.
Speaking of the app bar, you can do a few other things from here as well. For example, along with changing the color or organizing things a bit, you can use mark a task as completed using the Score button, pin a tile to the Start Screen, or simply remove it from the Dashboard.
If you bring up the app bar without first selecting a tile, you’ll be presented with a separate set of controls including Upload file, Audio Record, Video Record, Take Picture, Clean, Select All, and Dashboard – the last of which allows you to change the draw and the background of your dashboard.
The app is available for free at Windows Store and works on Windows 8 and Windows RT.
Download Qool
Read Create A Personal Dashboard & Sync It Across All Your Windows 8 & RT Devices With Qool by Waqas Ahmed on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Build Your Career Master Plan with a Mind Map
Build Your Career Master Plan with a Mind Map:
A career plan is a map that guides you to where you really want to go professionally. While there are several approaches to career planning and mapping your way to your next job, a mind map is an excellent tool for brainstorming and organizing your career ideas—especially if you're not sure yet what you want to do. More »
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