Search & Browse The History Of All Web Browsers On A PC From One Place

Search & Browse The History Of All Web Browsers On A PC From One Place:
Every major internet browser saves the history of all the webpages that you have visited, including all your web searches. The purpose of this feature is to let you easily locate a web page that you have visited in the past, and can be a lifesaver if you have forgotten an important URL. A lot of people use more than one browser (I myself use Mozilla Firefox as my main browser and Google Chrome as the secondary one). Sometimes when you are looking for a particular URL in your browser history, you forget which browser you originally used to access the webpage, and Windows does not allow you to search the history of all browsers at once. Internet History Browser is a free portable tool for Windows that changes that, by letting you view and search your complete browsing history across all major browsers including Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari.

When you start the application, you can choose to scan your computer to collect internet history, or browse the data stored in a history file. If you choose the Scan option, all supported browsers will be scanned and their results will be stored to a file. This file can then be accessed to share and view your browser history on any computer.

The Scan option opens up the history of all browsers displayed collectively in the form of a list. The URLs in the list are sorted according to the date and time they were accessed. When you select a link, you can see its title, complete URL, visited date, and the number of times you visited it, in the lower part of the interface. You can simply double-click any link or select it and click the ‘Open’ button to open it in your default browser. Each URL is listed with a small icon of the browser it was originally accessed in.

At the top, you’ll find a search field, allowing you to look for a particular URL from the entire list of loaded links. By default, the search results are sorted according to their access dates.

The tool saves the history file in its directory with a name of the format COMPUTERNAME_USERNAME.ihd. You can always copy this file over to another computer and open it there, or open it on the same computer at a later time using the tool. The option to open a saved file can be found in the File menu.
Internet History Browser works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Download Internet History Browser
Read Search & Browse The History Of All Web Browsers On A PC From One Place by Fawad Mir on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Configure Your Home Theater To Perfection With THX tune-up For iOS

Configure Your Home Theater To Perfection With THX tune-up For iOS:
For decades, cinemas and commercial theaters have been making use of THX standards to ensure high quality of audio and video. THX offers a set of rules for the optimal viewing experience on any medium, complete with guidelines to set up speakers, displays and projectors with ease. Until now, THX has mostly been useful for cinema owners but with the advent of home theaters and better television sets, the brains behind the standard set have resolved to make THX mainstream. THX tune-up is a newly released iOS app that helps you set up your own media equipment properly, according to THX standards. Not only does it have detailed tutorials, but the app also scans your devices for perfect sound, color, screen and connection settings. The instructions are available in both text and audio formats, making THX tune-up a perfect companion for configuring a full home theater without being a rocket scientist.
  

THX tune-up has a video tutorial to help you get started. In addition to that, there are graphical instructions scattered throughout the app. If you are ready to configure something straight away, connect your iPhone to the intended TV or display. You can make the connection via HDMI, AirPlay or VGA. The next step is to head to the ‘Equipment’ tab, and choose the specifics for the device you intend to set up or test. For displays and speakers, you are asked to choose the brand of the device. To make things a little easy for THX tune-up, tell it if your TV/sound system is THX-certified. There is no need to enter the exact model of the device, since specifying its generic type does the trick. For speakers, it is possible to test both stereo and surround sound systems using the app. The last thing you need to do in the Equipment section is choosing the type of connection you have used to link your iDevice with the equipment.
  
Now that THX tune-up has recognized your equipment, you are ready to get down to configuring everything. Under ‘Picture Adjustments’, there are steps for checking your display screen’s aspect ratio, brightness, contrast, color and tint. Some of these steps consist of nothing more than instructions that you have to follow on your own, but others (like color and tint) overlay different color filters with the picture on the screen to ensure that everything is in perfect order. If you are satisfied with a particular adjustment, mark it as ‘Done’ and move to the next. At the end of the cycle, THX tune-up offers a complete review of all the adjustments you have made.
For sound, the phase and balance of speakers can be tested simply by tapping some icons the app shows you for the purpose.

In case you want to test your equipment to see the results, THX tune-up has a few 1080p video clips in the ‘Extras’ section to play. You can stream these trailers to any device you want.
THX tune-up is optimized for all iOS devices, and works pretty well for all brands of equipment you can think of. For now, it is available for free, but this might change in the near future. So, head to the App Store and grab it right away.
Download THX tune-up For iOS
Read Configure Your Home Theater To Perfection With THX tune-up For iOS by Hamza Khalid on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Hands-On With The Official XBMC 12 ‘Frodo’ For Android [Review]

Hands-On With The Official XBMC 12 ‘Frodo’ For Android [Review]:
XBMC is likely the best and most feature-rich cross-platform media center application available for almost all leading computer platforms. The immensely powerful open-source software has always been revered for the wide array of media discovery, playback & streaming tools it supports, and things only seem to get better with the release of version 12 of XBMC codenamed ‘Frodo’ that not only brings with it a slew of brand new features, but also introduces us to the official Raspberry Pi and Android variants of our beloved media center. As with both recently-supported platforms, the latest release of XBMC now lets Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, ATV and iOS users enjoy full HD audio support, improved AirPlay support, new translations powered by Transifex, advanced content filtering in media library, better UPnP sharing support, video library tags, improved image support, and most importantly, integrated Live TV and PVR support. More to follow.

In addition to all aforementioned features, 64-bit support has made its way to OS X as well, whereas Windows and Linux users get to enjoy much improved controller support on their respective platforms. As of this writing, the brand new XBMC AudioEngine is not available for OS X and iOS. As for Android, the latest build of XBMC supports more or less all the features except for hardware-accelerated video playback, which would be considered a major miss by many but fret not – it is expected to be added very soon.

In what is to follow, we shall be presenting our readers with an overview of some of the core features offered by the Android variant of XBMC 12 Frodo from its gorgeously-designed, sleek ‘Confluence’ home screen. While the features will be nearly the same on all other supported platforms as well, the user experience may obviously vary across platforms.

Weather

Upon launching the XBMC app, you’re greeted with a menu offering a total of six sections, with Weather being the first one (starting from left). As its name implies, you can use this menu to keep a close check on the latest weather forecasts of multiple locations of your choice from around the world. Both in terms of aesthetics  and feature set, this particular facet of XBMC looks good enough to blow even the best weather apps out of the water.

The weather section shows you plenty of weather details about each location including current temperature, cloud condition, sunrise & sunset times, dew point, humidity level, UV index, wind speed, a 10-day, 36-hours, weekend & hourly forecast, and Up-to-date weather alerts via radar maps. In terms of customization, you have the option to specify a custom weather service provider, adjust map zoom level, and toggle animated maps.

Pictures

As the name implies, the Pictures section is home to your memorable photos and photo albums in a slick interface. It also supports a tons of add-ons, allowing you to import high quality images from a plethora of online image hosting services including 500px, Flickr, iPhoto, Picasa, Google Images and lots more. For importing local photos, you have the option to specify custom media directories. Using the left sidebar, you can opt to switch between six different preview modes, sort & filter items in multiple ways, and start full-screen slideshow of photos, with the option to randomize slideshow items.

XBMC lets you set custom duration for displaying each image in slideshow, enable pan & zoom effects, and toggle various options such as viewing EXIF info for photos, automatically generating photo thumbnails, previewing video files in listing and more.

Videos

This section is your one-stop shop for enjoying local video playback and streaming live videos from a wide array of online sources including YouTube, Vimeo, Al-Jazeera, Blip TV, CollegeHumor, ESPN and whatnot! Supported features include background playback, subtitles importing, video bookmarking, advanced browsing of online content, complete DVD menu support, custom video de-interlacing, video scaling, zoom level adjustment, option to hide watched videos, integrated video searching & filtering, vertical shift & pixel ratio adjustment, custom volume amplification level adjustment and lots more.

For advanced video settings, just head over to the app’s System Settings menu. From here, you can tinker with the video library settings, playback settings, file lists management, extended subtitles preferences and various DVD settings.

Music

The Music section offers you a unified place to access your local music files as well as stream audio from a large pool of online services including SoundCloud, Apple iTunes Podcasts, Shoutcast 2, Sky.fm, Icecast, TWiT and quite a few others. Besides supporting basic music playback controls, the app’s visually-rich audio player interface helps you fetch song lyrics from various online service, and sports various eye-catching visualizations.

As with the video settings, you can navigate to the app’s system settings to tweak the settings for several aspects of the music playback experience including your music library, advanced playback (PreAmp & cross-fading etc.), file list, song submissions to Libre.fm & Last.fm, preferences for audio CDs, and a handful of karaoke options.

Programs

The Programs menu can be used to access all system and third-party apps installed on your device. In addition, you get to browse and install dozens of free apps featured on XBMC’s own repository. These apps are to be considered more as XBMC Add-ons for Android, rather than standalone apps. The list of available apps currently includes the likes of Facebook Media, iBeLight, Gmail Checker, RSS Editor, uTorrent, Web Viewer, XBMC Library Auto Updater and several other useful apps that enhance your XBMC experience on Android.

System

In the System section, you’ll find four submenus for advanced system settings, native file explorer (to specify default custom media directories), XBMC profile management and system info. The File Manager and System Info menus are pretty much self-explanatory. From the Profiles menu, you can customize the master XBMC user settings, and define profiles for additional users. You can also enable/disable the login screen for the XBMC app from here, and select the various subsections of the app that you wish to lock separately from other users.

However, it’s the Settings screen within this menu that comprises the most important options of all. Ranging from the app’s overall layout to Live TV settings and remote access preferences, you can extensively tweak all the advanced settings of XBMC. It is also form here that you can affiliate your XBMC media app with other UPnP supported devices, your web server, SMB client or AirPlay devices. Other useful options include adjusting the app’s video (display) & audio output settings, power saving preferences, internet access settings, managing all your XBMC add-ons, toggling the app’s notifications, customizing the Live TV, recording & parental settings, and managing your custom RSS feed settings by utilizing the relevant add-on.

If you’re ready to give XBMC a shot on your Android device, just download the APK file from the link at the end and sideload it on your device as you would normally do with any other APK. You’ll find download links for other platforms on the same page.
Download XBMC For Android
Read Hands-On With The Official XBMC 12 ‘Frodo’ For Android [Review] by A. Rehman on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Give Your Windows RT Desktop A Facelift With Rainmeter

Give Your Windows RT Desktop A Facelift With Rainmeter:
Windows RT has been around for a few months now, with Microsoft’s own Windows Surface being the primary device this tablet-friendly OS has been running on so far. Recently, when XDA member clrokr successfully jailbroke Windows RT, it resulted in opening up doors of possibilities for the homebrew community to run ported x86 desktop apps on ARM architecture. By now, a multitude of app have already been ported to the platform by various users, and one of the awesome additions to the ported apps library is Rainmeter. For those who don’t know about it yet, it’s a fascinating desktop customization utility that allows you to give your desktop a complete makeover. In what follows, we will guide you through the process of changing that boring desktop look and spicing it up with Rainmeter’s plethora of gorgeous skin packs.

Before reading any further, make sure you’ve already jailbroken your device by following our step-by-step guide here. Once done with that, download Rainmeter from the link provided at the end of the post and use a ZIP file extraction utility like Unpacker to extract the contents of the archive to an easily accessible location on your disk. Afterwards, you have to simply run the Rainmeter executable file from the extracted folder. The application itself looks really simple. To get acquainted with its features, you might want to check our full review here and also our post on customizing Windows 8 desktop with the Rainmeter and RocketDock apps.

The beauty of Rainmeter lies in the endless customization options it puts at your disposal. The tool lets you adds different types of widgets to the desktop ranging from weather, clock & date to RSS feeds & calendar widgets. Although you can grab a huge number of such widgets from DeviantART, you might want to take a look at the following options for a head start.
MidnightBiro | MacBar 3.0 | Rota H.U.D | Wallpaper
The application automatically creates a Skins folder ‘C:\Users\username\Documents\Rainmeter\Skins’. So after downloading any skin pack, you just to need to move the extracted contents of its ZIP archive to the aforementioned directory in order to add it to Rainmeter.

Some of the files however, come with an RMSKIN extension, which can be  a bit tricky to install, since the ARM version of Rainmeter doesn’t include the skin installer that usually comes with the desktop app. But fret not – there’s a very simple method to extract those RMSKIN files.

All you have to do is rename the .rmskin extension to .zip. This in turn allows you to easily extract the files using the Unpacker app.

After installing your desired skin packs, launch the Rainmeter utility again (or hit Refresh all at the bottom of the application window) and you will see the skins added to the left pane. Skin packs usually come with multiple widgets but you can choose to add only the ones you want. To load a widget, select it from the list and tap the Load button. You can place the widgets anywhere on the screen, as well as lock them at one position via disabling the Draggable checkmark.

Skins can also be customized via a text editor, such as the native Notepad utility. This makes it possible to modify the scripts of the widgets according to your preferences. To modify a skin using a text editor, select your desired widget from the list and hit the Edit button on the program.

The screenshot below demonstrates how a simple-looking Windows RT desktop was turned into a StarWars-inspired Rainmeter theme. Quite alluring, isn’t it?

Rainmeter is a free application and this ARM version works on Windows RT only. You can download it from the original XDA-Developers thread via the link provided below.
Download Rainmeter for Windows RT
Read Give Your Windows RT Desktop A Facelift With Rainmeter by Waqas Ahmed on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

How To Browse & Launch Windows 8 Store Apps From Desktop

How To Browse & Launch Windows 8 Store Apps From Desktop:
Since the release of Windows 8, we’ve been seeing a lot of apps and hacks that allow you to access the functionality of the Modern UI or Start Screen from the desktop, or vice versa. For instance back in November, we covered a tip on adding an ‘All Apps’ shortcut to windows 8 desktop and taskbar. Even though Microsoft has aimed to transform the way people use Windows, there are a lot of people unwilling to embrace the change and simply want to use the OS conventionally. Some of the best examples are the sheer number of Start Menu tools that allow you to disable the Start Screen and bring back the Start Menu in Windows 8. While the desktop is still the default workspace for most people, one cannot deny the usefulness of Modern UI, specially Windows Store apps. However, if you have disabled the Start Screen, accessing these apps can be a bit difficult. Today, we will guide you through the process of enabling access to all your Modern UI apps right from the Windows desktop environment.

Here’s how it works: you will need to create a new shortcut and use a specific location string for it, in order to get access to the list of all installed Modern UI apps. Right-click anywhere on your desktop and choose to create a new shortcut. In the Create Shortcut dialog box, copy and paste the following location:

%windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{4234d49b-0245-4df3-b780-3893943456e1}

Once you have pasted this string as the location as shown in the screenshot above. click Next, choose and name for the shortcut and click Finish to create the shortcut.

By default, the shortcut will have the File Explorer icon. To change its icon, right-click the shortcut, select Properties and choose the Change Icon option. You can now select an icon from the given list or choose a custom one.

Opening the shortcut will directly take you to a folder containing shortcuts for all your installed Modern UI apps. Just double-click any shortcut to run the app.

If you are not a fan of Start Screen and have switched to one of the solutions to replace it and bring the classic Start Menu back, this tip will surely help you in avoiding the start screen entirely, by eliminating the need to visit it even for launching Modern UI apps.
You can download the custom icon we used for this guide from the link provided below.
All Apps Icon
Thanks, Matt!
Read How To Browse & Launch Windows 8 Store Apps From Desktop by Fawad Mir on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Access & Stream Media From Multiple Cloud Services On Windows 8 With Cumulo

Access & Stream Media From Multiple Cloud Services On Windows 8 With Cumulo:
When dealing with multiple cloud storage services together, things can get a little bit confusing. Keeping a tab on apps for each cloud storage service you use can become tedious, no matter what platform you’re using the service on. Most major cloud service providers such as Dropbox have eventually started to release dedicated Windows 8 apps, but what if you could access multiple cloud services under one interface? This is where Cumulo for Windows shines. Cumulo is a simple and intuitive app offering a feature fairly unique to it at the moment: providing you with simple way of accessing your SkyDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, SugarSync and Box  accounts from one single place.

Cumulo can be installed for free at Windows Store using the link provided at the end of the post. The app supports up to five different cloud services, and you can connect your accounts with the app using their toggles provided in Cumulo Settings bar. Though do note that the free version only lets you use SkyDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox, while SugarSync and Box are available to users of the paid version only.

Once signed in with one or more services, Cumulo presents you with all their folders in the same view, giving you quick access to all your cloud storage from a single place. This can make things get cluttered pretty quickly, especially if you sign in to all five of the available cloud options and have many folders in them. Due to this, you might even see multiple directories with common names such as Photos, Videos and the like. On the bright side however, Cumulo lets you easily identify the folders by adding a miniscule logo of their pertaining service to their icons. This way, you can be sure whether the Photos folder you’re accessing is the Dropbox one, or the one on SkyDrive.

The free version of Cumulo lets you download, view and stream files from your cloud accounts. You can right click an audio file to bring up the app bar, from where you can choose to share, download, play or open it on the web. The share button is quite handy to instantly share the URL of the file with your friends. The Play feature instantly begins streaming the media, albeit it doesn’t offer any navigation controls.

In addition, the integrated photo viewer works like a charm as well. You can zoom in and out the images via pinch to zoom gestures on a Windows RT tablet, or by holding Ctrl key on keyboard and scrolling the mouse wheel on computers without a touch screen. Images can also be downloaded to your local drive the same way as any other files.

Cumulo’s streaming feature works not just for audio files, but for videos as well. The built-in video player allows you to adjust volume, play or pause the video, and jump to your desired scene via the seek bar. The videos are played in full screen mode.

Last but not the least, the app also allows you to share the contents of a complete folder via the Share Charm. You can share the URL of the folder on Facebook, Mail, Twitter and any other supported Windows Store app.

Overall, Cumulo is an excellent cloud storage app that provides a great way to access multiple cloud storage accounts under one roof. Unfortunately, certain basic features to manage your files such as deleting or renaming them, and uploading new ones, are not available in the free version, and you’ll have to purchase the Pro version to get access to those, along with support for direct photo and video capture & upload, and the ability to add SugarSync and Box accounts to the app. Cumulo works on all versions of Windows 8 and Windows RT.
Download Cumulo
Read Access & Stream Media From Multiple Cloud Services On Windows 8 With Cumulo by Waqas Ahmed on AddictiveTips - Tech tips to make you smarter

Free Android Development Tutorials

Free Android Development Tutorials:
When I learned how to program Java, I sat down for about a month watching YouTube videos and reading tutorials trying to understand what I was seeing.  Because development is such a broad topic, and everyone thinks differently, one cannot have too many resources from which to absorb knowledge. This is why we decided to contribute to the development knowledge pool with our own How To Build an Android App series on XDA Developer TV.
Currently, Linux.com is hosting a multi-part series of developer tutorials aimed at teaching you how to learn how program an Android application. They are covering the details to include basic Java. Thus far they have released three parts:

• Android Programming for Beginners: Part 1 - This tutorial walks you through creating a basic 30 second countdown application which displays a number on-screen.
• Android Programming for Beginners: Part 2 - Adds a drop-down menu to the counter allowing for adjustments to the timer
• Android Programming for Beginners: User Menus - Introduces the ListView class and replaces the drop-down with a  ListView

Don’t forget to check out our own local Android development tutorials from XDA Developer TV as well.

• How to Build an Android App Part 1: Setting up Eclipse and Android SDK
• How to Build an Android App Part 2: Writing a Root App
• How to Build an Android App Part 3: Arduino Development
• How to Build an Android App Part 4: Illumination Software Creator
• How to build an Android App Part 5: Arduino ADK – Working with Digital Outputs

Got any great sources to learn Android or Java programming?  Leave them in the comments down below!  Have you made your own development tutorial series?  Contact any XDA News Writer, and we will try to feature it.

The Aurora Desktop

The Aurora Desktop:

When we highlighted The Wallpaper Wednesday Desktop, reader tmfk chimed into the discussions with his own alien-looking landscape and the HUD he built around it. It looks so good we couldn't help but feature it on its own. More »