Showing posts with label Desktop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Desktop. Show all posts
Sunday, 7 October 2012
Monday, 16 April 2012
YTubePlayer Is A Desktop Youtube Player
Youtube desktop players offer an alternative to opening the YouTube website in a web browser. There are surprisingly few applications available that let you play YouTube videos on the desktop. Miro comes to mind but that application is not lightweight by any means.
YTubePlayer is a desktop Youtube player that comes with most of the bells and whistles that you would expect. The program does rely on Internet Explorer’s Flash plugin which without doubt can be a issue for many users who prefer not to install that plugin on their system. A fall back to HTML5 is not provided.
The player interface is minimalistic in design. You see a controls bar at the top, the player window on the left, and the search, playlist and video listings on the right.
You can start searching for videos right away by entering a search term into the form at the top. This opens a new window with search results that list the title, description, play time, views and thumbnail of each video result.
Videos are sorted by relevance by default, with options to sort them by rating, view count or publication date instead.
A click on the title sends it directly to the player were it plays automatically. You can use the controls at the top to pause and stop videos, and to switch to the next or previous video if you have selected a playlist.
Videos can be added to playlists, of which you can create as many as you want. Each playlist contains a feed of videos that have been added to it.
You can change the size of the window, and of the video player and playlist listing individually. That’s useful if you only want the player window visible on the screen to save screen estate.
The application has a fullscreen mode, and a toolbar mode. The latter displays only the toolbar and no video player or interface, which makes it great for music, and not workable at all for videos that you want to watch.
The application supports most multimedia keyboards so that you can control videos in the program window with your keyboard’s media keys. It also offers an option to import existing YouTube playlists, and to share playlists to other users of the desktop player.
The player comes without options to download YouTube videos. YTubePlayer is available for Windows and Mac operating systems.
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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday March 7, 2012 -Tags:windows software, youtube, youtube videos
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Thursday, 29 March 2012
Get Android Notifications Pushed To Your Desktop
There may be times where you do not have the time to pay attention to your Android phone. This can be at work where you may not be allowed to have your phone out in the open, or with you at all, or in situations where you are working with noise-cancelling headsets that would, well, make you ignore the phone’s notifications.
And while you probably can live without your phone for the time being, you may have a nagging feeling in the back of your head that you may be missing out on important notifications. This can be an emergency call, an important reminder that you receive per SMS or simply the fact that your Android phone is running low on battery.
Android Notifier is a free app for Android, that works in combination with Windows and Mac operating systems as well as Linux distributions. It basically redirects notifications from the phone to the desktop you are working on.
The phone currently can notify you about the following five events:
When the phone ringsWhen you receive an SMSWhen you receive an MMSWhen the battery is running out of powerWhen you receive a call to your voicemailYou will for instance see the callers phone number on your desktop PC if the option has been enabled. The Android app can be configured to send notifications on all five events, or only on select events.
You furthermore need to configure how your Android smartphone should communicate with your desktop system. Available for selection currently are Wifi or Bluetooth, with an USB option coming in the future.
Once you have set up the notification and connection options on your phone, you need to install a notification application on the desktop. A program that needs to be downloaded and run on the system is provided in the project’s download section over at Google Code. I suggest you follow the guide there to get everything set up properly.
If you plan on using Wifi as the connection type, you should be ready to go right after installation of both applications as Wifi is enabled in both apps by default. You may want to check the Wifi options on the Android app’s settings page if you run into issues there. It is also necessary that both the phone and the desktop PC are connected to the same network.
The app has an option to send a test notification which you can make use of to make sure everything has been set up correctly.
Android Notifier is a handy app for Android phone owners who sometimes cannot pay attention to their phone, but would like to be informed about important events.
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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Tuesday February 21, 2012 -Tags:android apps, androids
Sunday, 18 March 2012
Get News Notifications On Your Desktop With Feed Notifier
RSS feeds are dying. That’s what I’m hearing left and right. Many say that social networking sites have replaced them. And while social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook may be useful to stay up to date, they are nowhere near as accessible as a feed reader. You first need to follow users who post the news that you are interested in, then need to wade through everything they post to find the news, and lastly stay on the social networking site or use a desktop app to avoid missing news.
Feed Notifier is a news notification app for the Windows operating system. When you first start it up you are asked to add feeds to the program that you want to monitor. This is done with a right-click on the program’s system tray icon and the selection of Add Feed. You can also open the options to add feeds there.
Feeds can only be entered one at a time which is a severe limitation, especially if you want to monitor hundreds of feeds. You could combine multiple feeds with Yahoo Pipes to reduce the setup time.
You can configure the polling interval and notification border color for each feed individually. A popup is then displayed in the lower right corner of the screen whenever new content has been added to one of the added websites and services.
Controls are displayed at the bottom of the popup that allow you to go back and forward, and to pause the automatic updating. A click on the news title or blog name takes you to the site in the default system browser.
The popup appearance and behavior are configured in the preferences as well. Here it is possible to change the maximum title and body length, change the duration the popup is displayed or display it in another position or on another monitor.
Feed Notifier won’t check feeds if the computer has been idle for at least 60 seconds. It would not make sense to display news on an idle computer, as it is likely that the user working on it is currently not present. The option can be disabled if that’s preferred.
Filters can be configured for all feeds or individual feeds. These exclude news matching select keywords. This can be useful if you want to reduce the number of news popups throughout the day.
Feed Notifier is different in this regard from other feed readers such as RSS Owl or Google Reader. It is not a program that you open to read up on all the news item that have been posted since the last time you have taken a look. Its realtime approach works best if only a handful of news feeds are monitored. If you monitor hundreds, you probably end up spending more time looking at new news popups than working on the computer.
Interested users can download the open source software Feed Notifier from the developer website.
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Create Your Own Custom RSS News Feed About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday February 12, 2012 -
Tags:rss feed, windows software
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Wednesday, 14 March 2012
QTranslate, Versatile Desktop Translator For Windows
Having a translator at hand can be quite useful when you are browsing the Internet. With users from different social background and countries coming together, there is always the chance that you stumble upon text written in languages that you do not understand. Often your only option to make sense of the text is to use a machine translation service like Google Translate or Microsoft Translate.
Web browsers like Google Chrome offer built-in translation options, others offer add-ons like Quick Translator to add this functionality to the web browser.
But browser add-ons or features are limited to one browser, which may not be enough if you are also receiving emails, messages or documents in languages that you are not fluent in.
That’s where desktop translation clients come into play. QTranslate is a lightweight free translation software for the Windows operating system. The program supports six different translation engines: Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, Promt, SDL, Yahoo Babel Fish and Yandex.
QTranslate registers several global hotkeys that let you translate text from any open program window. The two most important hotkeys are Ctrl-q, which displays a translation of the highlighted text in a popup window, or Ctrl-Ctrl which sends the highlighted text to the program window where it is then translated.
Tests in the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird email client, Google Mail and Microsoft Office were all successful.
QTranslate detects the original language the highlighted text is written in automatically. First time users need to make sure that the target language is set correctly in the main program window.
The keyboard shortcut Ctrl-e furthermore uses text to speech synthesis to read the text out loud. This only works if Google Translate or Microsoft Translate are selected as the translation engines.
Another interesting option is the ability to run a web search for selected text with the shortcut Ctrl-w. Web hits are displayed in a small popup window next to the highlighted text.
The program keeps track of all previous translations, which can be displayed in a history window with the shortcut Ctrl-H.
Verdict
QTranslate is a versatile translation software for the Windows operating system. Support for six translation services and hotkey driven translations are the program’s main selling points.
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Skype Translator About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Monday February 6, 2012 -
Tags:google translate, microsoft translator, translator, windows software
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Wednesday, 8 February 2012
Windows Store, Too Metroesque For The Desktop?
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About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand.You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Saturday January 21, 2012 -
Tags:windows 8, windows store
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Responses so far:Shadess says: January 22, 2012 at 2:22 amReplyRoman ShaRP says: January 22, 2012 at 3:34 amReplyVibin says: January 22, 2012 at 8:12 amReplyNerdebeu says: January 22, 2012 at 9:50 amReplyRoy says: January 22, 2012 at 1:09 pmReplyfokka says: January 22, 2012 at 3:41 pmReplykalmly says: January 22, 2012 at 5:46 pmReplyDan says: January 22, 2012 at 7:02 pmReplyJimmu says: January 22, 2012 at 7:16 pmReplyNerdebeu says: January 23, 2012 at 9:38 amReplyLeave a Reply Follow Ghacks Subscribe To Comment Rss
Microsoft revealed additional information about the
Touch screen users can scroll with a flick of their finger, while mouse and keyboard users do not have that luxury. They need to use their input devices to scroll the page horizontally, something that should feel awkward to many considering that this is not a common activity on the desktop.
The store has been integrated into Metro UI, which means that many of the user interface controls are working in the store as well. Users can tap on the search charm to run a search or zoom out of the page with the pinch gesture. And while those actions will surely be accessible via shortcuts on the desktop, it is likely that the operations will not be as fluid as on touch screen devices.
Pinching, flicking and tapping, that’s what gets you the best results in the store and Metro UI. But the majority of Windows users are not using touch based devices, and chance is that the majority won’t in the coming years.
It is not really clear why the company decided to go down that route, other than trying to increase their market share in the tablet and touch device market. It feels like an all or nothing move, with no turning back.
Is no one at the company wondering if Windows 8 could alienate a large part of the company’s existing user base?
The concentration on apps, and the exclusion of desktop applications, is another aspect that weights heavily here. While it would have certainly be more complicated to build a Windows store that included desktop apps, it would have been much more rewarding from a user perspective and certainly also from Microsoft’s perspective.
Microsoft has released a video that demonstrates the user experience
It is interesting to note that the video only showcases touch based navigation in the store, and not keyboard or mouse navigation.
The Windows 8 Beta will surely shed more light on a desktop user’s user experience. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft has improved the developer preview’s experience, or if it has remained more or less the same.
What’s your take on the Windows store and Windows 8?
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Responses so far:Shadess says:
I don’t get the “just metro apps” store either. I understand it would have been tricky to just offer existing program installers from the store and have a good experience with fluid auto updating and such but come on make a new installer that would play nice with the shop or something. Ever since it first became clear that win8 would have a store I just naturally assumed it would have desktop programs and autoupdating through it but no. Such a big big letdown. Windows8 still looks like it has some worthwhile updated features from win7 but what I most wanted isn’t happening :<
As I said many times, I rate the Metro UI as worst of all I have seen, so my opinion on it’s integration in Windows just couldn’t be good.
The same for Windows store – I would like don’t see it at all.
So far I’m from my work experience in Win 8 Dev Preview I’m not pleased with it at all. Yes, the system starts faster, but there all pleasant just ends because of the Metro, which I don’t like and don’t need, and which is hard to ignore because of pushing it by MS.
I think Microsoft got the basics wrong, seriously.
I like the Metro start screen, completely, but except that, Metro UI is crap. I mean it’s so annoying to leave an app *without* closing and even multi-tasking is uneasy. And I don’t even like these full screen apps.
To keep it short, you can’t have same OS on a Tablet and a PC.
Afflicted for my English, I read it very easily but does not speak it and do not write it (Google + Bing Traduction + personal modifications;) )
If Microsoft does not change anything compared to Developing it Preview, Windows 8 will be a colossal failure and I go even further, can put in danger the company.
One will not be able to compare at all with the relative failure of Vista. And even with the dependent sale. Remember that it was possible to return to XP at the time of Vista, which many people did (DELL for example proposed XP in the place of Vista).
Why a catastrophic failure?
(1) Does not create a single interface for different devices, Apple does not, for example. And you can’t really compare Metro and Mac OSX.
2)The touch screens represent only one very weak share of market for the office computers, and that will not change before years.
3)Windows 7 had an exceptional success, and is best OS than Microsoft conceived. It exceeded XP in share of market since very little time (Autumn 2011), and continues to be sold very well. To want to launch a new OS whereas the old one is not in loss speed is a madness.
4)You see companies with Metro on their working station, you? Let us be serious.
(5) These companies are beginning to renew their computing for Windows 7 only. Remember the XP mode… You think that they will engage in the purchase of Windows 8? It is not nothing understand business, while some still use IE6 in intranet, and the need to accompany them to at least IE 8…
(6) To read and discuss with many people, here, in Europe, and France in particular, apart from a few very rare users of smartphones, I don’t know anyone, but really nobody wants it, and most people have uninstalled Windows 8 DP after a day of use (my view I have taken 1 month).
7)People like appearance, and even if one will be able to come back on the desktop, naturally the interface seems to be Metro. And Metro, from a purely aesthetic point of view is particularly ugly, I would say horrible for everyone I know (users smartphones included).
(8) When I read the sites, international forums, the return of experience on Windows 8, with “geeks” is overwhelmingly negative, and the words used are sometimes extreme limits desperate.
Microsoft runs to the suicide. If they are the commercials ones which had this idea, then it is really of very bad commercials, with any direction of the analysis. Not only Windows 8 will not be sold, but worse, if I dare statement, it will not be pirated, and not because of its system of safety and authentification.
Afflicted for my English, I read it very easily but does not speak it and do not write it (Google + Bing Traduction + personal modifications;) )
Unless it changes substantially before release, W8 looks like continuing the MS good/bad alternate OS strategy and becoming another Vista/ME.
Porting what is essentially a nice tablet OS to PCs/laptops is conceptually a bad idea and the Store highlights the differences between the 2 platforms – I can’t see many reasons why a W7 user would consider upgrading.
W8 is a big gamble for MS – it looks good on touch devices but I wonder if they’ll be far too late to that particular party (or peaking fad depending which way you look at it)
as i said before, i simply don’t like the metro ui. on non-touch-computers its completely useless and on tablets etc i think it’s the worst solution of all (android, ios, web os,…).
as for the desktop-part of win8, i really can’t complain much, as long as you can disable metro _completely_.
and the store? you don’t have to use it. i for sure wouldn’t.
Metro
is not meant fo’
desktopo
I love it!! I cant wait to use this on all desktop computers I have. Looks great, feels smooth. I really hate the Apple store experience and who can trust doing any business with spygoogle. Microsoft is my choice when it comes out. Ive been selling all my apple stuff getting ready for it. I think finally one company gets it, its the customer and thats Microsoft.
Anyone notice that as 8 comes closer the anti Microsoft paid google and apple articles are all the same and so are the comments. Same anti comments but different websites. How many websites did google say they had in their paid blogger camp?
If Google or Apple had intended to pay someone to criticize Windows 8, they have not took me. I do not speak English, you saw, not? Should you care, you and your paranoia. I love Windows 7, I find Chrome OS totally absurd, and for the little that I saw a Mac by far, as it is fully locked, it doesn’t interest me. And I do not use the browser Chrome, Safari, but Opera and FF. And, it makes me sick to see MS do anything and commit suicide.
Saturday, 21 January 2012
SearchMyFiles, A Versatile Desktop Search for Windows
SearchMyFile is a portable desktop search software for the Windows operating system. The program’s portable nature ensures that searches do not leave traces on the system the program is executed on. And while that may slow down result generation a bit, it is still faster than many other programs that you can use to search for files and folders in Windows.
When you first start the program you will notice that two program windows are opened. The first window lets you configure the search parameters, the second displays the results.
When you look at the search window, you will notice that it offers a lot of search options. You only need to select at least one base folder for the search though to get started, as everything else is optional. The program supports multiple base folders for the search, as well as file, folder and extension exclusions. You could for instance search only for doc or docx files on all hard drives and partitions connected to the computer. And while those options are handy enough, you can use the program to search for file contents in text or binary form as well.
That’s still not everything there is to search. How does searching in alternate data streams sound? Or parameters that take the file size, file attributes or creation, modification or access time into consideration?
SearchMyFiles stops by default after the first ten thousand matching files it finds, with an option to set a different limit or no limit at all.
The Search Mode menu defines how results are displayed in the search window.
All search modes share the same layout. Details are displayed for each result, including the file or folder name, location on the computer, size and time related information.
The program comes with the usual Nirsoft tools to create HTML reports and to export the data to text, xml or csv files.
One interesting option, available under Options > Open File on Double Click, allows you to open any file in the search results listing with a double-click. This can be handy to verify duplicate files or to open the file that you were looking for.
A command line version supporting the majority of search parameters is available as well.
Windows users can download Search My Files from the official Nirsoft website. The program is offered as a 32-bit and 64-bit version.
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NoDupe, Fast, Versatile Duplicate File Finder About the Author:Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand. You can follow Martin on Facebook or Twitter.Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday January 15, 2012 -
Tags:desktop search, file search, nirsoft, portable software, windows software
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Saturday, 14 January 2012
A Lightweight Transparent Calendar For Your Windows Desktop
When you want to look at a calendar in a default Windows installation the only option you have is to click on the clock in the lower right corner of the screen. And while that’s an option, it is not a very comfortable one if you need to look at the calendar regularly. The calendar on top of that does not provide any additional functionality that one would expect, for instance an option to set reminders.
You could use the calendar of a messaging software like Outlook or Thunderbird, or install a third party calendar like Desktop Calendar.
The free portable software displays the current date and the days of the current month on the desktop. The display is fully transparent which means that it fits nicely with any desktop background. When you first start the application you will notice that it is positioned in the upper left corner of the screen. You can move the calendar by holding down the shift key, and dragging and dropping the window to another location on the screen. Only the controls at the bottom of the calendar can be used for that.
Right-click the window afterwards and select save position from the menu to lock in it place there. Options in the same menu opens the application preferences. Here you can change the calendar font type, size and colors, spacing, the date format and other relevant preferences. Depending on the desktop background, font and size, you may need to experiment with the available color font colors to find one that is readable.
Edit Reminders is the third and final option available in the context menu. This allows you to set custom reminders, one-time or recurring, for birthdays, appointments and other events. New event types, along with their color code, can be defined in the program options.
The biggest issue that you may have with the program is that you cannot synchronize the data with online calendars or calendars in other applications. The portable nature of the application allows you however to synchronize the data between multiple computer systems.
You can download Desktop Calendar from Glenn Delahoy’s website. The program is fully compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.
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Tags:calendar, desktop calendar, portable software, windows software
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