The App world for PCs and Laptops

As you all know this is the smart phone and app era i.e. the devices are are becoming smaller and for every thing you can have an app. Earlier the term used was the software but now with the modernization of technologies, the Laptops and PCs have been converted to Tablets and Smart Phones and so does the word software has modified itself to app. 

You often use Tablets and Smart Phones and if you need any kind of software you go to the App Store to find the App. This is the app generation and in the coming times the software will be totally overcome by the word App. But when we install something in our computers we do not call the Apps, still we call the same word i.e. software. What if you got the same type of environment for your desktops and laptops? I cant say about the older age groups but for sure the younger generation will like that. 

Chrome has introduced a "Chrome App Launcher" whose environment is similar to the one which we often use in mobiles and tablets. The Google is providing you "Platform as a Service (PaaS)" in the form of Chrome, in which they are now integrating every possible thing that a person could need online at one place. The Google persons know that people are fond of Apps so they introduced the App Store for Chrome. You can easily install any app by just clicking on the icon. You need not to arrange the setup and make it safe with you for future use. This is because Google has got the hold of Apps over the Mobile segment and this is one way to get the hold of Desktop users who like to use the Apps. 

So do try the Chrome App Launcher. 

Treasure Web Content you like at one place - "The Evernote"

We all are web visitors and tends to visit the informative web pages very often and obviously when we visit the informative web pages we always in the greed of copying the nice content for our future use or for the educational purpose. Each one of us saves the content from the web pages according to our priorities. This was the old methodology to save the content from the web. 

Suppose you have saved some content into your computer and you are somewhere outside where you need to have a reference of that but unfortunately you do not have internet and your computer then what will you do? You are lost!!!!

For these kinds of problems, an innovative mind has created "evernote". It is a software for the windows and Mac and application for android, ios and window phones. Mean to simply say that it is a platform independent application that you can use any where and any time. 

This is an application which works offline as well as online in which you can save your important text notes, web content, photos, audio note, video note, pdfs and any other sort of documents. When you input the data into evernote it saves the data on the local system and when you connect it to the internet your data gets sync with your online account. For this you need to have an evernote id that is free of cost but for just 60 Mb of data. If you need more data you have to pay but that is also very nominal. Once you have synced your account your data is available on all the devices to which you have installed evernote. In addition to that evernote also provides browsers plugin by the name web clipper which can clip the content of the web you want and you need not to copy and paste the data it automatically clips and save the data, you just have to select the data. In this way you can efficiently manage the web content that you need. 

Evernote also gives you a unique email id with every account so that you can mail the content to any one from within the evernote. You can also share the content privately with in the evernote with other members registered on the evernote.  

Climb the Cloud

These days you all must be listening/reading about the Cloud Storage here and there but do you often use cloud computing? I don't think so!!!! Cloud is given the name for this type of computing because clouds are every where, where ever you go in any part of the world. So this is a technology that enables you to store and compute the data on the cloud, it means you can store, retrieve and compute the data any where. 

This technology is based upon the internet because it is available in almost in every part of the world and so does clouds. You can use the internet to store the data online on cloud storage and can use the data any where you need. In this case you need not to save your data on multiple locations, carry pen drives, use external hard drives and the most important benefit of this is that your data gets protected from hard drive and window crashes which is very much common. Moreover, the replication of data also get reduced and you need not to buy many storage medias and keep safe with you. You just need to have a password and that to in your mind.

Many cloud storage services provides you free of cost data storage but a few Gigabytes only. Its simple phenomenon, the more data you need to store the more you pay but still it is one of the cheap and safe mechanism to store the data. The most popular Google what we think is just a search engine give a 15 GB drive with every email id and in spite of that, it gives you computing facility also so that you need not to install basic software on your system. You can create and edit your presentations on the way to a trip with just a smart phone or with a tablet and you need not to have MS Office installed in the device. You can read more about functionality of Google drive here. 

So guys forget the pen drives and external storage devices and switch on to cloud for better way of storage and safety of data.   

Think Different.....

This is the story of a boy named Nishant who has made his own prototype called "Automatic Electric Shock Tripper" and won the first prize for that in "Innovation Jockeys - Season 2" conducted recently in Bangalore by Accenture and sponsored by Yahoo. There were more than 5000 participants from different engineering colleges among which the 17 year boy from Sona College of Technology bagged the battle and now he is going to spend one week in U.S at the research center of Accenture. 

Now let us have a look at the innovation of Nishant - "Automatic Electric Shock Tripper". He has made a prototype to make people safe whenever there is a breakage in main electric supply lines or there is leakage of electricity. 

In this prototype the transformer will turn off the connection to the wire that got cut much before it falls or when there was heavy electricity leakage. 

There is an automated system call functionality that will shoot up a voice message to the line officials and do tell them the nature of the problem. The tripper will cost somewhere around Rs. 10,000 which is very much economical. 

This is brief about the innovation of the creative mind Nishant. Insipte of that i also want you to know something more about him as he has made more than 30 product by using electrical and information technology and has seven patents to his name and the 8th one is on its way. 

Give a Test Drive to Google Drive

Google drive is a platform for online creation, storage and sharing of files very easily. This is a wonderful development by Google and is very useful as well. It allows you to take full advantage of the gadgets you have as it is available for all platforms. You can use it online or you can download to your system or smart phone or tablet and sync with each other through your Gmail account. Many benefits of using Google Drive are as follows:

• You can create your documents, reports and presentations any where with the help of just internet. You need not to install any kind of special software for that. Your Gmail account will become your operating system and Google drive will become your computer in which already everything is installed and space storage of 5 GB is provided and that too absolutely free.
• If you want to send a large file to your frend you can easily send via Google Drive. Just upload your file to your Google Drive and share it with your friend. It is quite simple and useful.
• The most important advantage of this is that you can use it from anywhere and from any device.
• You can keep your important documents and files into drive that you may need any time as it is more secure and safe than the pen drives or portable hard disks. 
• There are around 144 applications that you can install or link with your Google drive. Some of the common applications are: PIXLR EDITOR(Just like photoshop to edit photographs), OFFICE (like word, excel, powerpoint), AUTOCAD, Graphing Calculator, Drive Tunes, PDF Mergy, Google Drawing (like paint), Drive Notepad and many more.

You can well imagine that if you will get all these things in your Gmail account only, and moreover you can access it any where and on any device, then why will you install all those things in your computer. What you need is just sign in into your Google Drive and get ready for the ultimate riding experience.

Smartly backing up and securing your contacts with Smart Phones

We all generally face problems when we lost the phone and we do not have the backup of the contacts. But with the wave of smart phones this problem is quite solved. The simple solution is that you need not to save any contacts in the phone or sim. You might be thinking that why so? This is because when ever you lost the phone the contacts are saved in either of the two memories i.e. phone or sim. But if you do not save anything to either of the memories then the threat of misuse of contacts is quite less. The simple way to back up and secure your data is keeping the contacts on the cloud. The best is to save the contacts to your Google account and sync your smart phone with your account and all the contacts will be visible from your Google account. The simple steps to backing up all the contacts to your Google account are as follows:

1. Firstly export all the current contacts in your smart phone to a single .vcf file. This is not difficult at all. All the smart phones have this facility to export all the contacts into a single file. Go to contacts in your smart phone, chose the option export all contacts to SD card. It will automatically create the single .vcf file containing all your contacts.

2. Go to your Gmail account from your smart phone or transfer the .vcf file to your computer and then login to your Gmail account. 

3. On the left corner where Gmail is written, click on the small arrow to see the contacts section. 

4. Click on the contacts to move to the contacts section and click on more button to expand the menu.

5. Click on import and give the path of the .vcf that you have exported. This will import all you contacts to your Gmail account. 

6. The next step is to sync your Gmail account to your phone and the contacts in your phone are ready form the Gmail. Whenever you add a new contact, add it to your gmail account when phone asks you where you want to save. 

Another benefit of this is that, you can sync your gmail account on your multiple devices and your contacts will be there at multiple devices without having the trouble to import and export your contacts. Whenever you lost the phone just change the password of your Gmail account, so that the contacts in your lost phone got unsync and your contacts remain safe and backed up.

Creating Animations using CSS3

This is the era of Internet and Technologies where every day you could find a new development. CSS3 is a mind blowing development in the field of web designing. This is not only a technology but a platform from where any designer, weather fresher or experienced could touch the sky. Its so simple and results are so impressing that you could even forget flash. The design era in the web designing sector was firstly captured by flash and it remain there for a decade, but now JQUERY, HTML5 and CSS3 have changed the scenarios. They are so light in size that they could easily load in the web browser and the results are awesome. Here, I am discussing a small example as how to easily create animations using CSS3.

#anim
{
width:100px;
height:100px;
background:red;
position:relative;
animation-name:myfirst;
animation-duration:5s;
animation-timing-function:linear;
animation-delay:2s;
animation-iteration-count:infinite;
animation-direction:alternate;
animation-play-state:running;
}

I have created an id with the name anim. The basic CSS you can understand if you are a web designer or a fresher even in the IT sector. I will describe the CSS3 properties. animation-name is the name that is given to the animation. You will come to know, further in the tutorial how it will work. animation-duration specifies the seconds for which your animation will play. animation-timing-function tells the behavior of the animation, it could be liner, ease, ease-in, ease-out. animation-delay specifies the time in seconds between consecutive iterations of the animation. animation-iteration-count specifies the no of times animation will play. IF you want it to play all the time then specify it infinite. animation-direction tells the direction in which animation should play. It can be normal or alternate. animation-play-state specifies the state of the animation when the page gets loaded. This is the description of the CSS3 for the id anim. Moving on further, I want to explain the @keyframes CSS at rules. These are certain set of rules that can be used to develop the animations.

@keyframes myfirst
{
0%   {background:red; left:0px; top:0px;}
25%  {background:yellow; left:200px; top:0px;}
50%  {background:blue; left:200px; top:200px;}
75%  {background:green; left:0px; top:200px;}
100% {background:red; left:0px; top:0px;}
}

Here @keyframes is the syntax and myfirst is the name of the animation that we have specified in the CSS property. Coming to the description of the rules. The @keyframes rule set provides you the facility to give different animations at different time intervals of the animation. In this example I have divided the animation into four sections. At 0% i.e. when the animation starts the css given will be applied till 25% of the animation is complete and the css given at 25% will be applicable till 50% and so on. When you apply this in your code you will find something like below.

Beware of Phishing

Phishing is the art of fetching the personal and secret information like user name, password, bank details, credit card details, cell numbers etc. Since many persons hesitate to reveal the personal information on the websites because of identity theft, the phishers have found an advantage out of that. They deliver the mail to you which seems like it is sent personally and is so convincing that it attracts and forces the user to give the personal information. Instead, persons should understand that giving the information on trusted sites is purely secure rather than giving the information by mail to any one.

Certain ways how phishers attack, what mistakes are commonly observed and how you can protect yourself are as follows:-

• Fake and spoofed emails and messages on cell phones: The main way by which phishers attach is emails and messages. Whenever you receive an email or message with a threat or congratulations like 
• Send the form immediately or your bank account will be terminated
• Congratulations you have won $1000, please fill your details and send as soon as possible
• You have been selected in MNC, register yourself for the interview
• Your credit card is at the last stage of renewal. Renew immediately

          All these types of messages are fake and they are intended to get your personal information. So when ever you receive such a mail. Do not panic or get excited, rather stay calm and recheck the things.

• Copy of Popular Websites: This is also very common technique to get the information via fake means. The designers make the copy of certain popular websites and misusing the faith developed by those websites to fetch the information. They just make small changes in the URL of the website like they change www.facebook.com to www.faecbook.com but the design on the page and the website is the same. Even many persons make clone of the bank's website. So when ever you fill your personal data on any website do check the URL twice.

Portable Electronic Gadgets - A need or social symbol?

These days most of the persons do not judge you by what you wear, how you talk, how you behave, in-spite of that they judge you by what electronic gadget(s) you carry along with you like smart phones, tablets, smart watches etc. This scenario is not applicable only to the youth but to every age group. In any party, the status of persons is with smart phones or tablets. If you have something to show like this then you have a status else you do not.

This is not the fault of the people rather it is the impact of the developing technology. The technology has developed to such an extend that every person is in the net of that technology. Every one needs to have access to the technology in order to get updated. In one or another sense, we can say that portable electronic devices are much of a need these days. These electronic devices provide a means of ease in every sphere of life, like instant mail access, instant media sharing via messengers like whats app, any time any where business conferences using apps like Skype, any time any where television using apps like nexGenTv, weather access via AccuWeather, you can create and give presentations any time any where, get up-to date on social front etc. etc., it is endless. 

There are so many advantages of the smart phones and tablets but still for many persons it is just a status symbol. There is no doubt that what a high end phone can provide you features, a basic smart phone cannot provide, but still they could provide all basic needs that a smart phone needs to deliver. We should not use them as a status symbol rather than they are for making our life simpler and faster on technological front.

What type of images should Designers/Developers use on web pages

Web developers/designers have different types of image formats that they can use on the web, but many times they got confused as which type of images to be used. In general there are three types of images that are best suited for the web pages:-

1. JPEG
2. GIF
3. PNG

All three of them have their own characteristics and they are as follows:

1. JPEG: 

• It supports 17 million colors 
• It uses lossy compression technique
• Size should be reduced without much impact on the quality of picture

2. GIF

• Supports 256 colors only
• Uses loss less compression technique
• Supports animation
• Low quality

3. PNG

• Easily load over the web
• Provides transparency
• Provides 8-bit and 24-bit channel which could reduce the size
• Uses loss less compression technique
• Good quality

It depends upon the developer/designer as to decide which of the type to use. This article will help them to decide when and where to use which type of images. Based on the below table, it becomes easier for the developer to decide when to use which type of images.

Type	JPEG	GIF	PNG
Logo
Photographic
Descriptive
Textual
Transparency
Animation
Colorful
Sharpness
Compression

Moving over from core coding to Content Management Systems

These days core coding ways of developing web sites is getting out of trend and the main reason for that is more use of Content Management Systems.For the new comers it is highly advisable to learn all the basics of core coding. Develop few sample websites so that they could understand the basics as how web pages becomes a website. After getting hands on to the core one should immediately move on to content management systems. The reason for moving from core to content management systems are:

1. There are certain web development standards, which are not so easy for the freshers and also not so easy for the experienced persons. They should learn those standards from CMSs as those standards are already implemented in all CMSs.

2. This is the era of smart word along with hard work. Do hard work on learning the coding skills and do smart work by implementing those coding skills via CMSs.

3. CMSs are easy to implement, as they have their own standards. If we go by the options and features they provide us, we can develop very efficient websites with in very less time.

4. Most of the CMSs are free and their tutorials and manuals are easily available.

5. If you have learned coding thoroughly and you are working on a CMS, then you can excel very well because if you want to develop some advance website features then you have to create certain plugins or modules that are not available in that CMS. If you create a plugin, and you think that could be useful to others as well then you can get that plugin patent and fix a price for that. If it will be really good you could earn a lot from it.

6. These days screen sizes are much variable, which creates problems for the designers but many of the CMSs provides templates that are much responsive, means that got fit to any screen size weather tablet or smart phone. One should just not implement it but simultaneously learn as how to do.    

How to easily generate CSS3 for your website

All the fresher web developers these days should focus on new techniques for styling and creation of web pages. CSS3 is very good and provides so many design features from earlier CSS, but the thing is that how new comers learn about these styles. They know, there is CSS3 but they do not know as how to use it. Here I am explaining a very simple way to generate and apply CSS3 code for their websites. One should not make a habit of this, but it is very good for learning as well as for quick design development. 

There is a website, www.css3generator.com that provides a feature to generate CSS3 code, that code could be understood and can be copied and applied to your website very easily. Let us take an example step by step:-

1. Go to  www.css3generator.com

2. From the drop down chose the type of CSS style you want to give. In this example we will use text shadow.

3. Give the parameters as you want and you can see the changes in the preview area. In this example we have given 4px horizontal length for the shadow, 3 px vertical length for the shadow, blur radius is 2px and shadow color is e6092e. You do not have to specify the shadow color, when you click on the text box of shadow color, color picker will appear and you can easily pick the color and its code will be displayed in the box. You can easily see the text shadow in the preview area.

 4. In the box next to the browser icons is the code of the CSS3.

5. Click on the notepad icon on this portion of the webpage. The CSS3 code will be copied to your clipboard. 

6. Now go to your web page code in which you want to apply this CSS. You can make a class or ID for this. 

If you want to make a class they you have to write code as

.class_name{

text-shadow: 4px 3px 2px #e6092e; filter: dropshadow(color=#e6092e, offx=4, offy=3);

}

and if you want to use it against an ID then you have to write code as

#id_name{

text-shadow: 4px 3px 2px #e6092e; filter: dropshadow(color=#e6092e, offx=4, offy=3);

}

class_name and id_name could vary according to your naming methodology. 

7. Then give the reference of this CSS in your text element. For suppose you have a text element as:

<h2>Hello, This is CSS3 Generator</h2>

Hello, This is CSS3 Generator

and it will be displayed as above. If you want to give that styling that we have generated then you can give

<h2 class="class_name">Hello, This is CSS3 Generator</h2> 

if you are implementing as a class

or

<h2 id="id_name">Hello, This is CSS3 Generator</h2> 

if you are implementing as a ID.


When you implement this you will get the result as below:

Hello, This is CSS3 Generator