With the advent of Web 2.0, many applications have shifted from being desktop apps to web based cloud apps. This category contains all the best apps reviews, tips and tricks and troubleshooting solutions about these services. These services include Facebook, Twitter etc.
Google Chrome offline installer can be downloaded from the links given below. The links point towards the latest version of Chrome browser.
Google Chrome Offline Installer 32-bit (Single User): Download
Google Chrome Offline Installer 32-bit (All User): Download
Google Chrome Offline Installer 64-bit (Single User): Download
Google Chrome Offline Installer 64-bit (All User): Download
Firefox 57 has been released in the stable channel today, 14th November 2017. You may download Firefox 57 offline installer from links given in this article.
Previously, the two updates were released in two consecutive weeks for Firefox 57 Beta version to experience the changes of Firefox 57 before it comes to Stable version.
Firefox 57 is twice as fast compared to earlier versions of Firefox as it is powered by a cutting-edge engine. It uses 30 percent less memory than Chrome browser so other apps won’t slow down. The new look of Firefox 57 makes the browser more attractive and effective. The old add-ons system has been removed from the Firefox 57. And many other new features are added in this release.
Firefox users can easily upgrade to Firefox 57 via automatic updates when the updates will available. But you can get the latest Firefox by downloading it from below direct links.
Let’s see the changes, improvements, and new features of Firefox 57.
The Firefox has started Quantum project to increase the performance of Firefox 57, and it has released with Firefox 57. This new project Firefox Quantum is 2X faster in speed. Firefox Quantum also includes a visual refresh “Photon”, that looks and feels new and refreshing for all operating systems.
Firefox gets a new Visual Redesign interface – Photon project. You can experience this new UI in the stable version of Firefox 57. The AMD VP9 hardware video decoder support for video playback has been improved, and it will use less power consumption than the earlier versions of Firefox.
If you have enabled the accessibility services, the title bar of the window will show you the accessibility indicator. One more new thing, the date and time input support has been added in the Nightly update.
WIth Firefox 57, easily manage site data by clearing unwanted cookies and cache to fix the performance issues by going to the “Options/Privacy and Security” section of the browser.
Firefox 57 has new light and dark themes. If you want to switch between these two themes, you need to enable it by going to the Firefox Settings. Otherwise, Firefox will enable the default theme as a default.
The Browser’s scroll feature now uses asynchronous scrolling. You may feel smoother scrolling with this asynchronous scrolling. In Linux, the content process has more strict security sandbox to block the Filesystem reading and writing. In Unix, the middle mouse paste in the content area no longer navigates to URLs by default.
Firefox 57 brings some changes for developers also.
On Windows and Linux OS, Firefox can crash in some situations if you are using Intel Broadwell-U-processors with old microcode. This issue is unresolved in this release. But Firefox will surely release some other update to fix issues.
The following links are direct download links to Firefox 57 offline installer. You can easily complete your installation without connecting to the internet with these offline installers.
Download Firefox 57 for Windows 64-bit
Download Firefox 57 for Windows 32-bit
Update Firefox browser to experience a new and the fastest browsing with its cutting-edge engine.
To disable hardware acceleration in Google Chrome, follow the steps below:
If you are unable to play videos, you will need to disable hardware acceleration in your browser. For Chrome simple steps above will solve your problem.
Mozilla now offers Firefox with a web installer. It is called stub installer. This means that the user downloads Firefox setup stub instead of the complete offline installer. The initial download is about 300 KB but when you run the web installer, it will start downloading the latest version of Firefox.
The issue with web installer is that it cannot be used to install Firefox on the system where there is no Internet access. If you are a single user, it is beneficial for you to download Firefox stub installer as it will download the latest version of Firefox.
But if you want to install Firefox on multiple computers, it is probably wise to download an offline installer. This will save you a lot of bandwidth as the setup will not be downloaded again and again as in case of stub installer.
There are two ways to download the latest Firefox complete offline installer. One is using the official Mozilla FTP servers and second is to use the Mozilla’s website.
The official FTP location of Firefox can be accessed here: ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/
You will need to go to the releases directory to get the latest stable release of Firefox. You will find all versions of Firefox from the beginning including the stable and beta versions. Each version has its own directory. You will need to go to the directory of latest version of Firefox.
To recognize the latest version, you can scroll to the end of the list and see which version number doesn’t have a letter ‘b’ in its name. For example, right now the latest release of Firefox is Firefox 22. So you will need to go to 22.0 directory.
If you want to download Firefox for Windows, you can go to win32 directory and download Firefox offline installer in the appropriate language as specified by each directory. Likewise, for Linux, you can go to linux x86_64 and for Mac OSX, you can go to the mac directory.
The second method is easier than the first one. First go to firefox.com and instead of clicking the download button, click “Systems & languages” link just below the download button. This will open another webpage listing down all the languages and their corresponding Firefox downloads for each Operating System including Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
Just find your language and click on the corresponding Download button. This will download Firefox offline installer instead of the stub installer.
Dictionary Pop-Up is a Firefox add-on which adds a dictionary to Firefox. The user can get the meaning of any word just by double clicking or selecting the word on any opened webpage. The Dictionary Pop Up is an official extension from Dictionary.com.
This add-on is especially useful for people whose vocabulary is weak and they want to improve their English learning experience. The dictionary currently supports English only.
To install this add-on, just go to Firefox Menu –> Add-ons –> Get Add-ons and search for “Dictionary Pop-Up”. Otherwise, you can simply open Dictionary Pop Up add-on link in Firefox which will automatically install the add-on for you.
The extension does not need Firefox to be restarted. It will start working immediately after installation. To get a meaning of any word, just double-click it and a pop-up will show up immediately with the meaning of the word.
Dictionary Pop-Up not only displays the meanings of selected words, it will also show the synonyms if available. You can also click the sound icon to let the add-on speak the word for you.
If you want to get more details about the word, just click on the “More” link at the end of pop-up and you will be taken to the webpage from Dictionary.com which has a lot more details about the word.
You can also search for any word directly on dictionary.com by selecting the word, right-clicking and selecting “See word on Dictionary.com”
Overall, I like the concept of having dictionary on the go while browsing the Internet. The pronunciation feature is very good as the user is able to hear how that particular word is pronounced. I have installed this add-on and am using it regularly. Hopefully this will help me improve my English comprehension and spoken skills. What do you use for improving your English learning skills?
We live in a time when marketing is so pervasive that it is not unusual to have more junk mail than legitimate mail in our mailboxes and inboxes. Some would argue that it is a wonderful blessing for consumers to be made aware of all the products and services that they may need. Others might disagree.
Regardless of where you may stand on the issue, everyone agrees that it can be annoying to get lots of junk mail. Fortunately, there are some methods, applications, and services available to consumers that don’t want to be inundated with solicitations. In fact, spam makes up over 14 billion emails per day, more than 70% of which is created for identity theft. So the need to avoid it and delete it from our lives is more important than ever.
You can usually spot SPAM before opening it if you are paying attention. The first thing to check is the sender’s name. Secondly, check to see what time the email was sent. Interestingly, most SPAM is delivered between 12am and 4am.
Another indicator is file size. Most advertisements are at least 3 KB. If one is still not sure after checking these things, one can open the message. If it does seem to be SPAM, do not click on any links! To be safe, I don’t even open emails from anyone I don’t know, especially if the title appears “too-good-to-be-true”.
One of the ways that marketers gather email addresses is from forums. One precaution that will limit SPAM is to not post email addresses on forums. Additionally, there are many spam blocking tools that can be downloaded such as Spamgourmet.
Those using Microsoft Outlook can use spam filtering plug-ins that are available. Most email programs enable the user to limit the incoming emails to the ones in the address book.
Obviously, calling a company that uses direct mail advertising and requesting to be taken from their mailing list is one of the methods for reducing junk mail. Of course that is very time-consuming to call each advertiser that shows up in the mailbox and it still doesn’t totally solve the problems.
One of the challenges in stopping junk mail is that the postal department offers a service to marketers called “Every Door Direct Mail.” This service enables a business to send mail to every single address in a specified neighborhood, even though they don’t know your address.
There are now several online services that help to help people in unsubscribing or opting out of getting postal junk mail. One of them is called Catalog Choice, and it is my favorite. This is a free service that enables people to search a database of catalogue marketers and remove your name from any of their listings.
Zumbox is a service that helps businesses and consumers to convert physical mail into email. Consumers that sign up can have the participating businesses send their advertisement digitally instead of physically.
The great thing with these services is that you don’t need to make any phone calls or jump through a bunch of hoops. Anyone with a laptop, tablet pc, or whatever other gadget we all have these days is all we need to protect ourselves.
Lifelock is a paid service that charges $10 per month. They automatically remove a person’s contact information from all the lists they don’t want to be on. The service also provides different levels of identity protection.
PaperKarma is a Smartphone app that helps cut paper mail that is unwanted. One simply uses their smart phone app to take a picture of the unwanted junk mail and PaperKarma contacts the advertiser and has your name deleted from the mailing list.
By taking advantage of these options, one can greatly reduce the amount of unwanted mail in the mailbox and inbox.
How do you deal with junk mail?
Paul Mansour is enthusiastic about start-ups along with consumer and small business technology. Working within Dell.com, he needs to stay up-to-date on the latest products and solutions and best-in-class e-commerce strategies. In his spare time he can’t resist taking apart his latest gadget and forgetting how to put it back together.
The main purpose of BitTorrent is to share and distribute large amount of data over the internet. They decrease the server dependency on downloading large files over any peer-to-peer network and make a “Swarm” where user can join as a host and download and upload files from each other at the same time.
In this article, we will discuss some tips about boosting torrent download speeds.
When you think to choose any BitTorrent application for your PC or Laptop, take some time and read the reviews about that application you are going to installed. Some Torrent clients are easy to use, but are difficult to configure, and vice versa. You can check the best BitTorrent client for Windows. Wikipedia has a huge list of detailed BitTorrent applications with respect to Operating system, features, interface, vulnerabilities etc.
Seeders and peers or leechers are the most important part of any torrent file. Large number of both will affect your downloading speed. Basically seeders are those computers who have downloaded that piece of file and helping others to download quickly, while peers are those who are currently downloading and uploading the file simultaneously. Choose the download file which has more seeders and less peers.
It is also important to note that if you see a file with 0 seeders or a file with large number of peers, then there might be a chance that file contain viruses. So always check reviews and comments before choosing any torrent file.
When running any torrent download, always make sure that you mark its bandwidth allocation to High. Bandwidth allocation depends upon your internet speed of downloading and uploading also called up and down.
In uTorrent, you can adjust the bandwidth by going to Options->Preference->Bandwidth.
When you are downloading multiple files then it is suggested to keep the bandwidth of higher priority file to high and the rest to low so that the speed could be managed and distributed equally. It is also suggested to keep the uploading limit to Low.
By default, BitTorrent applications are not allowed and permitted to communicate through firewall which results in blocking of most of the torrent clients.
To enable Torrent to communicate through your firewall, you just need to configure your Control Panel settings and ask the firewall to allow the BitTorrent applications.
BitTorrent uses default ports when installed on any computer. They transfer the data packets using different port numbers and if one port is too busy for waiting acknowledgments, then it will unable to send more packets results in slow downloading.
So always configure your BitTorrent port number greater than 10,000. Recommended range of Port number is in between 200000 to 600000. These port numbers are recommended because they are less frequently used by other applications.
As stated earlier, it is not good for a torrent file having large number of peers and low number of Seeders. So you should always limit your connection with peers. In uTorrent, this can be done by going to Options –> Preference –> Bandwidth. There you see three different settings for configuration under Number of Connections.
The first setting determines and limits the maximum no. of connections your BitTorrent can have with other clients on the Internet. This should not to be too high nor too low, otherwise either your downloading stops or becomes very slow.
The second setting allows you to connect the number of peers you restrict per download. This should also be set to low so that you have enough packets to boost up your downloading speed.
The third setting allows other computer to download from you. Keep this low restrict them to do so, but keeping it too low recognize you as a bad user. So choose the right number according to your internet speed and usage of torrent.
These are some of key tips which can help your BitTorrent speed up the downloading of torrent files. Experiment with these tips and let us know which tips you found very useful.
Gmail provides a list of widgets to entertain its users and to make them more productive and organized using Gmail. The encouraging point about Gmail Widgets is that you do not need to search for them over the internet, rather they are available at your dashboard.
Go to the Settings
Select ‘Labs’ tab. Gmail labs are crazy experimental stuff, as called by the developers
Every gadget appears with its name, image, some description and the radio options of Enable/ Disable.
Select Enable
Find the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the page to make the settings effective
This is a very useful and handy gadget for the developers. You can add any gadget directly by specifying it URL.
Did you feel annoyed when it comes to sharing an image with a friend through email? You can always share images by inserting them as ‘Attachments’ but it may lead to unambiguous messages. The default formatting toolbar does not allow you to embed any image in the email message, however, you can enable this feature by using ‘Inserting Images’ from the labs. Click on the ‘Insert Images’ button and browse through your computer to select the image.
By default toolbar
After installing ‘Inserting Images’
Gmail lets you chat with your friends from your Gmail inbox. Add more spice to your chat by displaying your profile image and viewing your friend’s display picture in the chat box. Enable the ‘Pictures in Chat’ gadget from the Gmail experimental labs and view the profile pictures while you chat.
As obvious by the name, it adds links to the left side of your inbox. You can use Quick Links to add most frequently visited website or any web address given in the email message. You can also add any email as a Quick Link.
This is not any experimental gadget, rather it is a built-in feature of Gmail. When you read any email, you will see the sender name and profile picture in the right column. Below its picture, you will a link of ‘Show Details’. Click on it and it will display the recent messages from the sender.
There are also many other widgets available in the laboratory like:
It adds a ‘Mark as Read’ button in your inbox. Now you can mark your emails as being read without actually reading them.
It adds a calendar in the left column. Add important events and meetings to this calendar,so you don’t miss any important date.
This gadget lets you listen voice mails right from the email notification.
Undo Send is a helpful gadget for those who are always in a hurry. If you have pressed send button in hurry, click Undo Send to cancel the sending of email.
It is handy for the Google Drive Users as it displays your recent and starred docs.
Which gadget did you find most helpful? Do you use any other gadget to increase your productivity? Do share with us!
Microsoft Office is the most popular Office suite. Most people will need a solution for opening and editing files created with Microsoft Office apps like Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. There are a lot of solutions by which we can open Microsoft Office files without installing Office on our computer.
The first solution is from Microsoft, Microsoft Office Viewer. Office Viewer is a simple app which can open Office documents without the need of installing Office suite. The second solution is to install another free Office suite which can read the formats of Microsoft Office like docx, xlsx, pptx etc.
Nowadays, opening files directly from the web is becoming popular. So you can open your documents in Google Docs or using Microsoft Office in SkyDrive.
But if you want to view documents right into your browser without the need of installing or downloading anything, then here is what you need to do:
In this method, the document needs to be hosted online instead of being saved locally.
If you want to be able to open local documents in the browser, you will need to have Google Chrome installed on your computer. Install the Chrome Office Viewer extension and open any Office document using Google Chrome. The extension is in beta and does not offer high quality view of the documents. So you will need to compromise with the quality if you are using this Chrome extension for viewing your documents. But it is certainly a great utility for quickly over-viewing the documents that have been downloaded from the Internet.
How do you view documents which you have downloaded from the Internet or are actually viewing online without downloading?
Most of the people including me find it difficult to handle the default function of Microsoft Windows updates. I find it difficult because every time I install Windows, I have to go through a lengthy process of installing the updates again. I have been searching for alternative ways to update Windows rather than going to Microsoft Update site. I have found some solutions and want to share with my readers.
C’t Offline Update is a small software which lets you choose the operating system for which you want to download the updates. You can always stay up to date by manually downloading all the updates for your version of Windows. The advantage of C’t Offline Update is that the downloaded updates remain downloaded and ready for installation if you decide to re-install Windows again.
Windows Updates Downloader is a enhanced approach to download Windows updates for offline use. It lets you select which updates to download in addition to selecting your operating system. Once you download Windows Updates Downloader, you have to download the latest Update Lists (ULs). The link to downloading Update Lists is also given below.
Windz Updates functions like the original Windows Update site. It requires a plugin to be installed to detect which updates are needed to be installed on your operating system. It is especially useful when anyone does not want to use the default Internet Explorer. Windz Updates plugin is not compatible with Internet Explorer while it can be installed for Opera and Mozilla Firefox. When the installation is complete, just scan for updates and install them.
Softwarepatch is rather a specialized site which contains some but not all the updates to different Microsoft softwares including Microsoft Windows. If anyone wants to download a specific update or a Microsoft software, then this site is a suitable choice.
Shavlik provides a google gadget for downloading and installing the latest patches for the system. You must be running Google Desktop to run this gadget.
This list is quite old and it only works until Windows 7. I’m compiling another list for Windows 8. If you know of any update site or software for Windows 8 updates, kindly let me know through comments.