When iOS 5 was released, the most effective feature that I found to be was iMessage – Apple’s own web-based messaging solution that worked not just on iPhones, but also iPad, iPod touch, OS X, and then some, making conversation easier than ever before. I had used a lot of internet messengers before for both Android and iOS, but none matched the convenience of iMessage in my opinion. However, if you’re on Android, the best alternative that you get is, beyond question, WhatsApp Messenger. The app is fast, it’s sleek, and works just right. The support for almost all versions of Android also mean that it doesn’t suffer from the platform’s segmentation issue as much as some others do.
JoinedNovember 9, 2012
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The Nexus line up of devices has always received the prime cut of all that is Android, be it OTA updates, developer attention, mods and custom recoveries, root procedures and whatnot, and that, too, before the rest of the Android lot. This holds true not just for the smartphone showcase, but the tablets, too, since Google decided to enter that market itself. Generally, all the Nexus devices have been at the top of the Android food chain, as it was at the times of their respective releases. Their Achilles’ Heel, however, has always been their cameras, where the units mounted atop the Nexus devices were either inadequate or low performing, resulting in a loss of the battle in the mobile photography arena. Indeed, even mid-range droids had a better camera sensor as compared to the one built into, say, Galaxy Nexus.
It’s a generally accepted fact that first mover advantage exists in all fields of life, including the online world. If you look at the most famous web services and applications today, this indeed seems to be the case. However, there are almost invariably always some exceptions to the general principle, and Facebook happens to be one of those. When today’s social networking giant entered the market, there were already big players like MySpace, Orkut and Hi5 in operation, but Facebook offered something different, continued to improve on it, and thrived with it. Today, the online portal boasts enough active members that had it been a country, it would’ve been one of the largest in the world by population.
If you’re an Android user and at all interested in modding your device, playing around with custom firmware, trying different recoveries, manipulating your device’s bootloader, or anything that falls under the umbrella of advanced usage, you are bound to have come across the term “ADB”. Abbreviation for Android Debug Bridge, ADB for the uninitiated, provides a terminal/command-line-based interface for interaction between your computer and Linux-based Android device. Packaged as a part of the platform tools in Android Software Development Kit (SDK), ADB allows app developers to tamper the internal components of the operating system; ones that are not available to the user otherwise. Since modding a firmware often deals with changing parts of the system, ADB is essential to gain those abilities.
Android has now become a generally pretty stable platform/operating system for smartphones and tablets, and every new iteration only adds to that. Long gone are the days when an Android device would go into constant freezes, get repeated app Force Closes, or would generally become sluggish in performance; a huge of contribution of that goes to the open source development community, too, that strive day and night to make our devices more useful and stable. However, there still might be time when you install an app that doesn’t agree with your operating system or firmware version, or that might have some broken pieces of code, or any other issue, resulting in the same problems that we discussed above. Even worse are the cases when you start suffering from severe battery drain, or when the device itself goes into a boot loop after having installed a certain APK. For all those cases, Google has built-in a neat hidden feature in Android, called safe mode.
Samsung Galaxy S III has been one of the most successful devices that the Korean company has come up with to date, and the Android beast boasts everything that is worthy of a flagship, and then some more. The massive 4.8-inch smartphone packs quite a punch when it comes to raw power, and for that reason, it was quick to receive root, custom firmware, custom recovery and lots of developer love in general. However, it’s no hidden fact that the device is perhaps too large for some users, and while manufacturers seem to be generally headed for large screens with lightweight armor, a tad lesser real-estate would be more comfortable for some. To cater to that crowd, Samsung has released the younger, smaller sibling to Galaxy S III, the Galaxy S III Mini I8190.
Troubleshooting a Windows based PC has many steps. You may try System Restore if you need, or play around with MSConfig utility, or try system recovery, depending on the nature of problem that you’re facing. Among all the commonly-used troubleshooting steps, Safe Mode is one of the most frequently-used ones. Booting your computer up in Safe Mode is something you’d always try if facing some issue with normal start up, even if you don’t know much about what you’re doing. This has been the norm for PC users for years, until Windows 8, where the Safe Mode went missing all of a sudden. Similar to wireless ad-hoc connection in Windows 8, it’s not like this start up mode has been taken out; it’s just been buried deep, and requires some steps to be activated. In this post, we’ll guide you how to boot up a Windows 8 PC in Safe Mode.
Windows 8 isn’t just missing the Start Orb or the ability to easily restart/shut down the PC; there are certain other elements that Microsoft either decided to bury deep within the settings, or omit altogether, when compared with Windows 7 and earlier iterations of the operating system. Among them is also the ability to easily create ad-hoc wireless networks using your current internet connection and wireless adapter. Essentially, an ad-hoc wireless connection turns your PC into a virtual Wi-Fi router, allowing other devices to connect to the internet through a shared internet connection, each with its own unique IP address. Until Windows 7, ad hoc connections were a breeze, since there was an option to create one right in the Network Management utility. With Windows 8, the ability does exist; it’s just a little hard to achieve. In this article, we’ll guide you how to create a wireless ad hoc connection under Windows 8.
An operating system upgrade is always worth having, in my opinion. Newer changes are almost always valuable, and the ability to utilize the latest technology on your smartphone, tablet, computer or laptop is a much-needed benefit. Similar holds true for Windows – the world’s most used PC operating system – where Windows 8 is the latest and greatest in the choices that you have. A lot of people have their issues with the operating system, but that isn’t stopping Microsoft from making constant updates to the OS, making it even better than before. I leave the debate of how useful Windows 8 is at that, and come to something that’s actually limited in the operating system: backward compatibility. Up until Windows 7, Microsoft allowed users to run applications that were compatible with, say, Windows XP, but that has been taken out in the latest iteration of Windows.
One of the larger reasons for a lot of people – who are technically sound enough to opt for a free alternative like Linux – to continue using Microsoft Windows, is the platform’s wide support for applications, and, in particular, games. For even casual gamers, Windows is perhaps the sole choice, owing to the fact that the vast majority of games are available on the said platform, and Mac and Linux continue to trail far behind in comparison when it comes to the number of available titles. For this reason, it makes sense that almost all versions of Windows are capable of running most titles, whether they’re legacy classics or modern-era high-end shooters.
