Being Informative

YouTube is awesome. It’s the best video-streaming website for general purpose videos, and it’s choc-a-bloc full of great features. But with a few tweaks, it can be even better. The many problems with YouTube are well documented, from a comments section that often draws trolls and miscreants, to more benign annoyances like the cluttered and distracting interface. Most of these can be solved with the use of extensions and add-ons for a browser. Some of them require third-party websites, but it’s still easy to do. 1. Healthy Productive YouTube (Web): Remove Distractions, Focus on Good Content   YouTube can be a major source of distraction and an endless rabbit-hole in which you keep finding new things to watch. Healthy Productive YouTube is a simple userscript that seeks to fix that problem. Userscripts are an easy option to customize how a website appears to you. You can use Stylish to install Healthy Productive YouTube in your browser. The script removes th...

LinkedIn often tells people when you view their profiles and shows them your name. That person may even get an email or alert saying you viewed their profile. Here’s how to browse privately without LinkedIn sharing this information. It may seem silly to prefer anonymity on a social network, but other social networks don’t work this way. Facebook and Twitter don’t send someone a notification whenever you view their profile. To find this option, head to the LinkedIn website, click your profile icon on the top bar, and select “ Settings & Privacy .” Click “How others see your profile and network information” under Privacy. Click “Profile viewing options.” Select how you want to appear. You can select “Anonymous LinkedIn Member” for pure private browsing or select your private profile characteristics, which may appear as just “Someone on LinkedIn” or something more specific. People will still see that someone viewed their profile after you view their profile—b...

The question most of us have in our free time isn’t whether or not to stream something, it’s, “What should I watch on Netflix?” Here are a few quick ways to get an answer. Netflix is constantly tweaking its interface to tell you to watch certain shows and movies, but sometimes, it seems like Netflix pushes its own productions too strongly while ignoring more worthy options. Third-party recommendation engines, like those in this list, can be better at finding something more suited to your palate. 1. What The Hell Should I Watch On Netflix (Web): One Pick At a Time If you don’t want to spend time tweaking a bunch of filters to find exactly what you’d like, this is the simple option. What The Hell Should I Watch On Netflix (WTHSIWON) focuses on speed and simplicity, giving you one pick at a time. First, choose whether you want movies, TV shows, or anything at random. In the second step, choose the genre. You’ll immediately get a recommendation, complete with a tr...

Desktops aren’t the only devices that pick up viruses. While it’s not a common occurrence, Android devices can indeed suffer from malware. If you do get a virus, you could perform a factory reset to get rid of it, but that means you’d lose all your data. Your photos, saved games, text messages, and everything else will be gone if you didn’t back them up. Obviously, a factory reset should be your last option. So what can you do to remove a phone virus without a factory reset? Let’s find out. Android Virus Removal Apps The Play Store is home to dozens of Android virus removal apps. However, most of them are bloated and want you to pay for features you don’t need. However, there are a few worth using. If you think you’re infected with Android malware, it’s not a bad idea to install one of the below apps and scan. You don’t need to keep it around afterwards if you follow the common sense tips above. 1. Malwarebytes One of the most trusted names in desktop secu...

WhatsApp is  expanding its Business API that let companies communicate with their customers on the platform. They can now programmatically send users information like shipping confirmations and boarding passes, offer real-time customer support, and accept inquiries via a click-to-chat button on their site (similar to how Facebook’s Messenger plugin works). That puts WhatsApp in a great position to grow its brand: it stands to earn money from businesses that are slow to respond to customers, and those fees also incentivize businesses to improve their support channels. Plus, users may prefer WhatsApp over other modes of communicating with companies, like waiting on the phone to be connected to a sales rep, sending an email, or filling out a support request form on their site that doesn’t accommodate certain kinds of questions or requests. It’ll be interesting to see how it continues to grow its business, and whether it’ll eventually go the way of China’s WeChat to...

  Back at Facebook’s F8 developer conference in May, WhatsApp announced that it would be bringing group calling with both voice and video support later on this year. Now, WhatsApp says the feature is live for users around the globe on iOS and Android starting today. Video calls have been supported by WhatsApp since 2016, but until now they were limited to two participants. The app is now starting to add group video calling to its iOS and Android app and it supports up to four people, the company has announced. WhatsApp says that the new feature is engineered to work under slow network conditions. Additionally, calls are end-to-end encrypted, like all chats on the messaging app. In order to start a group call, start a video or voice call with one of the contacts. Following this, you will see a button at the top-right corner of the screen that will let you add another participant to the call. Once the call gets connected, an Add Person icon is shown on the top right, ab...

If you’ve watched the somewhat surreal Westworld TV series from HBO, you may want to pay particular attention to the game that Warner Bros. has just published on the Play Store, some three months after preregistrations began. The game puts you in charge of managing the park at Westworld, where you’ll have to entertain each of the guests’ whimsical demands. As you might expect with such a simulation game, you have to build and control the environment. You’ll start right at the bottom as a lowly trainee using the Delos Park Training Simulation (DPTS) to learn the various aspects of park operations and host maintenance. Tasks include the following: Manufacture, collect and upgrade over 170+ Artificially Intelligent Hosts as you create the ultimate experience for Guests Our Guests want to “live without limits.” Match the right Hosts with Guests to satisfy their every desire with these violent delights Improve and upgrade A.I. Hosts by performing diagnostics, ...

WhatsApp is one of the world’s most popular messaging apps, so it makes sense to know as much about it as possible. Aside from just text messages, WhatsApp also lets you send images, call others, and even upload audio messages. Those audio messages have been subject to a pain point for a while. Since they play out loud through your phone’s speaker, you might not want to open one in public and broadcast it to everyone around you. So if you don’t have headphones around, you’re out of luck. Thankfully, a hidden WhatsApp trick will prevent you from ever having this problem again. How to Listen to WhatsApp Audio Messages in Secret Whenever you receive an audio message and don’t want to play it through your speakers, here’s what you must do: Simply tap the Play button on the message, then immediately hold your phone up to your ear . WhatsApp will intelligently detect that your phone is up against your head, and switch to playing the message through your phone’s ea...

I'm pretty sure that if you are Pokemon GO fan, the most fascinating feature that would have caught your eyes would have been Augmented Reality.  Augmented Reality, as can be seen in the pic above, is an enhanced version of reality where machine generated stuff (say, Pokemon ball, Pokemon character) can be superimposed over the live view of the real world (say, road, grass, pavement). If you've ever wanted to create augmented reality experiences but had no idea where to start, Google might have your back. It's releasing a free Introduction to Augmented Reality and ARCore class on Coursera that teaches you how to develop AR content, even if you have no knowledge of the format. Walk through the 15-hour program and you should know how to use both ARCore as well as resources like Google's own Poly object library. It's a helpful gesture for app makers wanting to hop on the AR tre...

Tesla is updating its software once again, and Model 3 owners should be particularly pleased with these latest developments. With update 2018.24, Model 3 cars are now capable of accessing the Autopilot Summon feature, as well as cabin overheat protection and Wi-Fi. Drivers can also limit the speed of their vehicles via the new mobile app update, setting a top speed of anywhere between 50 and 90 miles per hour. While Summon is likely old news for those with the Tesla Model S or Model X, this is the first time that Model 3 owners will be privy to this functionality. As the name suggests, it allows owners to move  a Tesla both in and out of a parking space remotely, using either the mobile app or the key. It’s high time that Summon made its way to Model 3 vehicles — after all, the cars have long been equipped with the requisite Autopilot sensor suite that makes Summon possible.   Along with Summon, the update also provides Model 3 vehicles with Wi-Fi access, ...

The Netflix app is notoriously tricky to navigate thanks to one of the most poorly designed search features ever. There’s no advanced search feature, no way to search by other users’ ratings, and no native way to browse the hundreds of categories. Wouldn’t it be great if you could see each movie’s IMDb rating directly within the Netflix app? Well, it turns out that you can. Keep reading to find out how to do this. How to Get IMDb Ratings in the Netflix Android App The app you need is called Flutter . It is available for free in the Google Play Store and is entirely ad-free. Flutter relies on Android’s accessibility services to work. The accessibility services allow the app to read the on-screen content. It then uses the information to correlate the content you’re looking at with IMDb. As soon as the search is complete, the IMDb rating will pop up on your screen. The app will guide you through the process of providing accessibility permissions when you fire it up ...

After years of ignoring the medium, Google is finally taking podcasting seriously. To that end, the company has released a standalone app called Google Podcasts. What Is Google Podcasts? In a nutshell, Google Podcasts lets you listen to podcasts. You can search for the podcasts you already know and love, and subscribe to your heart’s content. Or, if you’re keen to hear more, you can let Google recommend podcasts based on your listening habits. Google Podcasts syncs across different Google products, including Google Assistant. Google will remember how far through an episode you are, meaning you can start listening on your smartphone but finish listening on Google Home. Google Wants to Transform Podcasting At launch, Google Podcasts is very similar to countless third-party alternatives. However, in the longterm, Google is hoping to use the Podcasts app to “transform podcasting for the better”. This will be achieved by utilizing AI and encouraging diversity. In te...

Lenovo has been hyping up a new phone called the Z5 over the past few weeks, posting sketches and renders that hinted at a truly all-screen design free from bezels and notches. Well, the Z5 just got unveiled in Beijing and... I'm afraid there's bad news. Yep, that's a notch. And a chin at the bottom. The Z5 has a 6.2-inch 19:9 1080p screen with bezels that Lenovo claims are thinner than the Xiaomi Mi 8 and iPhone X, and a notch that is narrower than those two phones. But it still has a notch, like practically every other Android phone this year. Lenovo claims a screen-to-body ratio of 90 percent. Elsewhere, the phone has an unspecified eight-core Qualcomm processor and 16-megapixel dual cameras. The battery is 3,300mAh and can be fast-charged at 18W. On the positive side, the Z5 is pretty cheap at 1,299 yuan (~$200) for a model with 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, or 1,799 yuan (~$280) for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. It'll go on sale in...

Sometimes situations crop up wherein you don't want to log in into your personal email account on a "vulnerable-to-get-hacked" computer (usually present in cyber cafe) to send email to a person. To counter such situations, you can use the service offered by SharkLasers - a disposable temporary email address providing service. To use the service, follow the following steps:- Step 1 :- Open https://www.sharklasers.com/compose Step 2 :- Now write a mock email address, whatever may suit you(no compulsion to mention an actual valid email address). Step 3 :- Type your subject and message. Step 4 :- It even gives you the feature to send attachments of any form of size 150MB, so you can browse for the files and attach, whichever you want to, to your email. Step 5 :- Just click SEND and your mail will be sent. Do comment on this post if you liked it. Also please subscribe to this blog to get notified of the daily interesting news that will be posted here. ...

If you like modifying your phone viz. change themes, wallpapers, applying launchers and much more, then this post is for you. Though, Android does not allow Navigation Bar's colour modification without root, but there's a way around that lets you change Navigation Bar's colour and that too, without root. Navbar Apps , an Android Application that lets you choose a colour for your Navigation Bar as per your choice. Download it from Google Play, then open it once installed. Once you do, you’ll see the app’s home screen. Your navigation bar should change to orange right away to match the color of the app. This is the default behavior of the app—it changes the navigation bar color based on the color of the app you’re using. Tap the Gear icon next to Active App on the home screen and you can disable coloring for certain apps, or override the default color if you’d prefer another. If you’d rather keep it at one color, choose Static Color on the home screen. Tap the Gea...

Ever got bored of that same UI that original WhatsApp has...... If yes, then here it is - GBWhatsApp, a moded version of WhatsApp with beautiful Themes, not only beautiful UI is its SP but it has a bunch of pretty useful features that original WhatsApp does not provide. The list is as follows :- Ban proof, No Issue of Ban of your Account.  Supports calls, No Worries about calling feature.  Hide your ( last seen ) status.  Privacy mods like Hide Second read Tick etc.  Supports Custom Themes, Apply the Theme of your choice, hundreds of themes available in inbuilt Theme Store.  Theme Server ( to download/apply themes )  Change ticks/bubbles Style.  Counter statistics for groups.  Media preview without loading, much advanced and better than real whatsapp (gbmods rocks)  Show Online/last Seen in Main Screen.  Send video to size upto 30 MB instead of 16 *MB.  Send 90 images at once instead of 10.  Change your status...