Kiran Upadhyay

Public wireless networks are becoming more and more prevalent within towns and cities, providing an excellent alternative to running up a large data usage bill on 3G or 4G. Often public Wi-Fi is “free”, perhaps afforded to customers of a particular shopping chain or Telecoms Company, or anywhere else where a transaction might have already been made. Managing Wi-Fi on an Android tablet is largely straightforward, particularly on the most recent versions where a single widget can toggle the wireless networking on and off. However, this is an experience that can be improved with useful third party apps available from Google Play. The following free apps might well fall into the description of useful – certainly their descriptions present a compelling case – but do they deliver? Wifi History First up is  Wifi History , a tool which should enable you to check the history of your wireless connections and display how long you were connected. Now, in this case, we’ve act...

Everyone knows how to set a picture as wallpaper. Everyone knows how to use pictures, even slideshows, as screensavers. But what if you want more than that? What if you want actual videos playing on your wallpaper or screensaver? Sounds complicated? It’s actually very simple, no matter which version of Windows you’re using (Windows 8 users, I have no guarantees for you. Some of the options below might work for you too, give them a try to find out!). Why would you want a video as your wallpaper or screensaver? First of all, it’s fun, and it makes sure you never get bored. In addition, playing a video on your desktop allows you to continue watching something while you work, and if you’re the sort of person who believes in multi-tasking for productivity, this could be perfect for you. If after using any of these methods you find that your previous wallpaper has disappeared, all you have to do is right click anywhere on your desktop, choose “ Personalize” , and click on your previou...

Let’s be honest, the Windows Task Manager isn’t that great for understanding and managing the processes running on your computer. Even on  Windows 8 , where it’s much-improved, the task manager can’t come close to the power of  Process Explorer . It’s part of the Sysinternals set of tools that Microsoft purchased – and for good reason. They’re among the most powerful system utilities for Windows. In addition to its power, Process Explorer is also flexible. It’s available from Microsoft as a single .exe file. That makes it a portable app you can throw on a  USB drive  and run on any computer. Understanding The Processes Running On Your Computer Perhaps the greatest thing about Process Explorer – from a power-user perspective – is the way it helps visualize the processes running on your computer and their relation to each other. The task manager included with Windows is a bit of a mess, displaying all running processes in a flat list. It works if you’re hun...

Google Talk is Google’s own desktop instant messaging program. You can log in using your Google account. And if you are on Gmail, you have already been using Google Talk, possibly without noticing. With the Google Talk desktop application, you can stay in touch with your contacts and continue the conversation after logging out of Gmail. The tool supports text chat, file transfers, voice calls and voicemail. This article shows you how to set up, customize, personalize, and actually use Google Talk. Note that some features are only available if you have a Gmail account, including voicemails, chat history, and offline chats. A complete list of features and a thorough Help section with detailed explanations can be found here . Setting Up Google Talk After installing Google Talk, you will want to tend to the usual suspects, i.e. should the tool start with Windows, how should it behave when you click something, and what notifications do you want to receive. Click...

There are quite a few song identification services for all our ‘tip of the tongue’ recall moments. Now, Google has launched its own Song Search widget that may just help you answer the question “What was the name of the song?” Please note that this is a widget, not an app, and that you will need access to the web. Widgets, as you know, perform simple functions and in this case it’s about identifying songs from your homescreen. The Google Sound Search widget was previously available on the Nexus, but in its latest avatar, it can be installed across all Android devices. Once installed, add it to the homescreen and let the search widget identify any music playing around you. If you are running Android Jellybean, you can add the widget to the lockscreen. The Song Search widget also keeps a history of all identified songs. You can sync it across all your Android devices running the widget and use the identified songs to purchase their digital copies from Google Pla...

Talk to anyone about mobile gaming and the first game that pops into mind will likely be Angry Birds. It’s no secret that Angry Birds has taken the mobile gaming market by storm, coming out with sequels and themes and all sorts of ways to milk the franchise–even going as far as making a Star Wars version . But me? I never liked Angry Birds. So imagine my surprise when I downloaded Shoot the Apple , gave it a try, and saw that it was pretty similar in gameplay. You fire objects at a target, navigating or destroying obstacles that are in the way. However, Shoot the Apple has a 4.5 star rating on Google Play, and after playing it a bit, I can see why. Shoot the Apple distinguishes itself from Angry Birds in a number of ways, and these are the reasons why I enjoy this game much more. Quite frankly, when I first saw the opening screen for Shoot the Apple, I was turned off. It looks like a family-friendly game, which it is, but the artwork just isn’t according to my...

In June I switched over from a combination of Windows and Linux to pretty much using OS X solely, and being largely familiar with Windows software (and painfully aware of the lack of many Linux alternatives) I had to replace a few oft-used programs with Mac-friendly alternatives. At some point I realised I was bereft of a file recovery tool and it was at that point I discovered PhotoRec . Previously I’ve resorted to Recuva and written about Pandora Recovery , neither of which play nicely with OS X. PhotoRec overcomes this by being compatible with just about every major OS including OS X, DOS and Windows 9x, modern Windows, Linux and even NAS drives . The source code is also available for compiling on other systems, if you’re that way inclined. PhotoRec & TestDisk Despite the name, PhotoRec isn’t just a photo recovery tool – though it performs this function better than any other I have encountered. In reality PhotoRec is capable of recovering more than 390 fi...