Kiran Upadhyay

Google today announced the launch of App Maker, the newest entry in the low-code, drag-and-drop app building market. Like its competitors from Microsoft and numerous startups, App Maker promises to make it easy for anybody to quickly develop basic apps that serve a very specific purpose inside an organization. The new service features a cloud-based drag-and-drop development environment that lets you build the user interface and populate it with data from your G Suite applications, Google Maps, Contacts and Groups and virtually any service that offers an API. These applications then run on the same infrastructure on which Google’s own G Suite apps run, and IT admins can also manage them in exactly the same way as Gmail, Drive and other G Suite applications. The typical use case for these kind of apps are time-tracking solutions, or tracking orders and inventory — essentially any problem inside a company that can be easily digitized and solved by a very basic custom app. The ad...

Microsoft has a little problem and it’s time we all admitted it. We have to gather the family in the living room, sit down Microsoft in the comfy chair and have a little heart to heart. Everybody can see it, except Microsoft — and it could be time for an intervention. It’s the keyboard thing, Microsoft. Enough already. Design your software to take advantage of a touch screen. Let the keyboard go, dude. Steve Jobs once said, it was a mistake to think of the tablet as simply a ‘keyboardless laptop.’ What I think he meant by that is that you need to design software to take advantage of the fact it has a touch screen, to rethink the entire workflow, not simply move the same software to the tablet. Think. Be creative. Apparently, Microsoft missed that — or deliberately chose to ignore it. The key feature of the Surface tablet? It has a keyboard. Look at the Surface commercial with everyone snapping their keyboards to their Surface tablets. It was all about having a keyboard. If w...

Remember when Chrome  was fast? Microsoft might, if ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley’s recent report that the software company is building a lightweight browser, codenamed “Spartan,” bears out. According to Foley, Spartan is “new” and “isn’t [Internet Explorer].” Her post notes that it could be set free inside of the Windows 10 release schedule. In short, Microsoft may be building a speedy, simpler browser that maintains use of Internet Explorer’s rendering engine. Internet Explorer has had a ribald history, growing from zero market share, to market-dominating heights, to slow decline in the face of Firefox, to faster decline in the face of Chrome, to a recent re-acceleration under a new, standards-based approach. Its life has been bitcoin’s late 2013 to date, but stretched out over several decades. Whether the company’s recent moves have been enough to salvage Internet Explorer’s tarnished brand, however, is open to interpretation. Microsoft certainly wants its browser to gain market...

For years, local law enforcement agencies around the country have told parents that installing ComputerCOP software is the “first step” in protecting their children online. Police chiefs, sheriffs, and district attorneys have handed out hundreds of thousands of copies of the disc to parents for free at schools, libraries, and community events, usually as a part of an “Internet Safety” outreach initiative. (You can see the long list of ComputerCOP outlets here.) The packaging typically features the agency’s official seal and the chief’s portrait, with a signed message warning of the “dark and dangerous off-ramps” of the Internet. As official as it looks, ComputerCOP is actually just spyware, generally bought in bulk from a New York company that appears to do nothing but market this software to local government agencies using shady information. The way ComputerCOP works is neither safe nor secure. It isn’t particularly effective either, except for generating positive PR for the l...

Fresh off the hackathon dungeon, Laplock is a nifty little app developed at our TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon in London. Martin Saint-Macary and Ivan Maeder worked tirelessly for the past 24 hours to build an easy-to-use software lock for your Mac. Here’s how it works. At heart, Laplock is a menubar app for your Mac. You install it, enter your phone number and/or Yo account, and that’s it. After that, whenever you close your laptop lid and leave it somewhere, if someone unplugs the power cord, an alarm will blast through your speakers and you will get a notification on your phone. Notifications can be a simple text message or a Yo. If reception is bad, the app will call you instead. Behind the scene, the two hackers used the Nexmo API to manage the notifications. While Saint-Macary was already part of the runner-up team at the Disrupt Hackathon in Berlin, it was Maeder’s first hackathon. They two met at the venue yesterday, and started working on this project right away. “I t...

Sending text messages is one of the most used functions of smartphones, so it’s something you likely do dozens of times a day — if not more. However, if you’re somebody that works at a desk for long periods of time, it’s jarring to constantly switch between your computer and your phone. If you use a dedicated messenger like WhatsApp, you could run it on your desktop using an Android emulator, but this is a complicated setup and would likely be choppy. If you’re not up for this, there are some awesome solutions that allow you to send actual text messages from your phone on your PC without the hassle of emulation. We’ve covered many of these services individually in the past, but this time we’re going to test the apps and decide which is your best option for texting from your computer. Note that these apps use your existing phone number to send messages; if you’re looking to send SMS messages for free online check out our list of ways to do so. MightyText First up is MightyT...

Closing an online account? Wait! There’s something you need to do first. While surfing the Web, it’s second nature to register on various websites in order to gain access to a variety of services, features, and goodies. Once the mystery is solved, you move on to something newer and shinier, leaving behind a trail of unused accounts. Get rid of clutter like that for a better digital life. Before you set about closing all unwanted accounts, follow the steps outlined below. They’ll help ensure that you won’t be going “Uh-oh” after you erase some of your online identities. Check For Dependencies Many services allow you to use your Google, Twitter, or Facebook credentials to log into their site. Some of them bypass email-based registration altogether and insist on using these popular services for sign ups. For example, to create an account on Medium, a publishing platform, you need a Twitter or Facebook account. Also, some services are designed to connect multiple accounts and ...

For PC gamers, there are two points with which they interact with their games – the mouse and the keyboard. Because of this, hardcore PC gamers tend to be pretty picky with the hardware they use. Mad Catz is hoping to have the gaming keyboard for gamers, no matter their preferences, with the $300 S.T.R.I.K.E. 7. It’s modular, and can be adjusted to suit the needs of the different players. It even comes with a touchscreen that can perform all kinds of cool actions that make interacting with the PC more enjoyable. Of course, the modular features and the screen are unique touches, but in the end, the S.T.R.I.K.E. 7 needs to deliver the comfort and performance gamers expect from a top-of-the-line gaming keyboard. Does it? Is the screen just a gimmick? Is it worth the effort to tweak the layout? All these questions and more are what we are going to take a look at in this review.

Microsoft is not known for its quick adoption of new trends, but when it does get on board, it often tries to make up lost time with gobs of money and hoards of experienced software engineers. This strategy seems to be working with Office Online, a cloud-connected version of the world’s most popular productivity software that is free to use (with limitations) and offers a buffet of useful features. You’ll even find Office Online useful, if you already have a copy of Office installed on your computer. Office Online Is Free There’s always been one big, fat problem with Office; the price. It’s expensive, and many users simply can’t afford it, even if they prefer it over a free solution like Google Docs or LibreOffice. Office Online, however, is one of the few ways you can use Office entirely free of charge, forever, and without any specific limitations. Office’s web apps are the same whether you pay or not, and free users even receive 15 gigabytes of cloud storage, which is far mor...

Control your Android phone or tablet using the mouse and keyboard on your computer. Whether you want to respond to texts using your computer’s keyboard or use your tablet as a second screen for research, this setup feels like magic when it’s working. Even better: you can copy text on one device and paste it on another. Synergy has long made it possible for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers to share the same mouse and keyboard. Doing so is seamless: move your mouse pointer past the edge of one screen and you’re immediately in control of another device. This is perfect if you have two computers on the same desk. It’s 2014, and most people don’t have multiple computers on the same desk — but it’s not unusual to have an Android phone or tablet alongside your computer. If you’d like to control that device using the mouse and keyboard you already control your computer with, the Android version of Synergy is exactly what you’re looking for. Synergy for Android requires your device ...

The USB Promoter Group announced today that it has finalized the design of the USB Type-C plug, a new type of USB plug that's designed to completely replace every size of all current USB connectors. Like Apple's Lightning cables, the new connector is reversible so that it can be used in any orientation. According to the USB-IF's press release (PDF), the new connector is "similar in size" to current micro USB 2.0 Type-B connectors (the ones you use for most non-Apple phones and tablets). It is designed to be "robust enough for laptops and tablets" and "slim enough for mobile phones." The openings for the connector measure roughly 8.4mm by 2.6mm. As we've reported previously, cables and adapters for connecting Type-C devices into older Type-A and Type-B ports will be readily available—the prevalence of these older ports will make any industry-wide shift to USB Type-C an arduous, years-long process. The new Type-C plug will be compatib...

If you’re a freelancer, small business, or running a non-profit organization, fillable PDFs could be really useful for you. You might send them to clients to apply for your services, or to create a design brief for a project. You may use them yourself if you regularly need to provide clients with standard information that only changes a little, such as an invoice for payment. This article will show you how you can design your own fillable PDF form, completely free. Free & Open Source Fillable PDF Creation Most PDF-creating programs charge if you want to do anything more involved than reading a PDF. With LibreOffice Draw, an amazing open-source program in the LibreOffice Suite, you can take full control of creating documents including fillable PDFs, and it won’t cost you a dime. Incidentally, LibreOffice Draw, which we covered more generally before, can be a decent overall alternative to Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator for creating art, illustrations, and documents.

All hard drives die sooner or later, but that doesn’t mean they all die at the same rate. At this time, the average lifespan of a hard drive is six years i.e. 50% of hard drives make it to the six-year mark. Sometimes an early death is the fault of the manufacturer, but more often than not, hard drives fail earlier than they should because we don’t take care of them. For some, that might be a strange concept. Hard drives are tucked away within the computer, aren’t they? Do they really need to be “taken care of”? You’d be surprised. Let’s look at the most common causes of hard drive failure and what you can do to prevent them. Don’t want to suffer through the recovery of a dead hard drive, do you? The quickest way to render a hard drive useless is physical trauma. Sounds obvious, I know, but hard drives are more fragile than you might expect them to be – there are several moving parts that can malfunction even at the slightest disturbance. A simple bump while the hard drive is sp...

Technologically speaking, Ubuntu is a pretty good Linux distribution. But sometimes you might wish that the user experience in Ubuntu could be better. There are plenty of Ubuntu-based derivatives that try to solve this problem in their own ways, but one distribution that’s gaining some special attention is Deepin. Interested? Here are five reasons why you should try Deepin, especially if you’re new to Linux. Based On Ubuntu First off, Deepin is based on Ubuntu, which provides many under-the-hood benefits. Since Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distributions are widely used across the Linux community, you’ll know that all packages are supported and updates are guaranteed (especially security updates). Additionally, any packages that you find online that are made for Ubuntu can be installed in Deepin without any worries at all. While Deepin might not be very popular, you can feel good using it. Deepin’s Own Desktop Environment deepin desktop   5 Reasons Why New Linux Users Will Lo...

SD cards are mostly just plastic – put a tiny WiFi chip inside and suddenly they take on a whole new life, allowing for wireless data transfer. But not all WiFi SD cards are made equal. Today, we’re putting three different brands to the test to see which is worth buying. At the end of the review, you’ll get the chance to win the best. We’ve gathered two popular brands, as well as a generic Chinese import, to see how they compare. Each card is Class 10 SDHC, with 16GB capacity. Transcend ($50) Note: Since purchasing these cards for review, the Transcend WiFi SD card product line has mysteriously disappeared, resulting in 404 errors on the Transcend site. There appears to be no way to download updated firmware either. Stay well away from this company – it may be related to  violations of the GPL licensing . The Transcend card includes free SD reader, as apparently some standard readers can have a problem with WiFi cards. The manual recommends you only ...

The Heartbleed SSL vulnerability is making headlines around the world – and misreporting in the press and online is causing confusion. How can you stay safe and ensue your personal details aren’t leaked? What Is Heartbleed? Well, It’s Not A Virus Ignore The Hype & Don’t Panic The Phishing Risk So, Should You Change Your Passwords? Check Which Websites Have Been Patched Conclusion: It’s a Waiting Game You’ve probably heard Heartbleed described as a virus. This isn’t the case: in fact, it is a weakness, a vulnerability in servers running OpenSSL. This is the open source implementation of SSL and TLS, the protocols used for secure connections – those that begin  https://  rather than the usual  http:// . This vulnerability – more commonly referred to as a bug – essentially creates a hole through which hackers can circumvent the encryption. Confirmed on April 7 th  2014, it occurs in all versions of OpenSSL except 1.0.1g. The threat is limit...