Kiran Upadhyay

Recently, Google has been busy beefing up  Latitude  to make it more competitive with other location apps -- and more fun to use.  Location history  was added recently,  iOS users can post check-ins  via Latitude, and now Google has begun rolling out location-based deals which are tied to the service. If you're in the U.S., you can now score local savings at participating merchants by checking in with Latitude. Google will also be offering "status deals," which users can unlock by visiting a particular merchant on a regular basis.  Mashable notes  three status levels: regular, VIP, and guru -- though partners can apparently customize those titles if they choose. Right now deals are available from merchants like American Eagle Outfitters, Arby's, Finish Line, Macy's, Quiznos, and RadioShack.

Have you noticed there’s a few things lacking in the native Android OS which really should be there? Or are you plagued by those little  Android  annoyances that just shouldn’t be this much of a pain to fix? You’re not alone! Luckily there’s not too many of these little annoyances and most of them have a free application to help us out with a quick fix. Here’s a selection of things that bug many people about Andoid, but which have a simple, easy fix you can use today. 1. Need Phone Silence At Night There are a great many apps to make your phone silent at night. Some allow certain people’s calls to get through. Others just block out all calls, SMS and notifications.  Silent Sleep  is a basic, free answer to this problem. I personally think an application like this is the first thing any Android phone needs. 2. Stop Accidental Phone Calls All it takes is one little application called  Call Confirm  to prevent your phone ringing people quite so easily. Th...

Firefox has long been the darling of geeks everywhere, but its popularity has waned lately, mostly due to competition from Google’s Chrome browser. Firefox, while stable and practical, simply wasn’t as quick as Chrome. Some, such as myself, switched. Now  Firefox 4  is out, and the browser has been substantially redesigned to improve performance and offer a better interface. The add-on ecosystem always changes when a new browser version is released, and Firefox 4 is no different. Many older add-ons are broken – at least for now. Fortunately, there are a few new or revised add-ons already available. Movable Firefox Button 1.3 This add-on makes the Firefox button in Firefox 4 movable. By default, the button hangs out in the upper left hand corner, on the same part of the interface used by tabs. This add-on lets you move it to someplace else, such as alongside the search bar, which frees up more room for tabs to appear. FabTabs 1.4 The concept behind FabTabs...

The big three – as far as browsers are concerned – have been making headlines as of late. Microsoft released IE9, which was downloaded nearly 2.5 million times in the first 24 hours of being released. While impressive, Firefox 4  came out  clearing some 5 million downloads in its first 24-hour release period. Google Chrome has even been in the news with some of its new features, like talk to search, being integrated in its latest beta release. Out of the three browsers I’ve mentioned, Chrome is still my favorite. It’s very minimalist and I’m a fan of the overall design and functionality. Besides all that though, one of the cool things about Chrome is also one of its most basic features – the ability to add themes. People have created a lot of great themes for the Chrome browser that you can install with a simple click. In this article, I’ll show you the Google Chrome themes that I thought were the coolest. What’s so cool about themes? Well, rather than try explaining it to...

There is no end to just how useful  Dropbox  is, and it’s no secret how much all of us here at MakeUseOf love the service they provide. You’d think it couldn’t get much better than keeping all of your files synced to several computers, backed up on the cloud,  and  working quietly in the background making sure that every new file you save to your Dropbox folder is synced in real time. But it does. Thanks to some interesting Dropbox settings, along with some great third party services that have been built on Dropbox, there are several creative and unique ways you can use Dropbox to do more than just sync your files. Whether you want to take your favourite music with you on the go, listening to it no matter where you are, whether you want a quick and easy way to create a gallery of photos, or even if you want to build an entire website using Dropbox to host it, they’ve got you covered. Listen To Music While you can play audio files saved in your Dropbox folders, th...

We have to deal with web forms and check boxes daily: to comment on any article, to subscribe to an email alerts, to fill in the contact form, etc. It is always worth looking for more and more possible ways to optimize the process. I have already shared a few FireFox  addons to recover forms . However times have changed. Nowadays more and more people use several browsers randomly and we need some cross-browser-compatible tools to cover everyone’s needs. The browser-based tools listed in this post have only some basic functionality but they are able to make your forms more usable and friendly! Besides, these web form helpers are all very easy to install, so you can test any and decide if that’s something that could turn useful to you. Let us know! Save and Recover Forms 1. Simple Form Fixer (Userscript) Tested on: FireFox and Google Chrome Simple Form Fixer  is a nice little userscript with huge functionality: it can save and recover almost any form. The script places a re...

Facebook  Wall is a powerful tool: it lets you stay in touch with hundreds of people all over the world and keep up-to-date with what they are up to and what they share. With it being such an important tool, it is quite clear why it has been tweaked so many times throughout the life of the social network. You can see lots of things at a glance once you enter your Facebook dashboard: your friends’ current mood and thoughts, your friends’ new friends, your friends’ photos, etc; as well as your new potential friends, your friends’ upcoming events and lots of other things. With so much information stuffed into one page, it is easy to get lost. With Facebook  killing default wall filters  while quietly introducing  new wall settings , seeing what you actually want becomes almost impossible. Would you like to have more power over your wall? The following user scripts will help you to tweak your Facebook wall to de-clutter and simplify it! Note: All the three user scri...