Kiran Upadhyay

Just a few days ago, Google announced the release of the Chrome OS source code . Within less than 24 hours, the web was littered with disk images for running the new OS on virtual machines such as VMWare and VirtualBox. I even managed to put together my own Google Chrome OS download in the form of a complete VirtualBox appliance. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve taken it a step further, and now you can easily try it on your own computer from a USB thumb drive. Before You Get Started Before you decide to download Chrome OS, there are probably a few things I should tell you about it. It is in the very early stages of development, so there is still a lot of stuff that doesn’t work. In fact, it may not work for you at all. You should also be made aware that this operating system is very simplistic by design, as it is intended for use on netbook computers . By definition, a netbook is a small and inexpensive laptop intended for very casual use such as web browsing and simple office

If there’s one thing that gets to me it’s wasting money. I know we all like to splash the cash a little and have fun – hell I’m known to buy the latest gadget, game or gizmo if my bank balance permits me. But it’s spending money when one doesn’t have to that gets to me. Say for instance you’re buying a new iPod for almost 200 Euros. I’m always amazed by the amount of people (almost all) who’ll just pay it even through they could have put in 20 minutes work and saved themselves 30 Euros. That’s an extra thirty Euros you could have in your pocket for basically doing nothing. As a younger person (although I know most people are affected by the recession) I’m kind of expected to be somewhat up to date with ‘fashion’ and of course technology. And that means expensive purchases. Many young people just bite the bullet not realising that they could easily save (and make) money by following even a couple of the steps I’ll outline below. I’ve compiled the following list of 5 ways to save mone

If you’re anything like I am, you’ve accumulated a great deal of photos of your family, your travels and everything else that interests you. Other than storing it away on disk or even creating an online photo slideshow with them, wouldn’t it be cool to make your own home movie using those photos, background music and creative scene transitions? In this article, I’m going to describe how you can use Pinnacle Video Spin to take those photos that mean so much to you, and convert them into your own movie that really expresses the emotion that the photos represent for you. With special effects, a meaningful audio track and even a voice-over track if you wish, you can transform static photos into a movie that will impress. Using Pinnacle Video Spin to Make Your Own Movie You don’t have to pick up a video recorder to create a meaningful movie. Even if you only have photos, the Pinnacle Video Spin software has enough features so that you can use voice-over audio, special effects and music

Anyone in the IT industry has been asked to covertly record or recover a user’s browsing history. It comes with the job and no one likes it. We like it even less when you have to take screenshots over and over again of long lists of URL’s. Internet Explorer and Firefox both do not have a method to print out a user’s browsing history. So what do you do? Get an intern to do it? Nope because it is confidential! Bang your head against the wall?  Nope! As you are a Make Use Of reader we are here to show you a solution. That solution comes from one of our favorite utility programmers – NirSoft . NirSoft has two applications Mozilla History View and IEHistoryView . As you can probably work out, each one of them works for their respective browser and will not work with the other. So keep both of them on your memory stick when you go a’ hunting. Run the portable application and it will start scanning the machine instantly. Below I ran this on..umm…a user’s machine – yeah that’s the ticke

The Windows Registry is the root ball of the operating system. Every little bit of system information is rooted in the registry, be it software, drivers, user information or registration data. Over the lifetime of a computer, numerous tools are installed, updated, moved or removed. Even if done thoroughly, this can create a mess in the registry when files are left behind and references become outdated. As a result, the computer slows down, programs produce registry-related errors, and eventually the system becomes unstable. There is a number of free tools out there that can fix common registry errors, such as missing shared DLLs, incorrect file extensions, invalid paths, missing shortcuts, orphan Active X objects, invalid devices, invalid links to startup programs, and lots more. Here is a short review of the five best freeware registry cleaners. 5. CCleaner CCleaner definitely is the most popular Windows system optimization tool. It comes with a ton of features, one of them bein

It seems it’s the age old enigma as far as computers and the Internet goes: How can I send (or store) a large file?  Many services have limitations set up.  For instance, many email providers won’t allow file attachments larger than 10 MB.  These days that’s not much, is it?  Many services allow larger file sizes and capacities… for a price. Well, here at MakeUseOf we are more interested in service that are FREE.  Other MakeUseOf writers have written some articles that can help. Let me share with you a free solution that includes file sharing AND storing: GoAruna .  GoAruna has several benefits, two of which are unlimited, free web storage space (the size limit for each file appears to be 100MB) and ease of use.  In this post, I would like to share some of the capabilities of this site and how they may be helpful. File Storage As I mentioned earlier, GoAruna sports a handy UNLIMITED total file storage limit!  This is cool because you can save as many files as you like!  There is

A Guest Post by David Cleland from TotalApps . In 2006 I proudly started my first blog, DigMo ! It was technology, it was creativity, it was music and it was education. Despite it being a bit of blog soup I was pleased at how quick the site grew but within a few years it reached a critical point beyond which I really couldn’t get the traffic to grow. The site was frankly far too general to appeal to a specific community. The site had a massive 80% bounce rate and taking advice from reading the great advice on this site I decided to take stock and critically re-evaluate the future of DigMo! As a result I decided to split the site and create two separate niche blogs, DigMo! To focus on educational technology and I launched a new site, TotalApps , to focus on Mac and iPhone App reviews. The thought of starting from zero scared me and I looked at ways to get the site up and running quickly. I decided the best way to draw attention to the blog was to offer regular site competitions. Fi