10 best Android apps 2014

1. BBC Weather

Free from the BBC, which arrived late to the weather app party in 2013 and delivered a completely stonking, triple-A meteorological experience. A variety of stylish widgets, long-range forecasts, location-aware settings and support for multiple locations make finding out how much it's raining everywhere a joy.

2. Kabbee

Winning fans all over London is this, with the Kabbee app aggregating local minicab firms and attempting to match your late night drunken ferry needs to the cheapest available nearby operator. The idea is to create competition among operators, with the result being some substantial savings over the usual black cab rates.

3. Easyjet

This isn't just some corporate effort full of cross-selling and adverts, it really works. You can book your flight through the simple interface, pay, check-in, then have the app generate a QR code boarding pass to wave at the ticket desk. Paper is entirely eliminated, therefore dealing with printers is entirely eliminated, making life substantially better. Just don't run out of battery power on the big day, else you're stuffed. If EasyJet doesn't fly to your destination then Kayak is a great alternative for global globe trotters.

4. Barclays Mobile Banking

The first wave of mobile banking apps were rubbish, mostly composed of skins that pointed you to some terrible mobile web site. But not in 2014. Go through the fuss of verifying yourself with this one and the Barclays app is extremely useful, listing and managing all your accounts, and even able to function as a replacement for the physical PINsentry card reader that's required to access the full desktop banking site.

5. Sky NOW TV

Sky's ramped up its Android app selection in spectacular fashion over the last year or two, with all manner of streaming, on-demand and specialist services available. Sky NOW TV is the best and most useful of the bunch, letting users buy access to its sports channels on a PAYG basis. Dead handy for cherry-picking the occasional big event without needing a full subscription.

6. BT Wi-Fi

If you're a BT Internet user, this is a must install. Feed the app your BT account master password (this will be the one you thought up on a whim eight years ago and won't be able to remember), and it'll automatically log you in whenever you're in range of a BT hotspot. Given that there are trillions of them in the UK, it means automated access to properly useful Wi-Fi connections when out and about, avoiding the spam £6-an-hour merchants.

7. Vine

The movie making sensation took a little while to appear on Android, then took a while for the numerous bugs to disappear - but now it's all good. It's a simple recording/stop-motion/animation tool, letting you shoot live video on your phone and share it via social networks. The app is also the best way of browsing Vines from others, as the categories and pages mean you can leaf through it like telly, favouriting users.

8. Dropbox

Pretty much essential for anyone juggling a work PC, home PC, laptop, tablet, phone and internet fridge, Dropbox's key power lies in letting you access any files anywhere. It can also automatically upload photos taken on your phone to your account, meaning that, after a bit of uploading and downloading, all your shots are *right there* on your desktop without any tedious cable connecting.

9. Speedtest

Get angry about how slow your internet is. Get smug about how fast your internet is. Spy on the network speeds of your friends and neighbours. If one of your frequent conversations with your mates is how fast your internet currently is, you need this. You can do unlimited broadband up/down speed tests on any boring weekday evening.

10. eBay

The app itself isn't what you'd call attractive, but it lets you browse, watch items and buy stuff, integrating a Paypal sign-in for quick getting of things. Better still, now Android phones all have immense cameras on them, it's a doddle to sell items straight through the app - take a photo, upload it, have most of the listing data pre-filled for you. The app is better as a selling tool than the desktop site, in fact.

Whatfix website to guide a new comer

Too bored reading articles, watching videos, here's a good way,

                 Flows are interactive how-to guides

WhatFix is a community driven website where anyone can create 'Flows'. Think flows as presentations, which on execution, can provide step-by-step instructions inside any web application or a website. This means, one can create a flow over queries related to Gmail, SalesForce, Facebook, or any website or web app you can think of, and you can run them to get step-by-step instructions directly inside these applications!

You can use flows to;

• Improve training effectiveness.
• Reduce customer support queries.
• Ensure quick adoption of tools and applications.
• Provide a collaborative way to create knowledge base.
• Use them to solve a problem or contribute to help others solve problems.

Some 'Flow' examples

• Safe-Search
• Gmail Tricks
• Easter-Eggs

Most productive ways to spend time on internet

1. Print Friendly

This site makes any web page printer friendly.



2. Can I Stream It?

Pick a movie and find out where you can stream it.



3. Fliptext

Flip text to post on your social media sites.



4. Date to Date Calculator

Find out how many days, weeks or months have passed between two dates.


5. Screenr

Allows you to make and share screencasts.


6. Mailbox Locator

Find the closest USPS mailbox.


7. Camel camel camel

Tells you the price history of any item on Amazon. So you can get your hands on it when it's cheapest.



8. A Good Movie To Watch

Instead of scrolling through Netflix forever, this will tell you what to watch.


9. Skyscanner

Browse flights by date, price, and budget without knowing where you want to go.

10. Online Alarm Clock

If you lose your phone and still need an alarm.



11. World Frequency Counter

Find words that you overuse in your writing.



12. Two Foods

When you can't decide what to eat, this will make the choice for you based on what is more healthy.



13. Ripetrack

Find out what your fruit is at the peak of ripeness.



14. sleepyti.me

This site will tell you what time to go to sleep according to natural sleep cycles.



15. Practical Typography

Learn everything about typography using this site.



16. Adobe Kuler

Use this site to find complementary colors using the Adobe color wheel.

17. Online Etymology Dictionary

Gives you the definition and origin of any word.

18. ViddyJam

Like Pandora for music videos.

19. Account Killer

Delete any social media account, not just disable them.


21. Scale of the Universe

Shows you the size of things in relation to others.


22. What the Font

This site and app detects the fonts on any image.



23. The Rasterbator

Turns any image into a printable poster.



24. Is it iced coffee weather?

Fact about the Facebook notification icon

The Facebook notification icon which is globe shaped changes its map view with your location.

• access Facebook from the US and countries in Latin America:

• And this is the icon for countries in the Eastern hemisphere:

Quoted from the source:
"It’s the small things in life that can make a difference, and this is a nice way to acknowledge that Facebook is a global service, not just from the US."

Google dictionary

If you frequently need to look for word meaning by typing in Google ,then Google dictionary extension is your solution.
It provides meaning to the word and also pronunciation
just by double-clicking the word.
It can also store the word history you searched and provide an excel sheet for that.
You have different option when the word will be looked up.

you can see synonyms and other details just by clicking the dictionary icon.

Here's the link:For chrome
Google Dictionary (by Google)
Edit#1:
For firefox users(i haven't used it):
Dictionary Pop-Up by Dictionary.com (Official)

Block Adds in Google Chrome

Annoyed of ads on your favorite website.
Just add AdBlock  extension in Google Chrome. It is also available for Safari.

And the result !!!

Google`s mirror image:elgooG

• Google when spelled backwards becomes 'elgooG', But the interesting fact is we can also use http://www.elgoog.im for our searches.

• 'elgooG' is the mirror image of Google search engine; not only is all of its content a reversal of Google, the search terms must also be written in reverse order to yield the desired results.

• Though created for fun purpose, it found practical use in the People's Republic of China after the domestic banning of Google, as it circumvented the government firewalls.

It is definitely worth a try.:-)

unusable headphones as the FM antenna

This one I discovered recently: If you get an unusable headphones, don't throw it away. You can cut & remove the wire, and use the TRS jack as the FM antenna for your smartphone. 

All you need is to plug-in this TRS jack into your phone's headphones plug, and open the FM radio app, then start listening through your loudspeaker.

How it works: The headphones wire works as the FM antenna for mobile phones. Usually FM transmission will have a very strong signal, which needs a small piece of wire to receive the signal.

Control youtube by Smartphone!!!

Use your smartphone as a remote for YouTube on your PC or laptop

You can actually control YouTube from any smartphone without installing any apps or linking the two over a network. 
 

• Go to http://www.youtube.com/tv on your PC/Laptop
• Hit the up arrow on your keyboard twice to arrive on the search tab. Hit enter, and you will see a code meant to be entered on your mobile device

Image Courtesy: Page on lifehacker.com
 

• Go to http://www.youtube.com/pair on your mobile device and enter this code

Voila! now you can remote control YouTube. 

Source: Reddit

Edit: Uses of YouTube Remote

// Ultimately it is not about searching faster but it is about not having to be at your PC/laptop keyboard to search from there. Lets say you are lying down on your couch/bed and watching string of movies/videos, you can use Smartphone to play pause and move to next video.

// You can preview a video on your Smartphone before queue it over to the playlist on your monitor.

Capture text from images!

This works only on Google Chrome.

Go to "Project Naptha" and add the extension to your Chrome. Voila! 

Once installed you can select the text and Copy, Translate and.. wait for it.. Replace the text!

1. Copy:

2. Translate (it uses Google Translate for this, fair enough)

3. Replace (Select text->Right click->Translate->Modify Text)

Undo a send mail in gmail

How to undo a mail sent in Gmail ?

After following these steps you can easily enable that option.

1. Click the gear icon in the top right corner of your Gmail window and select Settings from the dropdown menu.

2. Select Labs from the row of tabs.

3. Scroll all the way to the bottom where you see Undo Send and click Enable.

4. Hit Save Changes at the bottom.

5. Now when you send an email, the yellow dialogue that displays "Your message has been sent" will also, for a few seconds (the time is configurable) give you the option to Undo. The email is only actually sent once the Undo option disappears.

6. Just by clicking on that button you can undo your message.