Locate Public Google Plus Hangouts Easily With GPhangouts

Locate Public Google Plus Hangouts Easily With GPhangouts: "

If you’ve been on the Internet recently, the chances are good you may have heard of Google+, the hottest social network to come out since Facebook’s arrival in 2004. Google+ has been generating a lot of buzz and everybody has been signing up to see what all the hype has been about. It still remains to be seen whether or not Google+ will be able to rival juggernaut Facebook (it’s still way too early in the game) but so far they’re off to a good start, amassing some 18 million users in such a short period of time.

One of Google+’s most talked about features is Google Plus Hangouts. Not sure what that is? In this article, I’ll show you what Hangouts are on Google+ as well as show you a new way of finding public ones that you can enjoy and use with others.

What Is Google+ Hangouts?

If you’re still new to Google+ (there’s a good chance you are), you may not have seen the Hangouts feature yet, which is basically just a really cool group video chat setup for you and others.

Bumping into friends while you’re out and about is one of the best parts of going out and about. With Hangouts, the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time. Let buddies know you’re hanging out and see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat. Until we perfect teleportation, it’s the next best thing.

Hangouts is touted as the best free video conferencing solution out there because – like most of Google’s products – it’s clean, simple, and easy to use. From what I’ve heard around the interwebs, you’re more likely to experience problems because of your slow Internet connection than because of the tool itself.

If you’d like to learn more about Google Plus Hangouts, check out this short YouTube video from Google:

One possible issue with Google+ Hangouts however, is the issue of getting people you know to participate all at the same time. This can be explained by the service still being new and all, but what if you want to hang out now? GPhangouts can help you with this.

What Is GPhangouts?

GPhangouts offers a way for you to connect with other Google+ users in public Hangouts, as well as share ones of your own. On GPhangouts, you can join any Google+ Hangouts that you’re interested in to begin video chatting with others.

The site shows when the Hangouts are starting and – if there are any – topics that are to be discussed. Just click through to the Google+ user profile associated with the Hangout you want to join and then the Join this hangout button at the specified start time.

As I stated before, you can also add your own public hangout to the listing if you like.

Conclusion

GPhangouts has a kind of a Chatroulette feel to it, which isn’t a bad thing (I know what you’re thinking!). In a sense, you will likely be video chatting with “strangers” – as in, people you don’t know – on GPhangouts, but it will be around the topics you choose and everyone involved will have a Google+ account, so I don’t see any real issues there. Enjoy!

Are you jumping on the Google+ bandwagon?

Locate Public Google Plus Hangouts Easily With GPhangouts is a post from: MakeUseOf

More articles about: google plus, hangouts, social, social networks

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Site To Phone Lets You Easily Send Links & Text To Your Smartphone

Site To Phone Lets You Easily Send Links & Text To Your Smartphone: "

I spend a large chunk of my life in front of my computer. For those rare times I need to leave my chair and actually go do something in the real world, I sometimes want to take a chunk of the Web with me. Perhaps it’s a link to a Google Map helping me get to where I want to go (assuming it’s not the bathroom), or a bit of text about the place.

Google already offers something called Chrome to Phone, but it’s very limited. It works only with Chrome, and only with Android devices. Site to Phone, despite the similar moniker, actually supports all major browsers (not just Chrome) and all major phone OS’s (not just Android).

Upon arriving at the website, you’re presented with a huge button that simply cannot be missed:

Tapping the button generates an ID, and invites you to browse to it from the phone. This is something you’ll have to do manually. Grab your phone and tap out the address as it appears on the screen.

Let’s do that right now.

Rather than get an APK file or a Market link with a purpose-build Android app, we’re presented with a simple list of instructions using what the phone already offers. In other words, this is just a glorified bookmark. Some people may think it’s a bit low-tech, but personally, I like the idea of making my phone do more without actually installing new apps.

The instructions didn’t work exactly as planned, because I use an alternative launcher. I had to add the bookmark manually to my launcher (Go Launcher EX), but once that was done, it looked like this:

Tapping the button indeed brought me back to the page, where I clicked the “Complete Setup” button. Instantly, the window changes – I’m in:

That’s it! I can now paste anything in that box, hit Send to phone, and it will show up on the smartphone version of the website. Sure, the downside is that I won’t get push notifications and links won’t automatically open, but it took mere seconds, was free, and did not require any software installation. Also, note the huge range of mobile OS’s and browsers supported: Since Site to Phone is implemented in such a simple way, it can easily support just about anything that has Web access.

Okay, let’s try it out by sending some text. I just entered a bit of text on the desktop, hit Send, and tapped the shortcut on my home screen. The page reloaded on my phone’s browser, and I got this:

Yes, so they’ve added a needless escape character (I typed “I’ve” and they rendered “I\’ve”), but other than that, that’s exactly what I wrote. I can now easily copy and paste that text. Sadly, sending a link didn’t work as well as I expected it to:

As you can see, the URL wasn’t turned into a link. That’s a bit of a downer, but maybe I’ve done something wrong (please enlighten me in the comments, if so).

Back on the desktop side of things, you may not want to go to the Site to Phone website everytime you want to send over a quick snippet of text to your phone. So now would be a good time to look at the browser tools Site to Phone offers:

So there’s a bookmarklet (for anything and everything), an IE Accelerator and a Chrome extension. Let’s try the Chrome extension. We get a toolbar button, and clicking it instantly sends the current page to the phone:

Tapping the link on my phone’s home screen launches me instantly onto the site I sent to the phone:

But getting to my previous notes is difficult – going to the website on the phone just sends me to MakeUseOf again. I tried several times, but kept getting the same thing. This may be one case where this minimalistic app oversteps its bounds and tries to be a bit too clever for the user’s own good. To fix this, go into the options page and enable Device control panel:

Now, when you tap the shortcut icon on the phone home screen, you’re taken to the Site to Phone page even if you’ve just sent a link to the phone.

The Chrome add-on also lets you send text to your phone effortlessly. Simply select any chunk of text in Chrome and right-click it:

Tapping “Send text to phone” just works; you don’t get a notification or any other bells and whistles, but when you go to the website on your phone, you’re going to find that text waiting for you right there.

Bottom Line

Site to Phone gets a thumbs-up from me. I love the minimalistic way this solution uses existing, simple and widely supported Web technologies, and the huge amount of devices and browsers it supports. If you’re looking for a low-fat way to get links and text to your phone, look no further.

Site To Phone Lets You Easily Send Links & Text To Your Smartphone is a post from: MakeUseOf

More articles about: link sharing, mobile browsing

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Adobe Digital Editions: Free eBook Reader Software

Adobe Digital Editions: Free eBook Reader Software: "

Adobe Digital Editions is a free ebook reader software that helps the user to store and manage digital publications and e-books. The user can use this free ebook reader software to even download and purchase the different books available online.

Digital publications and ebooks are available in plenty and managing them is quite a tedious task. Digital Editions from Adobe has been designed to help the user in doing so. This free ebook reader software comes with a number of features that make it an efficient digital content management application.

Adobe Digital editions can be installed by using the installer on the website and the size occupied after installation is as small as 10 MB. The list of supported e-book devices are available on the website .The system requirements are minimal . 128 MB of ram a 500 MHz processor a Microsoft XP SP 2 or higher is enough to run the application. This can also be run on MAC OS X with similar configuration. Support for multiple languages are also available.

The books can be downloaded on the listed devices using a wireless connection, or via a USB connection with the computer. If you love reading books in your PC, you can also try Reader Library Software, Martview and eXPert PDF Reader reviewed by us.

Some of the Remarkable Featur

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Connection Keeper: Free Network Tweak Tool for Dial-up Users

Connection Keeper: Free Network Tweak Tool for Dial-up Users: "

Connection Keeper is a free network tweak tool to maintain the internet connection,especially while using dial-up network. This free network tweak application essentially simulates browsing activity , thereby preventing the connection from going to idle state. This program makes sure that the user is connected to the internet without any interruption.

Internet connection, when connected using a dial-up network , gets disconnected while the user is idle. It requires constant activity on the network, either continuous browsing or a download. And when this does not happen, the ISP, more often than not, drops the connection and the user has to dial-up again to get connected back. This makes it inconvenient for the users. Connection Keeper has been designed to eliminate this problem and to make sure that the dial-up users surf the internet without any problem.

In fact the program even automatically dials-up to the network, in case of disconnection. Apart from this this free network tweak tool can also close the popup windows asking if the user wants to stay connected. This freeware has been designed to work on machines running various versions of Windows operating systems such as 95, 98, 2000, Vista, NT and 7. The size of the latest version installer being just 5MB, it can be downloaded and installed in no time.

You can also try Ashampoo Internet Accelerator, Connection Meter and Fing reviewed by us.

Some of the Interesting features of Connection Keeper are:

• Once configured, the program can automatically dial-up and connect to the internet in case of any disconnection.
• Can run minimized in the system tray when the systems is not connected to the internet and it consumes almost no bandwidth.
• The interval of simulation activity is can be set by the user or it can be made to check at regular intervals.
• It can be used to report buggy URL connections and it can be configured to download a proper or a bogus URL.
• Comes with a simple interface and no advertisments or any such kind of distraction.
• Command line operation to perform the above said functions is also available.

With all these features, Connection Keeper is a free software for all those Dial-up connection users to keep their Internet connections alive. Try Connection Keeper Free.

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RetroCopy: Enjoy Arcade Games in Your PC Free

RetroCopy: Enjoy Arcade Games in Your PC Free: "

RetroCopy is a free software that simulates gaming consoles and arcade systems using which the user can play the games designed for those machines on the PC. The simulation of hardware is so detailed that the user can get a close to real experience while using this software to play the games that are usually played on the arcade systems. Now you can play arcade games on your PC with this freeware. It works like a free NES emulator for PC or free SEGA Master emulator for PC.

RetroCopy comes with a host of customization options and features that enable the user to customize the system to look exactly like the one they used to play on an arcade. The customization includes a custom User Interface, Custom graphics engine and cycle accurate emulator cores and all these ensure that the user experience is close to real.

This application is available for free download on RetroCopy’s official website and the size of the installer is just about 10 MB. It can be used on machines running Windows and Linux. A separate media – torrent is also available for download. Separate versions are available for 32 and 64 bit operating systems. To ensure that the application performs best, the user just has to make sure that proper Audio drivers, Graphics accelerator drivers are installed on the system. A help page is also available on the website for users to reach to when they encounter hiccups.

RetroCopy is more than just an emulator. It comes with a host of other features. If you love playing games, you can also try Dress Up Games, Online Games Downloader and Mail Games reviewed by us.

Features of RetroCopy:

• Retro copy is the first SEGA Master system and Nintendo NES emulator. It is also the first cycle accurate Sega Game gear and E-arcade accumulator.
• The application is fully multi threaded and hence the Audio, Video and Input run on different processor cores whenever possible. This makes sure that the CPU usage is the minimum possible.
• The user can also rewind the games in real- time.
• Playing these arcade games on 3-D Tvs makes the entire experience great fun.
• With Retro Copy the user can also setup his/ her own virtual game room, virtual TV sets in the room and play games / videos on it. Thanks to the openGL 3d Engine the experience is so real with the room coming alive with shadows and screens projections.

All these features make Retrocopy, a one of a kind software to simulate the arcade games. Try RetroCopy Free.

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Control Your Finances & Master Your Expenses With Money Manager Ex

Control Your Finances & Master Your Expenses With Money Manager Ex: "

When it comes to personal finances, there are three types of people. There’s the person without any budget whatsoever, there’s the person that tries to keep track of everything mentally (and fails), and then there’s the person that tracks and accounts for every penny.

No matter what end of the range you fall into, it’s never to late to sort out your finances and try to find out why you keep falling short (or nearly so) every single month. It really doesn’t always come down to how much you make, sometimes a healthy financial life boils down to understanding where all the money is going.

Most people just don’t want to take the time to sit down and go over every excruciating detail of a “budget”. And doesn’t the word “budget” sound boring and drab? Seriously – who wants to spend a Saturday afternoon budgeting when you could be spending it at the mall and going out for some Chinese food?

Well – maybe that’s half the problem. Lucky for you, I’m going to share a free, open-source money manager software that Damien previously mentioned very briefly, called Money Manager Ex that’s going to make it very easy to organize your finances, create a budget and monitor where all your money is flying off to.

Quickly Create Your Financial Database

This app is a little bit like ClearCheckBook, which Daniel covered in 2008. However, I do think this one offers much more functionality. In Money Manager Ex, each “account” is called a Database. When you first launch the software, you can get started by clicking on “Create a New Database.”

The next step is to pick your currency. From the list, you’ll see that this software isn’t just your run-of-the-mill U.S. currency only application. The developers have really taken the global community into account.

The first thing you’re going to want to do is create your bank accounts. Later, this will be automated, but to get started you should create each account and fill in all the details. Create a new account by clicking the “New Account” button in the icon bar.

It doesn’t really matter what you put for the balance, because later you’ll be importing the actual details and transactions from your real bank account.

To get an accurate picture of your overall financial standing, you’ll want to go through each category in Money Manager Ex and add any accounts, investments, funds, and assets that you may own. Assets include things like property, cars, jewelry or artwork.

When you have all of your assets and accounts set up, it’s time to create your budget. Create a new budget for the year, and you’ll see the center pane populated with a template budget. If you already have a list of your bills and your income, just go through this and add all of those items in.

If you don’t have a list yet, well then now is the time to take stock of all of the bills you owe. The template makes this process a lot less painful, and it will remind you of things you pay that you probably normally forget about. Don’t forget to also add your income items into the budget as well!

Now, unless you have the time to start manually typing in all of your bank transactions in order to keep the software synced to your bank account, you’re going to want to export/import your bank data for each account. Money Manager Ex can import QIF and CSV files, so check with your bank website to see what format you can export to.

This will bring in all of the transactions. The one somewhat time-consuming job you’ll be left with is to categorize each transaction. This is worthwhile though, because it will make the reporting features of the software much more helpful – and could very well reveal to you where the money-drain is in your checkbook.

The final task you’ll need to do is to click on “Repeating Transactions” in the left nav and add all of your current bills. These are expected, predictable bills that you receive and pay every month, with a known due date. This helps the software automate some of the updates, and also provides from better future predictions in the reporting section.

Speaking of which, the bulk of the left navigation is taken up by all of the reports that you can use to examine your financial standing in a very graphical way. You can see where most of your income comes from, where most of your outgoing money goes, a full transaction report for a certain time frame, and much more. This is the area that makes this money manager software so valuable.

Budgeting and managing finances is never fun. If you’re anything like me, you’re too busy trying to earn a living, to sit down and nit-pick where every penny goes. But I can tell you that this is one money management app that won’t take away too much of your precious time.

Just take the time to add your budget and assets once, and all you have to do is export transactions from your bank account to get regular updates on your financial health and well-being.

Give Money Manager Ex a try and see if it helps you uncover any low-hanging fruit in your spending habits. Did it help you get your budget in place? Share your experiences with the software in the comments section below.

Control Your Finances & Master Your Expenses With Money Manager Ex is a post from: MakeUseOf

More articles about: budget, finance, money, money management, save money

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