7 Android Settings You Should Change Right Now

Android comes with a lot of features, but not all of them are enabled out of the box. With the ever-growing feature set, it’s easy to miss those deeply buried Android settings that can enhance your experience.

Whether you are looking to fine-tune your privacy and security or boost performance, here are some changes you should make in the Android settings menu.

1. Hide Sensitive Content From Lock Screen

Since Android 5.0 Lollipop, you can interact with the notifications directly from the lock screen. While this is convenient, it also means that anybody can go through your notifications — even when your phone is locked.

Fortunately, there’s an option to hide sensitive notifications on the lock screen.

First, you need to secure your Android phone with a password, pattern, or a PIN. Once you do, here’s how to hide sensitive notification content.

• Open Settings > Notifications.
• Tap the cog icon on the upper-right of the screen.
• Tap On the lock screen.
• Select Hide sensitive notification content.

Sensitive notifications will show “content hidden” instead of displaying the actual message. You’ll need to unlock your device to view the message.

If you would like to hide sensitive notifications on a per-app basis, select Show all notification content. Hit back and you should find a list of installed apps. Tap on the app you’d like to hide sensitive notifications from, then tap On the lock screen > Hide sensitive notification content.

2. Opt Out of Personalized Ads

There’s a shocking number of things that Google knows about you. Its huge tracking system is the reason why you see such precisely tailored ads. For instance, if you search on your desktop about noise-canceling earphones, you might quickly start seeing ads for them around the web.

If you’re paranoid about your privacy, there’s an easy way to turn it off.

• Open Settings.
• Navigate to Google > Ads.
• Enable Opt out of Ads Personalization.

Note that while you’ll still see ads in ad-supported Android apps, they’ll not be based on your interests.

3. Enable Auto-Lock and Power Button Instant Lock

By default, your Android phone’s screen turns off automatically after a set period of inactivity to save battery. But the lock screen only kicks-in a few seconds later. Mischievous people can potentially access your unlocked device if you leave it unattended during this period.

It’s recommended to lower your screen timeout. To do so, head over to Settings > Display > Sleep. Select the lowest acceptable number of seconds after which your screen would turn off.

Once you’ve lowered the screen timeout, it’s time to force the lock screen to kick in as soon as the screen is turned off.

• To do so, navigate to Settings > Security > Automatically lock.
• Select Immediately.
• On the same page, enable Power button instantly locks.

Note that this setting might be located elsewhere depending on your Android manufacturer. An easy way to find the appropriate setting on any custom Android skin is using the search option in the settings.

4. Disable Doze Mode for Specific Apps

Introduced in Marshmallow, Doze is a nifty feature that helps you save battery on your Android device. The basic idea is that your apps “sleep” while your phone is off, preventing them from running amok in your absence.

While this works great for most apps, you might get delayed notifications from your favorite messaging apps. Also, you might experience issues with VPN apps as they need to run constantly in the background. In such cases, Doze mode can do more harm than good. Fortunately, Android lets you disable Doze mode on a per-app basis.

• To do so, open Settings > Battery.
• Tap the three-dot overflow menu button.
• Select Doze and app hibernation.
• Tap the app you would like to exclude and select Don’t optimize.

Note that you should create exceptions only for the apps that really need it, otherwise they can cause a major battery drain.

5. Enable Persistent Number Row in Gboard

If your job involves dealing with numbers, it can be cumbersome to toggle your keyboard between the number and the alphabet mode.

If you use Gboard, which I guess most of you do, you can enable a persistent number row at the top of your keyboard. It’s a great way to utilize the growing screen real estate on mobile devices.

• To do so, open Gboard.
• Hold the emoji/cog icon and tap on Gboard keyboard settings.
• Tap Preferences.
• Enable Number row.

You should see a persistent number row at the top of your keyboard. This can help you substantially increase your typing speed.

6. Enable Instant Apps

Instant Apps are a pretty innovative idea: you can check out Android apps without having to install them, thus saving time and data. It started out as an Android Oreo-exclusive feature, but Google started rolling it out to devices running Lollipop or later a couple of months ago.

Instant Apps are disabled by default, but enabling them is just a flip away.

• Open Settings > Google.
• Enable Instant Apps.
• Tap Yes, I’m in to confirm.

Once you enable it, simply search for the app on the Play Store. The Play Store listing supports just 5 apps for now: BuzzFeed, NYTimes, RedBull TV, OneFottball, and ShareTheMeal. To try an Instant App, tap Try Now besides the Install button.

To search for other Instant Apps, search for the apps from your mobile browser.

7. Move Chrome’s Address Bar to the Bottom

Reaching the top of the screen, especially with just one hand, can be quite a pain. Chrome’s address bar is placed at the upper-half of the screen, making it harder to reach on larger-sized phones.

Thankfully, there’s a quick way to move Chrome’s address bar to the bottom for easier access.

• Type chrome://flags in Chrome’s address bar and hit Enter.
• Find Chrome Home and enable it.
• Tap Relaunch Chrome.
• Tap the Recent button to open up the multitasking screen. Swipe away Chrome to force close it.
• Re-open Chrome.

You may need to restart Chrome a couple of times to make it work. It’s kind of weird, but this is how it works for now.

That’s it! The address bar should be moved to the bottom, thus making it more accessible than ever.

Make the Most of Your Android Phone

Tweaking these settings will help you get the most of your Android device, without dramatically changing the way you use your favorite operating system. Whether you’re looking to protect your privacy or enhance your everyday Android experience, a few tweaks are all you need.

Which of the above settings have you changed on your Android phone? Do you know of any other settings that can help you level up your Android experience? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.

- makeuseof

10 Best Apps to Hide Photos and Videos on Android

Our whole personal life is now wound up in the smartphone we carry along in our pockets. We capture a multitude of photos and videos, which you may want to keep private. But, it’s possible that your phone can accidentally fall prey to someone’s hands or you may just pass it over to a friend unaware of their true intentions. Well, if you are an Android user, you don’t have to worry, as there are several great apps to hide photos and videos on Android. Well, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best photos and video hider apps on Android:

Best Photos and Video Hiding Apps for Android

1. KeepSafe Photo Vault

If you’ve used an Android app to hide your private photos or videos, you’d surely heard of KeepSafe Photo Vault. It’s been around for quite a while and is still one of the better apps to safeguard your media from others. The app has bagged massive updates over the years, making it cleaner and easy-to-use by all.

It provides you the usual PIN, pattern, and fingerprint authentication options, post which it shows you a clutter-free and categorized folder grid. You can jump into any of these folders to add and protect your private photos, videos or personal IDs. You can create new folders of your own, share them with other KeepSafe users and back up all of them to their private cloud space.

KeepSafe brings along a ton of advanced security features, such as fake login PINs, break-in alerts (where a selfie of the intruder, along with time and date of unsuccessful attempts is logged), and disguising the app with a different front-end via Secret Door. But, all of the features are hidden behind a paywall and I recommend you get it if you’re really looking to protect your private media.

Key Features: easy-to-use, colorful and loaded with extra functionality, most of which have to be enabled with a Premium subscription.

Download (Free, in-app purchases start at $0.99)

2. LockMyPix Photo Vault

Among the whole lot, this was my favorite pick for guarding my photos and videos against the nosy crowd. Called LockMyPix, this aptly-named app is designed to provide the safest photo vault for protecting personal all your media files. It is backed by a military-grade AES encryption standard, locking your files behind a PIN or pattern.

It renders an intuitive user experience, enabling you to encrypt your photos/ videos directly from the homescreen of the app. You can even instantly click pictures and add them to the vault in a jiffy. The add-on features allow you to unlock the app using your fingerprint, shake the device to lock the vault and even hide LockMyPix from the app drawer. The cheery on top being that you cannot screenshot the app when it’s unlocked, which now also adds to the privacy and security of your content.

While the free version offers you a host of functionalities, you also get the option to set up fake login credentials in the Pro variant. This feature will come in handy when someone is pestering you to unlock the app but you can give them access to a secondary vault with a fake PIN. The only drawback of this app is that you cannot backup private photos/ videos to the cloud.

Key Features: ultra-secure photo vault, which uses AES encryption and doesn’t even let you capture screenshots of the contents within.

Download (Free, upgrade to Pro version for $1.99)

3. Hide Pictures & Videos – Vaulty

Vaulty is yet another well-known and reliable photo/ video hiding apps, which may look a tad bit dated but performs its job perfectly fine. You can simply jump into the app, select the media files you want to hide from the gallery and password protect it from the outside world.

The highlight of Vaulty is that it captures “mugshots” of intruders, who try to access your vault but fail to enter the correct password. You will instantly know who tried to intervene in your private space, the moment you unlock the app. This feature is available for free to all users, which is unmistakably a plus.

You also get the functionality to create multiple vaults, with separate passwords, to store different types of photos or videos in each one. You’ll, however, have to upgrade to the Premier subscription if you want to backup your files to the cloud or remove ads from the app.

Key Features: extremely simple to use, there’s almost no learning curve. You can create multiple vaults to hide a variety of media files.

Download (Free, upgrade to Vaulty Premier for $9.99/month)

4. Hide Something

With close to 5 million installs in the bag, Hide Something is one of the most trouble-free apps for hiding photos and videos on your Android device. You can protect your files from inquisitive users via PIN, password, or the fingerprint sensor. The process of transferring new photos or videos to the ‘invisible’ folder is as simple as sharing a file with the Hide Something app.

You also get access to a mini collection of beautiful themes, support for a variety of media file types, an advanced image viewer and fake login mode to further protect your privacy. Hide Something is also particular about not being detected, so it doesn’t show up in the ‘recently used’ list.

But, the feature that takes the cake for me is that the app backs-up all your private media files to Google Drive and makes it possible for you to browse them with the desktop browser. This simplifies the process of sifting through and accessing photos or videos for the end user.

Key Features: uber-simple and secure from the get-go, but adds a cherry on the top with the desktop browsing feature.

Download (Free, get premium license for $2.99)

5. Vault

All aforementioned apps are restricted to hiding just your photos/ videos, but the Vault is an all-around app which helps safeguard more than just media files. It can hide all your phone data, be it SMS, contacts/ call log or even apps, which houses all your private info.

Aptly named Vault, this app brings along all the necessary features you’d expect to find in a privacy-focused app used for hiding personal stuff. You have the ability to create fake or multiple vaults, make the app’s icon disappear from your home screen, or record break-in alerts. You also get free cloud backup support.

But, my favorite feature of Vault will have to be the incognito browser that has been baked right into the app. You can browse the Internet without leaving any trace of all your expeditions on the web. This functionality can be seen as being similar to Firefox Focus (which was one of our best app picks for 2017), which does not record what you’re surfing on the Internet.

Key Features: an all-in-one privacy app, which enables you to hide almost anything. You also get an in-app incognito browser.

Download (Free, in-app purchases start at $0.99)

6. Private Zone

If you’re looking for an app that does a lot (I mean, a whole lot) more than simply being able to hide your photos or videos, then Private Zone should be the perfect pick for you.

This app is definitely useful for guarding your private photos, videos or apps, but has also brought along a variety of features for privacy-obsessed people. Here are a few of the top features of the Private Zone app:

• Free Private VPN service
• Custom Lock screen app
• Phone Anti-theft Features
• Harassment/ Spam Call Intercept
• Boost – RAM Manager
• and other privacy controls.

Though Private Zone is laden with several cool features, it’s at the expense of your peace of mind. The app is filled to the brim with ads, which can get frustrating for users. But, it can be avoided by picking up the premium subscription for the app.

Key Features: packs a whole lot cooler privacy-focused features than you’d expect. It has been designed for privacy fanatics.

Download (Free, in-app purchases start at $0.99)

7. GalleryVault – Hide Pictures And Videos

This is one of the most popular photo and video hiding apps in the Play Store, with more than 10 million downloads. GalleryVault enables you to quickly hide and encrypt your photos, videos and any other files that you do not want others to see. By putting all your private media in a secure vault, the files are encrypted and nobody will know of its existence of the same.

GalleryVault has a simple and elegant interface, which provides you access to all of your hidden photos or videos in a jiffy. It supports all popular features, that you’d find in any decked-out privacy protection apps. This means you get the shake to lock, break-in alerts, fake login, fingerprint authentication, stealth mode, hiding files in SD cards, and more.

In addition to protecting your photos and videos, Gallery Vault also supports GIF playback, private browsing within the app, and a video editor to enable you to piece together a story using your hidden content. Isn’t that a great feature to have when you’re compiling a birthday surprise video for your friend?

Key Features: a decked-out privacy protection app, which hides most of your files and is packing a private browser and video editor as well.

Download (Free, upgrade to Pro version for $5.99)

8. Hide Files – Andrognito

Andrognito, which is an abbreviation for Android + Incognito, is one of the more secure privacy protection apps. It allows you to hide your photos, videos and other files behind strong layers of military-grade AES encryption standards, while storing the files in the cloud to free space on your device.

The free version of this app enables you to hide apps in just a single vault, but you can purchase the PRO version to create more private vaults, access your vaults via the cloud backups on multiple devices and gain access to additional features. It will also remove intrusive ads that annoy me almost instantly.

Unlocking the PRO version of the app will get you the fake vault spoofing, invisible icon, fake force close, and custom theming feature as well. But, the simplistic interface of this app had me attracted to it in the first place.

Key Features: stunning material design UI, with strong AES end-to-end encryption and cloud backup feature, makes it a definite pick.

Download (Free, in-app purchases start at $0.99)

9. Piktures – Beautiful Gallery

Taking a step away from privacy protection apps, I’d now like to suggest you a handful of photo gallery apps that provide you the functionality of hiding photos and videos. Piktures is a sleek-looking app that makes it easy to access all of your device’s media files, but we are interested in the ‘Secret Drive’ feature.

You need to swipe from the left to open the hamburger menu and access the secret drive. The Piktures app lays intense focus on privacy and makes you step through multiple hoops to enable this feature. Once this feature is enabled, you can long-press any picture or video and tap the “Secure” option in the menu bar to shift the file to the secret drive.

The app may not provide the users a variety of add-on features, but you’re free to create multiple vaults to segregate the media you want to hide from others.

Key Features: a stunning photo gallery app, with a secret drive that acts like a photo and video hiding vault.

Download (Free, upgrade to Premium for $5.99)

10. F-Stop Gallery

If you didn’t already know, F-Stop is one of the most well-known image gallery apps that’s available on the Play Store. It has an intuitive and lightweight user interface, which makes it easier to organize all your photos and videos.

The app brings along a lot of features that will improve your gallery browsing, sorting, and tagging experience. You can sort images simply dragging and dropping the files, but we’re here to discuss the privacy features of F-Stop.

The app has two such features, which enable you to exclude (read: hide) folders with your photos or videos from the gallery by adding a .nomedia file to the same. And you can also protect single media files simply by password protecting them. This secure folder is accessible from the hamburger menu on the left.

Key Features: a full-fledged gallery app, with an image editor, filters, privacy protection and a lot more.

Download (Free, upgrade to Pro version for $4.99)

Best Apps to Hide Photos and Videos on Android

If you’ve been concerned about the privacy of your photos/ videos of recent, then I’m sure that at least one of our suggestions will help curb your anxiety. The hiding of private media content in secret vaults will take the weight of someone getting to them off your shoulders. So, do any of these privacy protection apps meet your criterion?

- beebom

Secret Whatsapp Features You Should Know

Once a small startup, Whatsapp has significantly grown into the most popular social messaging app with around 1 million active users. Though you may use it daily, you might not know the cool and secret features.

Use Classic Typewriter Font

In order to change the font of your messages, use ` symbol 3 times on both sides of word. For instance, “` Hello “`. You can create this symbol with Android keyboard but it is not available on iOS keyboard. If you have an iOS device, just copy and paste “` symbol and use it on both sides of word.

Broadcast the Same Message to Several Recipients

In the top left corner of “Chats” screen, there is a feature known as “Broadcast Lists”. This way, you can send one message to several contacts without letting them know. It is much like “Bcc” button. Instead of using Facebook to invite people to the event, or asking several people if they like to play football without having to setup group chat. All you need to visit Chats – Broadcast Lists – New List and add your contacts and draft your personal message and send it to all. Their reply and the message will be shown in private chat with each user. But it will have a small megaphone icon with it. Your contacts will never know that the message was sent to everyone.

Find Out Who is Closest to You

In order to figure out who your best friends are on Whatsapp, go to Settings – Account – Storage Usage on iOS device. Here you will find a list of groups and people you text on Whatsapp apart from overall interactions you’ve had with the person. If you choose “Size” at the bottom of screen, you can find out who spent the most data on using Whatsapp.

Bold, Italics, Strikethrough

You can easily format the text in messages on Whatsapp. You have to add symbols on either side of words. If you want any word to be bold, add asterisks on both sides of sentence or word, for example, *bold*. To write any word or sentence in Italics, use underscores, e.g. _italics_. To strikethrough your message, add tildes, i.e. ~strikethrough~. You can add several symbols on either side of words to use multiple formats, e.g. _*bolditalics*_.

Check Whatsapp Data Usage and Cut Down

In order to check out how much data Whatsapp is using, just visit Settings – Data Usage – Network Usage. In Data Usage, the amount of data used by Whatsapp can be controlled when you disable the option to auto-download audio, images, documents and video when you connect your phone to Wi-Fi.  To reduce data usage for Whatsapp calls, you can choose Low Data Usage mode.

Control What Private Info to be seen by Unknown Users

If you have been added to group chat with unknown people or your Tinder conversation is moved to Whatsapp but you don’t know where it’s going, you can control what info such users may know about you. Just go to Settings – Account – Privacy and then change Profile Photo, Last Seen and Status to Contacts. This way, only your contacts can see your picture in your contacts list.

Share Documents

You can share documents from your cloud storage accounts like iCloud Drive and Google Drive in Whatsapp Chat. Go to upwards arrow to the left side of text window and then go to Share Document and choose where to share your document from, such as iCloud Drive and Google Drive.

Read Message without Letting them Know

If you want to take time to respond to a message without letting other person see the blue ticks, this secret may help you. You can read their message without letting them know. Once you get the message, instead of opening it, dismiss notifications on home screen and turn Airplane mode on. It will block mobile data and Wi-Fi and keep any new message from coming.  Read the full message. Close the app and turn Airplane mode off. Despite reading the message, it won’t display blue tick to the sender. You can also turn off read receipts totally. You have to head to Settings – Account – Privacy and turn off Read Receipts. You can also share latest Whatsapp status to look cool.

- whatsappstatus247

Google Hangouts 5 Tips And Tricks for Windows Phone, Android and iOS

In the race for being the top application to provide access to internet communication for free, Google has not been left behind.

It has jumped on to the bandwagon with the launch of Google Hangouts.

Google hangouts was preceded by Google talk. Although the services provided were same as those of Google hangouts, hangouts has a lot of new features that qualifies it as a good VoIP app – so much so that the application is now also used widely as a business communication tool among professionals.

If you have not had much experience with the application, you can follow the tips and tricks in order to use the application better.

The application can be used more conveniently with the help of keyboard shortcuts. Pressing the question mark can help you activate or deactivate the microphone at your convenience. Keyboard shortcuts make browsing the web easier and older chat messages are more easily accessed.

Google hangouts can be used to send messages and these can be sent with the help of commands. Typing “/to” before the name of the individual can help you send messages across.

Instead of sticking to the laptop microphone and speakers while you are on a voice or video call, the audio output would be much clearer if a user opts for the usage of headphones.

Corporates draw the most benefits from Google Hangout’s screen sharing feature. The application mirrors this feature from the Skype.

Simply by clicking on the share screen offer, you can share the screen with your friend or colleague and make work easier. Choice can be made between choosing either specific windows or the whole screen.

Google Hangouts can also be a very cost effective means of using VoIP by managing the amount of data you use. This can be done by toggling between normal quality voice calls and HD quality voice calls, which generally trend to consume more data.

-   therem

WhatsApp Improved Privacy – Top Tricks and Tips

WhatsApp currently has over 800 million active users and it is growing pretty fast, especially after the developers have finally brought the Voice Calling feature to the application.

When it comes to our privacy, we always want to be sure that our personal data never gets into the wrong hands. This is why today we’re going to give you a few tips that will improve your privacy while using WhatsApp.

Turn yourself invisible

In case you don’t want to be disturbed on WhatsApp, you can always make yourself invisible. To do this, go to Setting->Account->Privacy and set who can see your“Last Seen” or “Status”. At the same time, you can disable the “Read Receipts” option, which will not allow the sender to know if and when you’ve read the message that (s)he sent to you.

Setting a PIN code to WhatsApp

Do you usually share your mobile device to your friends, so that they can check out some videos on YouTube or play a game they like? Are you sure that they are not going to open the WhatsApp application and read your private messages? Well, if you don’t trust your friends, a good idea to stop them from checking your WhatsApp messages is to set a PIN code to the application. As you already know, WhatsApp doesn’t come with a PIN code and this means that you will need to install a separate application to lock it. On Android devices you will need to install WhatsAppLock, which will allow you to set a pin to the WhatsApp application.

Blocking a stolen mobile phone

In case your mobile phone has been stolen or if you lost the device, then we suggest you to “block” WhatsApp as soon as possible. To do this, you will go to your carrier and ask the operator to “kill” the SIM card from your stolen/lost device. After that, ask them to give you a new SIM card with the same number. Insert the new SIM card to a smartphone, install WhatsApp and use your mobile phone number to get verified. Once you get verified, the WhatsApp account will be automatically deactivated from the lost/stolen device.

-   ordoh

WhatsApp Free Download – Hidden Tips and Tricks for Group Messaging

WhatsApp is one of the applications that you might consider installing on your smartphone. The application has become quite popular and now there are 800 million active users who log into their accounts, to chat with their contacts every day. There are a lot of secrets that the WhatsApp Group messaging feature comes with and today we’re going to tell you about a few of them.

WhatsApp Group Tips and Tricks

Deleting your message

Sometimes, you are in a rush and you might send a voice, video or image in a group chat where you are not the admin. Well, unfortunately, you are not able to do anything, as the message will be sent to all the group members in the next second. This means that you will need to ask an admin to remove the voice clip, video clip, image or message that you’ve sent.

Deleting a WhatsApp Group

If you are the admin of a WhatsApp Group and you decide to delete the existing group, then these are the steps that you will need to take. Usually, when you are an admin in a WhatsApp Group, if you select “Delete and Exit”, the WhatsApp Group will not be deleted and it will just randomly select a new member from the group and give him/her admin rights.

To completely delete a WhatsApp Group, you will need to remove all the members from the group (one by one). When all the members are removed, you will be able to select “Delete and Exit Group” and the Group will be completely deleted.

WhatsApp Group Chat – who read your message?

In case you didn’t know, you are now able to see who has read your message. You will get information about all the users who checked your message and the time when they read it.

To see all this information, you will need to tap on the WhatsApp Group Message you’ve sent and select “Info”. After that, you will see all the people who’ve read your message. In addition, you will also see who has received the message, but didn’t read it yet.

Delete media from WhatsApp Group

If there are a lot of members in your WhatsApp Group, then you will most likely get a lot of spam messages such as voice clips, video clips or images. In case you notice a voice clip, video clip or image that should not be in your WhatsApp Group, just tap and hold on it and delete it.

You can also go to the Group Info section and select “Clear Conversation”. This will delete all the voice clips, video clips and images from the chat.

-  ordoh

Twitter Tips and Tricks – Becoming an Instant Hit on Twitter

One very simple thing to become is a Twitter pest.

This is a person who explodes out tweets that have nothing to do with their profiles, constantly begs people to follow them in their tweets and or messages, as well as that who keeps spamming the same links.

When it comes to Twitter, be the best, not a pest. The worst thing to be doing on Twitter is begging people, for instance, to follow you, liking a re-tweet or even liking a follow, since these make you look like having limited brain or mental capacity on top of looking desperate. Someone may think begging people to follow you on twitter will or may get you suspended.

How to get more Twitter followers

Well, it may not. But the bad news is that it labels you as a ‘pest’ among the other twitter users. This actually results in some people having to stop following you on Twitter. To be a winner on Twitter, you simply follow people you think or feel might be interested in you and your thoughts hoping that they will do the same for you – follow you back – for the vital thing on Twitter is not getting immediate followers; rather, more people will naturally follow you over time as other people start to know and follow you.

When you post relevant tweets on Twitter regularly, people will naturally start following you. You have to keep them interested in your posts before they start thinking that you are a pest. If your profile is related to new car models, your followers might grumble if you start making posts about high heel shoes or something else not related to new car models.

The only way to become this is to maintain the skill of coming up with unique content in each and every tweet. Proper usage of the services provided by Google Alerts, Hellotxt.com and Twitterfeed.com helps keep your name clean and distanced from the pest tag. If you don’t have many different pages to post, there are various URL shortening tools that can be used to change the links of these pages. These tools enable you to make numerous and different links that automatically point to the same page.

At this point, you should be having some concrete knowledge regarding the major things that are to be considered when it comes to becoming the best on Twitter and not a pest. In addition, by now you know some of the tools that have been developed to aid in the creation of status updates and posting them.

Bottom line

With these tools, hopefully, you can become one of the best on Twitter and realize the constant success this app can bring to your business or brand; otherwise, people on Twitter will label you a Twitter pest and once you get this label, it is almost impossible to get rid of it. In addition, if more than enough people report you to Twitter due to your ‘pest’ behavior, Twitter reserves the rights to suspend your account.

All in all, you should use the best twitter tools presented to you to avoid becoming a Twitter pest and become a Twitter best.

-  ordoh

Tips and Tricks of Using the Apple Watch – Siri, Alerts and More

The Apple Watch was announced sometime back and now that this device is already in the market, there is a lot that you really need to learn, in order to unleash the full power of this amazing wrist watch.

Back then, when this watch was announced, very few people had even a rough idea of how the watch would look like and now that we’ve finally had a glance at how this device looks like, it is time to learn more about using the Apple Watch. Whether this phone will be a hit in the market is still a question that only time can answer. However, there is word on the street that Apple has already sold more than 2 million units of the Apple Watch. This is despite the fact that there are pre-orders that are meant for July delivery, since Apple has not yet rolled out all the models that are expected for this device.

This is just a slight indicator of what destiny this watch has in its hands. However, Apple has the advantage of being a known brand, boasting premium devices that are usually priced heavily and no wonder, there are users who will still buy the $17,000 model just because it is from Apple.

If you are a gadget lover, the sight of the Apple Watch will bring sheer delight in you; however, others see this as a chance to mock the upper class, with quotes like “the Apple Watch is worth the price of a kidney” flooding numerous social media platforms. Better still, the Apple Watch has a lot to offer and this has nothing to do with the swag that many think this watch is all about. In this regard, here are a few tips and tricks you could put to use as you try to find your way around this prestigious Apple Watch.

Using Siri

Siri is the popular voice assistant from Apple that the users of Mac OS X and iOS enjoy on their devices. Now that the Apple Watch has arrived, Siri has found a new partner and for sure, the two are doing great. All you need is say something to your watch and the tasks will automatically be executed. With the screen size of the Apple Watch, the icons are obviously small. To open Siri, you can either say “Open Siri” after pressing the digital crown or simply say “Hello Siri”.

Mute alerts

Alerts can be a very good thing indeed; but, wait until you are in a meeting and one of your crazy alerts sounds. Don’t wait for this embarrassing moment to hit you; instead, turn off the Apple Watch alerts by going to the Apple Watch app and then tap on “Sound and Haptics”. Follow this by clicking on “Cover to mute” and then cover your watch’s display for a few seconds. This will enable you to easily turn the Apple Watch alerts to mute.

Accessibility

To ease the accessibility of the Apple Watch, Cupertino developers opted for two crucial features. These are the ‘Voice Over’ feature and the ‘Zoom’ feature. To activate the accessibility features of the Apple Watch, click on the digital crown thrice. The features must also be activated on your iPhone and to do it, tap on “My Watch>General>Accessibility>Accessibility shortcuts”. You also have the option of using Siri to do all these. All you need is to request this voice assistant to do the tasks of Voice Over and Zooming.

Screenshots

Taking a screenshot using the Apple Watch is a very easy undertaking; however, some of us find it a little confusing. If you want to take a screenshot, you’ll have to simultaneously click on the digital crown as well as the side knob.

-  PAU

Windows 10 Upgrade Tips And Tricks – Top Features and Improvements

Microsoft is preparing to release the final version of Windows 10 and all the Windows 8 users can’t wait to upgrade to the new operating system. Last fall, the company presented the new Windows 10 in San Francisco and since then, Microsoft released many Insider Preview Builds and the users had the opportunity to take a peek at the features of the new OS.

The missing Start button from Windows 8 made a lot of users very frustrated and they even made petitions to bring it back along with the Start menu. Microsoft complied with the waves of requests and brought it back, but moreover, the users can now customize the Start Menu for a better experience.

Windows 10 Home

Windows 10 Home is a replacement for the basic versions of Windows 8.1 and it will be free this summer. And the happiest users will be those who have a tablet that runs on Windows 8.1 and it’s powered by an Intel processor, but Windows 10 Home will be available also for devices running on Windows 7 Starter, 7 Home Basic and 7 Home Premium.

Windows 10 Mobile

While Windows 10 Home will be an upgrade for Windows 7 and 8.1, Windows 10 Mobile will reach the smartphones and tablets that currently run on Windows RT and Windows Phone 8.1. This mobile version won’t be bought from online stores, but it will come embedded inside the devices that you will buy from now on. However, the Microsoft tablets running on Windows RT and Windows Phone 8.1 won’t be upgraded to Windows 10 yet.

Windows 10 Pro

This is another version of Windows 10, but it comes with advanced features that aim a premium category of consumers: those that are running small businesses. Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t given many details about this version, but it will surely interest a lot of app developers.

Windows 10 on Xbox One  

The Xbox One console is running on Windows 8, but it has other custom upgrades. Microsoft will roll-out the new Windows 10 to every Xbox One console, but for now, we don’t have any substantial information about the changes for this version, and it’s uncertain yet if the users will be able to download applications from the Windows Store.

Windows 10 Education

Another version of Windows 10 was developed for educational purposes and it won’t be found in stores, but it will be installed on computers from schools and school districts.

Windows 10 Enterprise and Mobile Enterprise

The companies will buy the Windows 10 Enterprise version in bulk directly from Microsoft, but a price for it hasn’t been set yet. Of course, it will have a sophisticated application management, encryption and other features, but we don’t know yet when it will be released.

-  PAU