You often see people recommend Android apps online without giving a URL, just a barcode to scan for the download. That barcode is actually a QR Code, and a decoder app on Android can read the download link stored inside it. Apple Daily’s Animated News app also offers a square barcode like this. It’s also a QR Code, so you need special software to decode it into a URL. ...
When I write articles on Windows and need to capture the screen, I usually use FSCapture. But lately I have been writing some articles about Ubuntu, and I need to take screenshots for them. Ubuntu has a built-in screenshot function, but honestly it is very inconvenient. It doesn't save automatically, and the image format is always PNG. For someone like me who is used to FSCapture, that is hard to get used to. So I asked a netizen online whether there was any other screenshot software. A netizen nicknamed Sanmiao Wei recommended Shutter and even sent me a link (thank you~). Then I found out that the site Brother Wei sent me happens to be run by a friend of mine XDD. What a coincidence~...
DNS Firewall is a program recently written by a webmaster. Its main function is to block access to certain websites. For example, if you have kids at home and you don't want them visiting adult sites or Facebook, you enter the URLs of those two sites into the program, and then this computer can no longer connect to them! The principle behind DNS Firewall is actually very simple. It modifies the hosts file built into Windows and maps the DNS entries of the blocked sites to 127.0.0.1, which is your own computer, so the browser simply can't reach those sites xD...
Did you know that Microsoft Office isn't the only software that can handle word processing? Plenty of other programs can do the same job, and OpenOffice is one of the best of them. OpenOffice is nearly identical to Microsoft Office in function. It can handle word processing, presentations, spreadsheets, databases, and more. Most importantly, it's free. It also supports extensions, so you can install plugins that add features and make it fit your needs even better....
Dolphin is the browser I recommend most after using an Android phone. It has so many features that it nearly rivals a proper desktop browser. It supports tabs, RSS, and mouse gestures, and it has built-in sharing, so you can send a web page to others through Facebook, Twitter, SMS, and other services. Android's built-in browser also supports multiple tabs, but you have to press the window button to switch between them. Dolphin puts the tabs right at the top of the browser, which is convenient (though it takes up some space). Dolphin can also subscribe to RSS feeds automatically when it detects one on a page. The whole package is far beyond the built-in browser. It can also sync bookmarks with Google....
A QR code is one type of two-dimensional barcode. All barcodes in the world fall into two categories: one-dimensional and two-dimensional. The barcodes cashiers scan when you buy things are one-dimensional. The square barcode you see on income tax forms every June is two-dimensional. A QR code is one kind of two-dimensional barcode. Its main function is to store data in the form of an image. When a machine scans it, it can read the data inside. That's a bit abstract, so here's a more down-to-earth explanation: say I wrote a self-introduction article. I could turn the article into a two-dimensional barcode and let others scan it. QR codes are also commonly seen in newspapers. For example, on Apple Daily's moving news, you can use your phone to scan the QR code and see the URL. Another common place for QR codes is high-speed rail tickets. If you've bought a high-speed rail ticket at a convenience store, you may have seen a square barcode on it. That barcode is a QR code. Just scan it at the ticket gate and you can get through~ XD...
Besides the browsers we all know, like Opera, IE, Firefox, and Chrome, there's a group of less famous browsers that use one of the four browsers mentioned earlier as their core, then improve the interface or features on their own. For example: TheWorld Browser and today's RockMelt both belong to this category. Today’s RockMelt is a social browser built on the Chromium core. You can think of Chromium as basically Chrome, with no big difference between them. What sets RockMelt apart is that it’s a social browser: it’s integrated with Facebook and Twitter, so you can use those two social tools right inside the browser. Because it’s built on Chromium, it has almost all of Chrome’s features too. For example, extensions and themes work. However, RockMelt doesn’t support sync, which is a major shortcoming. ...
Many of you have probably seen URLs in the form of goo.gl, right? This is a URL shortening service provided by Google. Sometimes you find a really funny post on a forum and want to show it to a friend. Then you have to copy its URL, but forum URLs are usually very long, and copying them takes forever.... That is when a short URL comes in handy. With the goo.gl shortener, you can turn a URL of several dozen characters into one with fewer than 10 characters. It is also useful when you want to share a file with a friend. So how do you create a goo.gl short URL? Just open the site you want to shorten, then click the button of the Chrome extension called "goo.gl URL Shortener." The "goo.gl URL Shortener" extension also lets you copy the short URL, view its information, and get a QR code....
Google Chrome 7 has officially launched! The main feature of Chrome 7 is GPU hardware acceleration. Besides this new feature, it also fixes some bugs from Chrome 6. The speed is said to be 60 times faster. However, hardware acceleration in Chrome 7 isn’t enabled by default. You have to use a special method to turn it on. So what are the benefits of GPU hardware acceleration? Simply put, once you turn it on, games you play in the browser run much faster. On some older computers, Facebook lags noticeably, and turning on GPU acceleration makes that less likely. So I recommend that friends who like browsing (Facebook~) and playing games in the browser should definitely turn this on. ...
This post introduces a Chrome extension called One Number. It checks Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Voice for new messages. Many similar tools exist in the Chrome Extensions gallery, but I especially like One Number because it combines Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Voice in one place. Unlike Google Mail Checker, which only checks Gmail for new mail, One Number's author, mzzt.net, is verified by Google, so you do not need to worry too much about viruses. ...