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How to install Facebook Paper for non-US users

Facebook rolled out Facebook Paper for the iOS devices yesterday, as announced. Facebook Paper is an app that beautifully shows your News Feed stories and other themed stories.

Facebook Paper is available for iOS devices only in the US for now. If you are in hurry to install Facebook Paper before an international rollout is launched, here is a trick that will help you.

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Open App Store on your iPhone or iPad. Tap the Featured section in the bottom left of the app. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see your Apple ID there. Tap it.

Then, in the pop-up menu that appears, click View Apple ID and then you’ll be asked to enter your Apple ID password. Once entered, you’ll find an option there to change the country. Set the country to US.

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Change Country on iTunes

You’ll be asked to accept the new Terms and Conditions. Once done, choose None while Apple asks for a valid payment option.

Note : If you have pending non-US Apple credits or iTunes Match subscription, or iTunes Pass, you’ll be in trouble. You’ll have to either to finish your credits and then change your country to US. Or, you can login from iTunes desktop app and sign up for a new US account. Note that you’ll need a US address and credit card.

Also, your existing credit card details will be lost when change countries. You can now download and install the Facebook Paper app on your iPhone or iPad.

Link: Paper – (Facebook) on App Store

Via The Next Web

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Force your Nexus device to use 3G in low network coverage area

One of the most irritating things about Nexus devices is how they don’t stick to the network you choose. Say you’ve got 3G data to use and network coverage is weak, your device will quickly switch back to EDGE (or whatever has good coverage).

Funny thing is, AOSP has built-in feature to ‘force’ an Android device to use a network (even if coverage is nil) – but it is kind of hidden. Read on.

Screenshot_2014-01-17-11-20-50

To access the feature, open Phone/Dialer app, type ##4636##. Tap on Phone information. Scroll down and you’ll find a drop down menu where you can choose between different network modes. Choose ‘WCDMA only’.

That’s all. Now your device will stick to 3G regardless of network coverage.

If you want a quicker way to access the setting, then get this little app called ‘Network’. It’ll directly launch the Phone information page and you can then change the network mode.

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Signal for Gmail: Edit emails you receive for better productivity

I came across a nice Chrome extension called Signal that allows users to edit emails that they have received. You might wonder why that is important, but it has it uses. We often use emails and mark them important or label them on Gmail to create a sort of to-do list for ourselves. Signal seems to extend that a little bit more.

Here I have installed the extension on my browser to test it and sure enough get the option to highlight and edit a particular email.

Gmail_Signal_highlight

 

As you can see in the image above, I do not need any other information from this email except the highlighted part. You can see in the image below how the edited email looks like.

Gmail_Signal_edit

As you see the social icons and other unimportant text from the email does not show up.

This is very useful if you are have to summarize a long email into points or for highlighting and saving important parts like dates, addresses, phone numbers and email ids.

Do try out Signal and drop in your comments.

Link: Signal

via (Life Hacker)

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How to change your number on WhatsApp

Your WhatsApp account has always been linked to your mobile number. But, with the latest update(s) on WhatsApp for all platforms, Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Nokia S40 and BlackBerry 10, you can now change your mobile number – that’s porting your WhatsApp account to another number.

This new option Change number is available inside the Account settings tab – Settings > Account > Change number. The operation is really simple. Just enter your old mobile number and the new mobile number in that page, and WhatsApp will do the rest for you. This will move your account info, settings and groups to your new number.

For those using Nokia S40, go to Options > Settings > Change phone number.

WhatsApp change number

Sadly there isn’t an option for you to change number on Nokia Symbian and Windows Phone yet.

Things to note

Make sure that you have both your old mobile SIM and the new one plugged into different mobile phones. WhatsApp needs your new number to be active on a mobile device at the time of changing numbers.

Why this feature?

Most people always go about jumping from one carrier to the other. It is tiresome to take WhatsApp backups, import to the new mobile phone and then restore, isn’t it?

Also, this feature is makes it easy for premium WhatsApp users to continue their membership hassle-free.

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Download Hangouts v2.0.012 APK – Comes with SMS integration

Google launched Nexus 5 on 31st October and with that came Android 4.4 – KitKat. Hangouts v2.0.012 comes with support of SMS, sending and receiving animated GIFs, location sharing and many other improvements. This latest version of Hangouts has been extracted from the Nexus 5 devices.

On launching Hangouts you’ll be asked to enable SMS integration. You can enable/disable SMS integration whenever you wish to in the Settings section. Hangouts doesn’t ask you to set that as the default SMS app. The default SMS app remains the same, old one.

Hangouts_SMS

You can now share your locations with your friends and send/receive animated GIFs.

Moods is another new addition. It’s basically like status updates in WhatsApp and Hike.

The APK download link is mentioned at the bottom of this post.

To install this APK file, you’ll have to enable installation from Unknown Sources in your Android settings section. Go to Settings > Security and enable the Unknown Sources option.

Some users have reported crash reports/bugs with some devices running this updated version. As for me, I’ve not experienced any crashes.

If you are enthusiastic about trying the new SMS integration, download the APK right now, or you can choose to wait till Google updates Hangouts on Google Play Store.

Link : Download Hangouts v2.0.012

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How to check whether you have won a Nexus 7 from KitKat

It was a few weeks back when Google partnered with Nestle to bring an exciting contest. 1000 Nexus 7 devices have been thrown in as the grand prize.

All the Android marked KitKat bars (2F, 4F and Dark) come with coupon codes inside them. Lucky coupons might receive interesting goodies.

  1. 1000 winners will get shiny a Nexus 7, each
  2. 20,000 winners get a bag of 8oz. KitKat Minis, each.
  3. 150,000 winners get a $5 Google Play coupon code, each.

Android-KitKat-Nexus-7-winners

To check whether you have won yourself a Nexus 7, head to the KitKat website, and in the Winners section, you can check whether your name and your mobile number is mentioned.

The winners list is updated daily.

Also, at the time of writing this post, the KitKat website mentions 580 Nexus 7 tablets remaining. This contest ends in 28 days, that’s November 15, 2013.

Good luck!

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How to upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro version from Windows 8.1 Preview

Microsoft finally has released the Windows 8.1 Pro version to public. This is an update to Windows 8, which in my opinion was a terrible UI for a laptop. The Windows 8.1 Pro update has some useful changes like showing the Home or Start button, allowing a single and uniform wallpaper background to both the desktop and the start screen and also allows readjusting the sizes of the app tiles on the start screen.

If you are someone like me, who is already running Windows 8.1 preview version, then these next steps will be very helpful.

Upgrading to Windows 8.1 from Preview version installed over Windows 8

If you have installed your Windows 8.1 Preview on top of PC running Windows 8, then you can easily update through the Windows Store app from your home screen.

Click on this direct link to Windows 8.1 Pro on the store and the Store App should start on your PC. The Store should show you the following screen.

Windows 8.1 Pro
Windows Store Screen for updating your PC to Windows 8.1 Pro version

The download is about 3.63 GB and will keep your PC settings and files but all your apps will need to be re-installed. Microsoft is releasing a lot of built-in apps with this update so there will a lot of new apps showing up on your Home screen.

If you did not update to Windows 8.1 Preview from Windows 8 but did so by booting from a ISO media, you still can download the Windows 8.1 Pro update but will need to purchase the Windows 8 licence. You can buy this licence here.

Upgrade from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 Pro

Now if you are running Windows 8 and not the 8.1 Preview version, then this link to the store should still work and take your to the Windows 8.1 Pro upgrade option.

Download and upgrade the version free. This will save all your setting, files and even apps from the previous version.

Useful links:

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How to Hide Your Details in Shared Endorsements in Google Ads

When you +1 something, your name and photo will be shown to friends and others.These are called Shared Endorsements. Till October 10th, your details were shown only to +1’s done on places like Google Play.

Google updated it’s Terms of Service (ToS) on October 11th, 2013. 3 main changes have been announced.

  1. Your name and photo will be shown in ‘Shared Endorsements’ in Google ads, in addition to shown in other contexts like Google Play +1s
  2. Awareness on how to keep your mobile devices safe.
  3. Awareness on how to give your Google password safe.

Thankfully, Google gives us an option to opt out from this. You can choose to not show your name and photo on Google ads.

How to hide your details in Shared Endorsements in Google ads?

  1. Go to Shared Endorsements settings.
  2. There you will find an option to disable showing your details on Google ads.
  3. Un-check that and save the settings.

Google Ads Shared Endorsements Settings

Note : For those aged below 18, things are different. Their details will not be shown in the shared endorsements, but they may see shared endorsements from others.

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Quickcast: Create and share 3 minute screencasts on OS X

Most screensharing apps are complex, pricey and are targetted for professional video editors. If you ever want to quickly snap a video to share your screen with any one, you wouldn’t use something like Camtasia.

Quickcast, as the name suggests, lets you record and share screencasts in a jiffy!

Quickcast

The process is really simple, you select the part of screen to get recorded (or select whole screen), toggle Microphone and Camera on/off and start recording.

You can record for a maximum of 3 minutes and as recording is done, the video is automatically uploaded to its site and link is copied to clipboard.

There are some neat additions like, if your video’s length is than 10 seconds and the screencast area is less than 300x300px, Quickcast will output a GIF instead of a normal MP4 video file.

You can give title, description (in Markdown!) and tag the video.

Quickcast is free and open source. It’s Mac-only right now, but because it’s open source, I’m sure some one will port it to Windows and Linux too.

Link: Quickcast

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Schedule Posts/Updates on Google+ Pages

One of my favourite feature on Facebook pages is that it allows users to schedule posts. This allows a page owner to post an update for maximum visibility. It also means the posts can be spaced out and not spam someones timeline. Google+ Pages are also popular with bloggers to share their posts online but unfortunately there seem to be no option to schedule posts. This feature itself is completely missing on Google+.

Bufferapp for Google Plus Pages

But Bufferapp which also allows scheduling of tweets on multiple accounts, has introduced scheduling options with Google+.

This allows users to hook up their Google+ page to Buffer and schedule posts at separate times and dates.

Some Limitations!

There are restrictions on the number of posts you can schedule and also the number of accounts you can use with Buffer with the free package.

I was a little disappointed with BufferApp not supporting posting to Google+ profiles but it seems to be an issue on Google’s side. Google has not released a Read/Write version of its Google+ Profile API. This means we are not going to see 3rd party apps being able to schedule and post on Google+ profiles anytime soon.

Try out BufferApp for Google+ pages. Do let me know about your views and any similar services in your comments.

Link: Buffer for Google+ Pages