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Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Make International Phone Calls from your Mobile even without the Internet

 How do you make international calls from your mobile phone? Mobile carriers often charge exorbitant rates for international phone calls but you can Internet based services like Skype or Google Hangouts and call any landline or cell phone number in the world for a low per minute fee.
All you need is a mobile phone connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot and some credit balance in your account for making the phone call. You can use these VoIP apps when travelling overseas as well and make significant savings for both domestic and international calls.
Now consider a scenario where you have a mobile phone but there’s no Wi-Fi around and the 3G/4G services are either slow or unavailable. Would you still be able to place calls through any of these apps? The answer is obviously in the negative but there’s at least one app that has figured out a unique solution to this common problem.
The app, known as Ringo, lets you make international calls from your mobile phone but “without” requiring the Internet. It does so by cleverly converting your request to dial an international number into a local number.
Let’s say you are trying to call someone in Singapore from India. When you make a call through Ringo, the app will internally dial a local number in India. At the other end in Singapore, it will again make a local call to the desired number and will connect these two calls using their own infrastructure. This process is transparent to the end users though it make few seconds extra to initiate the call.

International Call Rates – Comparison

Here’s a chart comparing the voice calling rates (in cents per minute) for all the popular voice calling apps. Ringo not only allows you make international phone calls without 3G or WiFi but it is cost-effective too.
SkypeViberRingo
Callback
Ringo
Wifi
Google
Hangouts
USA2.31.91.20.2Free
India1.52.21.90.91.0
UK2.35.91.40.43.0
Russia2.37.912.511.612
Brazil3193.62.66.0
China21.31.60.61.0
Singapore2.31.91.40.42.0

In my testing, I found the voice quality good and the app automatically figures out all the international numbers in your phonebook.  Also when open a contact inside Ringo, it will show their current local time and this little detail does help save a trip to Google.
Is Ringo a replacement for Skype or Google Hangouts? Well, yes and no. With Ringo, you do not need the Internet to make phone calls but you still need a local number. In the case of Skype, you do not need a local number but you have to be connected to the Internet. Also, Ringo is mobile only while Skype lets you call telephone numbers from Mac and Windows PCs as well.
Ringo is available for Android, iPhone and Windows Phone.

10 URLs That Every Google User Should Know

What does Google know about the places I’ve visited recently? Where should I go if I have forgotten the administrator password for Google Apps? What are my interests as determined by Google? Where can I get a list of ads that I’ve ever clicked on Google?
Important Google URLs
Here are some of the most important links that every Google user should know about. They are hidden somewhere deep inside your Google Account dashboard and they may reveal interesting details about you that are otherwise known to Google. Let’s dive in.
1. Google stores a list of usernames and passwords that you have typed in Google Chrome or Android for logging into various websites. They’ve a website too where you can view all these passwords.
2. Google creates a profile of yourself based on the sites you visit, your Google+ account and other signals. They try to guess your age, gender and interests and then use this data to serve you more relevant ads. Use this URL to know how Google sees you on the web.
3. Google lets you export all your data out of the Google ecosystem. You can download your Google Photos, contacts, Gmail messages and even your YouTube videos. Head over the the Takeout page to grab the download links.
4. If you ever find your content appearing on another website that is using one or more Google products – say Blogger, AdSense, Google+ or YouTube – you can raise a DMCA complaint with Google against that site to get that content removed. This wizard can also be used to remove websites from Google search results that are scraping your content.
5. Your Android device may be reporting your recent location data and velocity (are you moving and if yes, how fast are you moving) back to Google servers. Head over to the Google Maps website to see your entire location history and you also have the option to export this data as KML files that can be viewed inside Google Earth or even Google Drive.
6. Create a new Google Account using your existing email address. The regular sign-up process uses your @gmail.com address as your Google account username but with this special URL, you can use any other email address as your username.
7. Google and YouTube record every search term that you’ve ever typed or spoken into their search boxes. They even keep a log of every Google ad that you have clicked on various websites, every YouTube video you’ve watched and, if you are a Google Now user, you can also see a log of all your audio search queries. OK Google.
8. You need to login to your Gmail account at least once every 9 months else Google may terminate your account according to their program policies. This can be an issue if you have multiple Gmail accounts so as a workaround, you can setup your main Gmail account as the trusted contact for your secondary accounts. Thus Google will keep sending you reminders every few months to login to your other accounts.
9. Worried that someone else is using your Google account. Open the activity report to see a log of every device that has recently been used to log into your Google account. You also get to know the I.P. Address and their approximategeographic location. Unfortunately, you can’t remotely log out of a Google session.
10. This is a complete list of web apps, browser extensions, Google Scripts and mobile apps that have any read or write access to your Google data. If the permission level says “access to basic account info”, it basically means that you have used your Google account to sign-in to that app.
Bonus: For Google Apps Administrators
This is important but undocumented URL for Google Apps users. If your Google Account ever gets hacked, use this secret link to reset your admin password. You’ll be asked to verify your domain name by creating a CNAME record in your DNS.
https://admin.google.com/domain.com/VerifyAdminAccountPasswordReset

Get Fare Estimates for Uber Taxis on Twitter

How much will it cost if you are take an Uber taxi from point A to point B? Uber’s mobile app has a built-in fare estimator but you can now also Twitter to calculate the fare. Write your query in plain English (see example), send it to @WhatTheFare and the bot will let you know the approximate fare for your ride in less than a minute.
@WhatTheFare is a new Twitter bot that will help you estimate the cost of your Uber trip. You’ll get to know the fare as well the different types of Uber taxis that are available on that route. And you can use the bot to estimate fare for trips anywhere in the world where Uber service is available.

The bot’s response will also include a deep-link (see example) to Uber’s mobile website and it will directly populate the pickup/drop-off co-ordinates should you decide to book a taxi with Uber.
You can use the bot from anywhere in the world but the Uber prices are always provided in the currency of the pickup/drop-off address. Here’re some sample tweets that used the @WhatTheFare bot to know Uber prices.

Internally, like DearAssistant, the Uber bot is also written with Google Scripts.
It uses the Google Maps API to geocode postal addresses found in your tweet request, fetches the list of Uber taxis available for that route via the official Uber API and then tweets the response using the Twitter API. The taxis icons in the tweet are standard Unicode emojis supported by Twitter.

Twitter Guide: How To Do Everything With Twitter

The first tweet was published almost 8 years ago and Twitter has come a long way since then. There’s a whole ecosystem of apps and services available now that allow us to use Twitter in more ways than ever before. This guide curates the best tools that will help you get the most out of Twitter.
The Best Twitter ToolsThe Best Twitter Tools
1. Nuzzel – This works as an intelligent filter for Twitter and helps you discover the most popular news stories shared across your Twitter network. All signal, no noise.
2. Flipboard – Connect your Twitter account to Flipboard and it will create a beautiful magazine for all your Twitter feeds that you can flip through on the web (example), mobile and Windows 10 devices.
3. LifeOnTwitter – Get interesting statistics and facts about your Twitter account (example).
4. TallTweets – It lets you send tweets of any length by slicing your long tweet into multiple 140-character tweets (sample) and sending them in sequence.
5. IFTTT / Zapier – Whether you want to tweet by email, cross-post tweets to Facebook, or need a way to easily upload your Instagram pictures as native photos on Twitter, these tools can easily automate such tedious tasks.
6. Spruce / Canva / Adobe Post – Pick a photo, write some text and watch as these tools transform your text into a typographical masterpiece.
7. Storify – A web-based app that helps you find and curate tweets around topics and turns them into stories. You can also pull in YouTube videos, Facebook posts and other content from the social web in your stories.
8. Twitter Curator – This is like Storify for Google Docs (demo). You can search, filter and collect tweets right inside a Google Document.
9. Buffer – The best app for scheduling tweets. They offer useful analytics and the same tweet can be simultneously published to Facebook and LinkedIn as well.
10. Twitter Archiver – Specify a search phrase or an #hashtag and the archiver will pull in all matching tweets into a Google Sheet where they’ll live forever.
11. Twitter RSS – Easily create RSS feeds for Twitter search results and subscribe to them inside Feedly or any other feed reader.
12. CrowdFire – A handy tool to keep track of your unfollowers, send auto DMs to new followers, find dormant users in your Twitter timeline and more.
13. Egg Followers – Find all your Twitter followers that are still using the default egg as their profile picture. They are likely spam accounts.
14. TwitterCounter – See how your Twitter circle has grown over time. Some of this data is now available inside Twitter Analytics.
15. TweepsMap – It creates a Google Map of your followers so you know where they are coming from.
16. Daily140 – Get a daily email with most recent follows and favorites of any 5 Twitter users of your choice.
17. Tweriod – The tool analyzes the time when your followers are most active on Twitter. You can time your tweets accordingly for maximum reach.
18. Sleeping Time – Know the time period when a particular Twitter user is least active online.
19. TwitterFontana / VisibleTweets – Show tweets for any search term in real-time  on a big display. Useful for events.
20. PayWithTweet – Tweets are a form of social currency and some websites will happily give away design goodies, PDF ebooks, coupon codes, etc. in return for tweets.
21. ClickToTweet – The site will transform your text, say a quote, into a tweetable link. Useful for putting links in email newsleeters.
22. TheHash – It aggregates the most popular tweets around trending hashtags for the day and puts them in a beautiful visual design.
23. Direct – It brings a messenger-style interface to Twitter allowing you to chat with anyone through DMs.
24. Twitter Merge – Send personalized Tweets or DM multiple peope in one go from a Google Spreadsheet.
25. Twipho – A search engine for Twiter but limited to tweets with images.
26. Twitter Bots – Learn to write your own Twitter bots that can auto-reply, retweet or like tweets.
27. T4BP – Short for Twitter For Busy People, the site lets you quickly see updates from all your Twitter friends in single page.
28. Out Of Office – Setup an out-of-office reply bot similar to the one you have in your email program.
29. Web TweetDeck – The only reliable Twitter client that works in the browser without having to install any app. Includes tweet scheduling as well.
30. Instacurate / Vellum – These will turn your Twitter timeline into a visual Pinterest style news site.
31. Fake Tweets – With a little CSS, you can change the text of any tweet and create fake screenshots similar to the ones you regularly see on satire websites.

How to Record your Desktop Screen with YouTube

Screencasting is simple. You download a software program, hit the record button and a video of your computer screen is created, ready for uploading to YouTube. There are a plethora of screencasting tools to choose from but did you know that you can also create screencast videos inside YouTube without requiring any desktop software? All you need is a YouTube account and a web browser.
Here’s a step by step guide on how you can make screencasts of your desktop windows with YouTube.
Create YouTube Screencast

How to Create a Screencast with YouTube

Step 1: Sign-in to YouTube with your Google Account, click the Upload button in the upper left corner and choose Events under Live Streaming. If you never done this before, YouTube make require you to verify your phone number to enable streaming.
Step 2: You are on the Create Event page. Give your screencast video a title, set the privacy of the video to either Unlisted or Private and click the “Go Live Now” button.
Step 3: This will open the Hangouts on Air page. You can click the camera icon to turn off webcam recording. Similarly you can toggle the microphone icon if you do not wish to record audio.
Step 4: Now click the Screenshare button in the left toolbox and select a desktop window that you wish to record for your screencast. Remember that if you using multiple virtual desktops, it will only show program windows that are active on the current desktop.
Record Desktop VideoRecord Desktop Video
Step 5: Click the Start Screenshare button to share your screen and then clickStart Broadcast to start recording the screen. This is a private session so nobody can watch your broadcast while it is being recorded. When you are done with the recording, click the Stop Broadcast button and switch to the YouTube website.
That’s it. Go your YouTube video dashboard (youtube.com/my_videos) and you’ll see the new screencast video that you’ve just finished recording. You candownload the video to your Google Drive or share it withe world.
The videos are recorded in 720p HD and this it would be a good idea to resize your desktop window to the 16:9 ratio before hitting the broadcast button.

How to Find the Wi-Fi Password of your Current Network

Your computer is connected to a Wi-Fi network but you do not remember the password that you had earlier used to connect to this particular WiFi network. Maybe you forgot the password or maybe the network administrator entered it directly without revealing the actual password to you.
You would now like to connect a second device, like your mobile phone, to the same WiFi network but how do you find out the password? You can either send a password request the WiFi admin or you can open the command prompt on your computer and retrieve the saved password in one easy step. The technique works on both Mac and Windows PCs.

Find the WiFi Password on Windows

Open the command prompt in administrator mode. Type “cmd” in the Run box, right-click the command prompt icon and choose Run as Administrator. Now enter the following command and hit enter to see the WiFi password.
netsh wlan show profile name=labnol key=clear
Remember to replace labnol with the name of your Wireless SSID (this is the name of the Wi-Fi network that you connect your computer to). The password will show up under the Security Setting section (see screenshot).
If you would only like to see the password and not the other information, use the findstr command:
netsh wlan show profile name=labnol key=clear | findstr Key
If you do not see the WiFi Password
If you do not see the password, probably you’ve not opened the command prompt window as administrator

Show the WiFi Password on Mac OS X

Your Mac OS X uses Keychain to store the configuration details of the WiFi network and we can use the BSD command “security” to query anything stored inside Keychain, including the Wi-Fi password. Here’s how:
Open Spotlight (Cmd+Space) and type terminal to open the Terminal window. At the command line, enter the following command (replace labnol with your WiFi name), then enter your Mac username and password to access the OS X keychain and the Wi-FI network password would be displayed on the screen in plain text.
security find-generic-password -wa labnol

Reveal the WiFi Password on Linux

This trick for getting Wi-Fi passwords works for Linux too. Substitute labnol with the wireless name (SSID) of your network. The value of the field psk is your WiFi password.
sudo cat /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/labnol | grep psk=
If you don’t know the network name, use the following command.
sudo grep psk= /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/*
WiFi Password for Mac OS X

Start WLAN AutoConfig (Wlansvc Service)

If you are using this technique to retrieve the WiFi password on a Windows computer but getting an error that says – “The Wireless AutoConfig Service (wlansvc) is not running” – here’s a simple fix:
Click the Windows Start button and type “services.msc” in the Run box to access Windows Services. Here go to the WLAN Autoconfig service and make sure that the status is Running. Else right-click the WLAN AutoConfig service, select Properties and go to Dependencies. Check all the dependencies to make sure they are all running.