September 2015
Receive notifications when Android apps go on sale
If you don't mind buying apps or games on Google Play, then you may find it useful to monitor select apps automatically to receive notifications when they go on sale.
While you may be inclined to buy some apps or games right away, for instance if they are priced cheap or simply awesome, you may not want to pay the full price for others, for instance if they are expensive or not needed right away.
Finally! Google starts optimizing Chrome’s memory consumption
While Google Chrome is generally seen as a lean browser optimized for speed, things are not all that glorious under the hood. The browser's memory consumption is an Achilles' Heel especially when compared to competing browsers like Firefox.
How to disable or delay taskbar previews in Windows 10
Windows 10, just like Windows 7 and 8.x, displays thumbnail previews of open program windows when you hover over icons in the Windows Taskbar.
This can be convenient at times, especially if you have opened multiple program instances and want to quickly select one of them.
I don't use taskbar previews usually and find them even a hindrance at times. I removed the search icon and Task View icon from the taskbar for instance as I don't use these features at all.
KMPlayer 4.0 ships with minor improvements
Media players, there are so many out there for Windows that it is nearly impossible to compare them all to find out which is best. To name a few popular ones, there is VLC Media Player, SMPlayer, PotPlayer, KMPlayer, UMPlayer, Real Player, Windows Media Player, Media Player Classic Home Cinema and hundreds more.
Mozilla, Google and Microsoft to remove RC4 support in early 2016
Mozilla, Google and Microsoft have agreed to remove support for the RC4 cipher in Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge in early 2016.
Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in RC4 in recent time which led to recommendations to avoid use of the cipher at all costs by companies such as Mozilla or Microsoft.
Chrome 45 launches without NPAPI plugin support
Google Chrome users who rely on functionality that NPAPI plugins provide won't be able to make use of it anymore with the release of Chrome 45. NPAPI-only plugins such as Java or Silverlight are used throughout the web and while their use is declining, there are numerous applications and services that make use of either one or another plugin.
Google announced back in 2014 that it would retire NPAPI plugin support in all versions of Chrome from January 2015 on.
Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and others partner-up to create next-gen video formats
A conglomerate of streaming media providers, web browser makers and hardware manufacturers have partnered up to create next generation royalty free video formats.
The member list reads like the Who is Who in the streaming world as Amazon and Netflix, Cisco and Intel, and Microsoft, Mozilla and Google have joined the alliance to further that goal.
The idea behind the alliance is to join forces, use knowledge gained in previous attempts to create future video formats, to create a universal standard that is open and royalty-free.
Move files from old Windows PCs to new ones with free PCmover Express
While it is clear to tech savvy users how to best transfer files from an old computer to a new one, it is something that less tech savvy users often have problems with.
It is usually the case that you want to take some files with you when you buy a new computer or build one from scratch.
Maybe it is photos, programming projects, videos or documents. The question that comes to mind often is how; how do you get the files from the old system to the new?
Windows 10: big jump in usage share in August 2015
Windows 10 has been out for little over a month; reason enough to find out how the operating system did usage share wise.
NetMarketShare's published desktop operating system usage share statistics for August 2015 indicate that Microsoft's new operating system Windows 10 jumped straight to position four of the most used operating system from not being in the top 10 a month earlier.
It surpassed Linux, all Mac OS X editions as well as Windows Vista and Windows 8 in that single month.