March 2016
Kolor Eyes: Watch VR videos in 2D
Kolor Eyes is a free video player for Windows, Mac, and mobile operating systems that you can use to watch Virtual Reality (VR) content on 2D screens.
I'm interested in Virtual Reality, and 2016 seems to be the year the technology will come to the masses.
While I'm interested in it, I have decided long ago not to buy first generation hardware of new technologies anymore, and VR falls into that category.
Please Mozilla, give me control over System Add-ons
System add-ons are a relatively new feature of the Firefox web browser. The main idea behind the feature is to separate these add-ons and the functionality they provide from Firefox's core.
The benefit of doing so is that updates can be delivered to these add-ons without pushing out an update for the Firefox web browser itself. They are updated like any other add-on on the system (which is also independent from core Firefox updates).
They work in most regards like any other add-on installed by the user, but cannot be controlled by the user currently.
Microsoft is betting that digital pens are here to stay
I recently wrote an article on Ghacks titled “Is Samsung Giving up on the S-Pen?”, which argued that Samsung is shying away from releasing many new devices that feature the famous “S-Pen” stylus associated with it’s “Galaxy Note” brand.
Textify: copy text that cannot be copied
Textify is a free portable program for the Windows operating system that enables you to copy text from dialogs and windows that cannot be copied usually.
Basic examples are dialogs, text displayed in program windows that cannot be copied, or certain error messages that programs may throw.
While you may be able to use Ctrl-C anyway to copy text, it is sometimes not possible to do so without OCR software or other means.
Textify has been designed to provide a solution for these situations.
Honeyview: fast image viewer for Windows
Honeyview is a fast portable image viewer for Windows from the makers of the excellent archive manager Bandizip.
When it comes to image viewers, Windows users can select from a wide variety of free and commercial tools: from XnViewer and FastStone Image Viewer to Irfanview or the commercial FastPictureViewer Professional.
Improve Netflix with Flix Plus for Chrome
Flix Plus is a Chrome extension designed to improve your Netflix experience by adding options to hide spoilers, fade watched items and skip the postplay presentation.
The extension is more or less a collection of userscripts, and the main feat that it brings to the table is that it makes them all available under a single roof, that the scripts are maintained so that they continue to work with Netflix, and that a couple of extras are added to the extension by its author that are not available as individual scripts.
Stand-Bye: better Windows Sleep management
Stand-Bye is a free portable program for the Windows operating system designed to improve configuration and management of the sleep mode.
Sleep, and hybrid sleep, are useful features of the Windows operating system that put the computer into an energy saving mode that is triggered usually after some time of inactivity.
How to use multiple Chrome profiles
Google Chrome, just like Mozilla Firefox, supports different Chrome profiles that you can make use of to work with different sets of bookmarks, open sites, extensions and more.
You could use different profiles in the browser for work and entertainment, for research, or a specifically hardened profile for online banking and other critical activities.
This guide provides you with instructions on setting up different profiles in Google chrome, and how to switch between them.
Report: Windows 10 upgrade may turn retail OS into OEM version
Microsoft's free upgrade offer to Windows 10 stands until July 2016. Customers who work on genuine Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 systems may upgrade those systems to Microsoft's newest operating system Windows 10 free of charge.
It does not matter whether the source operating system is an OEM or Retail version, as both upgrade just fine to the new OS.
Retail versions offer the advantage that they allow you to change hardware of the PC without losing your license. The operating system will either activate automatically after the hardware swap or after contacting Microsoft.
Never 10: prevent upgrades to Windows 10
Never 10 is a new program by Gibson Research for machines running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 to prevent the upgrade to Windows 10 on these systems.
Microsoft makes it quite difficult for computer users to stay on Windows 7 or 8.1.