Quick Draw

I've always been a fan of Google's Chrome Experiments like Super Sync Sports or 100,000 stars. This new experiment called Quick, Draw! lets you play the beloved party favorite - PICTIONARY!! (.. with an AI). This is a game based on a neural network. Every time you draw something the neural network tries to guess what are you drawing; And whilst doing so you are actually training the network too. From animals to objects, or from a rollercoaster to a laptop, you get to draw a lot of things. You can also see what others have drawn before, by clicking on the pictures you have drawn, at the end of each round. Although using a device with a touch input is much easier (for you too draw... the A.I is quite smart) using a mouse or any pointing device should work fine.

Quick, Draw! | via A.I Experiments with Google.

Unroll.Me

Every couple of months, I find myself spending hours cleaning my email inboxes. Modern spam/junk filters do a good job, but not good enough. There are tons of email subscriptions that end-up unsubscribing every few months. Finding the 'Unsubscribe' link, answering the survey questions, and sometimes just adding stuff to the junk folder is a tedious task. Unroll.me simplifies this. With an awesome minimalistic UI, unroll.me not only manages your subcriptions, but with its 'roll up' feature, it consolidates all your emails which you don't wish to unsubscribe, but don't want them cluttering your inbox either. Don't wait up Unroll.Me is a must have service and it's FREE.
Unroll.me also has an iOS App.

Thanks reddit for the tip.
Visit Unroll.Me for the web app.

Convert Anything to Everything Online

  

Remember the time we used to download a million different tools to convert .flv movies to .avi or .divx, or convert word document to pdf and vice versa? No less than 6 months ago, my computer was loaded with such different file converter for audio, video, images, documents and archives. I even had apps installed on my phone to do file format conversions. Finally I decided to find an online alternative for this. Something which will convert anything to the target format I need. And YES, I still believe in the internet, because I found www.online-convert.com – Convert media free, fast and online. No software installation needed. All you have to do is Select the Target format, tweak the output file settings, upload the file or choose a file from Dropbox (favorite feature) or the URL of the file you want to convert and it’s done.

Currently free and Ads supported, www.online-convert.com can convert over 168 file types to JPG. With advance settings like frame-rate, bit-rate, cut/trim videos, etc. the video converter works flawlessly. Apart from audio and video www.online-convert.com offers converters for e-books, images, documents, hash and archives. The archive converter does not support .RARs yet, but .7z and .zip are great (another reason not to ever buy WinZip).

A lot different websites like convertonlinefree.com, www.zamzar.com, www.convertfiles.com, media.io offer similar features but only www.convertfiles.com offers comparable diversity of supported file formats.

www.online-convert.com is fast, free and elegant and totally deserves a place on your bookmarks bar ( beside TechMef.com)

Google Search Volume by Language : Chrome Experiment

The internet is beautiful, yet another Chrome experiment is here to support this argument. It’s open source and it’s amazing. I know it isn’t very useful, but it’s smart. Give it a try, playing around this was the best spent minute for me today.

Google Search Volume by Language | via Inside Google Search : Playground

Google Maps : Offline Maps and more

The new Google Maps comes with an amazing cards based UI and is very user friendly, but the ability of caching maps for offline viewing isn’t very obvious. Power saving is crucial while traveling and we don’t want to waste power and mobile data on Google Maps. Tablet users usually end up using sinuous ways like using a hotspot or looking for a Wi-Fi network availability just to peek at a map. Luckily Google does not hate its users and soon two methods surfaced that could cache maps seamlessly.

 

 

1. “Okay Maps”

The first one is an Easter egg. All you have to do is touch the little microphone button () on the right side of the search bar and say “Okay Maps” or you can just type it in the search box. The application will start caching the on-screen map area, with a notification showing  current progress. When the process if complete, the application displays another notification to indicate the completion of the task.

2. The standard method

The standard method is to tap the search bar and scroll down to the very bottom of the Google Places integration, recent places and other parts of the list. There lies the button saying “Make this map area available offline”. Again, it will trigger the “Pre-loading map..” notification. Once finished you can use Google Maps with or without an internet connection.

You can also use the web-app to get the directions and download them for offline use.

Google Maps | Web

Google Maps | Google Play

Google Maps | App Store

 

Screenshots edited using Evernote Skitch. All screenshots are taken on Asus Google Nexus 7 2013. HTML Translator – Windows Live Writer.

Super Sync Sports : Use your phone as a controller

The Best Google Chrome Experiment yet. Google’s Super Sync Sport is a simple sports game and the aim race in different sports – Running, Swimming or cycling. What makes it different? Use of mobile phones as controllers. Upto 4 players can participate in a race, choose adorable characters from a huge roster and Get Set Race!!

Super Sync Sports VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Open Super Sync Sports on Google Chrome or download the Chrome app. Grab your phone(s) or tablet(s) and visit g.co/super. Enter Code to connect to the same session and start playing. Up to four players can join in every race.

Requirements:

• A Computer that can run Google Chrome (Duh!)
• Phone(s)/Tablet(s) (Android 4.0+ and iOS 4.3+) with Google Chrome installed.
• Internet connection on all devices including the computer.

Super Sync Sports uses new browser technologies like the HTML5 audio, CSS3 and Canvas, and the Touch API to recognize the gestures you make on your mobile device and WebSockets to make sure your phone(s) and browser stay in sync similar to Remo Music player.

Super Sync Sports

Super Sync Sports | Web app | Google Chrome WebStore

GeoGuessr – Point and Find using Google Street View

GeoGuessr is a fun game in which you try to locate a place by looking at a Google Street View image. From the Great Barrier Reef to the North pole, you can be anywhere while playing this. You get 5 turns, each with a different location on the map. Pin your answer on the world map and score more points by being more closer to the actually answer. This might not be a Google Chrome Experiment but it’s indeed a creative utilization of the internet. GeoGuessr is a permanent bookmark on my browser and is waiting to be one on yours too.

GeoGuessr by Tekzilla

GeoGuessr | via Tekzilla

Z-Type : Type to Shoot

Playing games can improve your hand-eye coordination, stimulate quick thinking and reduce reaction time. A lot of games help you learn how to fly an aircraft or be more social. Z-Type is a HTML5 game that helps you type faster. A simple, 2D, type to shoot game is a better alternative those boring softwares that are suppose to help you type faster. Dominic Zsablewski is a developer/blogger who has created games like Z-type, X-type, Biolab disaster, Drop, etc. All these games can be played on a browser, some have mobile browser compatibility too.

Killing time on Dominic’s webpage is really easy. It’s the place to find a lot of games, good reads and a lot of other stuff for free. Undertaking such projects brings out the potential of HTML5. Developing web apps instead of mobile apps or downloadable content is a better choice, as no one wants to download and install stuff when they get bored. All they have to do is open a web page and start playing.

Follow the Chrome Experiment here.

Z-type X-type | via Dominic Zsablewski

Biolab disaster | Google Play | App Store

100,000 Stars

If you think Google SkyMap is awesome, wait till you see 100,000 Stars. It’s a Google Chrome Experiment programmed by some space enthusiasts at Google. With highly immersive and interactive experience, this web app also displays tooltips from Wikipedia, making it informative. According to Google Chrome Experiments 100,000 Stars shows the location of 119,617 nearby stars.

You can get started with the brief tutorial or just jump in with and travel the universe. Panning, zoom in, zoom out everything can be done with your pointing device. Click the star name to learn more things about it like the name of the discoverer, distance from Earth, approximate age and other information.

1000,000 Stars | via Chrome Experiments

World Wide Maze

We all know Teeter – the hugely popular ball and maze game. Now imagine any webpage as your maze board, add some fabulous graphics and some great 3D paths and you get ‘World Wide Maze’. Use your Android/IPhone or just your computer to play all you need is Google Chrome. This Chrome Experiment might be the best maze puzzle ever. You will never be bored of this because every webpage is a new playground. Just enter the URL or run a Google search and you are ready to go.

Gameplay–World Wide Maze

Hats-Off to Google Chrome Japan for this brilliant innovation.

World Wide Maze | via Chrome Experiments

Wakeup.io

Wakeup.io is a service used to schedule free wake up calls globally. A lot of services available online are capable of providing a similar experience, but they are restricted to local geographical regions, most of them being US and Canada centric and aren’t usually free. Wakeup.io is super easy to use, all you have to do is visit the Wakeup.io’s webpage and enter your phone number, date and time and hit the ‘Schedule Wake-up call’ button.

As soon as you schedule a wake up call on a number, that number receives a text message informing about the call scheduled. You can reply to that text message for the desired effects (without the quotes “ ”)

• “sleep” : to cancel the call.
• “stop” : to remove the number from their system to prevent any future call schedules.

You can also call +1 857-254-9253 to cancel/stop your wake up calls.

As soon as you pick up your scheduled wake up call, you hear an automated voice saying ”It’s time to wake up”, and the call ends.

You can only schedule 3 wake up calls every 48 hours, thus limiting the possibility of spam automatic calls.

The call is usually from the same number you have to call for canceling scheduled wake up calls +1 857-254-9253.

Even if you use different alarm clocks, Wakeup.io is worth a try. Beside wake up calls wakeup.io can also be used as an alternative to fake calls app or some other use (think EVIL).

Wakeup.io | via Lifehacker

Pocket : Read It Later

Pocket is an app that lets you save content from the web (text, images, videos or pretty much anything) for later viewing. The cloud integration lets you read your content across various platforms. There are a lot of ‘Read it later’ apps, but Pocket might be the one with the largest coverage, Android, iOS, Kobo and all major browsers. The auto-download feature, lets you download content whenever the internet connection is available and that content can be used anytime later, even when you are offline.

Pocket has a great UI and customization. It can be optimized for text reading by altering the text size, inter-line spacing, brightness control and Day/Night mode similar to any good ebook reader. The image viewer and video viewers are both customizable too.

One of Pocket's biggest new features is the ability to filter by content type; you can sort by image, video, and traditional text. Filtering by video reveals a grid of thumbnails of videos you've saved across Vimeo, YouTube, and other services. Most videos saved from the web will automatically get categorized appropriately, but only YouTube and Vimeo videos will display a pop-up player in the app.

Other similar apps to Pocket are Readability and Instapaper. But unlike them Pocket doesn't offer any options for plugging into other social networks.

Pocket also has a chrome packaged app which can be used offline.

Pocket | Google Playstore

Pocket | AppStore

Pocket | Chrome Web Store

Wikitube = Wikipedia + YouTube

After offline Wikipedia powered by Kiwik, here’s another tip to simplify your knowledge quests using Wikitube. Wikipedia and YouTube both are the widest source of anything and everything we need. An amazing amalgamation of the two just by using a Chrome extension can make your research more efficient.

Once you install this extension every Wikipedia article will have a handful of videos line up at the top of the article. You can click the red plus more ever more videos.

Wikitube from mark.dunne02 | Google Chrome Store

via Ghacks

Spirit : Set An Expiry Date For Tweets

Twitter’s new “blue line” for conversational treads is great for surfacing older conversations. But unlike those great conversational everlasting tweets a lot of tweets are time-sensitive, like countdowns, giveaways, ‘AmA ____ ask me anything today’ or other things that need not last forever. If you post such tweets that won’t be relevant after a certain amount of time, Spirit can delete it for you, just with a hashtag. Let’s call it a SnapChat for Twitter.

Spirit is an application for twitter, developed by a former Twitter Engineer - Pierre Legrain to make you the God of all your tweets, empowering you to set the time of death simply by using a hashtag (#15m, 5h or #7d). Besides Keeping your digital detritus to minimum, a meteorologist has found a great application for this; preventing storm warnings from being retweeted once they’re no longer in place. A similar app on twitter called efemr has similar functionality.

Spirit by Pierre Legrain

Via TechCrunch

Google I/O 2013

Google I/O is an annual conference held by Google in San Francisco, California. Since 2008, Google  announces major breakthroughs during the Google I/O conference. New Google Products, major updates, new ventures and much more…

 

This year we are expecting,

1. Google Babble: A collaboration between the G+ messenger, G!Talk, Google Hangouts and other IM clients by Google.

2. Google Now: Yes, Google Now is already out for Android JellyBean and IOS 6, but Google Now for Chrome maybe or as a replacement to the old iGoogle.

3. Android 5.0 (KeyLimePie): There are thin chances of KeyLimePie release, the all new Android 5.0. The probability is rare because of the fact that many developers are yet to adopt JellyBean and provide updates to their users, releasing a newer version will pull the developers back.

4. Google Glass: Public release of Glass and maybe a few more tweaks or apps for better usability of glass.

5. Google Play Games: Android Game Center for multiplayer games, completing with friends, in game gifts(expecting) and maybe a lot more.

6. Updates: A lot of updates for Chrome, Gmail, Google+, Picasa, Google Maps, Google Wallet, Google Keep and other Google apps.

Keeps your fingers crossed and watch the Google I/O stream live here.

RSS Downloader

Automate all your TV shows torrent downloads.

µtorrent has an inbuilt feature called “RSS Feeds” which downloads torrents automatically as and when they update. All the major torrent search engines provide RSS feeds for various topics/catagories, but downloading TV shows season after season (which is a #PITA) is greatly simplified by RSS.

Downloading TV shows requires up-to-date following of schedules, searching suitable .torrent files and waiting for the download to finish. RSS feeds automates the first two steps. All you need is a computer,an internet connection and a torrent client (like µtorrent, BitTorrent, Vuze, etc.).

STEP 1: Visit Show RSS.

STEP 2: Register (No email id required)

STEP 3: Select the shows you follow from the drop down list and add them to your list.

STEP 4: Click on Feeds ( Available on the navigation bar below the ShowRSS logo).

STEP 5: Select the Quality and ‘Do Not Include PROPER/Repacks’ (To avoid duplicate downloads) and click on the ‘Generate’ button.

STEP 6: Copy the link (preferably the 1st) and open the torrent client (µtorrent, BitTorrent, Vuze).

STEP 7: Click on the file menu and select ‘Add RSS feed…’

STEP 8: Paste the feed URL and select ‘Automatically download items in the feed’.

STEP 9: Keep the torrent client running (most clients can be hid in the tray) all times.

Enjoy the automated downloads… Advanced users can right click on the ‘Feeds’ shortcut on the sidebar of their client and select ‘RSS Downloader’ to create and manage filters. The filters allow you to select the download priority and quality. Also may advance options can be tweaked on the filters window.

ShowRSS currently supports a lot of popular TV shows, but if you are looking for something else try EZRSS or TVrss or FeedMyTorrents.

‘Google Keep’ or ‘Evernote’

Note taking apps are a major productivity booster. Making To-Do lists, taking notes, making image or voice reminders and syncing them over Web, phone or a tablet helps planning and scheduling your next move. With the rise of cloud services syncing everything over all your devices is easy, but selecting an app to do so is a tough job.

Google has released the Google Keep app for both the Web and Android devices. It's a small step in the right  direction. But the question is Evernote, Microsoft Office OneNote, Any.Do, SpringPad, SimpleNote are already available on the market, so ‘Why Google Keep?’. To start with, I’m a big fan of Google’s developments so far. This might make me a little biased but after using a lot of productivity tools, it comes down to Google Keep or Evernote.

Why to keep ‘Keep’?

I’ve to confess right away that before Google Keep, Evernote was hands-down the best productivity app. But the minimalistic approach is always a WIN. The clutter free look, color coding the notes and the ability to dictate the notes (which are converted to text) are some of the features that I like.

My favorite features: As I visited sites on my phone, I could click a "share" link and save the site, including a preview image and the link, to Google Keep. That makes it a powerful bookmarking tool, even if that functionality only works currently for the mobile app, not the Web app. Also converting lists to checklists and snapping photos right from the app makes highly usable.

Google Keep lets you see all of your notes in a thumbnail view, which makes them easy to organize and find. On an android device, there's also a widget that makes it easy to create a new note or task list, snap a photo, or record a memo. The web app needs a few more changes, but if you are an android user: Keep the Keep.

Why Evernote?

Evernote has nothing to worry about because of the time to release advantage. Evernote is like ‘The Hulk’ of the note keeping Avengers. SHARING NOTES: The one feature that puts Evernote ahead of all. Also adding multiple sound, video clips or images to a single note ( For Keep 1 note = 1 multimedia file). Grouping notes together in different notebooks.

My favorite features: Powerful search that lets you search even in images, text and handwritten notes. Business features like invites, sharing with others, tagging, notebooks and stacks.Apart from all this adding other files like a report to a reminder, keeps stuff integrated under one roof.

Evernote is the most diverse and powerful productivity and note-making app out there. Google Keep is nice and simple, but very limited.

WINNER: Evernote provides users with a powerful note-taking platform, along with customization and infinite capabilities through apps and add-ons. Plus, Evernote's version for businesses is a win too. I might still keep my Keep, because it can do what I need to do, but Evernote is indeed a WINNER here.

Extensions & Add-ons : Better browsing

Extensions & Add-ons : Better browsing

1. Faviconize Google

  (Click on the browser icons to download the extension/add-on)

This extension adds favicons—those little icons you see in your address bar when you visit a page—to Google's search results, so you can more easily see what site each link is coming from. Not only does the extension add some life to the dull results page, but these favicons make it easier to browse through search results, allowing you to instantly recognize credible websites. Faviconize is a tiny but handy utility that lets you save both time and effort while you browse Google search results. Faviconize is a must-have if you too are a Google addict.

Faviconize Screenshot

 

2. Turn Off The Lights

   (Click on the browser icons to download the extension/add-on)

Turn Off the Lights is a browser extension that lets users obscure everything on their screen except the Flash or HTML5 video they're watching, minimizing distractions and making for a more pleasant viewing experience for the internet users. Just a click on the Lamp icon will dim the surrounding so the users can focus on the videos they are watching. If you are fond of Youtube, Miniclip or other similar websites, Turn Off the Lights is a must have. The adjustable darkening and smooth transition makes it a 4.75/5 rated extension on Google Chrome.

3. HashPlug

(Click on the browser icons to download the extension/add-on)

Did you enjoy the “Real-time” search on Google, sadly Google dumped it. But Google Chrome users can now use HashPlug. It’s even better because HashPlug adds real-time search results to the Google’s search results page. Results from Twitter search automatically refresh, too, and you can favorite, retweet or reply to tweets directly from within the frame. And because the widget is not positioned in an intrusive way, HashPlug doesn’t get in the way of your normal search behavior.

The extension was cooked up by Bangalore, India-based startup Fenopix. 

4. Duolingo

Learning a new language is a tough job. Duolingo is a very interactive website (also available on iPhone and Google Chrome as a free app). You can select to learn Spanish, French, German, Portuguese or English. You can discuss translations with the online community and also help others learn the language faster. You can add friends and compare progress and test scores. ‘The great skill tree’ helps selecting the lessons you wish to learn or practice the onces you are done with. Overall Duolingo is a social platform to learn a new language for FREE.