Top 5 In-Demand Skills to Learn During COVID-19 Home Quarantine

With current COVID-19 pandemic situation, many people have been confined to their homes. Due to this, the majority of people are very idle in their homes and are not earning any income. Well then, in case you are one of them relax because you are in the right platform, below are some of the demand skills you can learn within 1-3 months while under home quarantine;

1. Coding

Coding is one of the demand skills in the market today and the best thing is you don't have to professional in coding to secure a job. With just basic skills you have chances to secure a job opportunity. One can start learning CSS and HTML coding and later advance to JavaScript. One can enrol for an online coding course at Udemy or any web development Bootcamp. Further, there are many basic tutorial videos available in YouTube which are resourceful to enable one to comprehend various coding languages.

2. Freelance Writing

Writing is one of the demand skills which is considered an asset because you can employ yourself and be your own boss. Freelancing involves writing online articles for various clients and submitting them through a certain forum. What you need is to have good grammar in the language you are writing. In case you are not a native speaker of that language, don't worry you can sharpen your skills by reading an introduction to freelancing guides and within a few months, you will be an amazing writer.

How To Score Cheaper Airline Tickets with Google Flights’ Fare Alerts

3. Web design and development

Many companies are looking for experts in web design to enable their clients to increase their ranking in various search engines. One can learn web design via online tutorials and doing more practical work. However, you need computer literate to understand how web design is done.

4. Blogging

Being a blogger isn't hard. You just have to create interesting and well written online content. For you to be a good blogger you just have to write interesting and high-quality content in your blog. You can advance your skills by visiting the various blog and get to understand how they can attract many people.

5 Ways To Free Up, Increase Your DropBox Disk Space

The secret behind being a good blogger is concentrating in one area for example about fashion or politics. By so doing you will get knowledgeable on that area and you will your blog post will be very influential. These days you can create your blog for free in various websites like Wordpress etc.

5. Graphic design

This is one of the marketable skills in the market. This is because many businesses have to come up with unique logos and images which will make them outstanding in the market. You can learn graphic design from platforms such as Lynda.com and within 3 months you will have a strong foundation in color, typography and layout. You can practice graphic design by using Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

There are many demand skills you can learn while under home quarantine for a few months and help you make income during this pandemic or even secure well-paying jobs after this pandemic is over.

Anyone Can Remotely Crash Your iPhone thru SMS with this iOS Text Bug

There’s another iOS text bug making the rounds of the internet today that renders anyone’s iPhone useless. And Apple is currently rolling out a patch to fix this so be sure to update your iOS immediately to iOS 13.4.5 beta.

So, the offending text is a combination of an Italian flag emoji and Sindhi character. As soon as it arrives on your inbox as a text message or through your WhatsApp or Messenger, your iPhone will become unresponsive, forcing it to restart your iPhone.

Apparently iOS has an issue dealing with that offending text as soon as it arrives in your notification tray, causing it to exhaust all its internal resources and eventually crashing your device. This is similar to the 2017 iOS text bug that crashes your iPhone as soon as you get a message containing a specific Telugu characters.

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Apple is said to be seeding out an update to fix this Italian emoji and Sindhi bug. So be sure you’re getting the most recent update from Apple. Alternately, you can temporarily disable notifications from your iMessage, WhatsApp, and Messenger.

5 Ways To Free Up, Increase Your DropBox Disk Space

If you’ve been using DropBox since its inception back in 2008, chances are your FREE DropBox account now is either full or about to run out of space. That’s especially true if you’ve been using the platform as your go-to repository to store your personal and work-related files. That’s a massive 12 years of backup files to date.

While there are a handful of newcomers offering the same DropBox-like functionality + FREE disk space, nothing beats the niftiness and simplicity of DropBox. Not to mention the fact that DropBox has been used by well-known digital companies so we can be sure our data is well-protected.

DropBox’s Basic Plan gives you 2GB of disk space. Sure it’s not enough. And if you’re a freelancer who isn’t ready yet to upgrade, then, read along as I’ll show you how you can get as much as 20GB of disk space from DropBox at no additional cost.

(Note: 2TB starts at $9.99/month, if things aren’t tight please consider upgrading to paid plans)

Here are 5 legal ways to increase your DropBox disk space for FREE

1. Delete unused files

   Digital assets such as images, PSD, XD, and other Adobe files can easily eat up our DropBox disk space. Visit each and every single folder and see if you can safely remove those files. If it’s already a one-year-old project or so, better delete them.

   Removing those unused files and folders can quickly regain the extra DropBox disk space you need.

2. ZIP/compress folders

   If you have a large folder on your DropBox you want to keep but don’t constantly use, try archiving it and zip it. You can save as much as half of its size. You can even further reduce it by using the most optimized compression method or use GZIP format to shrink its size.

   How To Unzip Archived Files in DropBox without Downloading them Offline

   Of course, you don’t want to archive those folders you’ll likely access in the next few months. Just archive those 1-2 years old project folders that you don’t have reasons to access again.

3. Take Advantage of DropBox Referral System

   DropBox has an existing referral system that rewards you with 500MB bonus space for each successful referral installs. Just go to https://www.dropbox.com/referrals page to get your unique link and you can start inviting friends to signup.

   Get A List of All Google Drive Files & Folders in Google Sheet

   A lot of people have been gaming this system and was able to snatch as much as 16GB of bonus disk space. The popular method includes using virtual machines and doing fake installations using their own referral link. DropBox requires each referred account to install its Windows or Mac app before rewarding the extra 500MB bonus disk space.

4. Move your backup files to other cloud services

   Again, DropBox has attracted tens of competitors trying to get a slice of the pie. Popular cloud storage platforms include Google Drive, OneDrive, Otixo, Mover.io, ZeroPC, etc. What these guys have in common is that they have free plans that give you as much as 30GB of FREE cloud storage space.

   You now have multiple options to choose from to unload some of your files and free up your DropBox disk space. You can go classic by downloading your DropBox files and upload them to your cloud storage of choice or you can use cloud storage management platforms such as Otixo to move files between multiple cloud storage providers. Doing so guarantees to free up your DropBox disk space.

6. Upgrade your DropBox plan

   If you want to skip the headaches of increasing your DropBox disk space, then, this would be your last option. DropBox Plus tier sets you back $9.99 a month which gives you 2 TB storage space. That should already be enough storage space for your digital life.

Wrapping it up

Our work-related stuff can easily eat up our DropBox 2 GB storage space. While there are other cloud storage platforms we can check out, it’s the security & simplicity of DropBox that makes it hard to depart. And if you’re unprepared to upgrade to a much higher storage plan, you can try the above suggestions to free up and increase your DropBox storage space.

How To Unzip Archived Files in DropBox without Downloading them Offline

Few days ago, I was confronted with this situation where I needed to get a specific file within a zip file shared to me on DropBox. The trouble is, the archive file is over 2GB in size and I am on a limited internet data connection and I can’t afford to waste time downloading the entire 2GB file just to get a specific file for my web project.

Such dilemma would’ve been not a problem if, and only if, DropBox has a built-in file management system where you can zip or unzip files in DropBox website. However, as you might already know, DropBox web app is still deprived of such functionality. And there are no DropBox App Extensions that can do basic archive file management.

So normally your only way out is to download the entire ZIP file on your local drive and do the actual unzipping on your machine, which sounds very much unacceptably antiquated.

Because 2GB of data would cost me $5 in my country to download (and $5 is not cheap), I had to find a way how to unzip DropBox files without downloading them first. Thankfully, I found a way out, albeit not the most straight-forward. And this article, I’m going to show you how.

What you need

• DropBox account
• Google Drive account
• Otixo account (or other free cloud file management apps)

Cutting off the crap, this method works this way: using Otixo service, we remotely copy those zip files from DropBox to Google Drive. And once those zip files are transferred to Google Drive, you can unzip them straight from Google Drive website.

How to unzip Dropbox files without downloading them first offline

For the purpose of this tutorial, I'm going to use a demo file globe-at-home.zip which sits right inside my DropBox account

1. You’ll have to signup or login first to Otixo and connect your DropBox and Google Drive cloud accounts. Otixo has a decent file management functionality where you can connect multiple cloud drives into a single interface so you can quickly manage your files from multiple sources. We wrote about it before, so go check it out.

2. Once you’ve added both your DropBox and Google Drive accounts, copy your DropBox ZIP file to your Google Drive. The transfer should take in seconds.

   

   

3. As soon as you hit the Copy button, the ZIP file should arrive on your Google Drive account.

   

4. Now, you're ready to unzip the archive inside Google Drive. To do that, you'll have to add ZIP Extractor as add-on to your Google Drive. See our guide here.

   Once ZIP Extractor is added, you can open your archive file with ZIP Extractor, as seen below:

   

5. And finally, selectively extract the contents within that ZIP file.

   

You're done!

Best & FREE Alternatives To Otixo To Manage Multiple Cloud Storage Accounts

ZIP Extractor will then automatically create a new folder containing all the extracted files within that folder where the original ZIP file is located.

Final Verdict

Being able to unzip files in DropBox isn't natively supported yet on DropBox web app. However, with a little bit of creativity, we can achieve the same feat by moving that ZIP file from DropBox to Google Drive and do the extraction in the latter. Well, thanks to Otixo.

Spotify iOS App Gets Native Sleep Timer Support

Music streaming giant Spotify silently rolls out an update to its iOS app which finally brings a sleep timer support for its app. No need to separately launch the iPhone’s Clock app.

Setting up a sleep timer on Spotify

To set up a sleep timer on Spotify, be sure you’re getting the latest update of the app. While your Spotify songs are playing, launch the Now Playing screen, tap the tiny three dots that sits in the upper right of your screen, and then scroll down a bit until you see the “Sleep timer” option. From there you can set a timer from 5 mins to 1 hour.

To turn off sleep timer on Spotify, just redo the above steps and in “Stop audio in“ screen, just tap ”Turn off timer“.

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As a music app, a sleep timer is a hotly-requested feature of Spotify which lets you doze to your favorite songs without draining your iPhone’s battery. It’s a feature first introduced to the Android version last year. iOS users, on the other hand, resort to the iPhone’s Clock app to stop audio playback on Spotify at a predefined time.

Quickly Create Printable Wifi Signs and Scan-to-Connect QR Codes

Found this cool website that lets you generate a WiFi sign and QR code so people can easily connect on your network. The service is called My WiFi Sign, which comes in handy when you want to skip the headache of sharing your WiFi credentials at home or office.

All you need to do is head to My WiFi Sign, supply your network credentials and in seconds you get a nice-looking PDF complete with your WiFi info which you can quickly print. Additionally, you get a unique QR code which your visitors can scan to quickly connect on your network without typing anything.

How awesome is that?

So, when a visitor or your child’s friends come in, you can just quickly point them to the printed My WiFi Sign rather than awkwardly reach to your access point and find the credentials.

New QR Tagging Service Helps You Find Your Lost Stuff

Not everyone will probably appreciate this but if you host an event or you own a shop, having a scan-to-connect QR code will do you a favor.

Go, check it out!

How To Automatically Block Spam SMS By Keyword on iPhone (No Jailbreak)

On average, I get around dozens of promotional spam text messages in a week from different lending companies offering their loan services. Not to mention the pesky offers from my telco and its merchant partners who aggressively promote their products through SMS.

Getting 20 unsolicited SMS in a week may not sound like a lot. But I felt harassed knowing that they have access to my personal contact number and they can anytime shoot me an unwanted SMS without my permission.

Truth is, while the internet is still the most effective place to attract customers, a handful of marketers still turn to robocalls and SMS marketing as a way to generate leads. They’ll assault your iPhone’s inbox with offers and yes, even dirty texts containing links of adult websites. And the most clever part is: they’ll use a different random number to text blast; not too easy to block and stop.

Well, not until today.

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If you’re using the iPhone and tired of getting spam text messages from lending companies and random people, now is the time to take action and permanently block those spam messages. And nope, you don’t have to jailbreak your iPhone just to accomplish it.

Meet VeroSMS, the Best iOS App to Block Spam Texts on iPhone by Keywords

Upon hearing VeroSMS’ promise of permanently blocking unwanted SMS, I didn’t easily get excited, to be honest. First, I thought it’s not at all possible to manipulate iPhone’s SMS inbox considering the well-protected iOS ecosystem. Or, even if you can do it, you’ll have to engage in the risky business of jailbreaking.

But I was wrong.

VeroSMS works flawlessly during my test and I don’t even have to upgrade to a $2.99 premium version just to get the job done. This iOS-only app automatically blocks incoming SMS matching my custom-defined keywords.

No more nasty alerts from spammers. All unwanted SMS are automatically rejected under SMS Junk tab in the iPhone’s Messages app. Yep, the nice thing about it is while iPhone won’t alert you for incoming spam messages, the app still keeps a copy of every unwanted SMS so you can anytime check back.

How To Stop, Block Spam Text on iPhone by Keywords or Phrases

Getting started is easy. All you have to do is:

1. Download and install VeroSMS from App Store.

2. Launch the app. If this is your first time opening the app, you’ll be asked to Enable VeroSMS Spam Filter. Just go to Settings > Message > Unknown & Spam. Under SMS Filtering, enable VeroSMS.

   

3. Navigate back to VeroSMS app. From Blocklist section, you can define your own keywords

   

   The paid version already comes with crowdsourced keywords so you can pretty much skip this step. However, you can also add your own, localised keywords, which makes this app really useful.

4. Now, see your iPhone magically junks those spam text inside your iMessage app. All matching text messages will be stored in SMS Junk tab. And you don’t hear a notification when a spam text arrives.

   

Note: Only those SMS coming from unknown phone numbers will be filtered out by VeroSMS. If a text message comes from someone in your contacts list, VeroSMS will see it as important and it won’t tag it as spam.

Top 5 Online Services to Trim, Cut YouTube Videos for FREE

YouTube, without a doubt, is everyone’s choice when it comes to entertainment and general info. With thousands of fun and informative videos being uploaded by the minute, it’s not uncommon for anyone to generate content out of existing YouTube videos.

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Teachers for instance can use copyright-free videos from YouTube to come up with supplemental video for their pupils. They can grab multiple, existing YouTube videos and do a bit of editing to produce a new video resource. Or if you’re a casual YouTuber like me, you may want to crop a YouTube video and get your favourite part to share as a meme.

Whatever the motivation is, trimming and making YouTube videos shorter doesn’t really have to be complicated. Truth is, there are free, online YouTube video editors that let you do basic trimming and cropping by simply pasting YouTube URLs.

5 Best Online Apps To Crop, Trim YouTube Videos

1. YT Cutter
   This ad-supported web app lets you extract favourite scenes from YouTube videos. Using the app is pretty much straight-forward. All you need to do is to paste a YouTube link and specify start and end time parameter. Once done, you have the option to download the cropped video, audio or GIF.

2. Kapwing Video Trimmer
   Kapwing’s Video Trimmer makes cutting YouTube video a breeze. The service offers the same video cropping capability but with a much nicer interface. After pasting YouTube video URL to crop, you can adjust which parts of YouTube videos to trim using easy-to-use, timestamp slider.
3. YouTube Trimmer
   Yet another free tool to trim, crop YouTube videos is Youtube Trimmer. The website may look simple but it offers surprisingly fast and easy way to trim, crop favourite parts of your Youtube videos online. Just supply the YouTube video URL and specify the start and end times for the crop.
4. YT Cropper
   And if for some reason you’re running out of options to make a YouTube video shorter, you may check out YT Cropper. Just supply the URL and adjust the handles to crop. Once done, hit “Crop” and let YT Cropper generates a custom embed code for you. Unfortunately, YT Cropper won’t let you download the cropped video for offline use. Sucks.
5. YT Videos Cutter by odownloader
   Yet another ad-supported YouTube trimmer which lets you cut YouTube videos in seconds. The good: it gives you the option to download either audio only or full video. And you have the option to select .webm and .mp4 formats. The bad: lots of ads.

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There you go! If there are other YouTube video editing apps out there that deserve a mention on this blog, just get in touch.

Get A List of All Google Drive Files & Folders in Google Sheet

Have you ever been in a situation where you wished you could get a simplified list of Google Drive files and folders in a Google Sheet?

If you’re working as a graphic designer or web developer, chances are you’ve probably gone through that occasion where you needed to juggle through multiples files and folders just to get the file you want.

Google Drive’s built-in file explorer isn’t that intuitive enough. Rummaging through hundreds of files can be too overwhelming, to say the least. Well right now, not anymore!

How To List All Google Drive Files & Folders in Google Sheet

Meet Drive Explorer, it’s a tiny little add-on for Google Sheet that lets you export all (or selected) files and folders into a much readable spreadsheet format.

Drive Explorer (formerly Drive Direct Links) lets you pick folders/files from your Google Drive, Shared Drive or the files shared with you to export to the Google Sheet. Sheet columns contain metadata of the files like name of the file, containing folder, folder path on your Google drive, direct download link, etc.

How Drive Explorer works:

1. You install the add-on and connect your Google account
2. Once connected, go to your Driver folder and create a spreadsheet
3. Inside your spreadsheet toolbar, click on Add-ons > Drive Explorer > Select files/folder.
4. And finally, wait for a few seconds until your spreadsheet is automatically refreshed containing your files/folders’ meta info such as folder names, filenames, folder paths, links, etc.

When is it useful?

Being able to view your Google Drive files and folders in a list helps us save time and improve team collaboration. If you own an online store and works with VAs to manage inventories, this add-on definitely comes in handy.

In our day job, for instance, we constantly update images on our client’s websites. And our clients usually just share a large Drive folder containing all the images that need to be uploaded to their website. With Drive Explorer, we can now easily get a decent list of files in that shared folder so our team can easily collaborate rather than going back and forth on Google Drive.

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Next-Generation iPhones May Soon Ditch Traditional Wireless Networks

It looks like Tim Cook doesn't want to heavily rely on traditional wireless carriers to beam internet data to its iPhone. And he hopes to see results within five years.

Bloomberg reports that Apple Inc. is hiring dozens of top-caliber engineers from aerospace, satellite, and antenna design industries in its bid to develop satellite technology that can beam internet data directly to iPhone devices.

Joining this newly-assembled team includes Michael Trela and John Fenwick, former aerospace engineers who helped lead satellite imaging company Skybox Imaging, which was sold to Google in 2014. Wireless technology messiah Matt Ettus also joins the team, along with Ashley Moore Williams from Aerospace Corp. who focused on communication satellites, and Daniel Ellis, a former Netflix Inc. executive.

Apple can pursue the costly development of a satellite constellation from scratch. Or they can team up with existing satellite makers to beam internet data direct to Apple devices.

Apple's Next-Generation Wireless Technology

The apparent goal of the said project is probably to mitigate Apple devices' dependence on traditional wireless networks across the globe, which are often confronted with issues on cost, efficiency, and privacy.

Remember that Apple's cash cow doesn't solely come from its devices' sales. Apple also gets a significant amount of revenues from other sources such as Apple TV+ subscription, Apple Music, Arcade, and who knows -- Virtual Reality experiences in the future.

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Tim Cook's reign in Cupertino also requires him to fight tooth and nail in VR wars. In fact, Apple is working on its own virtual headset which is expected to debut as early as 2021.

All these TV and internet contents and VR experiences require a massive amount of internet data that needs to be fed to Apple devices in realtime. So, developing its own wireless technology is a sound decision from Apple in my opinion, as foreign companies like Apple are often held at a gunpoint when trying to penetrate a foreign market.

Developing countries, for instance, have exorbitant internet data prices and there are often data caps to deal with -- issues which Apple nor Google is unable to control, disrupting the company's goal to expand its services to foreign lands.

Satellite technology is an unchartered territory of Apple Inc., but with its massive $16 billion pumped in its research and development in 2019 alone, it can be just a matter of time when Tim Cook's reign at Cupertino surprises us with this wireless ambition.

How To Score Cheaper Airline Tickets with Google Flights’ Fare Alerts

Dreaming to hit Philippines’ white sand beaches this summer? Don’t book that tickets just yet! Chances are, you could be getting pricier round trip airline tickets if you’re too excited booking those tickets a lot sooner.

With just a few clicks, I’m going to show you how you can snap up the best airline deals for your upcoming trips using Google Flights.

Google Flights, by the way, is another service of Google launched back in 2011 that lets you search flights in seconds. Unbeknownst to many, Google Flights has a ‘fare alerts’ feature that notifies you in real-time through email if there are downticks (or upticks) of ticket prices from your selected flight. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do in order to get the best deals in real-time from different airlines.

Here's how to monitor airline ticket prices with Google Flights

1. Go to Google Flights website

2. Search for your desired flight. You may opt for a round trip or one-way ticket (there are additional filters too such as desired stop-overs, which cities, airlines, etc.) Best to leave them as is to get the best possible deals)

   

3. As soon as you specify the desired departure date, the page should automatically pull a list of flights you can choose. The best flights for the chosen date will appear first on top of the page. So in case you’re happy with those prices, you can book them right away.

4. If the best flights are too expensive for you, you can activate Track prices toggle. Basically, it will monitor the lowest price for the trip and you’ll be notified through email in real-time.

   

As long as you don’t omit those tracked prices, Google will automatically alert you when there are downticks of those chosen flight, as seen below's screenshot:

Both Skyscanner and Traveloka have "price alerts" functionality, but it doesn't hurt to add Google Flights into the mix to get the best possible airline deals.

Google Launches New Recorder App with Realtime Offline Transcription Support

After announcing the latest iteration of its flagship Android phone the Pixel 4 recently, Google introduces a new voice recorder app for Android with built-in offline speech recognition support. Well, thanks to AI.

The new Recorder app uses speech recognition and AI to transcribe lectures, meetings, interviews and more—and makes them easy for you to find later. (English only right now, with more languages to come.) #madebygoogle pic.twitter.com/fdKRItuS4b

— Google (@Google) October 15, 2019

The voice recorder app, as seen on the above demo, can transcribe audio recordings in real-time with utmost accuracy. And the best part: it works offline. You can transcribe whatever is being spoken during meetings, lectures or interviews even without internet connectivity.

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Google’s newest voice recorder app is a massive upgrade from traditional audio recorder apps, which require decent internet connectivity to enable real-time transcription. And in most cases, the experience can be a bit clunky, unpleasant. That’s because your speech is being processed on a remote server before finally returning the transcribed text.

Search Parts of Recorded Audio by Sounds

The new voice recorder app comes with impressive search functionality too. Imagine you have this 2-hours long recorded lecture and wanted to re-visit that part of the lecture but all you can remember is a phrase or word? You can search by voice and the app will automatically highlight playback bar where those spoken phrases or words are mentioned. No more horizontal scrolling.

Google’s offline transcription technology is made possible by combining the power of real-time speech recognition and AI. And with the company’s unlimited resources being pumped in their Machine Learning department, we can expect a better and heaps clever AI-assisted voice processing in the future.

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So, next time you’re in a meeting or lecture, you can pretty much ditch writing notes and just intently listen to whoever is speaking. Let your Android phone do the note-taking.

Again, the app is initially being rolled out on the new Pixel 4, and the offline speech recognition is currently available in English. But with Google’s intention to reach as many users as possible, we can expect it to support other devices and other languages.

This Website Lets You Prank Your Friends with Fake System Updates

Found this really clever and evil site that lets you prank your friends and co-workers with a fake system update and thought you might like this too ;)

If seeing your friends’ worried look delights you, then, this fun website lets you do just that. The website, Update Faker, lets you select a fake system Windows or Mac update on your unsuspecting friends’ computer by simply visiting the website and selecting the “theme”. Just be sure to press F11 to go fullscreen mode on your Windows or Ctrl+Command+F on Mac.

The fake Windows update screen looks too real; from fonts, colors and even progress bars. Your target should definitely freak out upon seeing their computer screen doing the dreaded system updates. Just be prepared for possible reprisal.

Update Faker Themes to Choose From

Yet another reason why you should lock your computer when you take a quick break however short that is. Or else you could be a victim from pranksters lurking around your corner.

This is probably one of the meanest websites we’ve come across.

Enable Front & Back Simultaneous Video Recording on iOS 13 with this App

Apart from the updated keyboard, new editable emojis, system-wide dark mode, and other tiny yet much-needed bells and whistles, iOS 13 also brings a plethora of enhancements under the hood.

One of them is the introduction of a new API that lets you use both front and back camera of your iPhone to simultaneously record all the action in front and back all at the same time.

We saw it from a demo at Apple’s event last week, which showed an iPhone 11 Pro with Filmic Pro installed that delightfully activates and captures both front and ultra-wide back camera.

Newer versions of iPhones will certainly get this multi-cam sessions support. At the recent WWDC event last week, Apple also confirmed that the same multi-cam recording functionality will also be supported on iPhone XS and XR. That’s pretty much good news.

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Filmic Pro, being one of the biggest names to incorporate this feature on its app, is said to be releasing an update to its app later this year.

However, if you want to try it yourself right now without spending a penny and see how this front and back simultaneous recording works, then, you’ve got to check out Dualgram.

Dualgram: Use Your iPhone’s Multiple Cameras To Record Back & Front All At The Same Time

Dualgram was a brainchild of Junda Ong, who says there are so many occasions where he wished he could capture all the actions on both sides of the phone. And he’s not alone. Imagine you’re in your vacation abroad and wants to update your family back home and so you excitedly update them with your pictures and videos. Isn’t it cool to show all the sights in front of you while at the same time showing all the fun right behind you?

A multiple camera recording isn’t new. In fact, it’s been around for years on select Android devices — and it proved to be fun and more personalized.

With the latest iOS 13 and Dualgram, finally you can try it on your iPhone.

How To Turn Off Geotagging on iOS to Permanently Remove Locations from Photos on iPhone

iPhone and iPad camera has this built-in geotagging feature that automatically attaches your current location (aka EXIF metadata) every time you snap a photo. This geotagging support enables iOS to organize your photos by location, making it easy for you to browse through your past photos including personal travel photos and selfies.

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Most iPhone and iPad have iOS camera geotagging enabled by default. You can tell if photo geotagging is enabled when you go to iOS Photos > Albums, there’s a Places folder where all your photos are displayed on a map.

A lot of people may find it cool that their iPhone detects their location and attach it on their selfies. What these people don’t realize is that they’re exposing their exact location coordinates which could turn them into easy prey from people with malicious attentions.

So, if you’re uncomfortable about unintentionally sharing your location data and want things a little bit private, it’s highly recommended to permanently disable geotagging on iPhone before finally sharing them online.

Here’s how to turn off geotagging on iPhone 6, 7, 8, XR, iPhone Max Pro & iPhone 11

1. Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services

2. Tap Camera and set Allow Location Access to Never.

   

Preventing iOS from geotagging your photos should be that easy. Once done, it should remove geotag from photos on the iPhone moving forward.

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Please note that past photos with existing geotag won’t be removed. You’ll have to use EXIF remover such as Metadata Remover EXIF GPS TIFF or EXIR Purge to strip off sensitive metadata from iOS photos.

How To: Automatically Capture Web Page Screenshots At Regular Intervals

Previously on this blog we’ve talked about how we can use Google Sheet as Wayback Machine Internet Archive alternative to automatically capture web page screenshots. In that post, we’ve demonstrated how we can use screenshotmachine.com’s free API to generate a screenshot of website using Google Sheet script and store them in a dedicated Google Drive folder Web page captures.

It worked hitherto of course. The bad news is: the script suddenly stopped working, probably because of Google’s API changes or similar. But the good news is: there’s a good alternative to do just that for a minimal fee.

PageCapture: Automatically Capture Website Screenshots Daily, Weekly or Monthly

PageCapture is a nifty web app we discovered few days ago and we thought you’ll love it too. In a nutshell, PageCapture automatically creates a screenshot of any web page URL on schedule. There are a handful of capture frequencies to choose from: hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and even custom hourly intervals. You choose.

All screenshots are securely stored on PageCapture website. However, you have the option to sync it with your DropBox or Google Drive account. And if you’re a regular Slack user, PageCapture can automatically push all web page screenshots to your Slack account.

When is it useful?

Web masters and internet marketers will surely benefit such an automated screenshot-capturing tool. Web page screenshots act as visual backup which you can turn to when you want to recover something or just want to look back how your client’s sites look like in the past.

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Or if you’re an internet marketer, you can use it to spy on your competitor’s website and monitor SERP positions on Google search results on daily or weekly basis.

While massively popular Wayback Machine is awesome, it only crawls public pages at unknown intervals; no daily or weekly snapshots. So it’s not that totally reliable if you want a simple visual snapshot of a web page daily.

Why PageCapture is awesome

Aside from the fact that you can automatically capture web page screenshot on schedule, there are also other advance options you can explore such as the ability to choose device screen size (e.g. desktop, iPhone, iPad) and user-agents. So, web masters will definitely find this useful too especially if you’re maintaining highly critical sites that requires constant monitoring.

Go check out PageCapture and don’t forget to share this to your friends who might need this.

Finally, An AI-Powered App That Transforms Sketches Into Interactive Digital Prototypes in Realtime

The latest advancement of AI continues to offer us a whole new way to experience our digital lives. We’ve seen how Google predicts traffic delays & bus crowdedness, well, thanks to AI. We’ve also seen how YouTube enables you to virtually try on makeup and help you with your purchases decisions, thanks to its immersive AR Beauty Try-On.

With millions of power users’ growing appetite for anything automated, it’s not difficult to imagine a future where mundane, routinary tasks are being kept to a minimum. And fact is : it has already begun.

One of the coolest finds we’ve come across is Artyline, a free iOS & time-saver app that converts hand-drawn sketches into digital equivalent in realtime. All you have to do is to give a good scan on your sketches and you’re done.

Not everyone will appreciate this app, but such an app comes in handy if you’re an app developer or designer who wants to skip NinjaMock or any online mockup tools to quickly visualize your ideas.

Why Artyline is such a great app

The trouble with hand-drawn sketches is that it can potentially be misunderstood by most clients who normally aren’t adept in UX design elements. So whether it’s a simple app or not, the best way to present your idea and get their approval is to give prototypes as realistic as possible.

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With Artyline, generating prototypes is as simple as scanning your sketches and you immediately get an interactive version of our mockup. Think of it as an additional team member in your UX / design department where design sketches drawn from whiteboard or paper are quickly converted to digital formats. So you’d come well-prepared when meeting your client to discuss the next big app.

Artyline limitations

Because Artyline is powered by AI, it has a limited set of training to recognize basic shapes and transform them into design elements. Good thing is Artyline has this easy-to-follow guideline to make your sketches more recognizable by their AI.

Pro Tip: Use markers instead of writing pens. Don’t use pencils as they’re too illegible to recognize by Artyline scanner.

Artyline is still in its infancy and got tons of areas to improve especially in the execution side. However, I can’t easily denigrate an app idea this good just because of those hiccups. So, we are still impressed.

Give your app designs workflows an upgrade. Get this iOS app while it’s free. Thank me later!

Download: Artyline [Apple App Store]

WordPress.com To Acquire Tumblr for Less than $20 Million

A once popular blogging behemoth Tumblr will soon get a new home. It’s WordPress.

Automattic Inc, the maker of world’s most popular Content Management System, is currently in talks with Tumblr’s Verizon Communications Inc for potential acquisition as part of the latter’s media overhaul.

While no definite sum floats around the deal yet, one source familiar with the matter says it will be a “well below” $20 million deal.

Automattic Inc is said to rehome Tumblr’s 200 existing employees and vowed to maintain Tumblr’s existing porn ban.

Tumblr’s Early Years

Back in the days when no Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter yet, Tumblr used to be the go-to place for people who love to share online contents such as photos, music, videos, and blogs. The free service grew exponentially, with millions of daily active users soaked in addictive, user-generated contents hosted on their platform.

With a userbase that large, that got the attention of Yahoo, which acquired Tumblr for a whopping $1.1 billion under the helm of Marissa Mayer last 2013 until Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017 for $4.8 billion.

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