Best Android applications for productivity

Android is the best mobile operating system(almost 80% of mobiles uses Android) because of ease of usage, ease of customization.
After installing many Android applications on my Samsung Galaxy S4, I am writing this post on Best Android apps for productivity.

Get these useful apps if you are a business person or student or even an employee.

How can you learn from facebook pages

Facebook is built for a cause , not just to share photos and funny status updates but to share knowledge around the web.
Facebook not just a social media network. It is a smart network with curious people who shares awesome ideas around the world.
The Facebook pages are very resourceful which helps the users to improve their knowledge.
Just for example here is a story of a scientist cum professor Brian. Watch how he succeeded in his research using facebook pages and photo tagging.

  

Here is a list of some useful Facebook pages which can help you to increase your knowledge. Be productive while spending your time on social networking sites.

Best websites to boost your productivity

Productivity is nothing but making things simple for yourself.Whether it is office work or your personal task, there exists a best way to do it.
we are listing five best websites for making your things easy and simple. All of these websites are web services for improving your productivity.
You can bookmark these website to use them frequently to boost your day to day productivity.

5 websites to bookmark for improving your English

Learning is always fun. Building vocabulary is easy nowadays with the help of lot of online resources. We are giving you a list of 5 websites which will help you to build your English vocabulary.
These websites will help you to improve your day to day vocabulary as well as for preparing competitive exams like SAT, GRE,GMAT,TOEFL etc. 

Useful browsing tips you might missed

Browsing the Internet is what we do most of the time with our computers.Some times we forget some silly things and follow a long process to do a small task. So I am just reminding some tips for improving your productivity while browsing the Internet.

• Don't go back by clicking 'back arrow' several times. Just right click on back button and choose which page you want to navigate

Right click on back arrow to get browsing history of the tab

• Are you watching a long video on Youtube ? Are you reading a webpage for long time. Then why don't you go full screen ? hit F11 to concentrate on the content. This gives good browsing experience if you are using a small monitor.With full screen you can save some chunk of space in the browser.

• Use Ctrl+shift+T to re-open closed(may be accidentally) window.

reopen an accidentally closed window

• Got a link to open in new window. What you do usually ? right click and select 'open link in new window'. But why taking two steps? I suggest you use Ctrl + single [left] click on the link to open in new tab.

• Put a master password for your FireFox browser[read this] and relax. You just need to enter you master password for every browsing session, Firefox will not ask for user name and password for individual on-line accounts again. I save a lot of time by skipping the need to enter user name and password forms[without losing my security].

 

• If you are browsing on public(not your own) computer then don't forget to use 'Start Private browsing' option in Firefox. Same can be done in Chrome using 'Incognito window'. This will not store any data or history of your browsing session.This option is best for doing bank transactions and logging into your on-line accounts.

Let us know If you got some tips to share with us. You can always drop a comment or join the conversation on our Facebook page

    

How to choose a secure password wisely

Creating a password is 90 % psychological issue. In the other cases it is related to security as they are connected with money (like banking passwords etc.)

Why psychological ?

Say if you love XYZ person.So you keep the password as "ilovexyz"

but this can be cracked if the person name is too short. So you need to make a strong password from this sentence only for easily remembering the password.

HOW ?

• make each word's first letter capital. i.e. IloveXyz
• add your favorite special characters to the password. If I am using this password then i will turn it as ##IloveXyz##

Most of the time every on-line user will repeat his first password which he gave at the time of beginning his Internet usage.Usually every persons first password will be a simple and easy to remember kind of words only. If he continues to use the same password all the time then there is a maximum probability of keeping your on-line accounts in the hands of hackers.

To avoid this you can use a simple trick.

Add a word related to the website (where you are creating a password for the account) in your password.

choose different passwords for all your online accounts

Here is Mozilla, suggesting you to choose secure passwords with simple tricks.





If you are good at Ctrl+A | Ctrl+C | Ctrl+V  I will suggest you a weird idea!
Say your password is 'password1234' . I suggest you to change it as "password1234password1234". This will definitely increase your password strength.You don't need to worry about remembering it.All you need to do is type your password as you remember and copy paste it again.

Other ways to make your password secure and easy to remember

1. Use a password manager application on your PC, or note down a phrase of password in your mobile phone.Make sure you remember other phrase of your password.

2.If you are using Mozilla FireFox(Why do I use Mozilla?) then you can use a master password for all your on-line accounts. At the start of browsing session you will be asked for the master password which will automatically stores all the remembered passwords.


PS : If you are a hacker and if you are reading this post I have something to say with you.

"I DON'T FOLLOW ANY OF THE ABOVE RULES !!!
IT'S MY PASSWORD ! My own rules apply  !! This is just a post to give my readers an idea about choosing a strong password."

How my Laptop increased my productivity

Improve your productivity by using these tools

From the past 2 months I have been using my Laptop for blogging and web browsing in order to make Geeky Brains Blog more useful and productive.

Initially I have struggled to find some time to write this blog as I am working full time in an MNC.But later I have found some useful and productive tools(both online and offline) which helped me a lot to concentrate on blogging alone.

The machine I owned : Dell Inspiron N4050 powered by 2nd generation intel core i5 processor(2.4GHz) + an AMD graphics card which can handle a decent amount of graphics.

So this is not a high end laptop made to deploy in NASA machines but It is still a good computing device which came in my budget.

I use both Linux and Windows on my machine | most of the time I play with my laptop changing different kinds of operating systems. But this has shown a major effect on my productivity in the last month.So i have decided to use Windows 7 along with Ubuntu 12.04LTS which is quite simple and beautiful.

Besides we have a Netgear router installed in our Apartment so that our 4 laptops, A Nokia 820 and 1 ipad mini can share the 15Mbps wifi connection.(Before NetGear Hardware Router I was using Connectify hotspot. Connectify software can turn your laptop into a wifi transmitter)

 Coming to the point, Here I will give you some rough ideas which may help you in your day to day computing.

Notepad ++ | This is my favorite text editor I have ever used in my programming life. It supports many languages with auto completion feature. If you ever try to write some code I suggest you to include this tool in your collection.Most of the time I will edit html in this app

DropBox | I drop every important file here. Thus I never lose my important files.Both my Windows and Linux versions contains Dropbox. Using DropBox you can install many apps. (inside dropbox) which are really productive.
If you haven't used DropBox yet then you must try it now to explore the possibilities

ThunderBird : this is an opensource e-mail client from Mozilla foundation.I check all my 4 email account mails here both online and offline. Smart ! is in't it. Then get it here.If you are familiar with Outlook by Microsoft then I can say that Thunderbird is an alternative for it.this works on both Windows and Linux versions.
EverNote : My favorite note taking  app. You can use both online and offline once you download it. I also use EverNote Clearly browser extension for reading webpages like an E-book.

Hibernate | I use this in Windows 7 PC when ever I go out from my room for a long time(say 4 hours), So that when I come back to my laptop I can directly start from the point where I have left earlier (Instead You can also go for windows 8 if you can upgrade)

I KISS every thing on my Desktop !!! yeah :) I Keep It Simple and Silly. 
I use "Rainmeter" application for  customizing themes and skins of my desktop. It will give many more options to make your computer desktop almost like a tablet. Currently I am using a simple & minimalism theme as shown here.

Desktop with Rainmeter application

  

I use JetClean to clean my registry and maintain all installed software. This will improve the performance of my PC. I suggest you to run this tool frequently to maintain your PC performance.

I use Microsoft paint for my making basic pictures on my blog. I have downloaded and installed a bunch of fonts to make my words beautiful.

I guess this article will help you in some ways (at least one of the above). I am trying to update this list soon. So please keep visiting us.

Be Curious :) Be productive :) 

Ever Note Clearly - Read a webpage like an e-book

Do you have an EverNote accont ?

If Yes then you will definitely love this feature. If you say No then I strongly suggest you to sign up for EverNote.

EverNote Clearly for Firefox and Chrome

Clearly is a browser extension available on major Browser platforms like Firefox and Chrome.

Clearly will make any webpage into a clean and simple e-book like reading interface.

Install the Clearly extension for Firefox here . If you use Google Chrome then use this link

Advantages of using EverNote Clearly

While the primary usage of this extension is to read web pages easily, there are some other advantages too.

--->Save your favorite webpage to your EverNote account.
 ---->If you find some interesting content on a website what you will do ? I will mark that text and save it to my Evernote account
 ---> Set your theme for day and night compatibility. 

 --->You can print a webpage without any ADs on that page.


Here is a snapshot of Clearly extension in my PC 

Make your presentations beautiful with prezi

I hate Power Point presentations even the topic is interesting to me. In fact Power Point presentations make me sleep faster than sleeping pills. Power Point Presentations are one of the old methods we are still using for presenting an idea or concept.

Also creating a powerpoint presentation is a big job without any creativity.

 So lets make our  presentations beautiful and simple with prezi, an online presentation tool. 

Geeky Brains made a small presentation about the blog using Prezi. For better experience use full screen mode by clicking at bottom right corner. 

 

Go to Prezi.com and create an account for free. You can watch the 1 minute video tutorial to understand about prezi presentation making. 
 We can choose from a wide range of templates and edit it.Finally save it and share with the people you want to present.

ADVANTAGES OF PREZI :

• You can use it Offline presentations too
• You can embed the presentation in your blog or website
• You can download the presentation as a PDF file
• You can attach any video or image to your presentation

Finally and most importantly Prezi presentations are more creative and beautiful than an ordinary paper presentation. 

So present your ideas using Prezi to make it simple and creative :)

Readers ! please drop a comment if you have any doubt. If you like this post please like our facebook page. 

Create E-book with Wikipedia articles

I love Wikipedia but there is one thing i hate in Wikipedia.
It is Wikipedia's User Interface. The internal links looks ugly to my eyes(although they are useful !).
So most of the times I prefer to read Wikipedia articles in either print preview mode or in PDF mode.

You can also create an E-book using Wikipedia articles. This is a very simple option available in Wikipedia under print/export menu.

Click on "create a book" under print/export menu.

create e-book with wikipedia articles

Add your desired articles from Wikipedia by visiting each article. You can preview your E-book using PediaPress tool also.(you can buy the hardcopy of your book too!!)

After adding all of your Wikipedia articles choose your desired output file format and click download. You can read this e-book as PDF file or EPUB file (for e-book readers like Kindle).
This is one of the best way to read Wikipedia articles offline.

Top 10 websites you must bookmark

Staring from the invention of the web there are thousands of websites which help the user to increase his productivity. These can be used in your office, college and personnel life also.

The following list is not based on their  popularity but just as per the usefulness and good user interface.
So you may have your own top 10 websites bookmarked in your browser. But I hope this list will definitely help you.

 TOP 10 WEBSITES TO BOOKMARK

1.If you are looking to build good vocabulary visit VOCABULARY.com

this is an ad free website with stunning user interface.you can sign in and build your vocabulary.There is an on line dictionary facility also provided. I really wonder there is any other online dictionary which will load as fast as vocabulary.com . As a believer in open knowledge environment I love this ad free (and no fee)website

2.If you are doing some study or research through Internet you may need to print the pages or save them.
Here i suggest you to convert the entire webpage into a PDF file and store it with you so that you can print or read offline also
 Go to PrintWhatYouLike.com

Here you can remove the ads from the page so that while printing (or reading offline) the ads wont disturb you.

3.Love sticky notes . Then you may try EverNote.com
You can sync your notes and documents across your devices . The user interface is simply superb here.Similarly there is a websiteRememberTheMilk.com . It is also a good note taking site with simple interface

4.Now this one is not exactly about productivity but for relaxation. I always feel fresh music will increase one's productivity. browse a list of fresh music @ hypem.com. Remember the blackberry tag "Love what you do , Do what you love"

5.Now here another one for entertainment but at the same time this site can teach many things.
 Yes it is xkcd.com   this site's home page shows a lot of comic pictures randomly. But if you click on the what if section you will love it. The best thing is this website is under creative common license which means you can share (or copy) their content .

6.Scienceblogs.com  is a group of blogs by National Geography channel. Believe me , I can spend hours of time here!
sciencedaily.com  is also a similar  website where you can find all research results on science. Don't feel like "its all PhD guys stuff" . If you browse some topics you may really like some articles.

7.Have you ever tried a search engine other than google(well! Dont say yahoo or bing. I am asking something different)
wolframalpha.com  is not a regular search engine but a Computational knowledge engine. See the home page , Its really cool and User friendly.

8.Love creativity Thinking and mind matters. Then you should enter into creativethinking.net  I don't like the home page by Michael Michalko but I must applaud his works on the website. See the exercises page for testing your creative thinking.

9.typetester.org is an online tool to see how your text font appears upon a website.You can use this tool to test the font of your presentations also.

10.Some times we cant live without Google.Say for example last week you have searched for a key word in google and found something. But now you forget the keyword. So what you do now? simply click on google.co.in/history

But remember you must sign in to save your history.


Lets book mark these sites . Don't filter yourself to restricted area on the web. Keep reading this blog to get more updates :)