[Tip] Create and Apply Your Own Colorful Themes in Google Chrome

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J There are many 3rd party themes available for Google Chrome web browser on official Chrome Web Store and Chrome users can...

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5 Stargazing Apps For Android To Invoke Your Inner Astronomer

Technology is shifting very rapidly and there have been a lot of things which has changed in a little time and came in a better version of itself. I am talking about beliefs and different school of thoughts which has changed with the development of technology. Let’s talk about space and the universe, where beliefs have changed with the rapid growth of technology.

Today I will share 5 Android applications where you can find out more about the universe. There are many different apps through which you can learn and see deep into astronomy and heavy universe objects. Yes, technology has come this far, it feels like they grab the whole universe in your Android phone.

1. SkyView® Lite

If you are obsessed with astronomy, this application is for you. Just point the camera at the sky, whether it’s dark or light, it shows you the real location of the stars and different heavy objects in the sky. Rotate the camera around in the sky and you will find more objects like the moon, Mars, galaxies, satellites, etc aligned with the real ones and with a good view. Furthermore, with every object you see you will find the details (like its past) of the object. It has also a search bar where you can type the name of the object you are looking for and a navigator will guide you to the location of that object.

You will probably need a good camera quality and good low-light performance. This is the free version of the app so you cannot access all the objects and details but even then, you can enjoy browsing through the sky.

2. APOD

If you are wondering about planets and other objects then you cannot miss this application. This app has different pictures about space objects, big bangs, galaxies, milky way, planets, stars, etc. with every picture there is a brief detail given which covers every aspect of the picture, it is regularly updated with new pictures every 2-3 days.

This app is sourced by NASA and every picture is Ultra-High Definition. You can save pictures and you can set it on the wallpaper which will be updated automatically.

3. Phases of the Moon Calendar & Wallpaper Free

It tells you about the moon illumination and keeps you updated about every detail of the moon, like different phases of the moon with each date and its movement around the earth, about the distance on everyday bases, different spots on the moon plus a slight animation and many more.

I personally like the updates about every upcoming event or past events like a lunar eclipse, red moon, etc. tells you how this event took place. By activating GPS you can know the location of the moon.

4. Solar System Scope

A must-install app to all the astronomy lovers, it offers a virtual tour into the deep space and milky way. While having a tour, all your questions about astronomy will be answered, it’s that simple. As you open, a full solar system will appear and then you can deeply zoom-in with a bunch of information and details about every object you see, click on the planet or stars and it will allow you to go on another deep tour into that particular object with a lot of details.

You can zoom-out and go thousands of lightyears far from the solar system and it will show you a galaxy. You can move every object around with a finger to see deeply into it.

5. NASA

It is the official application for NASA, it includes everything about this organization related to deep space, the universe and galaxies. The app could be a useful tool in comparing with truth and realities. It has all the news, astronomy-related articles, different school of thoughts, latest images, TV and audio, live videos from the space, missions and upcoming projects.

This app is based on reality, how is it differs from the other apps is that it has the real space footages and works pretty smooth. It is the full-pack for astronomy.

Wrapping up

All these apps are useful in terms of astronomy and the Solar System Scope is my personal favorite because it is a complete virtual tour. One should go and check these kinds of useful stuff apart from gaming and entertainment, it’s the curiosity about outer-space which needs to be satisfied.

The post 5 Stargazing Apps For Android To Invoke Your Inner Astronomer appeared first on Gtricks.

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The Rise of the Electric Scooter

In an electric car, the (enormous) battery is a major part of the price. If electric car prices are decreasing, battery costs must be decreasing, because it's not like the cost of fabricating rubber, aluminum, glass, and steel into car shapes can decline that much, right?

On an electric scooter, though, the effect of battery price has to be even more dramatic because scooters are such lightweight, compact, and simple machines. They aren't much more than a battery and an electric motor to begin with. Remember the the Zappy electric scooter from twenty years ago?

What killed the electric scooter back then is the same thing that killed the electric car of year 2000: terrible lead-acid battery technology. It's too heavy, it lacks power, it doesn't have enough range, it takes too long to charge. These are all different ways of saying the same thing: the battery sucks. It wasn't until Lithium Ion batteries matured that both the electric car and the electric scooter — and pretty much electric everything, if you think about it — became viable.

Thus, one way to see if Lithium Ion battery prices are indeed generally dropping independent of all other manufacturing concerns is to examine the cost of electric scooters over the last few years. Let's consider one of the most popular models, the Xiaomi Mi M365:

This graph only shows roughly two years, from January 2018 to now; it looks like the original price for the Xiaomi M365 when it hit the US market in early 2017 was around $800. So the price of a popular, common electric scooter has halved in three years. Very good news indeed for electric vehicles of all types!

This dramatic drop in electric scooter price from 2016 to 2019 may not be surprising versus the parallel rise of the quasi-legal electric scooter smartphone app rental industry over roughly the same time period, in the form of Bird, Lime, Skip, Spin, Scoot, etc.

Early versions of Bird scooters were actual Xiaomi M365s, slightly modified for rental. Only by late 2018 had they migrated to custom built, ruggedized scooters optimized for the rental market. The rental industries have their own challenges, and ironically have started to pivot to monthly rentals rather than the classic 15 cents per minute.

Bird has experimented with its business model in recent months. In early March, the company altered its repair program in Los Angeles, which had relied on gig workers to fix broken scooters. It moved repairs in-house (though scooters are still charged each night by an army of gig workers). Later that month, the company introduced scooters with locks in some markets, in a bid to prevent theft and vandalism.

In April, it announced the launch of a more traditional rental program in San Francisco and Barcelona, in which users could pay $25 per month to rent a Xiaomi m365 from the company rather than paying per ride.

But this isn't meant to be a blog entry about the viability of scooter rental company business models.

I want to tackle a more fundamental question: are electric scooters the future of transportation?

Even Uber, as screwed up of a company as they still are, knows cars are overkill for a lot of basic transportation needs:

Uber believes their current micro fleet of ebikes and scooters can displace trips under 3 miles.

46% of Uber's rides are under 3 miles 👀 pic.twitter.com/OFmb8arZ3j

— Micromobility Industries (@MicromobilityCo) April 12, 2019

We have plenty of scooters here at my house, and the family and I enjoy them greatly, but I have never actually ridden or owned an electric scooter. So I bought one. It is of course the popular, inexpensive, and well reviewed Xiaomi Mi M365.

Here's a picture of my electric scooter inside my electric car. (I apologize that I didn't have an electric bicycle to park next to it for maximum smugness, but you can bet your sweet electrons I'll work on that next!)

Here's the short version of my review: this electric scooter is incredibly fun, works great, and if you can get it for a price around $300, practically a no-brainer. I love it, my kids love it, and as long as you're conceptually OK with the look, unlike Elon Musk 🛴💨 then you'll probably love it too.

Here's a neat video covering the "one year later" experience of owning the scooter, and what you might eventually run into or want to tweak.

(The main thing to take away from this video is that flats super suck on tires this small, so be warned. I put Slime in my Mi's tires out of an abundance of caution, but you could also go with solid tubeless tires – at the cost of some ride comfort – if you're really worried.)

That's not to say that the electric scooter experience is perfect. There are some challenges with electric scooters, starting with the biggest one: your local government has no idea how to regulate the darn things.

• Is this regulated like a bicycle? If not, why not?
• Are they allowed on the sidewalk?
• Do you have to ride them in the road, with cars … uh, depending on the speed limit?
• Do you need a driver's license?
• Do you need a helmet?
• Are you even allowed to legally ride them in public at all outside of private property?

The answers also vary wildly depending on where you live, and with no consistency or apparent logic. Here are the current electric scooter laws in California, for what it's worth, which require the rider to have a valid driver's license (unlike electric bicycles) and also disallow them from sidewalks, both of which I feel are onerous and unnecessary restrictions.

One aspect of those laws I definitely agree with, however, is the 15 mile per hour speed restriction. That's a plenty brisk top speed for a standing adult with no special safety equipment. Anything faster starts to get decidedly … uncomfortable. Consider this monster of a 1165KWh electric scooter, with dual motors and dual suspension that goes up to forty freakin' miles per hour.

That … is … terrifying. Even the reviewer, in full motorcycle safety gear, wasn't willing to push it all the way to 40 MPH. And I don't blame him! But now that I've shown you the undisputed Honda Civic everyman budget model of electric scooter in the M365, hopefully this gives you a taste of the wider emerging diversity in these kinds of minimalistic electric vehicles. If you want a luxury electric scooter, an ultralight electric scooter, a rugged offroad electric scooter … all things are possible, for a price.

Another reason the M365 is available for so cheap is that is successor, the Xiaomi M365 Pro, was recently released, although it is not quite possible to obtain in the US at the moment.

Having ridden my M365 a fair bit, I can confirm all the Pro improvements are welcome, if incremental: bigger battery and disc brake, more power, better display, improved latch mechanism, etc.

None of those Pro improvements, however, are worth a 2× increase in price so I'd recommend sticking with the M365 for now because its value proposition is off the charts. Did I mention there's a bluetooth connection, and an app, and it is possible to hack the M365 firmware? Pretty cool how electric vehicles are inherently digital, isn't it?

Here are a few other observations after riding my M365 around a fair bit:

• Please be respectful around pedestrians. Most of the sidewalks around here are not busy at all, but the pedestrians I encountered on the electric scooter were definitely more freaked out than I’ve seen before when using regular kick scooters (or skateboards) on the sidewalk, which did surprise me. An electric scooter has more heft to it, both physically at 26 pounds, and in the 15 mile per hour speed it can reach – but also mentally in terms of how it looks and how people approach it. I recommend slowing down to just above walking speed when encountering pedestrians, and if there is a bike lane available, I'd definitely recommend using that.

• Hills work great. The kryptonite of traditional kick scooters is hills, and I'm pleased to report that even with a cough sizable adult such as myself riding, I was able to sustain a respectable above-walking speed on most reasonable hills. Where I looked at a hill and thought "this probably should work", it did. That's impressive, considering this isn't the upgraded Pro model with bigger battery and more powerful motor. On flats and downhills the performance is superb, as you'd expect. That said, if you are a really big or tall adult, or live in a particularly hilly area, wait for the Pro model or an equivalent.

• Portability is good, but borderline. At ~26 pounds, the electric scooter is reasonably portable, but it's not something you a) could really get away with taking inside a restaurant / store with you to prevent theft or b) want to be carrying around on your person for any significant length of time. It's not nearly as nimble or portable as a kick scooter, but that's a high bar. You'll need to carry a bike lock and think about how to lock your scooter on bike racks, which turned out to be … more geometrically challenging than I anticipated due to the small tires, disc brakes, and the engine in the front wheel. They need more obvious locking points on the chassis.

To be honest with you I'm still bitter about the whole Segway debacle. There was so much hype back in the day. That ridiculous thing was supposed to change the world. Instead, we got … Paul Blart Mall Cop.

A Segway was $5,000 at launch in 2001, which is a whopping $7,248 in inflation adjusted dollars. Here in 2019, cheap $200 to $300 electric scooters are basically the transformational technology the Segway was supposed to be, aren't they? Are electric scooters the future of (most) transportation? I'm not sure, but I do like where we're headed, even if it took us twenty years to get there.

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[Tip] New Working Method to Always Launch Google Chrome in Guest Browsing Mode

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J This tutorial contains a new official and working method to always start or launch Google Chrome web browser in Guest browsing...

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5 Android Education Apps To Help You With Your Homework

Google Play Store offers a verity of Applications ranging from Entertainment and Gaming to Education Apps, providing that the smartphone can also be a “teacher”. Education apps help one enhance more in academics, the learning experience of human is on the next level since the last decade. Since these apps were introduced, problems one has faced previously has been eliminated.

Today I will introduce 5 education apps for Android which can be of your great help in your research, your homework, or assignment.

1. Socratic

Are you stuck in a math equation? or maybe you want to learn some topic for homework, then you should opt for this. Socratic App will solve your math equations by taking a picture of the question and it will solve the rest providing a step-by-step solution. This App is not just limited to math, even put a chemistry or geography question and it will recognize the words and provide your answers up-to-the-mark so you can score well in your assignment. It also has a very friendly teaching content on the App.

I myself have used it many times when I had a problem in academics, it’s pretty handy in making your assignments. The app is improving with new updates regularly, if you may want a good experience of easy learning go with Socratic.

2. Photomath

This math-solution app has very vast features in this, what it actually does is you point the camera at the question and it comes with a solution after recognizing the question. It shows you a step-by-step answer so you can understand the concepts, and then it will show you animation which will answer the ‘How’. It comes with a defined calculator so if you do not have the question in hand you can type your question in this calculator.

This Photomath App is limited to only Math and works pretty good when it comes to making your assignments or working for the exams.

3. Brainly

As it tag-line says ‘for students, by students’ it solely suits this App, Brainly app is a full package where you can find students as tutors, what actually happens is that you post a question and it will be correctly answered by a number of students in minutes, or if you know answers you can answer someone’s questions. it doesn’t matter if its a maths question or your chemistry question, just post it and get your answer.

It also has the option of camera pointing, it can really be your teacher in making assignments or anything related to academics, works more smoother than the previous ones.

4. Khan Academy

If you are talking about every aspect of a career that a student needs to cover, from Primary to Masters, from academic principals to interview preparations, then you must be talking about Khan Academy. Yes, Student can have direct access to any course of any grade, test preparations, interview preparation, college admission, book readings, careers, etc. Khan Academy also includes some shorts stories and creative things like poems for kids.

Student can have good learning experience because it offers every subject needed from the first day one entered school to the last day of Masters. This unique App has a number of attributes which no other app offers. Simply All-in-one.

5. Skillshare

If you want to learn photography, Freelancing or you want to Master Music with a little knowledge of Video editing then you have come to the right place. It actually comes with a video episode you will watch to complete a course. You search the classes you are looking for and you find the content.

Skillshare is a complete guide to the art classes which you can benefit from the actual courses, this kind of subjects are rarely taught in colleges that is the competitive advantage.

Wrapping up

I recommend to study online for the best solutions from a number of people is way better than the traditional way of learning. Online studies and homework are very widely used these days, we hire tutors online and we learn through different apps online. There are some Apps which even award you certificates on the completion of a course.

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Windows 10 19H2 Builds Changelog

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J UPDATED on Sep 05, 2019: Release of Windows 10 19H2 Insider Preview build 18362.10019. After releasing Windows 10 May 2019 Update...

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5 Gmail Add-ons To Simplify Your Email Experience

Google introduced Gmail add-ons at the end of 2017 to improve your email experience. At the time, there weren’t many add-ons worth looking at, but now there are dozens of add-ons to choose from. These add-ons work in the cloud without any local installation on your PC, and you can use them from anywhere you like as long as you can access your Gmail account.

Today, I am going to introduce 5 Gmail add-ons that you will surely find useful whether you are an individual or a small business owner.

1. Analytics Buddy

If you have an online store and use Google Analytics, then Analytics Buddy can be of great help. Analytics Buddy helps create meaningful data out of your unorganized data. It will automatically track the order number in your Gmail order confirmation emails and match it with Google Analytics data to show all the important data right inside Gmail.

You can then use that data to craft a personal email for the customer or simply provide more information for better customer experience.

2. Hippo Video

Having problems working up with your leads? Don’t worry now you can easily engage your leads to convert them into customers. Want to know how? This tool can actually help you make and personalize the video you want to send to your potential customers. You can make catchy phrases to grab their attention, this process can increase the flow of sales funnel, so make your creative videos now and grab your sales.

It also lets your personalize videos by adding a custom name or company name that may attract the recipient to open the email.

3. Smartsheet 

Tired of organizing important emails and attachments? The workplace is always a headache when it comes to organizing things especially your important emails including attachments. If that’s the case, then Smartsheet can make your life a whole lot easier.  It lets you organize emails in a spreadsheet row including the attachments and the body of the email.

You can also import your Google contacts on to this which allows you to share them with your contacts. Using this add-on you can organize important emails in a single spreadsheet and collaborate on them with your colleagues.

4. Zoom

The option of video chat and voice chat over email is kind of new, it is so time-consuming in the workplace or anywhere to send an email which could be settled in voice or video call in seconds, so this extension is here to help. It comes with an option to call over your email to connect you directly rather than sitting and writing an email, it’s pretty handy and easy to use, just add it to your email and enjoy calling.

As Gmail natively doesn’t offer a way to make audio or video calls while emailing, Zoom is definitely a blessing for those who prefer these quick methods of communication.

5. ToggleBox Recall

This add-on is specifically made for Gsuite users to protect emails under a domain against malware and phishing attacks and recall sent emails. ToggleBox keeps track of the malware and other dangerous viruses and deletes it when it’s detected. Not only that but it can also delete all the emails under a domain by a specified date, keywords, and recipients.

Furthermore, it also lets you recall your sent messages under the same domain. The recalled message will be deleted from the recipient’s mailbox and you can do this without the help of the administrator.

Ending Words

Zoom and Smarsheet are my favorite Gmail add-ons, and they really make email management and interaction with clients a breeze. Other than these, there are many more add-ons for Gmail that you may find useful. Just go to this Gmail add-ons page and find the one you like.

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