Signature is a concept we inherit from analogue age to authorize a document. Today we are mainly using digital documents, but still there are some situations where we need signature on them.
There are several solutions. One, you can get a print out, sign it and mail (snail mail) or fax it to relevant people. It doesn’t need a genius to say that it is not a efficient solution at all. Then you can use Adobe reader to add signature. There you can draw a signature or type it then add it in to a document. Yeah, this is a good solution.
But think of a document which needs to be signed by several people. In such a case none of those methods would be efficient. If you face such trouble, here is the solution to speed up document work flow.
Getting Started with SignNow.com
SignNow is an online document signing and sharing tool. There you can upload a document, sign in and invite other people to sign it as well. Once you get all the signatures you can download the document as a PDF. Here is how to do it.
Go to SignNow.com and sign up by entering username and password.
It will take you to main app dashboard.
There you can upload a file to start with. Once you do that it will be listed there.
Take your mouse over the document and click open.
It will open up the document. Click wherever you need to sign.
In the pop up window you can either type or draw your signature.
Click Add to place the signature on the document. Then you can move it around or resize.
Click done to go back to save and go back to dashboard.
If you want to invite others to sign the document click invite signers, enter their email and send invitations.
Status of the document signing will be displayed in main dashboard.
Once you get all the signatures you can export it as a PDF or email it in More menu.
The process is as simple as that! You can sign and share documents under one hood. I have tested this with .docx, .pdf and .jpg files types. It doesn’t work for .xlsx format. If you want to get Excel files signed, first you should convert them to PDF and then upload.
Use this application to make your document workflow efficient. To use this in enterprise level you have to purchase the service with entire set of features.
Try SignNow and join the discussion in the comment section below with your feedback.
With the introduction of latest android phones and the popularity of social networking websites, children nowadays tend to be extremely busy. Let alone other issues, I am mostly concerned about the amount of time my child spends on all these websites and not his studies. The only solution to this problem that I could think of was to search for a few spy apps for android phone of my child and I came across StealthGenie. This app gives me access to my child’s entire web browsing history on his android phone and I can know exactly how much time he spends on the internet.
How Does StealthGenie Work?
StealthGenie is a friendly and easy to install application software that gets installed in your child’s android phone within minutes. It runs in the background of your child’s android phone and gives you access to all his cell phone data within seconds.
Functions
Apart from giving you access to the entire web browsing history of your child, this android phone spy brings a few other amazing features with it. It provides you access to:
All the Pictures, Audio and Video files in your child’s cell phone
Records of all the Incoming and outgoing calls of your child
Records of all the SMS send and received by your child
Access to all his Contact numbers
Geo tracking – With this feature, you can find the exact location of your child whenever you want to
Compatible With
This amazing smartphone app is compatible with the latest android operating systems including Android OS versions:
These versions are used by many giant cell phone companies including Google, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola and others.
Best One Around
Either you talk about Facebook, twitter, MySpace or online games, children spend most of their time doing nothing but that. Therefore, a little bit track of their android phone is a must to avoid any unpleasant results in future. That tracking of your child’s android phone can be done through spy apps for android and what better than the best one around, StealthGenie.
Author Bio
Article has been written by Adrian who has deep interest in writing article on Android and Blackberry Apps.
YouTube, the biggest social video networking application is slowly taking over the place of TV. I’m spending many hours in front of YouTube and I know it’s same with you. Increased speed of broadband internet has removed the final barrier for YouTube, so no buffering anymore.
But I’d like to enjoy YouTube videos in a better environment. The white background with other video thumbnails is not so impressive. I like to have a better controller, go full screen easier, stop auto playing videos and solve many more problems to enjoy an amazing YouTube experience.
Finally I came across with this Chrome extension, Magic Action for YouTube. It adds extra functionality to YouTube to improve the user experience like never before. Let’s take a closer look.
Getting Started with Magic Action for YouTube
Go to Chrome Web Store and add Magic actions for YouTube.
It won’t add any new icon in to your address bar. To see the magic you have to go to YouTube. Let’s go there.
The very first thing you will notice is big switch next to YouTube logo. Try it, it will turn the whole interface to black. They call it night mode.
Then you will notice the new controllers below the YouTube player.
Rock mouse scroll and it will show you the volume controller on screen.
I know it has a lot of cool stuff. But before we actually start using the magic, let’s go and take a look at settings.
Click on settings button below the YouTube player.
Settings Explained
The setting page is huge and that means it’s going to give you lots of customization options. Let’s take a look at few important options there.
The first thing is, you can change the color and other behavior of on-screen volume controller. I’d like to keep it simple, so only change I did there is changing the color to white. If you think it’s not really required, you can disable it as well.
Then there is one of my favorite features. Here you can set the quality of YouTube videos. Then once you play a video it will automatically open in given quality. Select the higher to play the video in maximum available resolution.
If you are annoyed by YouTube ads, here is your savior. Enable add blocking. Here comes my next favorite feature, Cinema mode. With this you can change the YouTube layout to cinema like UI. I prefer the large player and you can see how it’s coming by pressing the cinema mode button below the video player.
Then you can stop auto playing and still let the video to preload once you open it, another very important option. After that there are some other options to enable auto replay, comments related options, hide video annotations, and advanced features. In advanced futures you can control mouse over events, quick social sharing and night mode.
How to Use It?
Now it’s all properly configured and you are good to go. Open a YouTube video and let it play. You will be able to see buffered amount of video as a percentage, enable repeat, expand it and go to cinema mode. You can easily go to cinema mode by clicking outside the video. In Cinema mode you can change the color of background and back-light. When it’s changing between cinema mode and others, the video won’t buffer again. It will stay at same quality as you set before.
Switch to night mode if screen is too bright and use mouse scroll to adjust volume. If the video you are watching is great, you can share it right there.
Here you have a good cinematic environment to enjoy YouTube video like never before. Sit back and enjoy your favorite video and forget you are in front of your computer. Tell us what you feel about this tool as a comment below.
Windows 8 is a revolutionary change in Windows road map. It introduced the “Metro UI” now called as “Windows 8 UI” specially optimized to work with touch screens. Along with the UI they introduced metro apps to go with it. They didn’t stop there and manufactured hardware to go with it.
They did a great job in designing UI and manufacturing hardware but there are no enough, quality metro apps yet. It’s one of the major drawbacks in Win 8 eco system. However it’s a matter of time, Microsoft has billions of dollars to spend on it.
In the meantime there is a cool solution for you to enjoy a wide selection of apps right on your Win 8 Pro device.
Getting Started With BlueStacks
BlueStacks is a free application running on Win 8, Win 7 and It’s providing Android environment to install and run any android application. In other words you can run Android app in Win 8, Win 7 or Mac. Yeah! It’s a cool Idea and giving you access to millions of Android apps right in your Win 8 device. Let’s go and see how it’s working.
Go to BlueStacks home page, select the suitable version, download and install.
Then you will have BlueStacks icon in your desktop. Launch the application.
It will open a Window where you can run Android Apps.
By default it comes with few apps such as facebook.
Tap on it, log in and Boom! You are running Android Facebook app in your Win 8 PC or tablet.
Before you install a new application you have to link your Google account to BlueStacks.
Go to Settings -> Manage Account -> Add account, and then provide username and password to login.
If you have enabled 2 step verification, you will need an application specific password.
Tap in the blue stack button to go to home. Then tap on search icon, search for any app you need, download and enjoy it.
BlueStacks has pull down notification panel and Sound notification same as any Android device.
This is a great solution to run Android apps on your Win 8 device to fill the void of metro apps. However you might face some issues with performance. I tried Facebook, Dropbox, twitter etc general apps on BlueStacks. They worked just fine. But when I was playing Angry birds, graphic was bit choppy. So it’s not a good idea to use this for graphic intensive apps.
There are lots of other features in BlueStack which are self explanatory. If you face any trouble or there is anything else to share join the discussion in the comment section below.
Do you want a faster MAC? It is hard to find some MAC owner who will answer this question with anything but a sincere “I Do”, but we sometimes forget to show our feelings, due to negligence or laziness. I confess that I’ve been one of those guys, who took his computer for granted and expected the same outstanding performance, without doing anything. For a while everything went silky smooth, but without me even noticing the applications started to run slower, errors popped up every now and then and even delay became a problem.
To wait for a miracle and hope that things will get better without me doing anything is not the kind of approach I like to take in life, so there I was searching the internet for a possible solution. My expertise with computers is limited, but I know just enough to fear viruses and other malware, while realizing the negative impact that cluttered registries have on the system. I’ve talked to some friends who have a similar understanding of these matters and they suggested me to install an antivirus and a registry cleaner.
I had an antivirus, but unfortunately it never detected anything and for a while I though that’s because my computer is crystal clear. Armed with these recommendations I jumped online to search for a good antivirus and a registry cleaner and I was even willing to pay for them. I’ve stumbled upon various products both free and paid, but among the names that appeared with a higher frequency was MacKeeper.
What I liked about this product was that it incorporates an antivirus and a registry mechanic, at a price that was better than most similar products bought individually. I was not reluctant to pay for a quality product, but since there are so many free software I decided to try the trial version first. Much to my surprise, the trial period didn’t restrict my access and I was able to browse through all the features and use them freely. I have to admit with a great deal of shame, that my attention was diverted instantly by the Fast Cleanup button, which proclaimed that it will clean my MAC quickly and safely.
Cleaning cache and binaries was something I understood right away, but when I’ve been asked about clearing languages and logs I was a bit surprised. The best thing when you encounter something that is not perfectly clear and it implies deletion of files, is to investigate the issue. That’s exactly what I did and fortunately, these features were harmless yet beneficial as they allow you to get rid of useless languages from applications and outdated user log files.
Like a snowball, my interest grew and was aroused by the other features incorporated in the cleaning section, such as Disk Usage, Duplicate Finder and Files Finder. I consider myself to be a neat person and like to keep the applications in order, but even so, I found some programs that were not supposed to be there. I can only imagine what these applications would find on my sister’s machine, but for the time being I used them on my beloved MAC to free some space.
As soon as the Fast Cleanup reached the conclusion, a long list of junk files appeared, waiting to be deleted. The advantage of being a pessimist is that you always have pleasant surprises and that’s exactly how I felt when being allowed to fix all those problems right away. In an overwhelming majority of cases, you are presented with the errors and instructed to buy the full product to be able to get rid off them. Now, this doesn’t inspire me a lot of confidence, since I can’t tell for sure if these are made up, to make be buy the software, or are really there.
I’ve got into such a cleaning frenzy that I almost forgot about the main reason I was here for, and that was to scan my computer for viruses. Located in the security section, the antivirus protects the MAC against both malware and spyware, which I found to be a relief, since I was positive that my old antivirus only dealt with viruses. I decided to choose the in-depth scan even though it took longer, so I would explore the other features while the scan was under way.
The first that caught my eye was the one sharing the security section, namely Anti-Theft. I was very amused initially, because I assumed that unless the laptop will release an electric charge or trigger a remote alarm the second it is stolen, the application is useless. In fact, it functions on a very simple principle, locating your device when it goes online and announce you about it, so you can notify the police. Very exciting is the ability to take snapshots of the thief and send them to you as well.
I was already in the optimization section, learning how to speed up the computer’s boot time, when the antivirus announced the end of the scanning process. The result was me praising and cursing my former antivirus at the same time, because although it kept my computer virus-free, it allowed the spyware to infest it. Wiping out all these threats didn’t take long and I’ve barely refrained myself from restarting right away to see the benefits.
Since I was already exploring the prospect of reducing the applications that launch on start, when the scan ended, I returned to the section and solved the problem. Most of the programs were not being used daily, so I got rid of them and also used the Update tracker function, to bring the rest of the applications up to date. To cut to the chase, I’ve restarted the MAC and watched in disbelief how little time it took for it to boot and how fast the computer ran after that.
The data control section with all the free tools available to maintain the privacy of sensitive information, to retrieve the ones deleted by mistake or remove forever certain programs, was nothing more than an incentive. I’ve bought MacKeeper the same day and I am using it ever since and it never gave me a reason to look any further. I can’t say for sure if there are better products, in terms of either efficiency or price, because I was so happy with this product, that I never considered the search should continue.
Also check this software for Mac recovery and Mac data recovery.
Search engine optimization is the main source of traffic in most blogs. It’s free, organic and gives you highly targeted traffic. So you have to pay very close attention to your site structure to make it SEO friendly as far as possible. There are millions of SEO tutorials you can find online and they explain all the basic concepts.
The most important thing to be noted is, search engines today are very intelligent and highly capable of identifying quality content. So you don’t have to pay too much attention to SEO. If your website is human friendly and filled with good quality content, it automatically makes it a SEO friendly website. Still there are few technical things which you have to do to stand tall in tight competition in WWW.
Here I’m trying to clarify few of common SEO related issues in the most popular blogging platform, WordPress. Most of those techniques have been tested in self hosted version. So they may not be possible in WordPress.com blogs.
Few years ago I was using all-in-one SEO pack to automate SEO procedures in my blog. However, with time lots of other developers came out with better SEO plug-ins. The best plugin you can find today is wordpress-seo. It’s free and offering you most comprehensive set of SEO features.
Go to your wordpress blog dashboard -> Plugins -> add new, search and install wordpress-seo plugin. After installation is completed activate the plugin. It will add new menu item to main sidebar. Now you are good to go.
WordPress SEO Configuration
Here I’m trying to be pretty straight forward with wordpress-seo settings. Below configuration is based on my personal experience and tried and tested for more than 6 months. It would be a good fit for any average blog, but may not be the best for all blogs. Click on SEO tab in side bar and access wordpress seo settings.
Dashboard
Here you configure site-wide security settings and different webmaster tools verification codes. If you want to go back to default configuration, press reset default settings.
Titles and Meta
This is an important section. Here you can set titles and meta tags for different items in your blog. You have to pay very close attention to titles than meta tags. Search engines give more weight to titles and if you have catchy titles there is a good chance of getting more clicks in search results.
In general tab, check no index sub pages. Users always need to see fresh content, so no point of indexing subpages with old content. Check, use meta keyword tag, though it’s not important anymore. For others default configuration would work. Clean up head might not be a good idea in some cases, so uncheck entire options there.
In home tab, set appropriate meta description and keywords after a proper analysis. Set author highlighting and publisher as appropriate. Setting title template is very important. My personal preference is “%%sitename%%”. It will simply display site name as title, simple and clean.
Now go to post types. Best title template you can use here is “%%title%% – %%sitename%%”. It will display post title and site name. Good for SEO and good for branding. Auto generated keyword and description is not a very good thing to do. So leave description and keyword template empty. When you are writing a post set them manually using wordpress seo box there. Finally never forget to uncheck all noindex, follow checkboxes. You need all your post and pages to be indexed in search engines.
Now go to taxonomies section. Uncheck noindex, follow checkboxes. It’s ok to index them in search engines. Set title template to “%%term_title%% – %%sitename%%”. I wouldn’t worry about description and keywords. If you want to go extra mile set keyword template to “%%term_title%%” and description template to “%%term_description%%”.
Finally go to other section to set author and archive meta. Set title template for author as “%%name%% – %%sitename%%” and for date archives “%%date%% – %%sitename%%” would work fine. Disabling archives could be good for SEO, but not so good for user experience. So best way is noindex, follow date archives and only if your blog is having single author noindex, follow author archive as well.
Social
If you want to enable facebook insight here you can set relevant meta tags. Same way you can add twitter card as well. All the relevant tags will go in to head section.
XML Sitemaps
Enable XML sitemap and submit post/page sitemap to Google webmaster tools and other webmaster tools. It will make it easier for search engines to crawl your pages.
Permalinks
WordPress can handle permalinks perfectly and you don’t have to use this section. If your site has lots of comments check “Remove the ?replytocom variables”. It will make it easier for search engines to index your comments.
Internal Links
Using Breadcrumbs is a great idea for a site which is having complex site structure. It’s good for SEO and user experience as well. Enable Breadcrumbs and insert them in to your WordPress template.
RSS
If you want to alter content in RSS feed you can do it here. You can user different templates as well as HTML codes.
Now your entire configurations are in top shape. You will get the result down the time. Remember SEO will never give you instant results, so have patience, trust the system and continue it in long run.
In import and export section you can export all your wordpress seo settings. Export it and save it in a safe place. In the case you have to reconfigure it, you can use exported settings with just one click.
Now you have taken all the basic SEO steps. However there are few things remaining. You have to be active in social media, get good quality links and make your site super speedy. In another article I’ll tell you how to make your wordpress blog super speedy.
Never forget, content is the KING. If you have good content you will get lots of social sharing as well as back-links.
The popularity of Smartphone gave birth to many of other trends. QR code is one of them. QR codes keep popping up in many places day by day. By scanning them with your Smartphone camera, you can retrieve small piece of information quickly. It’s a great way to share a web URL, price tag, Facebook page etc.
Generally the information you can find in a QR code is a small piece of text. Previously I shared a tool with you guys which can convert text to QR code. You may have seen QR code with telephone numbers, SMS and web URL. Once you scan them, QR code scanner applications are smart enough to understand the type of data in text retrieved and open them in appropriate application.
What if you need to store your whole business card data, in other words vCard, in a QR code? This should be possible since all the data in a vCard is text based. All you have to do is arrange them in a standard order. There is an online tool to do all those with just one click.
Getting Started with GoQR.me
Go to GoQR.me home page.
There you can see QR code generator.
It has all the conventional text, URL, call and SMS converters.
We don’t need any of them, so directly go to vCard option.
There you can simply enter all the details.
While you are entering data QR code will get updated real-time.
After you finish entering data, you can either download the QR code or embed it.
This QR code contains your entire vCard. Once someone scans this with his Smartphone, the QR code scanner will provide options to send SMS, make a call, find address on map, go to web, send email or save entire data in phonebook. It would be a great idea to include this in your business card or resume. So anyone would be able to read and save your vCard in matter of seconds.
So far we discussed how to prepare your working environment and selecting a good looking as well as high performance theme. There are more steps you should take towards high performance wordpress blog. Today our focus would be on how to optimize your images and videos for maximum performance.
You can find two types of images in your blog.
Optimizing images and videos in theme is one time process, but optimizing them in posts is an on going process. You must setup a proper system to get them done in a minimum time.
Roadmap
Best Practices for Image
Use smallest possible resolution for images
Never resize images using HTML attributes
If you need several sizes of images, have separate physically resized copies.
Optimize them for web using a photo editing tool
Finally use Smushit for optimum compression.
Smallest resolution will give you smallest file size. If downsized a large image using HTML attributes, still you are using the same bandwidth. It will be slower. So have a separate actually downsized image. I’m pretty sure you have enough space in your web server.
Best Practices for Videos
Better not to host videos unless it’s really necessary
Host videos in 3rd party video streaming service
Embed those videos in your blog posts. YouTube will be a good solution.
Try not to use videos in your theme.
If you host videos in your hosting server, It will consume significant amount of bandwidth. It will be very costly. So use a 3rd party video streaming service, it’s free and highly performance optimized.
What is the Best Way to Compress Images?
Edit your image in Adobe Photoshop.
Set the resolution of you canvas considering original image size needed.
Use save for web and devices
Configure it to give the minimum possible file size
Put it through SmushIt for further compression.
You have to keep using the same process for entire videos and images which you are going to use in your blog posts. This will decrease the web page size drastically and improve page performance significantly.
So far we optimized wordpress theme and hypermedia. Next Step would be optimizing CSS and JS.
Contact me @MalindaOnline to claim your Free Website Performance Review. I’m giving you a detailed report with identified performance bottlenecks and optimum cost effective solution.
Subscribe to my FeedBurner to get latest articles right in to your inbox, follow us @NotesOfGenius to get latest updates in NOG. Stay tuned!
Last time we spent some good time configuring your working environment. It’s essential to walk down the road to high performance wordpress blog. Today our focus is the theme. I’m pretty sure once you install wordpress, first thing you would do is selecting a theme.
Here I’m trying to guide you to select not only a good looking theme, but a theme with good performance. This is a very important aspect in the context of SEO as well as user experience.
Roadmap
Select and Install a WordPress Theme
Once you install wordpress you will notice that it’s having a default theme. Most of the people would like to change it to something unique. There are two ways for you to install a new theme.
Go to wordpress dashboard -> Appearance -> themes -> install themes -> Search and install
Do a Google search for wordpress themes, download one and transfer it to wp-content/themes in your hosting server. For this you could use hosting control panel or FTP client such as FileZilla.
Either way you will be able to see a preview of the theme to get an idea how it looks like. But it’s not enough. You have to pay close attention to below technical aspects.
Clean and valid HTML code
Appropriate usage of JavaScript and CSS
Appropriate and minimum usage of images and videos
In order to verify those you could take a look into source code of theme files. Especially you must take a closer look at below files.
Index.php
Single.php
Page.php
Header.php
Footer.php
Archive.php
You may not be able to find all of the above in some themes, but index.php and single.php will be there.
HTML and PHP code in every page must be properly organized, using minimum lines of codes. You can validate HTML code using W3C HTML Validator tool. It should not be using inline CSS or JS or at least minimizes them. It should have one external JS file and all the JS code in it. It should be linked in footer. Same with CSS, should have one external CSS file linked in header.
With the development of CSS you can avoid usage of images for drop shadows and round corners. Make sure your theme is not using images for those. Try to pick a theme with minimum number of images and check their file size as well. It should be small as possible. If the images in the theme are not compressed you can use Smushit tool to compress them.
Check List
Good looking theme
Easy to navigate site structure
Clean and valid HTML code
No or minimum inline JS/CSS
One external JS linked in footer
One External CSS linked in header
Minimum and appropriate usage of images
Images are properly compressed for web
You will notice that most of the free wordpress themes are not meeting above standards. Yet, if you are good with web development, you can optimize them on your own. If not, you have to go for a paid theme. Finally select the theme, do necessary optimization and install it.
Now you have a working wordpress blog with good looking as well as performance optimized theme. Next step is further optimization of images and videos in theme files as well as in your posts.
Contact me @MalindaOnline to claim your Free Website Performance Review. I’m giving you a detailed report with identified performance bottlenecks and optimum cost effective solution.
Subscribe to my FeedBurner to get latest articles right in to your inbox, follow us @NotesOfGenius to get latest updates in NOG. Stay tuned!
When you are using Google Chrome, you must have used Incognito window at least once. You may remember the Sherlock Holms like face that appear in the browser tool bar when you are in incognito window. This is there in Mozilla Firefox as well with the name “Private Browsing”.
What this actually does is, not letting the web page you visit remember you using any technique. In other words it’s not keeping browser history, not setting cookies or saving passwords when you are in an incognito window.
You can open incognito window by pressing Ctrl+Shift+N on Windows or from options menu. What if you want to open a specific web site in incognito window by default? There is no way to get it done with basic Chrome features. All you can do is manually open an incognito window whenever you need it.
If you like to automate opening incognito window for selected web sites, there is a great Chrome extension to save your day. That is Ghost Incognito, which is under Note Of Genius spot light today.
How to Use Ghost Incognito?
Go to Chrome Web Store, find Ghost Incognito and install it.
Once the installation is done, you will be able to see Ghost Incognito icon next to address bar.
Now visit the website which you need to automatically open in Incognito window. Remember for this you must use normal tab, not incognito window.
Once you load the web page, click on Ghost Incognito icon.
That’s it! You added that website to Ghost Incognito. Next time you visit the same website, it will automaticallyopen in an incognito window.
This is not only for main domain. All the sub pages also will be automatically opened in incognito window.
How to Remove a Domain from Ghost Incognito?
In the case you change your mind and need to remove a domain from Ghost Incognito, the provided mechanism is not that sophisticated. However, it’s not too difficult as well. If you want to remove all the domains, right click on Ghost incognito icon then click on options. By pressing the remove button you can exclude the entire added domains from Ghost Incognito.
If you want to remove one specific domain, you have to go through several steps.
Go to Settings Menu -> Tools -> Extension in Chrome
Enable Allow in incognito for Ghost Incognito.
Visit the website you need to remove from Ghost Incognito.
It will automatically open in Incognito window.
Normally incognito window doesn’t have any Chrome extensions. But since you allowed Ghost Incognito before, you will be able to see it in tool bar.
Click on Ghost incognito icon and it will remove current website from its domain list.
Open a new tab and visit the website again. Now it won’t automatically launch incognito window.
After removing website, make sure you disable allow incognito for Ghost Incognito extension.
Hardware: Intel Core i5 2nd Gen // 4GB DDR2
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium // 64 Bit
Browser: Google Chrome Version 23.0.1271.91 m
That’s pretty much all about Ghost Incognito and how to use it effectively. Now you will never have to remember websites you need to open in incognito window, leave it to Ghost Incognito.
