Another tool to check if a website is down

     Hi,
     Few weeks back I made a post regarding www.isup.me, a simple tool that allows you to check if a particular website is down or not. This time it's yet another website that basically does the same thing: www.isitdownrightnow.com (Quite the self-explanatory name, huh?)

     What makes this website different is that it does the checking for you perfectly, and gives you access to additional actions. You can post comments regarding a down website to let other visitors know, and you get to see a recent history of comments posted by other visitors for each website, which can be invaluable in confirming if a website is down or not beyond all doubt.

     An info graphic regarding the server status history is displayed for fairly popular websites. Ratings for websites are also an additional bonus.

     If you want to check if a server is down, and want more than a plain text 'yes' or 'no' as the response, www.isitdownrightnow.com is the way to go.

Cut and convert Youtube videos with ClipConverter

     One of the most common problem that an average user experiences while using Youtube, Google's immensly popular video hosting service, is the inability to directly download videos. I mean, if you like a video so much so that you want to see it again, you should be able to do it without wasting more data and waiting out even more buffer-time, right? But the closest we have come to realizing this via Youtube itself is the 'Save for offline' option, which does not allow you to share the video to other sources.

     But of course, this is the internet, where anything is possible. There is a large host of web services where you simple paste the URL of the video of your choice, and saving that video to your device in a format of your preference is just a click away.

     However, not many of such websites offer something www.clipconverter.cc does: It allows you to cut videos before converting them. This is especially useful when you just want to grab a few seconds from a huge video for a project or compilation you are working on, or if just one portion from a video is good enough to make it worth keeping.

     ClipConverter is pretty much self-explanatory. You enter the video URL, click on the format you wish to convert it to, enter the beginning and ending points of the portion you want to download, click 'continue', and choose the video quality of your choice. Then, the download is just a click away. Just in case you want to keep the whole video, ClipConverter also has a handy download without conversion button.

     Useful, ain't it?

Check if a website is down or not with 'isup'

   Some of us must have had that mini-heart attack experience when the website of your favorite cozy little internet community crashes for a while, making many of us realize how much we miss our online life as much as our real life.

   But the internet has evolved, and now we can check out if a website is actually down or not at the touch of a button. This can go a long way in helping us access certain websites as data router issues, firewall problems and adware as well as adblocker programmes can make a server locked out for a single user, who might think the website is down for everyone else as well.

Here is where www.isup.me, a really simple and efficient website comes in.

All you need to do is enter the URL of the website you wish to check, and within seconds the website is pinged from multiple locations around the world, conclusively checking if it is actually down or not.

Check out this interesting infographic

     We all have a natural tendency to compare things and find out what's best when we get interested in any topic. Whether it's a statistical crunch to find out if the Bugatti Veyron is faster than the Koenisegg Regera or a debate with a friend on which Pokemon generation is the best, comparisons have been always a part of our daily life.

     Then there is perhaps no better way to get entire fandoms all fired up than a cross-topic mega comparison on a point common to all the involved parties. And here you have a brilliant infographic comparing all the famous intergalactic starships from numerous franchises ranging from movies, sitcoms, video games and even books. Here, take a look:

Source: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/infographic-whats-the-fastest-ship-in-sci-fi-history-1718171303

What is your personality?

     Personality quizzes has one always been one among the most popular things to try out for a casual internet user. From a hundred different quizzes that play the role of Hogwart's sorting hat to even more that tell you into everything ranging from your olympian parent from the Percy Jackson series to your Family in the Song of Ice and Fire (a.k.a Game of Thrones), these quizzes keep us interested and amused for a long time.

    Thing is, barely any of these quizzes are actually scientific. Not that any of us have a problem with these quiz-makers not being qualified psychiatrists(They're plenty of fun!) , but it's nice to go for a quiz designed to give the correct results once in a while.

     And that's were www.clearthinking.org 's personality test comes in.

     It asks you 21 interesting and scientifically designed questions, and gives you an even more interesting result. It picks a suitable personality for you from the following:

     Think that's it? Hell no! If you're patient enough to read through, it gives you 3 whole pages of reports backed up by statistical data that shows your strengths, weaknesses, and how you did against the rest of the world.

     Added bonus: giving your email, which is one of the most annoying things associated with online tests and surveys, is just optional.

Try it out :)

Can you solve this puzzle?

Nothing big this weekend, just a link for some good ol' brainstormin'.

This puzzle is great for putting out challenges to your friends and seeing who gets to the answer first, but try to crack it yourself before you do that!

http://www.sciencedump.com/content/are-you-smart-enough-solve-famously-difficult-puzzle

Have fun :)

Start Windows 8 in safe mode

     Starting windows in safe mode is an extremely important step in troubleshooting bugs and problems in the operating system. Thing is, not many people know how to do that. Solving bugs and fixing issues in a computer can go a long way beyond a simple virus scan. So read on, and find out more.

What is safe mode?

      No use in learning to boot into safe mode if you don't know what it is, right?

     Safe mode is essentially a secure 'shell' where the operating system disables most drivers and programs except the core components of Windows. This allows you to identify whether the problems that prompted you to try safe mode came from the operating system, or another program driver.

     Some programs that integrate themselves into the very core of your system, such as antivirus programs, require booting into safe mode to uninstall completely. Most viruses fail to run in safe mode, so it can be used as a last-ditch effort to save and backup the data in a heavily infected computer.

How can I enter safe mode?

     There are multiple ways to enter safe mode, we shall look one below.

     Go to the start screen and search for 'run'.

In the windows that comes up, type in 'msconfig' and press enter.

This will open the System Configuration window. Go to the boot tab, check 'Safe Boot' and click OK.

A prompt shows up, giving the following message:

Now you can either click 'Restart' to go into safe mode, or choose 'Restart later', finish all your work, and restart the computer like you normally do.

Hope this helped :)

ConvertPad on android

     In this article I'm showcasing yet another popular android app that is a must-have for any user. One of the many reasons why smartphones are so popular is that it can do so much more than what one would expect it to. When handheld phones became globally popular over a decade ago, it's built in calculator was praised widely for allowing calculations and conversions in daily life to be done with relative ease.
     Now, smartphones have taken it to the next level, featuring dedicated conversion apps that allows for conversion between more units than you probably knew that actually existed in the world.

     One of the best free conversion apps available on Google Play Store is Sunny Moon's ConvertPad.
It's many features include multiple language support, currency exchange conversion and of course, a plethora of units ranging from length, area and weight to typography, sound and and even shoe size.

     In short, this app offers any and all units you can ever hope to actually find useful, and it allows for seamless, accurate and quick conversions between these units in a clean and resourceful user interface. The 10 million plus downloads and the 4.4 rating is testimony to the app's popularity and effectiveness.

Oh, and it's just a 5mb download.
Totally a must-have!

Pokemon teambuilder

  This is again a post for the many Pokemon trainers out there, especially for the ones who prefer competitive battling.
 
  Making a team is the first step in competitive Pokemon battling. No time spent wading through grass and visiting Pokemon centers and no money wasted on repels and escape ropes. It's just pick a team, make it, and go.

  While starting out on online battling is really easy, becoming a player good enough so you can go into any match with confidence and expecting nothing short of victory is a process that takes time, patience and skill.

  And once again, a really good team is the secret to the best player's mind-boggling winstreaks. Most teambuilder offer nothing more than basic information. Sometime you might end up mounting weaknesses while lacking coverage in certain types while teambuilding. The result will be a disastrous team that crashes down like a pack of cards against a prepared opponent.
 

  But once again, the internet comes to the rescue. The peeps at teammagma has made an exellent online teambuilder that illustrates your team's weaknesses and coverage in easy-to-read graphs so you can test 'em team cores and figure out deadly combos without even playing a single match.

  It's definitely worth a try if you're a Pokemon player.

Extract album art with ID3 Album Art Extractor

   It's a given fact that there is no human being (Or animals, for that matter) alive who doesn't enjoy listening to songs. Whether it be rock, pop, folk or EDM from the 80's 90's or the 'naughts, everyone who owns a phone is guaranteed to have a playlist loaded and ready to roll.

     Whether you download your songs from the internet or buy original album CD's, album art is a thing that has been part of music ever since the digital era. Simply put, album art is an image file embedded within the song that shows up as a thumbnail while the song is being played or previewed.

     While the album art of most songs is just a quick Google Images search away, you may come across custom album art or certain unique pieces that are just not so easily available on the net. And there is nothing so much frustrating as the inability find something on the internet.

     If you've been the victim of such a situation, you should know that you can save your bandwidth as well as your time by using a simple software to extract album art as image files.

     ID3 Album Art Extractor by Preston media is a free, lightweight and efficient software that does the job with absolute gusto.

     You can download the 356KB (!) software from here. Once you're done, you can run the program and follow simple steps to pick the folder that contains your songs, choose the kind of images you need to extract, and even define user access to the art folder before hitting finish and watching this brilliant piece of software do it's job perfectly.

Hope that helped!