Review of ActualMultipleMonitors from Actual Tools in Windows 8

I was recently contacted by Actual Tools and they asked me to try out their newest version of Actual Multiple Monitors. It is a tool that provides you with taskbars on all of your monitors, ability to move windows around between monitors quickly and ability to customize the wallpapers and settings for each monitor individually. Being a fan of multiple monitors, and actually having used AMM in the past, I couldn't resist the urge to try it out on Windows 8.

Let me start off by saying that multiple monitors are pretty essential if you tend to spend a lot of time on your computer creating content and reading a lot of content. For instance, if you're coding something you can have your text editor on one monitor and the running application on another. Or, you may prefer to have one screen dedicated to just emails and another one for writing. Either way, you'll be able to look at more content without having to minimize, maximize or move windows around as much, saving precious time and effort. 

One little problem with previous versions of windows (every version before Windows 8) was that it did not come with any built in tools to manage more than one monitor. If you wanted to have a taskbar on your secondary monitor, you would have to resort to a third party application. This was probably the main reason tools like Actual Multiple Monitor were created, because having a taskbar on every monitor and ability to assign a shortcut to move windows to another monitor makes things so much easier. With the Windows 8 desktop mode, however, you get a taskbar on each monitor by default.

Here's what my desktop looked like before Actual Multiple Monitors (you may notice that I have 3 monitors currently connected, all of different resolution):

Also, in the above screenshot you may notice a start button on the taskbar for the middle monitor. This is provided by the application Pokki, which I highly recommend if you miss the start button like I do.

Here's what my desktop looks like after installing Actual Multiple Monitors:

I'd like to point out that I usually have way more windows open :)

A few things you will probably notice right away are:

• There are windows start buttons, the windows clock on each taskbar for each monitor
• Each taskbar only shows the applications that are open on that monitor
• There are buttons on the title bar of each window to move the window around

There are some tweaks you could do to your setup with AMM such as:

• Changing the wallpaper (or desktop background colour) of each monitor individually. I don't know of a way to do this by in Windows 8 without using an app like AMM, although Windodws 8 seems to be able to choose a different wallpaper for each monitor randomly from a bunch of wallpapers
• Replace the main taskbar (on the main monitor) to only show the apps open on the main monitor

So it looks like this:

I would like to see a more "metro" oriented look for AMM's start button though, and the ability to have a third party launcher like Pokki for the center screen. But I don't mind using AMM's classic start menu (putting the windows 8 start screen for the start button doesn't workout for me), although its search feature does not have the ability to search through files on the computer or the web.

Conclusions

After using AMM for quite a bit, I really liked its ability to keep the applications that are not on that particular monitor hidden. If you're like me and have more than 20 windows open at any given moment in 10 different applications you'll find this feature quite indispensable. It's not so much the fact that you can find a minimized application on a particular monitor faster, but the fact that you can find it without having to stop thinking about something and search for an application icon. This feature alone would make you much more productive. Also, I like the shortcut for moving windows around. I've disabled the title bar buttons because they sometimes interfere with applications like chrome, where having more than 6 tabs open when the application is maximized is sure to cause some problems. See below: 

I just prefer to use Windows Key + / shortcut instead to move windows around to different monitors and using Windows + Up/Right/Down/Left Arrows to maximize, minimize and snap windows to one side.

Finally, having a start button on each monitor is also great. You don't have to keep going to the center monitor all the time just to open a new app.

I'm not too fussy about changing the wallpaper, icons and other visual aspects for each of the monitors, but it would be a nice feature to have in case you like tweaking and personalizing your wallpapers.

There are also other features in AMM like desktop divider that allows you to set a grid for particular applications, and a wide array of other shortcuts that allow you to move things around any which way you like.

I highly recommend that you give the trial version on Actual Tool's website a go. If you feel like it has boosted your productivity then you can buy the full version for about $25. This may be a steep price if you're a student like me, but if your full time job involves staring at a computer for a long time, it may be worthwhile to consider grabbing a copy or getting your employer to buy you a license.

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Free up some more hard drive space on your Windows 8 installation

I've been using Windows on my mac quite often recently, and although I had budgeted 65 GB of my precious SSD space to windows, it seems like Windows has already managed to consume 90% of that space! So, I wanted to figure out a way to reduce the hard drive space without deleting too much of my personal "my documents" content. Naturally, a good way of doing this was to delete unused system files. Although this installation is fairly new (about 5 months or so) there will still some old files remaining on the hard drive.

Here's how I went about gaining some more space:

Step 1: Run Disk Cleanup - the usual place you should start for reclaiming some hard drive space (you'll need admin access for this of course)

1. From the Start screen type in "Control Panel" and go to the control panel

2. Type in disk clean up in the "Search" bar at the top right hand corner

3. Click on "Free up disk space by deleting unused files"

4. Select your hard drive and click OK

4.5 If you feel like your system has been running fine for the past few weeks, you can also delete back up "system restore" files by clicking on "Clean up  system files button", then clicking on the More options tab that appears and clicking "Clean up" under System Restore and Shadow Copies, then go back to the disk cleanup tab

5. Check all the files that you think you don't need and click OK

Step 2: Run Windirstat to check for large files that you can delete

Step 3: I noticed a folder called WinSxS that was really large (about 12 GB), 

and looked it up to see if I could delete it. As expected, it was back up copies of all the updates that were installed, and links to other files so it would be catastrophic if anyone were to delete the installation. However, I found a little tip online that you can try to remove system files that have been superseeded if you had installed the latest service pack.

From the start screen type "Command Prompt", right click on the app, and click "Run as Administrator" on the bar that pops-up below. Then copy and paste the following into the window and hit enter:

DISM /online /cleanup-Image /spsuperseded

This will remove any old and unused files from the previous service pack and hopefully save some space on your hard drive.

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How to dim your monitor brightness more than what your monitor allows

So I recently got a new monitor (will post a review about it later) but I found that the LED monitor was a bit too bright for my eyes, especially when I'm reading a white page in a dark room. I tried using the monitor hardware to turn down the brightness, but it was still too bright.

Enter Dimmer! Dimmer is a light weight free windows application that adds another layer of "darkness" on top of all the windows on your screen and makes all the white pages less brighter.

Try it out, and I'm sure it should help make your monitor less bright!

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Choosing between Android, iPhone, Windows Phone and Blackberry

One of the things that I tend to use most everyday is my smartphone. I almost always carry it with me everywhere I go, and also have it close by when I'm at home. Needless to say, if there was one piece of technology I wouldn't give up it would probably be my smartphone. However, with so many different types of phones and smartphone operating systems out there, it can be somewhat of a hassle to determine the right type of smartphone for your needs. As such, I have put together here a little guide that may help you select the right type of phone. Most of what I have mentioned here comes from my own personal experience, with all these operating systems.


Top 3 reasons for choosing an Android Phone:

1. Price: A quick comparison between android phones and other smartphones will quickly reveal that android phones are in general a little less expensive than other varieties. This may be either due to lower specs, lower build quality or less features so always be sure to check some reviews online before going for an android phone that looks too good to be true. The top tier android phones, however, may be just as pricey as other competitors though, depending on how the smartphone market is when the phones are launched.
2. Freedom: One good thing about the android OS is that most manufacturers give you the option of installing any application that you want on your phone. It doesn't necessarily have to be downloaded from Google play (Android's app store). Often times, you can download it from the creators website (or forums such as XDA developers) and install it directly. Also, if you're even just a bit tech savvy, you can download custom roms and with technical some know-how "flash" it to your phones. Also, did I mention that you can play flash videos/games on android (you'll have to download a custom APK, but it's possible)?
3. Features: Big screen, small screen, high res, loud speakers, keyboards... there are all sorts of hardware features that you can find in android phones. If you're looking for an AWS spectrum phone (some providers like Wind/Mobility in Canada, and T-mobile in the US us the AWS spectrum for their services) then you can find plenty of android phones that may meet your needs

Top 3 reasons for choosing iPhone
1. Top of the line hardware: Apart from minor antenna problems with the iPhone 4, the latest lines of iPhones  have every piece of great hardware you'd want in a phone: 8MP camera, thin and light, high res display, adequate hardware noise cancelling and most of all a hardware silent/vibrate button (which is indispensable if you go to a lot of meetings and only realize that you forgot to turn off your phone after someone else's phone rings, and you don't really want to remove your phone out of your pocket)! One thing that I would have liked to see was some kind of a notification light, so I don't have to repeatedly turn the phone on to see if I have a message or email.
2. A wide selection of apps: iPhone still has more apps by number. Also, since Apple has been around the smartphone market for a while and the App store gets higher revenue than Android/Windows Phone/Blackberry stores many developers usually chose to release their apps for the iPhone first.
3. Reliability: iPhones on average have less software/hardware problems than Android phones. I've usually never had my iPhone never refuse to connect to the network after coming out of the subway for example, where as other platforms have sometimes given me some trouble.

Top 3 reasons for choosing Windows Phone
1. Fresh: Windows phones arguably have one of the funkiest looking hardware around. This is pretty cool when you want to differentiate yourself from the other iPhone users out there. Also, the Windows phone UI is pretty fun to use  and Microsoft has done a good job of showing the most critical information to the user upfront without having them jump to apps and screens.
2. Nice hardware: Many windows phone hardware partners (Nokia, HTC in particular) are putting out some of the best camera phones and high res displays out there.
3. Sufficient apps: While the Windows phone app store may not be as big as iPhone or Android, it does have a large variety of apps (especially those built using the "Metro" design platform) that will most likely take care of most things you would want to do with your phone.

Top 3 reasons for choosing Blackberry
1. Reliability: Blackberries have some of the best reception and voice quality (along with a few Nokias and Motorolas) that you can possibly find in a smart phone.
2. Keyboard: The Bold 9000/Bold 9900 probably has the best keyboard my thumbs have ever typed on. However, unlike touch screen based phones, there's no way to switch to a "number only" key pad when you want to make calls for example. Other Blackberries also have formidable keyboards that make it easier to type out those quick emails and texts.
3. Business features/BBM: Blackberry Enterprise Services/Blackberry Internet Service ensure that you get your emails in a secure and timely manner. Also, I've found BBM to be more reliable and faster than Apple's iMessage and even text messaging at times. It is also more secure.

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Top 6 Gmail Tips

Gmail is probably one of the best free webmail services out there given the enormous number of features it has. Plus, chances are good that if you're reading this blog, you're a gmail user! As such, I've put together a short list of my top 6 tips that I use all the time on Gmail's web interface. Although I do use Apple Mail quite a bit, I've been drawn to the web interface more so than a desktop email reader because it's easier to use from any computer, and works great without any setting up or delays thanks to Gmail's speedy interface.

My Top 6 Tips for Gmail:

1. Use keyboard shortcuts to quickly process your emails. This is especially handy when you have a lot of mail to process. Simply hit:
• N to move to newer conversation
• P to more to previous conversation
• C to compose
• ! to report spam
• F to move forward
• R to reply
• And there's more.. you can find the whole list of shortcuts here
• To enable this feature head over to the settings page by clicking the "Gear" button on the top right hand side of your gmail window, and pick "Settings" from the menu. The keyboard shortcuts option should be under the General tab.
2. Undo send - Have you ever been in the situation where you clicked send and only after you clicked it did you realize that you had made a mistake. Well worry no more, because Gmail's undo send feature "fakes" the process of sending out emails by giving you a 5 seconds to cancel sending your email once you click send. You can turn this feature on from the settings page under the general tab.
3. Automatically process your emails by using filters (on top of Priority Inbox): With the filters feature you can set rules for incoming mail such as newsletters or notifications and sort them, mark them as read, delete them and so on. The easiest way to set this up is to click on the "More" button at the top of an email when you are viewing an email and click "Filter messages like this". Gmail will then ask you a bunch of questions and you can have your filter set up in no time.
4. Read email from other email accounts through your Gmail Account. If you have multiple email accounts like I do, then it may be best to use the multiple sign on feature that google has started offering recently. If you click on your username on the top right hand side of the page, you can click the "Add account" button to link to or more accounts to one account so that you can easily switch back and forth between these accounts. Just one thing you may want to remembers is being in the correct email account before sending out emails.
5. Allow others to send email from your account: A recently added feature in Gmail is the ability to grant access to others so that they can send emails on your behalf! You can find this option in the "Accounts and Import" field on the Gmail settings page.
6. Multiple Inboxes: A great labs feature that I like is to have folders or labels displayed on the main page so that you can quickly see what's up. This is great if you set up Gmail to fetch email from several accounts, as you can have several different inboxes on the main page to browse through. You can find the multiple inboxes lab in "Settings", under the "Labs" tab (just search for multiple inboxes). Once you enable this lab, you'll have a multiple inboxes tab where you can configure additional options.

Bonus: Get yourself a Gmail pet hamster!

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The best ways to increase iPhone Battery Life

One thing that Apple has always paid attention to is the battery life in their devices. Most of them, particularly their laptops, far surpass the industry average when it comes to giving you lots of juice. In this post, I will mention some of the ways I, and many others, have managed to get more life out of their iPhones devices.

If you've used your iPhone for a few days, you may have noticed that the battery life is not as good as it was when you first got it. There are many reasons for this and the main culprits include:

1. Misbehaving apps that keep turning location services on or waking up your phone, trying to tell you something
2. Changed screen brightness and email sync settings - a brighter screen and syncing more often
3. Your phone trying Low reception areas
4. Syncing of large files (pictures, books, data etc.) from your phone to the "cloud"

All of these things use battery life. All of these things are also what makes your smartphone "smart". 

If you feel that your battery life is more important to you, then the best way you can get it back is by effectively disabling all the syncing, brightnesses changes and bad settings that have been pushed onto your phone by rogue apps.

Doing so is simple (although perhaps tedious):

1. Uninstall any apps you may have recently installed. In particular you can save a lot of juice by uninstalling data hungry apps that you don't really need/use such as:
1. VOIP Apps (Viber, Dell Voice etc.)
2. Apps that upload your pics to the internet (this include iCloud syncing, calendar syncing etc.)
2. Disable "notification" settings for apps that you don't really need notifications from using: SETTINGS > NOTIFICATIONS
3. Make your phone dumber: Turn off services that you don't need. Things that you can turn off from SETTINGS include: Location services (no GPS if you do this!), Siri (if you happen to have it, I don't use this much anyway)
4. Prevent uploading of "Documents and Data" to iCloud when you're using cellular data: Do so from SETTINGS > ICLOUD > DOCUMENTS & DATA > turn off USE CELLULAR
5. Prevent applications like Skype from signing you automatically from SETTINGS > SKYPE > SIGN IN AUTOMATICALLY

If you want to do all of the above, then you can try resetting all your settings from: SETTINGS > GENERAL > RESET ALL SETTINGS and this will maintain all you apps, but delete all the settings for the apps (this includes Mail, Google Calendar/Contact Syncing etc.). So next time you open an app it'll ask you if you wan't to use location services, notifications etc., and you can only allow a select few to access things like location services.

As far as I know, disabling things and resetting are the only ways of improving battery life on the iPhones (apart from draining the battery fully and recharging it again). Let me know of any other methods you come up with.

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Choosing a good pair of headphones/in-ear headphones

So, you want to buy headphones huh?

I think headphones these days are actually becoming more of a fashion statement than a device that helps you listen to audio. Being a commuter on the TTC (also known as "The Rocket") for the past 7 years, I have observed a marked increase in the use of headphones, ear phones and a bunch of other things. One thing that strikes me though is the large amount of people wearing those "beats" by (dr.) Dre headphones. Those may be great for the bass, but for people who wish to buy some "quality" headphones, here are some of my thoughts regarding a few technical aspects you can look at before purchasing a pair of headphones. While nothing beats trying out the headphones, this guide may be of help for people who wish to buy things online.

You can generally find the specs I've described below on the manufacturer's website or by simply by doing a quick search for it on google. Headphones.com is also a great resource for looking up some specs.

Headphone Impedance

One of the things you have to keep in mind about a headphone is that, effectively, it's just like a resistor (something that burns up energy). It takes the energy from the device that powers it and causes some membrane to vibrate in order to produce sound. The lower the resistance, the louder the sound produced by the headphones for the same amount of power. This is a key factor that you have to consider when buying headphones because if you plan to use a handheld device like an iPhone or a mp3 player to listen to music, you're generally going to want a lower resistance, somewhere between 8Ω - 16Ω (Ω = Ohms, a theoretical measure of the resistance). If the resistance is any higher, you'll likely have to resort to using a headphone amplifier that use batteries to get higher noise levels from your headphones. Not that there's anything wrong with using an amplifier, but it's just an extra inconvenience you may have to deal with in order to listen to some music.

Frequency Response

Here's were things start to get a little subjective, but I'm only going to mention the tech details.

So you probably know that headphones work by vibrating a little membrane like thing (called the "driver"), back and forth. However, the ability of that membrane to vibrate really fast or slow depends on what kind. A whistle sound for example, has a high frequency. A drum beat, however, has a low frequency. While listening to music though you want your headphones to produce both sounds equally well. However, that is not always possible to do. Some headphones can produce lower frequency sounds better, while others can produce higher frequency sounds better. The best types are good at both. As such, each headphone type has it's own "frequency response curve". The "flatter" the curve is, generally means that the headphone can produce more frequencies at the same sound level, and therefore produce more sounds.

X-axis is frequency (how fast the speaker is vibrating), Y-axis is gain (how much potential sound the speaker can produce at that frequency)

In the pictures above, the graph at the top is of a headphone that costs $19.99. To the bottom is a headphone that costs $1,945! (yeah, two thousand bucks!). The main difference is that the cheaper headphones can't produce the lower frequencies as well (like drum beats and such), hence the dip in the curve on the left hand side (which means you can barely hear those sounds). The really expensive ones can handle the bass very easily so it's like a "flat line", hence the price!

This spec of the headphone is what allows the headphone to handle the "lows", "mids" and "highs" that audiophiles often talk about. If you're into base, you want the left hand side of the frequency graph to be flat, and above 0 for the y-axis.

Active Noise Cancelling Headphones

Another type of headphones that are catching on these days are ones that work by playing "antisound" (1/2 wavelength out of phase sound waves, if that means anything to you...) so that it cancels out sound from the outside. These are especially handy if you plan to travel on planes or trains, since it's really easy to generate antisound for the low hum of airplane or subway engines. However a couple of caveats you'll need to keep in mind:

• Not all sounds are actually cancelled. It won't cancel out the sound of babies crying beside you, or people talking loudly, since it's very difficult to generate antisound for these sounds
• They'll often require batteries, and some may not even work without batteries. Buying new batteries every week/recharging them may become a hassle really fast
• These headphones are usually very expensive!

Some things you can check for such headphones are their "noise isolation"/elimination curves.

For example, if you are considering the Bose QC15 headphones, you can google for the noise isolation graph for the headphones, and it'll show something like this:

In this case, you want the frequency curve to be as low as possible for all frequencies, as opposed to the frequency response graphs in the previous two pictures above because want to cancel out/block the noise. Noise from airplane engines are somewhere around 70-100 Hz frequency, and the Bose QC15 do a nice job of cancelling it out by dropping the sound level of the engine noise by ~20dB. That's about the same reduction as reducing the sound of car traffic to the level of sound of an average conversation with a friend (yeah, it's hard to picture sound...).

So with noise cancelling/isolating (noise isolating headphones just block out the noise by covering your ears...) headphones, you'll want to check out these curves and try to find the ones that block out the most noise.

One thing you have to remember is that a side effect of this antisound business is that the actual sound that you want to hear will get a little distorted, changing the frequency response curve of the headphones. As such, it's always a trade off, and it's up to you to decide if noise cancellation is more important than you being able to hear a particular part of a song.

Fit and Finish

One final thing that's pretty obvious is how the headphones fit on you. This is something that you'll likely just have to experience on your own by visiting a store or something, and is highly subjective. As well, you probably want it to look cool.

I, however, don't really mind how it looks as long as it sounds good!

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