May 2016

WriteYours is a new program for Microsoft Windows systems that replaces keywords you enter with text that you have defined previously.

The application is offered as an alpha version currently but it ran fine and stable during tests.

The main idea behind the program is to make the entering of text that you type often more comfortable by assigning keywords to it which you then write instead.

Instead of writing your full address in an email or on a website for instance, you can simply associate it with the keyword add.

The new Windows 10 web browser Microsoft Edge is rather bare bones when it comes to tools that it provides you for troubleshooting issues you experience in the browser.

Yesterday for instance, I ran into an issue that would prevent a page from loading at all. Edge would hang, and since the tab was already open in the browser, closing and opening it again would not do a thing about it.

Whenever Edge opened, the browser would hang and I could do nothing as controls such as closing tabs or the settings were not working.

App Volume Control is a free application for Android devices that enables you to control the volume when specific applications are started or exited individually.

If you have encountered situations before when using your Android device where the sound was too loud, where notification sounds distracted you from watching a video, or where you did not want to be disturbed by your phone's ring sound.

Your Android device may ship with options to set the volume of media, the ringtone or alarm individually, but the same is usually not true when it comes to applications.

SoftMCCS is a free program for Windows devices that lets you test, diagnose and control a computer monitor connected to the PC.

Apart from revealing detailed information about the computer monitor and its supported features, it provides you with options to change monitor settings directly from within the application.

This can be useful if the monitor does not make available certain features that you want to control (while supporting them), if you want to make changes quicker, or if it does not support hardware calibration at all.

Microsoft revealed this week that the free ride to grab an upgrade to the company's new operating system Windows 10 will indeed be over at the one year launch mark.

This means that devices running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 can only be upgraded for free to Windows 10 before July 29th, 2016, and that the option to do so expires on the day of the anniversary.

Remember Tucows? The download part of the site was very popular in the last millennium as a destination for freeware and shareware.

It fell from grace like many other services of its time as other services became more popular. Nowadays, Tucows is still around but not as popular as download portals such as Softpedia, Cnet Download or even Freewarefiles.

Windows Live Mail 2012 users who use it to connect to Microsoft's Outlook email service receive emails from Microsoft currently that state that they won't be able to use the solution anymore come June 30th, 2016.

Windows Live Mail is a free email client by Microsoft that Microsoft made available as part of the Windows Essentials 2012 suite of programs.

It is supported by Windows 7 and newer versions of Windows, and still available for download on the Windows Essentials website.

Avira AppLock+ is a new application for Android by security company Avira which provides you with options to lock apps on the device.

The basic version of AppLock+ is free but if you want to make use of all of the applications' functionality you have to make a one-time in-app payment of €2.49 to unlock those features as well or €1.49 to unlock them individually instead.

First thing you are asked to do after installation is set up a pin and verify it, and set up a recovery password on top of that.

Many sites throughout the Internet play videos automatically when you visit them. This can be video content that is published on the site or in form of advertisement displayed on the site.

In the case of advertisement, most sites mute these videos by default but some are pushing it and turn on audio as well.

Most web browsers ship with muting functionality to counter these without you having to hunt the tab where the sound is coming from these days, but muting won't stop the video from playing.

Microsoft announced today that the free Windows 10 upgrade offer ends on July 29th, 2016.

The company has been tight lipped about what happens after the one year free upgrade period to Windows 10 expires with rumors ranging from an infinite continuation of the free upgrade offer to paid subscriptions for all users who took Microsoft up on the offer.