Ht Nawsaj

Recover Corrupted Word Document

Today i had to help a friend to recover a Word document, which had many unsaved changes over the last available version.

I thought it would be nice to write about it as all the regular recovery processes failed on me. I had to spend some time on internet for finding the alternatives which resulted in finding Damaged DOCX2TXT here

Problem

• The word file suddenly crashed and complete data was lost after reopening.
• The intial saved file was exisitng but all the intemediate changes were missing.
• The document was being edited on normal PC with Office 2010 with no cloud and backup options available.

Options tried for Recovery

• Default methods provided by Microsoft for Document Recovery mentioned in official support pages here.(No point in writing the detailed methods again)
• I was able to grab the .tmp file in same folder as the .docx file,then
  • Renaming and opening in Word did not work
  • Opening in Notepad returned Junk Characters.

Solution

With all the options failed to work ,i resorted to use Damaged DOCX2TXT as last option. As the name says it converts corrupted .docx to plain text file.

• The installation procedure is standard and simple.
• Once installed just opened the corrupted file or in my case .tmp file.
• The tool recovers the data as plain text,with out any formatting done in Word.

My friend had important data in the document and recovering atleast the plain text was great achievement than loosing everything.

Importing Existing Readability articles to Pocket.

 Continuing from previous import article from Google Reader to Pocket,i have modified the script to work with exporting articles from Readability to Pocket

Again this is necessary only for already exisitng articles,for new articles you can always use the IFTT

Step by Step process

• Get your json using export options in Readability account settings.

• You receive the mail with JSON file.

• Save above script in a file as *.py and modify the inputfile and outputfile in the script.

• Run the script using python.(Python needed to be installed on the system)

• The script generates html.

• Login into the pocket,use this URL to import the html.

• Once completed you will find the articles in pocket with Readability as Tag.

Following this, articles are imported to pocket account.

Pastebin link

Please remember the script worked fine for me,but i have not tested all the scenarios…….

XDA Forums – Place to find actual reviews

It is know fact that any product release is accompanied with reviews from all the major tech websites and bloggers.

Depending on the website or person reviewing ,they can be really good or biased.

But spending the time on XDA forums i realised we the users are best reviewers one can find.

From my experience,i suggest using these forums before actually buying the device.

How to use the Forums?

According the popularity and availability of the device,Xda developers would add a forum for the device.Every device has below sections….

• Device General
• Device Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting
• Device Accessories
• Device Android Development
• Device Original Android Development
• Device Themes and Apps

XDA has great member support classified according to their Seniority,Contributions and Development abilities

Before making a decision to buy

For regular users

• Check the General and Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting.
• Most common issues seen on the device are usually found on the first 2 pages as a Question or as an observation
• If an issue is reported by more people,then obviously you can face it too.
• If you are still in doubt to make a decision, you can ask questions in Q&A. You will get it answered in almost all the cases.

For users interested in Tweaking/Modding devices

• Users in this category might already known about XDA,if not Original Android Development and Stickies in General section are worth reading.
• You could find about the device ability to get Rooted,Custom Rom installed.
• You can get advice on Hardware mods for the device if compatible.

After buying a device

• You can proceed and seek the help about common queries.
• Threads with [How to],[Guide] would be very helpful.
• Themes and Apps is great section for the apps or themes for your device.
• If you are interested in after market accessories for your device,you can get all the help needed in Accessories section.

Going through the device forums you can find issues faced by people which are not covered in any tech reviews and few of them which occur only in long run or in specific batch of devices.

Reading these forums would greatly affect you decision to buy a phone.

Feedback to Developers

I realized recently that a lot of us purchase the app or games,use it or delete it if we do not like the same, but rarely provide any feedback.

And some of us,who always find something missing in the app,give bad ratings for the app in respective appstores or start blaming the app/developers in Internet forums.

In addition to above groups,there are few (excluding reviewers) among us who actually help the developer with constructive feedback and play a part in improving the app.

Why people hesitate to provide feedback?

From my experience as an end user,i came up with below reasons for not providing feedback or ratings.

• First thoughts that come across in user’s mind when they see Rate Me pop up

  • What’s in it for me?
  • Will my rating do any good?

• User Reviews in Official App stores are no longer anonymous.People do not want their name to show up there for different reasons.

  • They do not want people to know that they are using that specific app.
  • Does not want people trolling them for their reviews or opinions written.
  • Usual Privacy concerns.

• People go with Rate later,but the later never happens.

Alternative ways to provide feedback

• Oldest and the best way of providing feedback which always works Email. Although they receive huge number of emails,there are developers who respond to our mails.

• Alternate App markets or App suggestion websites like App Brain or App Shopper which allow Anonymous ratings and reviews

• Forums section of popular tech sites.

How my feedback helps?

From my experience ……..

• Developers always welcome constructive feedback (Feedback with things you like ,issues and features you would like to see.)

• There is always scope for improvement.If they like your idea,you may as well see it in later versions.

• Detailed steps to reproduce the issue will help in fixing the same in newer versions instead of just complaining about it.

• If the app is in beta state,every input from users like us helps improving the app.

• If you are Social enough provide the same feedback as review,this helps in people knowing about the app before they actually install.

From my end i have already started providing feedback wherever possible.Some of them were ignored and some were considered….

Moved to Chrome Dev channel

Why Now?

Following the announcement of preview of Chrome packaged apps,i updated my Chrome from stable to Dev channel releases to start using the new App Launcher.

What is App Launcher?

If you have not already heard about the App Launcher,it is similar to Chrome OS launcher for windows currently availlable only in Chrome dev releases.

It holds all the Webapps installed in Chrome and the launcher can be used with out actually opening the browser.

More details here on App Launcher announcement page

How the update went..

• As mentioned by Google it is better to backup your profile, paths are mentioned in the installation page for XP and Windows 7, if you have any important data.

• The installation was just one click from here, the complete process was smooth with out errors or compatibility issues.

After Update

My intention was to use the new App Launcher the most,so installed the packaged apps from the market.

Getting Bookmarks on App Launcher

• I wanted to have my most used bookmarks on the launcher,so started search on Internet.

• Luckily the old method mentioned here still works to have boomarks in App windows.

• Almost as mentioned in the link above,we can have custom Icons and app names for bookmarks added.

Next, Customize how to open the apps from the launcher.We can change between Full Screen,Windows,Regular or Pinned Tab.

My Impressions

• No regrets since the installtion.

• Running as good as my previous stable version.Atleast in the way i use the browser.

• In addtion,we also have access to Chrome notifications on Dev releases.

• Still i need to get use with latest New Tab which has redundant Google search bar in addition the Recent websites.

• Need to always log on to google account to use App Launcher,which i am not used to before.

App(s) i deleted

With huge collection of Apps on both Playstore and Appstore it is common among us to look for better and new apps to replace exiting apps.

I thought it would be interesting to document the apps i have deleted and replaced with.

Twitter and Dash are the two apps that had been removed from my phone….

Apps that replaced the deleted

Scope:I had used early beta builds of the application but has not been tracking it lately.I tried again installing and use the recent build,i am impressed and continued using it.

What i liked

• Look and feel-The application is as polished as official twitter client and lot better than Plume
• Combined Timeline-The app has support for Facebook and option to have combined timeline is great feature last seen in Tweetdeck.
• Media Timeline-This app has option to see only photos/Videos in our timeline,the same has been a recent addition to Tweetbot on iOS,
• Support for other social network-Current version of the app allows to add Tumblr,Foursquare and Instagram in addtion to * Twitter and Facebook*.
• Finally the app is free

What is missing

• Widget Support-I do not use widgets for Twitter,but still it is a misisng feature for many users.
• Image previews takes considerable time to load.

Overall a nice app worth installing….

TweetLanes:Less discoverd app among huge collection of Twitter apps.I was late to discover that it has support for App.net, has been using it ever since after deleting Dash client.

What i liked

• More consistent UI compared to the Dash client i have been using previously.
• Context Tweet box unique to this app.
• Best free android App.net client.

What is missing

• Missing Widgets.
• Notifications-The app does have notifications yet,still i keep using it as i rarely receive notifications on App.net.
• Auto refresh-Currently the app refreshes on launch and i could not find any option to set sync interval.The free version of Dash also did not have an option for auto-refresh.

Being open source and having timely releases implementing new features,i can see huge potential with this app.

First Week with Nexus 4

As mentioned previously i went with Nexus 4. This is an account of first week with it,ROM’s,Mods and Apps i am using now.

First thing after unboxing

• Nexus 4 being a Google flagship has ability to Bootloader unlock.Learned from my previous experience that the earlier you unlock the better it is, because it erases all the user data which includes all the files on 16 GB.
• Downloaded the factory images here,if any thing goes wrong these files comes to the rescue.

ROM Selection

• Once done,i have proceeded with search for Custom ROM.I had to choose from Paranoid Android and Cyanogenmod which are great roms for Nexus 4 and PA has won.
• Apart from per app dpi and layout,the features i was attracted were per app colors and full screen options.
• Per App Colors-It is great option to have navigation bar and status bar to match with app colors. (Blue with Dropbox,Grey with Google+ etc)
• Per App Fullscreen-Any one using devices with Onscreen navigation buttons will realise that a good amount of screen estate is wasted while playing games,with PA we have the option to switch to fullscreen on games and return back to normal after exiting the app.

So,downloaded the latest version here and booted my device to proceed with App installation.

Apps Installed

I had few already purchased ready to be installed from Playstore and need to select few as alternatives for iOS only apps.

• There is good catalogue of official apps from Google,went ahead and installed most of them especially which are not part of GApps package.

• Hunting for apps i purchased-With the latest versions of the play store it has become difficult to differentiate paid apps i have purchased already,My Purchases is great app to get the list for installing the same.

• Twitter App– i have tried many options to get twitter experience as good as Tweetbot iOS,but i would say nothing came close to it.I had to choose official Twitter over Plume,Carbon and Falcon Pro.

• Simple Note Client -I started using Simplenote across platforms as mentioned here.With no official version availble on Android,Flick Note is the closest i could get.

• Adfree – Although it hurts developers income,i would still like to remove ads wherever possible.This is one of the reason to root your phone.

• Press – Press Nice app to follow your google reader feeds availble only on Android.

• App.net – Dash is the only free app i could get on Android to browse App.net Alpha feeds.

• Video Player – With Android you have flexibilty to choose among a lot of video player which includes PC ruler VLC but i settled with MXPlayer,has great codec compatibility and on-screen key support.

• Tasker – Great app for complete Android automation,using it since the days of Eclair.

• Ingress – Lucky to have invitation,unique Multiplayer game from Google to play on the roads available only on Android.

• Finally all the cross platform apps like Dropbox,Snapseed,imdbetc.

My Impressions

Android has come so far since the days of Eclair and Gingerbread and Jellybean is whole new experience with project Butter.Below are my thoughts after Nexus 4 compared to iOS.

Bad

• Not sure if the App developers or Google OS to be blamed i could still see that scrolling is not as buttery as they claim.This can be observed in Chrome for websites and apps like Plume when you scroll huge list of tweets.

• Launcher and Widgets still redraw/refresh in few instances when exiting an app.

• Slow battery charging time compared to quick charging of Iphone 5.

Good

• Coming from iOS the Notification system on android is a great blessing,with recent changes to Gmail i find myself opening the main application a lot less.

• Widgets…Widgets..nothing more to say.

• Loving browsing and watching videos on bigger screen.

• Using Google Now more compared to the Siri previously.

• Editing documents and reading PDF is much better on Android.

• Good collection of Emulators to play old NES/PS games.

Finally,Cannot say good or bad it has turned me into flash junkie.In this one week i have even tried using Ubuntu Touch.

Carrying both Iphone 5 and Nexus 4,flagships of Apple and Google Ecosystem is a great experience to have instead of blaming each other for their demerits.

Ended up with Nexus 4

I was looking for Android as a second phone OS after using Iphone 5 for past 6 months.I was waiting for 2013 flagship devices before deciding on the phone to buy.

Finally,I have decided to settle down with Nexus 4 and bought it instead of Galaxy S4 or HTC One

Why Nexus 4? Especially in 2013

• With Google I/O in next month,I am sure Nexus 4 would be the only phone getting the new android version immediately.(unless Google releases new phone or Galaxy Nexus still supported)
• S4 and One are 2013 flagships,but they would still be running older OS.OEM ’s would take at least 6 months to update to latest version.
• Custom rom support-Although HTC one developer edition looks promising and receiving positive dev support ,cannot match Nexus 4 which already has great Dev and Google support.
• With Google trying to push it’s design language across Android and web,it is a great experience using pure OS instead of UI layers.
• Option to run Ubuntu has also attracted me.Daily beta builds are already available for download here
• Although price is not my constraint the Nexus4 costs almost half compared to unlocked version of S4 or One.

What I miss?

• 1080p screen-It has become minimum specification of 2013 devices which I would certainly miss on Nexus 4.
• Camera -Any review of Nexus 4 on Internet would mention about the below par performance of Nexus 4 camera,especially compared to One or S4.(My Iphone 5 can be useful here)
• Performance-Most common issue mentioned in technical reviews and seen in experience is Thermal throttling on Nexus4. If you see dropped frame rates in games,you will never stop noticing the same again.Certainly this would not be a match for S4 or One in performance.
• Battery –2013 phones are being released with high rating batteries which are certainly better than Nexus 4.

To satisfy the geek inside me,which always wants to use the latest and greatest in technology,Nexus 4 is the only Android device I could come up in the current market..

Using new read later service Dotdotdot

Dotdotdot is new read later service which has come up with new features.I have been using it since last few days,here are my thoughts about it…

How is it different from Instapaper/Pocket etc..

Timeline

• Timeline is User feed with updates about the article added like read,highlighted,added etc
• Importing article into dotdotdot has an option to make the article private or public,depending on the same it is displayed in the feed.
• It allows us to follow the users and read the articles from their timelines.
• Support to view global time line if you are not following any users.

ebook Support

• In addition to articles, it allows to sideload epub files and read on web or apps.
• Can be used as a full time ebook reader.

Highlighting

• It has option to highlight text snippets from both articles and ebooks.
• Highlighted text has option to both Comment and share.

What i like…

• Dotdotdot has new social features in addition to competitors.
• Time line is great feature to discover new content.
• Options to tag and edit title and author of imported article
• Also has option to import from Google reader.
• Option to create Lists.
• Mobile apps and browser bookmarklet.

What is missing…

• No option to filter what is shown in the Time line.Currently it shows same article once added,started reading etc..
• Importing article is still slower compared to other services.
• Articles imported are some times not properly converted to text.
• Mobile apps still under beta and importing articles takes considerable time.
• Hightlighted text is some times distracting,a option to disable would be nice to have.
• Option to change fonts/fonts size.

To conclude,it is good alternative for Pocket and Instapaper but still in early stages and has great potential….

Managing notes across the platforms

It goes with out saying that every body now use their mobile device or PC to quickly jot down notes or reminders. Some people would like to have them locally or sync them across the devices.

My interest was getting the notes across platforms and multiple devices,I use Windows,OSX and iOS.I mostly use them to capture books i would like to read,movies to watch,contacts etc.

Following are the different options i have tried before settling down with Simplenote.

Evernote

what i liked..

• Only service having official apps across all devices and platforms including WP8.
• Support for web clips ,images,pdf and etc.
• Option to manage notes in folders.
• Great service to manage bills and receipts.

why i am not using it..

• Being free user,cannot have offline notes.This is the major reason i stopped using it.
• Compared to other alternatives the native apps are not so comfortable for quick jotting.
• Passcode lock available only for premium users,very useful when handing over device to someone.

OneNote

what i liked..

• Nothing can compete with OneNote in terms of text formatting and customisation.We can directly insert Excel tables,charts etc.
• Great options to maintain multiple notes.
• Sync across multiple devices.
• Native apps for IOS,Android and WP8

why i am not using it..

• No app on Mac,it would be great to see it bundled with next office version.
• Takes considerable time to sync the notes on Android and iOS.
• Still no iPhone 5 support on iOS.

Apple Notes

what i liked..

• Very fast to access the application on iOS.
• Simple and powerful depending on who we use it.
• Can insert pictures and tables,format the text on Mac which will be synced to other devices.
• Notes can also be arranged into folders.
• Although rarely used ,notes is well integrated with Siri

why i am not using it..

• Apple iCloud website is only option to edit/create notes on Windows,and forget about using on Android.
• Very little formatting can be done on iPhone or iPad

Finally Simplenote

Why i am using it..

• Apps available for all the platforms.Official apps for iOS and open source apps for Mac,Windows and Android.Complete list here
• Very fast and simple to write on all the platforms (i can say by experience)
• Passcode protection available for iOS.
• Support for lists.
• Great support for search,both on web app as well as native apps.

How i am using it..

Thanks to this article , i found an option to use Dropbox as backup in addition to Simplenote sync.

• On OSX,nvalt2 is great app with lot of customisation options.
• I have configured the save location as Dropbox folder,so every note is automatically backed up in Dropbox.
• On IOS,we already have official apps and with the setup above i can also view from dropbox too
• On Windows,ResophNotes was able to satisfy all my needs.

So i am planning to continue with this setup until i can come up with better alternatives.